I hope everyone had a
great Thanksgiving! I know it has been
awhile, but …let’s get at it!
I hate the Ellsbury signing! The Yankees have blown it! They simply don’t understand what value means
and they waste so much money and then still want to get under 189? I do understand the "want" to get under $189 BTW.
The Ellsbury contract is
basically a 7 year deal at 153 mil (21.86/year because of 5 mil buyout) or 8
years at $169 mil ($21.13/yr). This allows
us to get Ellsbury for 16 mil the last year if the Yanks want to.
I think they were
smart to hold the dollar amount on Cano to 25 mil a year for 7 years. I would have held at 6 years because I am not
so sure who is giving out that type of coin, but I am ok 7 because he is your
main guy and making him a Yankee for life has some value. He has a chance to go down as the greatest 2nd
baseman of all time…and will be up there.
BUT, how do you tell a proven elite player, that is yours, that you don’t
want to go more than 25 and then you go give 22 mil a year for Jacoby
Ellsbury? WHAT? JE is a very good player; in fact he is a
slightly rich man’s version of Gardner who I think is very valuable, but 22 mil
and at 7 years? NO WAY! Who was going to give him even close to that
amount? Who were the Yanks bidding
against? This is the same stupidity they
did with ARod when they gave the 3 final years when they didn’t need to; 7
years would have gotten it done. In this
case 5 at 100 seemed more than enough to get it done; the Yanks just needed to
be patient.
Now how do you go
back to Cano and say you are only worth 3 mil more than a guy who has had some
injuries and his game is predicated on speed?
HORRIBLE decision and a much bigger risk than Cano. Now the Yanks will sign Kelly Johnson for 3-4
mil so they chose Ellsbury and Johnson instead of Cano? Johnson is an OK guy but not a difference
maker. Again, Ellsbury is a very good
player, but his speed will be diminished 5 years from now and you have an
albatross contract once again at the end. I hope we can sign Cano, but I think this contract makes it highly unlikely and if nothing else hurts your bargaining situation.
Let me put into
perspective why Boston just won the WS and we are acting like a desperate
franchise. Boston signed Pedrioa to a 6 year extension
that starts in 2016 for a whopping $14.2 mil a year. Yeah, 14.2 mil a year. Ellsbury is a pretty similar worth to Pedroia
when Jacoby is healthy. Cano is a little better than Pedroia. The Yanks should have kept Cano (and they would
have), I mean would he really go to Seattle for a few more mil a year…no way,
he wants to win and I would be surprised Seattle would give him some 8 year
deal worth much more than the yanks anyway.
Ellsbury had a career
year in 2011 where he was truly elite.
He had a .928 OPS to go along with his speed. He hit 32 HR’s that year but never hit more
than 9 before or after (kind of strange).
He had injured years in 2010 and 2012 that were bad, but overall his career
numbers show an OPS of .789 with adjusting for his SB’s he gets another 50
points for SB’s which puts him at an OPS of .840. (this is pretty similar to what he did last
year so that is a good expectation. He
is fast but not an elite defender, perhaps similar to Gardner in CF but probably
slightly worse. (Gardner played elite in LF and was starting to play really
well in CF)
The Yanks also signed
McCann who is another huge risk. Nothing
is guaranteed, but the Yanks just shot their money on two risks. Ellsbury is a low to mid .800 OPS guy and a
good defender who has to stay healthy and McCann is a guy who is showing signs
of slowing down from catching a lot. I
love offensive catchers and if he can come back to be a good hitter the risk
will pay off, but again it is a risk because in 2012 he had the least amount of
AB’s he has had since his rookie year to only have even less in 2013. His career OPS is .823 (which is really good
for a catcher), but his last 2 years were .698 and .796 respectively. Now, we could look at all of this and say
that the .698 was an aberration because it was only one bad year. However, one thing really concerns me, and it
is not that he was 0-13 in the playoffs last year. It is that the 2nd half of last
year his OPS was .680 and this is showing a little bit of breakdown over the
past 2 years. He also had an OPS of .858
at home and .740 on the road. He is a
big pull hitter so the short porch can help, but we better make sure we can
offset the lefties out of the pen because most teams have 2-3 lefties in the pen
(only we don’t) and in key AB’s lefties will be used. His career OPS is just over 100 points higher
against righties (.857-.744).
All in all, I think
the Yanks messed up and far overpaid for Ellsbury. The McCann contract was a lot as well, but
our catching situation was terrible and now while risky should be at least
average and could be very good. 17 mil
was on the higher side, but I do think that was around where they needed to be
to sign him. I don’t love the signing
but at least it makes some sense.
Ellsbury was just as risky but committed more money and overpaid for the
risk…bad decision.
Now, let’s hope we
get lucky with these…of course it could work out for a few years but I bet the last
2 years will probably going to be ugly.
Moving forward, I
want to discuss some of the thoughts I had regarding the moves we made last
year. My main issues with the Wells and
Ichiro signings had to do with the payments for the years but just as
important; the road block for young guys to come up and contribute. It is pathetic that in a year like last
year we once again didn’t develop anyone! This is a critical point as you never get
a chance to see if the young talent can contribute and thus contribute cheaply. It is fine if the older and costlier players
are producing, but we didn’t get much, nor should have we expected much. The big picture showed:
Ichiro – .660 ops and
good defense for 6.5 mil for 2 years
Wells - .631 OPS for
11.5 mil (Yanks cost) and 2.4 this year. We are giving Wells 2.4 mil and my issue is
that if you take both their salaries this year, for 9 mil. you could get a good
player that can help. Shoot, Pedroia was
only 14 mil so if we don’t spend 5 mil on mediocre players a few more times you
get a star. Like I have said over and
over on this blog, the yanks should go spend the money on the truly elite
players and then fill in with young rookies/inexpensive people and then when
making a run you see what is needed and you get a “Soriano” as needed. BTW, Soriano costs us 5 mil this year as the
Cubs pay 13 mil of his 18 mil this year.
Even if Soriano was not as hot as he was for us and he gave us his
career numbers (.825 OPS) that makes more sense to fill in as needed. I am not in love with his type of offense
(not working walks and swinging at everything, but at least he can be
productive.
Just going back to
Ichiro…and the signing for 6.5 million a year for 2 years. Last year I used the example of Chris
Dickerson as someone we could have had for league minimum (400k) and he would do
what Ichiro did. Ichiro ended up with an
adjusted OPS of .660 when you take SB’s into account. Dickerson who didn’t get many AB’s finished with
an OPS of .666 so they were pretty darn similar. Of course, part of my argument was that a
younger player (even younger than Dickerson) who is given a shot to play all
the time could get better (in truth, they could get worse as well as they could
get exposed as well). The other part is
what you could do with the 6 mil in savings as noted above?
Needless to say I am
disappointed because I don’t think we get Cano now because of the Ellsbury
signing. If he can stay healthy he will
help us, but I think we will at best get our monies worth if all goes perfectly
and the odds are we will have yet again overspent needlessly.
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