Uncategorized News & Rumors

For those of you who don't feel like digging through Eddie's latest Elias ranking projections, here's a list of free agents projected to snag Type A status.  An asterisk means the player has a 2010 option.

Bobby Abreu
Jason Bay
Josh Beckett*
Rafael Betancourt
Orlando Cabrera
Johnny Damon
Jermaine Dye*
Scott Eyre
Chone Figgins
Troy Glaus
Mike Gonzalez
John Grabow
Kevin Gregg
Vladimir Guerrero
Rich Harden
LaTroy Hawkins
Trevor Hoffman
Matt Holliday
Orlando Hudson
John Lackey
Cliff Lee*
Felipe Lopez
Victor Martinez*
Bengie Molina
Darren Oliver
Magglio Ordonez*
Andy Pettitte
Manny Ramirez*
Marco Scutaro
Rafael Soriano
Billy Wagner*
Randy Wolf
Jose Valverde

You can forget about Beckett and Lee hitting the market, and Martinez is unlikely.  Cabrera cannot be offered arbitration if he's a Type A, per the terms of his contract.  That leaves us with 29 potential Type A free agents with the chance for draft pick compensation.  Of course, to have a shot at two draft picks the team needs to offer arbitration.  That's not happening for Glaus and several others.  Click here for a refresher on draft pick compensation.

The Angels lead the way with five potential Type As.  The Cubs, Dodgers, and Red Sox each have three (not counting Beckett).

Yesterday's AL Rookie of the Year discussion post generated a ton of discussion.  Today let's get your thoughts on the NL candidates.

Names likely to be in the mix: Andrew McCutchen, Garrett Jones, Chris Coghlan, Dexter Fowler, Everth Cabrera, Casey McGehee, Ryan Roberts, Will Venable, Colby Rasmus, Gerardo Parra, Jake Fox, Ryan Hanigan, Chris Dickerson, J.A. Happ, Randy Wells, Tommy Hanson, Ronald Belisario, Ramon Troncoso, Kenshin Kawakami, Jordan Zimmermann, Brian Sanches, Dan Meyer, and Luke Gregerson.  Here's a look at the names we were considering back in April, by the way.  Jones, Coghlan, Happ, and Wells were not top contenders at that point.

Recent NL ROY winners: Geovany Soto, Ryan Braun, Hanley Ramirez, and Ryan Howard.

The other day we talked about which players we'd like to see called up to the big leagues this month, so let's change things up a bit. What do you think about the concept of September callups in general?

Is it fair to have more players available this late in the season when playoff races are being decided? You can argue that having an extra reliever or an extra pinch hitter possibly decide a game in September isn't fair to the 25 players who've been on the roster all year. Would it make more sense to have callups in April?

Let us know what you think in the comments. 

Let's get away from the hot stove for one post and talk about the American League Rookie of the Year candidates.  Rattling off some of the top names:  Nolan Reimold, Elvis Andrus, Gordon Beckham, Brett Gardner, Andrew Bailey, Brad Bergesen, Jeff Niemann, Ricky Romero, Jose Mijares, Tommy Hunter, Rick Porcello, Brett Anderson, and Scott Richmond.  Who's been the most valuable rookie in 2009?  And which of these players would you most want on your team moving forward?

The last few AL ROY winners: Evan Longoria, Dustin Pedroia, Justin Verlander, Huston Street, and Bobby Crosby.

It's hard to believe that it's almost September, no? The sun is going down a little earlier these days, it's getting a bit more breezy out, and the playoff races are starting to heat up. Teams can start calling up extra players on Tuesday, so clubs out of contention will hold auditions for next year while teams in the race will add extra weapons off the bench and bodies to keep their regulars rested.

Who do you want to see your favorite team call up? If you're a Pirates fan, do you want to see Pedro Alvarez in September? What about Jason Heyward or Buster Posey? Mike Stanton? Remember, a player has to be on the 40-man roster to be in the Major Leagues, so a callup might not be as easy as you think. 

Forgive the self promotion, but if you're a Yankees fan, I wrote about who the team may call up in September earlier this week at my usual spot, River Ave Blues.

We all know about the nearly two decades worth of futility. The Pirates haven't cracked the .500 plateau since 1992 and it's all but certain that streak will not come to an end this season. However, after years of the previous regime filling out the roster with expensive band-aid veterans like Jeromy Burnitz and Mark Redman, new GM Neal Huntington has reversed course and dealt basically all of his veterans for young bodies that he hopes will be the foundation of the next contending Pirates team.

Some of Huntington's more notable trades include…

• Trading Jason Bay to Boston for Andy LaRoche and three other prospects.
• Trading Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte to the Yankees for Ross Ohlendorf and three other prospects.
• Trading Nate McLouth to Atlanta for Charlie Morton and two other prospects just four months after signing him to an extension.
• Trading Freddy Sanchez to San Francisco for prospect Tim Alderson.
• Trading Ian Snell and Jack Wilson to Seattle for Jeff Clement, Ronny Cedeno and three additional prospects.

The media and fan backlash has been harsh, but Huntington has stuck to his guns. He has invested heavily in the draft the last two seasons, and has young Andrew McCutchen turning heads as McLouth's replacement. The team is still losing with regularity, but at least now the franchise appears to have a direction.

What do you think of the moves the Pirates have made in the last year or so? Do you think they're on the right track, or were they better off keeping players like Bay and McLouth and Sanchez and building around them? There's an argument to be made for both scenarios, but tell us what you think in the comments.

