Jays notes

Fangraphs has a Q&A with Jays-ish 2B Kelly Johnson.  They neglect to ask him whether or not he's signing in Toronto this offseason, which kind of sucks.  Having said that, he's one of the more SABR-savvy players in the game today, so it's cool enough.  He likes walks!

Tom Tango acknowledges the existence of that interview as well, so that comment section should be pretty good, as usual.  He looks in to one of Johnson's answers about approaches to hitting based on the 24 base-out states (bases empty with 1 out, runner on 2nd 0 out, etc.)

Sticking with Fangraphs/Kelly Johnson/2nd basemen, we get a look at the free agent market for 2nd basemen this coming offseason.  Not looking all that pretty...  and you wonder why Alex Anthopoulos wants to look at the trade market instead of the free agent market to fill his team.

Damien Cox of The National Idiot Convention Star thinks that the Cardinals won the Colby Rasmus trade.  I don't know how many times I need to tell you people that this isn't the case, no matter what.  The best result for the Cards is that both teams come out ahead of where they were with this one, but still...  2 months of a reliever and a mediocre starter, plus 3 years of control of another reliever isn't worth a potentially elite CF.

And of course, over at Getting Blanked, Parkes shits all over Cox (note: teehee... shit.... cox....) for being an idiot again.  I mean, I was gonna do that, but I wrote that half-assed World Series preview first, and it cost me.  Parkes shits on idiocy better than pretty much anyone around, and there's no shortage of that coming from Damien Cox.

World Series Preview

That would be a screenshot from Major League Baseball with Ken Griffey Jr. for the N64; a screenshot that I purposely took just for this very day.  It will lead me in to a nice boredom piece for once the offseason really gets going and there's nothing to write about.

Anyway, I don't think that it's a big surprise to anybody that the Rangers got to the World Series, and conversely, it's a giant surprise that St Louis made it.  Not only that, but I think we can pretty much kill the notion that old men like to present when they say "The way to win a World Series is through starting pitching and defense" since neither of these teams have pitched overly well, save for Chris Carpenter in game 5 of the Philadelphia series.  And you know, offense is an equally important part.

I don't think it's going to be a shock that I predict the Rangers to win the series with relative ease.  They're just simply a better team, though it's not like the Rangers haven't lost a World Series to a worse team before or anything.

St Louis has gotten here despite some pretty terrible starting pitching.  Texas certainly gets the nod with regards to pitching, despite not having a real ace the way STL does.  Don't get me wrong, CJ Wilson is awesome, but in the playoffs so far, he's really been the suck with an ERA over 4.  I'm wondering if there just aren't any innings left in that arm until next season, given the fact that he was a closer in 2009, going from a career high of 73 IP, to having thrown 427.1IP over the last 2 years, but maybe that's nothing.  Still, I feel like Holland/Lewis/Harrison is as good, if not better than Lohse/Jackson/Garcia.

The offenses are pretty close, I guess, but I give the edge to Texas with a really balanced attack 1-9.  STL's offense is pretty good, with Albert/Berkman/Holliday, but it just kind of stops there.  David Freese has kind of lit a fire under himself so far in the playoffs, but that can't really last forever, can it?  The best hitter in the playoffs has been Nelson Cruz, and the rest of the Rangers offense has been pretty solid the entire way through.

I seriously don't effing know how the Cards got this far, beating two teams who are so clearly better than they are.  They've played some good baseball over the last month or so, and I suppose they pounced on Milwaukee's dogshit defense.  When we get right down to it, Texas and Philadelphia are/were probably the two best teams in 2011-- I just don't see St Louis getting through both of them in one postseason.  It was wild enough for STL to get to the playoffs, let alone to the World Series, but that's going to be the end of 'er I feel.

Few links about the Toronto's

Hi.  Remember that thing I wrote yesterday about the Colby Rasmus trade?  Well Parkes at Getting Blanked writes pretty much the same idea, albeit more coherently and with a funny anecdote.  I always like it when we have similar thoughts, especially when I get them submitted before he does.  Makes me feel smart.  Little discussion in the comments too.

MLBTR does a little preview of the Jays offseason, as they do with all teams.  And wouldn't you know it, that comment section talks about the Rasmus trade too.

Assistant GM Tony LaCava will meet with the Orioles tomorrow about their vacant GM position. AA says that Lacava would be irreplaceable, especially considering how young AA's staff is.  Worst of luck to Tony.

Aaaaaand the World Series starts tomorrow.

Good tweets.

Twitterers are kicking ass so far today:

Patrick Sull, someone I've never heard of, says this:

Deal Colby Rasmus, qualify for the World Series. Tough day for group think.

