Texas paper: Millwood signs with Rangers
The Dallas-Ft. Worth Star Telegram reports it’s a done deal, pending a physical tomorrow.
Update! $60m over five years, and the fifth year is voidable by the Rangers if Millwood doesn’t reach an innings target in the earlier years of the deal.
So, Washburn: 38m over 4 = ~9.5m/year
Millwood: 60m over 5 = ~12m/year
Now, whether or not you think both of those deals are crazy, the chances that Millwood will, over the life of those contracts, be worth 2.5m more a year than Washburn approach 100%
High Expectations for Felix
The future of the franchise is hardly news around here, and we’ve seen national attention directed toward The King before. But this from the Baltimore Sun nudges the meter slightly past “props” and toward “exuberance.”
This will be [Felix] Hernandez’s first full season in the majors, and don’t be surprised if he challenges for the ERA title and the Cy Young Award – at age 20.
Note that I’m not disagreeing. Looks like the 2006 Mariners’ storyline for the baseball media is in place.
M’s after Hatteberg
Yes, there’s stuff to gab about.
John Hickey at the PI on the M’s interest in Hatteberg and Ishii. Hatteberg would be a lefty backup to Sexson which from a Hargrove matchup sense seems okay, but Sexson hit righties pretty well last year. However… Hatteberg is a picking machine. Picking machine!
Hatteberg’s agent wants us to believe that there are teams looking at Hatteberg as a starter. To which I say: which teams don’t have first basemen already better than Hatteberg aaaaaaaand would be willing to take on Hatteberg instead of (say) trading for one of Toronto’s 20 stockpiled 1B guys because they need better-than-Hatteberg 1B performance?
Also, if anything interesting happens today, go ahead! Throw it in here as a comment. We’re likely not going to be as on top of breaking news as we might otherwise be.
Purpura’s big break
From Baseball America’s General Manager Roundtable, this anecdote from Astros GM Tim Purpura may tickle M’s fans:
SCHWARZ: What’s the worst task you were given starting out, Tim–the hazing process when you were low man on the totem pole?
PURPURA: This is a matter of some dispute. But the truth is that my first job as an intern was to go rent a baby crib for Bill Bavasi’s daughter. He disputes it, he denies it, but it’s absolutely the truth–and I’m going to find the receipt one of these days to prove it to him. That’s as bad as it got. I don’t think people realize–it’s not hazing, it’s do-what-you-have-to-do, and I was happy to do it. I was happy to pick up the meal money, I was happy to go get the sandwiches for Mike Port and Bill Bavasi.
Hee hee hee!
PI:Mariners sign Matt Lawton
Wow.
Matt Lawton, who admitted in a story in USA Today Sports Weekly Thursday morning that he’d used steroids, struck a deal with the Seattle Mariners Thursday afternoon, the Seattle P-I has learned.
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s:
– 2 guys who failed a steroid test last year (Franklin, Strong)
+ 1 guy who failed a steroid test last year (Lawton)
= -1 net guy who failed a steroid test last year.
Fortunately, it’s on the cheap:
The 34-year-old will make only barely more than the minimum, $400,000, as a base salary. But he has incentives in the deal that could bring him $1.65 million if he maximizes his at-bats.
Still, it wasn’t that long ago Lawton was a useful player, putting up solid on-base numbers, though it’s been a long, long time since he hit for good power. Maybe he’s done, maybe he’s not. If he outhits Everett, who’s getting almost 10x his salary, it’d be amusing.
And this gives me an excuse to quote my player comment on him in the 2003 Baseball Prospectus:
Lawton’s headed into the second year of a four-year, $27 million deal. For an outfielder whose major attribute is his batting eye, that’s a little pricey. He’s coming off of an especially frustrating season that ended with surgery to remove a cyst in his shoulder that may push his return into the second half of the 2003 season. What they found in his shoulder was reportedly as gruesome as anything outside of Peter Jackson’s horror classic Bad Taste. It took a team of medical specialists to revive the medical specialists who passed out after taking the first look into that abyss, unprepared for what would be staring back at them. Lawton’s expected to be back and healthy eventually, but how many horror movies don’t have sequels?
#7 on Lawton’s comparable players list, as selected by PECOTA?
Ron Fairly.
Gil Meche to the Cubs for Patterson?
Caution, Gil Meche fans. Just because your epic Babylonian hero is being tendered a contract does not mean he will be a Mariner this season.
Jon Paul Morosi of the P-I reports on a rumor that the team may ship the right-hander to the Cubs in exchange for Corey Patterson.
I’m certainly not averse to jettisoning Meche if the team can something useful in return, but this is not that scenario. Acquiring Patterson as a reclamation project might be worthwhile on its own merits, but that doesn’t appear to be what would go down.
A Meche-for-Patterson deal would make Seattle more willing to part with center fielder Jeremy Reed, given Reed’s market value in the wake of Johnny Damon’s defection from Boston. …That shift could help the Mariners have their pick of a pitcher in return — Bronson Arroyo or Matt Clement — and ensure that the Red Sox assume some of Clement’s remaining salary if that’s who is dealt.
Trading Jeremy Reed to install Corey Patterson as the starting center fielder is like selling off a young thoroughbred so you can concentrate on racing your adopted greyhound. Simply put, Reed is more valuable than Patterson in just about every way you can imagine.