While we're still awaiting official word, it appears that the Angels will add Scott Kazmir to their rotation at the cost of some prospects later tonight. The Halos will reportedly take on Kazmir's entire contract, which is upwards of $23MM if the club declines his 2012 option. The team also has a decision to make this coming offseason about incumbent ace John Lackey, who is set to become a free agent for the first time in his career.

So tonight's question is this: how will the Kazmir pickup affect the Angels pursuit of John Lackey, if at all? Does the club now have a little more leverage now, meaning they could hold the line in negotiations with Lackey a little harder than they would have since Kazmir represents a "replacement ace." Or does it not even matter?

With news hitting that J.J. Putz is out for the season and that Billy Wagner had requested that the Red Sox not exercise his 2010 club option upon acquiring him, I thought it'd be interesting to take a look at what contract decisions clubs have to make on top relievers this coming offseason. Let's dive in and try to analyze with what we know so far on some of the more intriguing ones.

• J.J. Putz: Mets hold an $8.6MM club option with a $1MM buyout. Pretty easy call–no chance that's exercised. Depending on Putz's health going into next year–he might be due for surgery–odds are he'll take some sort of incentive-based deal.
• Billy Wagner: Red Sox hold a $8MM club option with $1MM buyout. Unless Wagner flashes unthinkable stuff and helps the Sox hoist a trophy, giving a reliever $8MM coming off of major surgery while pushing 40 might not be too prudent.
• Ryan Franklin: Cardinals hold a $2.75MM club option with $250k buyout. Barring injury or an impending expiration date on a deal with the devil, you can all but guarantee Franklin will be back. He's got an unfathomable 1.11 ERA and 32 saves in 34 chances in 48.2 innings this year for the Redbirds.
• Rafael Betancourt: Rockies hold $5.4MM club option. He's been a valuable set-up man for the Rox, not allowing a run in 11.2 innings since being acquired from the Indians. It's a steeper price to pay in this market, but Betancourt has really stabilized a shaky bullpen and if he keeps pitching at this level they probably have to exercise.
• Luis Vizcaino: Indians hold $4MM option with $500k buyout. Vizcaino will gladly take that half a mil, which will be paid by the Cubs.
• Doug Brocail: Astros hold $2.85MM option with $250k buyout. He's 42 and has been hurt all year. Gotta pass.
• Masahide Kobayashi: Indians hold $3.25MM option wit $250k buyout. Another Indians reliever who will take his buyout money and hope he can latch on to a team.
• Will Ohman: Dodgers hold $2.2MM option with $200k buyout. He was supposed to be a late bargain but has been an injured bust. Unless he can make it back this year and prove useful he'll probably be looking for work again.
• Alan Embree: Rockies hold $3MM option with $250k buyout. The injured Embree will probably be unemployed this winter.

There's been a lot made of this year's draft bonuses and the age investigations of international players such as Miguel Angel Sano over the past few months. Is it time for a change? Ed Price from Fanhouse.com and Charles S. Farrell from the Dominican Republic Sports & Education Academy Informer offer their takes on both of these controversial issues:

• As Price points out, Chipper Jones signed as the #1 overall pick in 1990 for a bonus of $275K. Not only that, but the bonus was agreed upon the night prior to the actual draft. Nineteen years later, Stephen Strasburg signed for a deal that could be worth over $15MM more than Chipper's. Jones says that he feels you should earn your money at the big league level, and his former teammate, Jeff Francoeur wants something to be done to stop escalating bonuses. This raises the question, should MLB move towards an NBA-style slotting system, where bonuses are locked in depending on where a player is drafted? Price uses Rick Porcello as an example – a pitcher thought to be a top-10 pick who fell to the Tigers at 27th, because of reports that he was seeking a $7MM deal out of high school. MLB Executive VP of Labor Relations and Human Resources says they've worked to prevent slips like Porcello's in the future; Scott Boras, not surprisingly, agrees. Craig Counsell, a member of the executive board of the players' union says that changing the draft goes against what they've been working for – the free market. What do readers think?
• Another issue in MLB is the questionable ages of some International prospects. Farrell suggests implementing a fingerprinting system in the Dominican Republic for when children reach fifth grade, the last mandatory grade of education in the Dominican. Farrell says this idea was suggested to him by a baseball executive, who pointed out that Venezualan children are fingerprinted when applying for their national ID cards. Farrell explains that baseball brings in roughly $350MM annually in the Dominican Republic, and that the country cannot continue to tarnish the reputation of its players through age investigations. He says that while fingerprinting is not a flawless plan, it's a step in the right direction – protecting the industry of baseball in the Dominican Republic.

The Rays lost starting second baseman Akinori Iwamura to a knee injury earlier in the season, but the defending AL Champs haven't missed him too much because Ben Zobrist has been nothing short of amazing as his replacement. With Aki on a rehab assignment (six games with Triple-A Durham this week, including tonight), the Rays are close to getting him back just in time for September call-ups.

While carrying both players in September won't be much of a problem, next season may be a different story. The team holds a $4.25MM options for Iwamura's services next year, but could choose to buy him out for $250K. There has been talk of Tampa needing to shed some salary after the season, possibly by moving someone like Scott Kazmir or Carl Crawford, and the team could stand to save themselves a nice chunk of change by buying Iwamura out. Of course, they always have the option of keeping both players given Zobrist's versatility.

What do you think they should do with Iwamura? Perhaps the best option would be to pick up his option then trade him, similar to what the Yankees did with Gary Sheffield a few years ago. Should they let him go, keep him, or do something else all together?