Now, I'm definitely not one to condone stupidity, and am typically first to challenge the notion that the ends justify the means.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Just because you got the intended result doesn't mean that what was done is at all excusable.  I'm talking, of course, about the Rasmus trade, which, from the STL perspective, was fucking terrible. Even if Edwin Jackson and Octavio Dotel weren't going to be free agents at the end of the season, you're still giving up way too much for an average starter and 2 relievers.

Having said that, St Louis did need another starting pitcher (who gave up 4 ER over 2 innings last night!) and bullpen help.  Giving up a 25 year old, potential superstar CF with 3 more years of team control (and what likely end up as cash) is a massive overpay for what they got in return.

So the question becomes this: had the Cards not made the Rasmus trade, do they still get to where they are now?  My answer is a clear "no".  I'm not saying that Rzep, Dotel and Jackson were responsible for the entire 10-game deficit being closed, nor are they fully responsible for even a single win to this point in the playoffs.  But getting here probably doesn't happen if Trever Miller or Brian Tallet or PJ Walters are in the bullpen, and Jackson pitched well enough in his 50-ish regular season innings as a Cardinal to help out there too.  This of course assumes that they would have been in the same 10-game hole that they got in after the trade, but still; there's probably a 1-win difference over the last 2.5 months between [Dotel+Rzep+Jackson+Patterson-0.5 Rasmus+0.5 John Jay-0.5 Kyle Maclellan] and [Tallet+Miller+Walters+0.5 John Jay-0.5 Rasmus+More McLellan starting and less of him in the bullpen], especially the way this bullpen has pitched in the playoffs, if that makes any sense.

Again, at no point does it ever make sense to make that trade if you're John Mozeliak, as there is no way that he actually thought "Well we're 2 relievers and a shitty starter away from getting to the World Series, all we gotta do is give up a potentially elite CF to do it!", but I'm sure if you told him that he could make that trade in exchange for the exact result he got, he, and every other GM in baseball, would probably make it any day of the week.  If the Cards win the World Series, the ends actually do justify the means, because winning the World Series is the only thing that really matters.  I'm sure they mortgaged off a good piece of their future by trading Rasmus, but getting the ring is much more important.  Basically, everyone shit on that trade, but STL probably doesn't get to where they are without it, and thus, we, the people who are the fans of the advanced metrics, the Moneyballers, the critics of braindead GM-ery, have been told by John Mozeliak himself, to politely suck it.

Good tweet #2 comes from @Bluejaysbatboy:

Sox blogs/comments talking about getting Farrell back to manage. For money or prospects, I think the Jays should be very open to this idea.

Umm, shit yes.  I mean, is there really very much value in a manager?  Especially one that, in his rookie season, made a lot of really basic errors, with regards to pinch hitting, lineup selection, bullpen management (I mean AA had to trade away Dotel to get him to stop facing lefty hitters), stealing bases with your best hitter at the plate, etc. And now we have the option of not only letting him manage a division rival, but getting compensation for it?  Man oh man.  I mean, Farrell can't possibly be noticeably more valuable than any other candidate out there, can he?  There's no WAR or WPA stat for managers, out there, but if we could say Farrell is worth Y mWAR, it's not like any other manager that could ever replace him would be worth (Y-1) mWAR-- it's impossible.

 It saddens me that AA said like a week ago that any of his staff could seek other employment without permission, because that might put a damper on *snicker* Farrell's trade value *pfffftttt hahahaha*.  To be fair, that comment AA made was about his scouts, front office management, and any assistants (i.e. LaCava, Wakamatsu, Luvollo) who could go to other organizations and qualify for promotions that they otherwise wouldn't get yet in Toronto, as opposed to Farrell, who, as Manager, probably won't be finding any promotions.  I fucking hope not anyway.  Unless he considers the same job in a different city to be a promotion.

I really don't think there's much of a chance of Farrell getting traded, by the way.  If he wants to manage in Boston, they'll probably just let him, but I doubt they did that big long manager search last offseason only to trade him this offseason.  The irony would just be so goddamned delicious though.

Finally, Mike Axisa of River Ave. Blues and MLBTR:

Pffft, I liked Colby Rasmus before AA was anywhere near the GM's seat.

Same.  It just seemed like I always traded for him or eventually signed him when playing MLB The Show in franchise mode.  For what it's worth, I also traded for Roberto Luongo on NHL 2005, as the Vancouver Canucks.

Stuff

Jays catcher prospect Travis d'Arnaud tore a ligament in his thumb on his catching hand yesterday, and needs surgery immediately.  Bad news.  Apparently he'll be all set to go for spring training, but that still sucks pretty bad.

Gregor Chisolm tells us some stuff that we already knew about concerning Kelly Johnson.  Apparently Johnson is a free agent and the Jays need to address the second base issue!

Jays' assistant to the Gnereal Manager Tony Lacava has been given permission to interview for the vacant GM job in Baltimore.  AA says that he'll never not grant anybody the freedom of seeking better positions within other organizations, which is friendly, I suppose.  He claims that such a policy should attract better personnel in to the organization, but I can't see it.  I dunno, he's smarter than I am, I suppose.

