Daily Archives: December 23, 2008

It is cold and now dark in New York but there is plenty of heat being generated by the afternoon news that Mark Teixeira has agreed to an eight-year deal with the Yankees.  My friend Rich Lederer, an Angels fan, called me from the golf course in California.  He was not happy.  He practically yelled on the phone he was so irritated.

How can you root for a team that has such an uneven financial advantage?  How is that fun?  Where’s the competition in that? 

“I hope they lose every single game,” Pat Jordan said to me when I called with the news a few hours later.  Both men, incidentally, are Republican, but they are also both rebellious, outsiders, self-made men.  They aren’t the kind that get off rooting for US Steel.

Yet here I am, a New York Liberal, and yet US Steel, that’s my team.  I used to have guilt about it, for years it worried me.  Then I grew up.  What’s the use feeling guilty?  You have accept what is.  Professional baseball isn’t a game.  The Yankees are out to win, every year, forever.  Isn’t that why Ban Johnson created the Highlanders in the first place?  They will spend whatever it they have to spend.  They pay a big luxury tax in return.  They might offend everything you stand for.  So be it.  I get it.

I like being a Yankee fan.  If Yankee fans are cursed by anthing, it is the teams’ ruthless ambition and unyielding arrogance.  The curse for a rational-minded Yankee fan is that you are rooting for the front-runner, the bullies. And if you are overly neurotic you will question what that says about your moral fiber.  So, we listen to other fans ridicule our team as something less-than-wholesome, something corrupt. 

As far as curses go, it’s not so bad.   After all, being a Yankee fan also means knowing, feeling in your bones, that you’ll see your team win again, and probably some time soon.  Which is not to say that it will happen, but Yankee fans feel as if it should, and, inevitably, that it will happen.  Being a Yankee fan also means wishing for, and often getting, big, fat, expensive Christmas presents like a CC or a Teixeira.  Sometimes, the toy doesn’t make it out the box before it breaks–Don Gullet, Jose Contreras, Carl Pavano.    

But you can’t predict the future and for the moment, all you can say is that you feel pretty warm in a cold, hard world.

All I want for Christmas is…

EVERYTHING.

According to Buster Olney at ESPN, Mark Teixeira is going to be a Yankee.

The Yankees have signed Chien-Ming Wang to a $5 million contract for the 2009, thereby avoiding arbitration with the first of their four arb-eligible players (Xavier Nady, Melky Cabrera, and Brian Bruney are the other three). The contract in and of itself is insignificant. Wang made $4 million last year, but missed the second half of the season with a lisfranc fracture in his foot and thus only got a $1 million raise. No big deal. I do, however, find the Yankees’ treatment of Wang’s arbitration years interesting.

Last year, Wang and Robinson Cano both became eligible for arbitration for the first time. With Cano asking for $4.55 million in 2008, the Yankees decided to buy out his arbitration years entirely with a four-year, $30 million contract. Wang, meanwhile, asked for $4.6 million and the Yankees took him to arbitration to save $600,000 and beat him.

To me, that says alot about the Yankees’ relative enthusiasm for these two players. That’s not to say that they don’t value Wang on a year-to-year basis, but Wang is 2 1/2 years older than Cano and, while its easy to forget even following his foot injury this past season, he has a less than rosy injury history.

Way back in 2001, labrum surgery cost Wang all of his second professional season, forcing him to restart at short-season Staten Island at age 22 in 2002. In his rookie season of 2005, he was shut down in mid-July with another labrum scare that, fortunately, turned out to be solved by his simply spending two months on the DL. In 2007, he started the season on the DL with a hamstring strain suffered in spring training, and last year he broke his foot running the bases in Houston, ending his season after just 15 starts. Thus, Wang has avoided the DL in just one of his four major league seasons.

Beyond those injuries, Wang is also sometimes looked upon with suspicion because of his poor strikeout rates. He has been able to succeed despite striking out just 4.02 men per nine inning on his career (against a league average of 6.48) because of his extreme ground-ball rate, but there’s a sense that that balance will not hold indefinitely. Fortunately, Wang managed to increase his strikeout rate in both 2007 and 2008, topping out at 5.12 K/9 last year thanks to the coaching of Dave Eiland, who had him working in more sliders when he needed a K. Unfortunately, Wang’s walk rates have risen as well, so that his K/BB ratio has held relatively steady near his career sub-par 1.58 mark (league average is 2.01).

