Blue Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos and manager John Gibbons are in no immediate danger of losing their jobs, but that could change if team president Paul Beeston leaves his post, FOX Sports’ Ken Rosenthal writes. Beeston is in the last year of his contract, and there is speculation around the game about whether he’ll stay. Beeston backed Red Sox chairman Tom Werner over Rob Manfred for commissioner, which Rosenthal implies might suggest Beeston was looking for a job in the commissioner’s office. Also, Rogers Communications, which owns the Jays, hired a new CEO in January. Here are more notes from the American League.
- Phil Hughes is open to a contract extension with the Twins, writes Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press. Hughes quietly had one of the top seasons among starting pitchers, with 6.1 fWAR and 4.3 rWAR. He walked just 16 batters in 209 1/3 innings. Combined with a solid 8 K/9, Hughes set a major league record for K/BB ratio at 11.63 while pitching to a 3.52 ERA. Hughes is entering his age-29 season and has two years and $16MM remaining on his contract.
- Earlier this weekend, the Orioles designated reliever Preston Guilmet for assignment. For Guilmet, that move concluded a season spent in a transaction vortex, CSN Baltimore’s Rich Dubroff writes. Since Guilmet arrived in a minor trade with the Indians in April, he’s been involved (by MLBTR’s count) in 14 transactions, mostly a function of the fact that he had options. None of those transactions were earth-shaking, but they had to have been trying for Guilmet personally.
Lock Phil Hughes up! Twins need rotation stability in the worst way!
He’s there for two more years as it is. He’s not going anywhere.
There’s no point in extending someone if they’re not going anywhere for a long time unless his value is just going to go up. Ryan Howard is a perfect example of signing someone when you didn’t need to backfiring.
Both Hughes and the Twins handled the bonus situation with a lot of class. Talking about an extension right now seems a little odd though.
I actually was kind of shocked that Hughes did not take the outing. But I loved that the Twins organization was willing to give him a chance at getting his bonus money. I think all in all the situation as you said was handled with A LOT of class
Please get rid of Beeston
I think AA is more at risk – not many of his trades have worked out, whether it be Rasmus, Morrow, Yunel Escobar, or the big Marlins and Dickey trades. None of those trades have made the team better, as evidenced by the fact the Jays have never made the playoffs under AA. D’arnaud and Snydergaard will be stars long after Dickey is retired. AA also lost the respect of his best players this year by not making a trade deadline deal that could have helped put them over the top, like Lester or Price. You can blame Rogers, but he promised a deal if they were in contention, and he’s only as good as his word. This team has all of the building blocks to contend, but do they have the right leadership to put the pieces together like the O’s and the Royals did this year ? Another failed season is a reminder that playoff success is all that matters. Jeter made the playoffs 16 out of his 20 seasons, and won 5 of the seven World Series he played in. That’s success. The Jays haven’t been to the playoffs or won anything since 1993… that’s 21 years and counting, and that’s failure.
The Yankees use to buy every Free Agent in a time where quality Free Agents were available in the truckload because most teams couldn’t afford to keep their stars locked up. Let’s not forget the Yankees in the 80’s made the playoffs twice, and didn’t make the playoffs in the 90’s until they had the largest payroll in all of baseball.
They started outspending everyone in 1994, that was the first season in which they would’ve made the playoffs in 13 years.
The Yankees were not good in the late 80’s. They overpaid free agents and did not win. Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball in 1990 which allowed the team to start promoting prospects. Bernie Williams was brought up first, then Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte a a couple years later. Jorge Posada followed a year after that.
These are the players that carried the Yankees to multiple World Series.
In 2002 they went back to buying stars like Jason Giambi. This helped them get back to the playoffs but they have not won the world series as often as they did with young Jeter/Rivera/Pettitte.
Aging Giambi/Teixeira/ARod has hindered them.
So the solution to winning is easy, just find prospects that will play at a star level for 20 years in a row!
I was always under the impression that quality free agents and trade pickups like Paul O’Neill, Tino Martinez, David Cone, Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, John Wetteland, Chuck Knoblauch, David Wells, Scott Brosius, and El Duque were what really put the Yankees over the top. While I don’t think they’d have pulled it off without Jeter, Williams, Posada, Mo, and Pettitte…in the late 90’s, O’Neill was a leader (moreso than Jeter was then), Wells and Cone outpitched Pettite most of those years, and Wetteland (in 96), and Brosius (in 98) were world series MVPs.
And in 2009, where would they have been without A-Rod, Johnny Damon, Nick Swisher, Matsui, Tex (who had his finest year in pinstripes) and CC Sabathia?
The Yankees were really good at buying talent greater than or equal to the “core four”, and that’s how they won so much.
Very few people use to become free agents before the MLBPA won a case against collusion in 1989.
I would think they need more time. Do they really need to rush to an extension, he is there 2 more years, and he has tended to alternate good and bad years. You got him through his age 30 season already, don’t need to rush into his decline years.
I read something earlier this week that said an extension would be the only way the Twins could give Hughes the 500k bonus without violating the rules. The basic idea would be to extend him for a year with his same salary and tack on 500k signing bonus.
That could be the only rational reason I can think of for a Twins/Hughes extension.
Loved the Hughes signing from the start. Didn’t actually figure he’d be very good (didn’t particularly care either), but I really liked how they picked the bounceback candidate they liked best and gave him multiple years so they might actually be good at some point in the future while he’s still on the team. A much more exciting risk than giving him a one year “rebuild value” deal where they’re gonna stink regardless and he’ll just walk for a better payday + team if he ends up returning to form.
Would’ve obviously looked really bad if he repeated his stinky years, but that’s where all the fun comes in as long as it’s not my team’s money on the line. :p
I like this idea well enough. What if he pitches like this for 2 more years? They’ll be looking at paying him $16-20MM a season for 3-5 seasons. If they locked him up over this off season they could probably secure him for 2-3 years at $10-13MM per.
If he’s locked up before 2015: 2 years/$25MM w/$2MM buyout on a $14MM option.
if he keeps pitching like this until FA: 3 years/$48MM w/$3MM buyout on a $17MM option.
Or he could fluctuate wildly in his performance, as he has his entire career. Then, who knows? Phil Hughes is the perfect example of a player who’s worth $20MM one season and $2MM the next.