Buster Olney seems to think that David Ortiz could be a fit in Toronto.  Other than the fact that he's a douche, I don't hate it.  The only real problem I have with the concept is that there's already two guys in the lineup who don't play defense, in Adam Lind and Edwin Encarnacion.  I guess you could stick Edwin at 1B and DH Ortiz, if you really feel like trading Adam Lind's super team friendly contract when he's at his lowest trade value (well... this past offseason was his lowest trade value, but he's coming off a really shitty final 3 months of the season).  Ortiz, despite being 35, is still a pretty damn good hitter (153 wRC+, 4.2 fWAR in 2011), so that bat fits in the lineup just fine.  It would probably force the Jays in to putting a liability in to the field with Edwin, but the Ortiz production would be nice regardless.  I'm not sure what a 35-year-old, all bat, no glove DH should go for on the market, but I'd be skeptical to give a multi-year deal to him, especially at any significant price.  He made $12.5MM this past season, and I doubt he'd get a raise on that, even coming off a 4+ win season.

Okay, that's enough.

Maholm Update

I'd like to take this moment in time to update something that I wrote yesterday.

Pirates pitcher, Paul Maholm, is probably going to be a free agent soon.  I examined his value in a trade yesterday, and determined that it's pretty tough to justify any team going out there and trading something useful for him, just to exercise an option that is kind of pricey.  Like I said, part of being a GM is trying to squeeze every bit of value from the cash you spend.  Maholm isn't exactly a stud out there, but he's not bad by any stretch, which just kind of sours me at the thought of paying him $10MM for a season.  Having said that, it does appear that the Pirates are going to decline the option, if we read between the lines when we hear that the Pirates are in the market for starting pitching.

Now, what I wrote yesterday was mostly from the perspective of the Jays, who are rumored to be looking for a front-mid rotation guy.  Something I didn't really consider, and this was kind of shortsighted of me, is the fact that the Pirates have a commodity, albeit at a price that is risky as shit.  I went through some options yesterday that the Pirates have regarding Maholm, and figured that they'd exercise and trade him, either now or mid-season. But after thinking about it, if they decline this god damn option, as that article sort of suggests (near the bottom), I might lose my fucking mind.

First, you say that you're looking for starting pitching.  Okay, you can never have enough pitching, that's cool. Charlie Morton, while not that good, is still one of your top-5 starters, and is hurt until at least the start of the regular season, which creates a hole right there, a hole that you can fill with one of your own starters that you didn't appear to want.

Second, after CJ Wilson, there are no lefty starting pitchers available*.  Maholm, as a lefty, is just more valuable to a team than a right-handed pitcher of similar skillsets.  SOMEONE WILL GIVE YOU SOMETHING FOR HIM.  Even if you have to keep him for a month or two, or eat some cash, somebody will give you something useful.

Third, he might end up being worth the contract.  He's not a bad pitcher.  All you need is 2 WAR-- even less if you trade him.  Eat some cash (and fuck knows that Pittsburgh has some money stashed away-- payroll is at like $42MM) and you could even get a nice prospect.

I'll admit, when I wrote what I wrote last night, I was thinking that there wasn't a ton of value associated with Maholm, since his contract is so close to his actual worth, it would be risky for anybody, let alone anybody who's going to give up anything to get him.  But there is fuck all available on the free agent market, and not much else on the trade market.  I still think it's pretty dumb to leak out a remote possibility of declining the option, but this might work out.  Enough teams out there are looking for pitching, and many of them don't want to dish out 5/85 for CJ, or christ knows what for CC and Darvish.  On any decent team, Maholm is a 3rd starter-- and that might actually be enough in this market to throw something useful.

The big problem-- nobody is going to give up starting pitching to get Maholm.  At least not yet.  Nobody's desperate enough.  Come July, someone will be desperate enough to give up something for half a season of Maholm, and the market will be way, way better.  But if they want to find starting pitching, especially today, when people are hoarding young starters, you're going to have to give up one of those position player prospects to get starting pitching.

The Pirates have a bunch of hotshot starting pitching prospects that should be in the bigs by 2014, and they might not be ready to contend until then anyway-- if this is about money, exercise the option or trade his rights, and maybe sign Dana Eveland or Jojo Reyes to mop up some innings.   If this is about Maholm not being good enough to be on a team that is supposedly ready to contend... I'm not sure what more you're looking for.


*- Assuming CC re-ups with the Yankees.  Even if he doesn't, there's a small number of teams who are going to be able to offer CC the money he wants.

24

That's right folks, I turned 24 years young today.  As result, I purchased a 24-package of beer yesterday, and will consume each of them before the strike of midnight.

I believe Homer Simpson put it best, when he told Marge "Put the kids to bed, I'm comin' home loaded."