Were you disappointed with Reed’s offensive performance last year? Well, as a rookie in a pitcher’s ballpark, he outpaced the career numbers Patterson has amassed playing half his games in Wrigley Field. Reed’s plate discipline is dramatically better than Patterson’s; he’s also two years younger and makes less money.
The past two seasons, Patterson has struck out 286 times and walked 78 times, posting a robust OBP of .254 last year. .254! That was Reed’s 2005 batting average. Lest you think I’m cherry-picking stats, Patterson has had 2,200 major league at-bats — and his career OBP is still less than .300.
I doubt a Clement deal is in the works because of the salary involved. It strikes me as unlikely that the team could get Boston to pick up enough of his paycheck to make the deal work, and even if that were the case, I still would be loath to give up Reed.
As for Arroyo, well, that would be even worse. Dave already did an admirable job of explaining why Reed-for-Arroyo doesn’t make sense for the M’s. Arroyo isn’t that hot a commodity, and to give up a guy with his career arc pointing in the right direction would be folly.
Essentially, the question is this: would you rather have Jeremy Reed and Gil Meche or Corey Patterson and Bronson Arroyo?
For me, the answer is easy.
Another bullet dodged
Sir Sidney Ponson got out of jail and back into the major leagues in the same 24-hour period. Fortunately, it wasn’t the Mariners who took a flyer on him, but the Cardinals.
Besides getting into numerous scrapes off the field, Sir Sid has been wretched on the mound the last couple of years. This is a signing the M’s were wise not to make.
Another item of, uh, interest:
Ponson will be a different looking pitcher. Since reaching the major leagues in 1998, he has pitched with his head shaved. Photographed leaving the central booking center following his arrest Monday, Ponson sported a full head of dark hair.
That’s just the type of detail you expect from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Between this and ESPN’s coverage of the pressing “Johnny-Damon-will-have-to-shave” issue, it’s barber day in baseball.
Franklin non-tendered
The M’s will not offer contracts to Ryan Franklin, Cha Baek, and Jamal Strong, making all three free agents. Gil Meche, however, will be offered a contract.
A Tale of Two Offseasons
It is the best of times, and it is the worst of times.
Before the confused e-mails begin to roll in, let me specify: skies are dark if you’re a Mariner fan, but somewhere, there is joy in Mudville. The Texas Rangers may be about to cap off a productive offseason with a run at Kevin Millwood.
Unsatisfied as most are with the M’s performance this winter, the fact that a division rival has markedly improved amplifies the disquiet. The Rangers’ signing a coveted starter would make the pill all the more bitter.
It’s always darkest before the dawn, and tomorrow is the shortest, darkest day of the year. Perhaps things will shift, and lighter days will lead to more lighthearted posts.
But as it is, I just had one thought when I saw Mike Bauman’s argument for why Cuba should get a spot in the World Baseball Classic:
Playing this tournament without Cuba would be like proceeding with the American League West schedule without including the Seattle Mariners.
… “it would cause roughly the same result”?
Today’s roundup
Late update: Greg Dobbs is designated for assignment (!) to make room for LHP Jake Woods, claimed off waivers from the Rangers.
“Mariners bust budget to sign lefty” reads the PI headline. Except there’s nothing in the article about them busting their budget. The article does offer this ray of hope:
…indications are the Mariners want Reed more than they want Clement or Arroyo.
And from the humor department:
Franklin could be retained as insurance and as someone who could push Meche for a spot in the rotation. Or he could be non-tendered, thereby becoming a free agent. Given that he’s averaged 200 innings the past three seasons, he would be a hot commodity as a free agent.
I guess though that might depend on what you think “hot” means.
Art Thiel blasts the team for not re-signing Freddy Garcia, which along with other decisions forced them to overpay for Washburn, who Thiel is not so big on.
However, o’er at the Seattle Times, Bob Finnigan says Reed’s on the market as the team continues to look for pitching:
Even with Jarrod Washburn in the rotation, the Mariners are still in the trade market for another starting pitcher.
And while outfielder Jeremy Reed may be the leading candidate to go in any deal, the Boston Red Sox aren’t the only possible destination.
An industry source maintains that the New York Yankees are another possible trading partner.
Um, technically, any team is a possible trading partner. I’m just saying that if you’re going to grant anonymity to a source, shouldn’t you at least get something interesting out of them?
Larry Stone writes up the team’s line (“M’s believe Washburn is good fit for Safeco“) and ends the article with:
The team is engaged in ongoing trade talks involving Jeremy Reed, who could yield another starting pitcher. Bavasi indicated that any other acquisitions are likely aimed at improving their depth  “players that can back up or threaten some of the guys we have  in a good way. There’s a lot of fine-tuning to go through.”
They want someone to come in and threaten Everett, and someone else to get Everett’s back, and so on down the roster? That seems needlessly wasteful.
Corey Brock gets in the best lines of the day though o’er at the NT:
Jarrod Washburn can certainly empathize with what Seattle Mariners fans went through in 2005.
The 31-year-old left-handed pitcher, who on Monday agreed to a four-year contract for $37.5 million, said he was continually puzzled as to why the Mariners did not fare better last season.
No no wait, it gets even better:
“Every time we played against the Mariners last season I couldn’t believe they were not winning more games,†said Washburn, who played the past eight seasons for the Angels.
“The lineup they have – starting with Ichiro at the top – they’ve got some talented guys.â€Â
Ahhhh, that’s quality humor in arrangement there.