I have heard, but been unable to confirm anywhere, that Hasegawa has reached an agreement with the Yankees. I report this because it’s interesting if true: the Yankees will spend more on their bullpen soon than 1/3rd of the teams in baseball spend on their entire team. But not being able to confirm it, I don’t put much stock in that yet.
Big news for the M’s, potentially, is that the Mets are making an offer for Kazuo Matsui (NY Times link). Some report the deal is 3 years, $21m, to which I say “pah”. Matsui’s a modest upgrade on Glass Guillen, but he’s not 7m/year of upgrade value. This also seems to mean Jose Reyes shifts to second which is — I’m just going to say this — dumb, as Reyes could be a superstar shortstop. I’ve never understood why teams pile on their problems and… ahhh, you’ve heard that rant before.
Also, while we here at the USS Mariner are in the Vlad-Vlad-Vlad cheering section (which is pointless) the word on the street is that Vlad is asking for Manny Ramirez money for a long, long time, and I don’t know that anyone, even Alex Rodrgiuez, would get that kind of money with a really long-term deal on the market today.
For those of you keeping score at home, that brings the Yankee lineup to
DH: ?
C: Jorge Posada
1b: Jason Giambi
2b: Alfonso Soriano
SS: Derek Jeter
3b: Aaron Boone
LF: Hideki Matsui
CF: Bernie Williams
RF: Gary Sheffield
The obvious next move, if the Yankees are really blowing the doors off (and they are), is to go get Beltran and move Bernie to DH/spot corner OF. When Giambi’s knee goes out again, they’re still in trouble, but offensively they’d field the best offense in baseball.
As for the M’s, I think Rhodes might be a bargain: his injury-hiding, awful season may cost him a huge chunk of money that would make a healthy Rhodes cheap.
Anyway.
Its time for your daily Yankee transaction. Today, they’ve added Javier Vazquez, one of the best pitchers in baseball, reportedly for Nick Johnson and a throw-in.
This week alone the Yankees have signed Gary Sheffield, Aaron Boone, Tom Gordon, Paul Quantrill, and Felix Heredia, and you can add the trade for Javier Vazquez today. Hey, Brian, share the wealth, man.
In other bad news, Hasegawa wants 3 years, $9 million, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we gave it to him. Hello disaster signing! I’d put the odds at 50-50 that the M’s could get better performance from Simpson or Taylor than Hasegawa, and for the league minimum to boot.
Oh, and we’re also attempting to overpay for Eddie Guardado. He’s been a pretty good pitcher the past two years, but has the “proven closer” label attached, and thus will be paid more than he is worth. The M’s should have learned their lesson from the Sasaki debacle. Don’t pay for closers; develop them, then sell them to other, less intelligent teams for actual pieces of value.
Of course, we could be optimistic and say that if the Mariners are interested in Guardado, the whole Sasaki-to-Japan thing may have more teeth than some people believe.
The Red Sox released Jeremy Giambi. Call me stubborn, but I still think he can hit, and he’d certainly be a better bat off the bench than Mabry was last season. Heck, I’d take him over Ibanez at this point as well, and Giambi’s likely to come much cheaper to boot (no, that wasn’t a pun about his defense).
In our effort to become U.S.S. Yankee, we’ll link to the Paul Quantrill signing. If you’ll recall, Quantrill was one of my targets, and at just under $3.5 million per season, he’s a good deal. Flipping draft picks for relievers isn’t a good idea, though, and the Yankees have now forfeited their 1st-3rd round picks in next year’s draft.
Its an unfortunate commentary on Mariner fans that the vast majority want Shiggy re-signed and Arthur let go. Here’s to hoping Bavasi makes the right call, letting Hasegawa go sow his 86 MPH fastballs elsewhere and brings back Rhodes for a hopefully healthy 2004.
Winter meetings next week. Things could get interesting for the M’s there. They have their irons in quite a few fires, and things might move quick.
More intriguing Yankees news: They just paid $5.75M for 3B Aaron Boone, he of the career .780 OPS and who turns 31 before next season. A deal which will cripple them? Certainly not. Doesn’t seem like a good place to spend money, though.
Alrighty… that new Big Board I promised a few posts ago is up. Enjoy.
There’s another part to this, though — Beltran’s a 1-year player and he’ll demand top dollar after next year. The Yankees would (obviously) want to sign him to a long-term deal, but they’ve also got huge salary commitments that are pushing them over the cap *now* with penalties that grow more severe every year. While it may seem now like George is willing to spend whatever it takes today and forever, this CBA is going to start giving them noogies next year and purple nerples the next, at the same time that team’s really going to be old and decrepid. They might be giving up Johnson as part of a Beltran deal that makes them close to invincible next year, but for the remaining years when Johnson’s cheap and awesome while the Yankees pay out $bazillions in cap fees, that may end up tying their hands for either Beltran’s extension or pursuing the kind of quality FAs we take for granted they’ll be after.
Also, my nightmare is that Dave’s entirely right, that the Yankees have a checklist that goes
– sign Sheffield
– trade Johnson for Beltran
– sign K-happy fly ball staff to minimize Jeter-Soriano shortcomings:
– sign Colon
– sign Millwood
– etc
I shuddered just typing that.
I gotta go with Dave on this one; signing Gary Sheffield is never a bad decision. It’s particularly not a bad decision if you’re the Yankees, because you have the money to do it and the resources to make another move (like adding Beltran) as well. But hey, wouldn’t Sheffield have looked nice in left field at Safeco? I like Sheffield-Winn-Ichiro a heck of a lot better than Ibanez-Winn-Ichiro and I’m guessing you do too.