On top of concerns about his fragility and effectiveness, there’s age. Wang was 25 as a rookie and will be 29 this season. That’s certainly not old, but he’s several months older than both CC Sabathia and  Josh Beckett. Wang’s arbitration years will take him to age 30, where as Cano’s contract is only guaranteed through his age-28 season. It seems to me that this is the primary reason why the Yankees are taking Wang year-by-year, but went ahead and bought out Cano’s arbitration years in bulk.

There’s another thing that strikes me about Wang’s new one-year deal. It seems unlikely that Wang’s value is going to be lower next year than it is now. Wouldn’t it have made more sense for the Yankees to try to negotiate a two-year deal and thereby preemptively suppress Wang’s 2010 salary based on his injury-shortened 2008 season? Perhaps having failed to get a multi-year deal out of the Yankees last year, Wang and his agents wouldn’t agree to such a thing. Still, I think the fact that the Yankees continue to go year-by-year with Wang supports a notion I had when the Yankees signed A.J. Burnett for five years:

The Yankees don’t intend to re-sign Chien-Ming Wang after he becomes a free agent.

Think about it. Sabathia is signed for at least three years and possibly seven. Burnett is signed for five years. Joba Chamberlain is well on his way to establishing himself in the rotation. That’s three spots in the 2011 rotation that are already spoken for. Wang will become a free agent following the 2010 season. If the Yankees can, over the next two years, develop just two more young arms (with Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, and Zach McAllister being the top candidates), there’s no room for Wang in 2011, and no need to pay a free-agent salary to a player whose arbitration years the Yankees wouldn’t even buy out. Even if the Yankees only develop one more starter by 2011, that leaves just one empty spot in the 2011 rotation, and there’s a good chance that they will be able to find a better way to fill that last spot than to give a big-money, long-term deal to a 31-year-old Chien-Ming Wang.

Of course, when it comes to pitching anything can happen. It could be that none of the pitchers above is healthy or productive enough to claim a rotation spot in 2011. Projecting pitching even just three years into the future is a dangerous game, but the way everything looks right now, I think we’re only going to see Wang in pinstripes for two more years. Enjoy him while you can.

Powered by a $275,000 to $400,000 watch, here’s the news:

• ESPN.com’s Buster Olney recaps the offers made to Mark Teixeira to this point, and foresees that Tex will wind up with the BoSox at the end of all the circus acts:

Mark Teixeira told Red Sox owner John Henry the other day that he has offers higher than what the Red Sox offered, but as Boston gauges the market, it’s clear that club executives now must have serious doubts about that.

Does Teixeira really have lots of offers for more than what the Red Sox are offering? Clearly, Boston doesn’t think so. Only Boras knows for sure.

It seems that the game has played itself out, the last cards have been dealt, and now Teixeira is in position to make his decision. The read on the table here, still, is that he will sign with the Red Sox.

• The Record’s Bob Klapisch thinks a Girardi/Manny combo won’t work:

Just how much of the Yankees’ ineptitude was the fault of the over-zealous manager, who transferred his anxiety onto his players? Girardi’s postgame death stare was legend in the clubhouse; at times he wouldn’t even speak to his players, much less look at them, as he marched back to his office after a loss.

So before they start negotiating in earnest with Scott Boras, Manny’s agent, the Yankees need to consider how Ramirez would respond to Girardi’s state trooper mentality. Here’s an early theory: He won’t.

Put it this way: How likely is it that Manny would shed his dreadlocks for Girardi, as per club policy? Ramirez did trim his hair for Torre, but only by an insignificant amount. Torre, knowing that he needed a happy and productive Manny during a three-month rental, chose not to push the issue.

• MLB.com reports that the Yanks avoided arbitration with Chien-Ming Wang by signing him to a one-year deal worth $5 million.

[My take: Do only position players get offered deals to buy out arbitration and/or free agency years?  Given Wang’s excellent track record, his youth, and the fact that none of his injuries have been arm-related, would there be any incentive for the Yanks to wrap him up for a few years, at least in terms of vesting options based on innings pitched?  The Tribe are well-known for buying out a year or two of free agency of young position players, saving a few bucks now and down the road.  But the Yanks have only done that sort of thing with one player of recent vintage (Cano), and so far, its not a bargain for the Bombers.  Nonetheless, if I’m Wang, I’m looking at A.J. Burnett’s track record and saying “we get outs in different ways, but I’m just as effective in terms of winning games.  How about a multi-year deal for me?”]

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