Nationals Arm Race

Tired of Prince Fielder rumors yet? Photo: AP/Morry Gash

Here’s Tom Boswell‘s weekly Monday chat on 11/28/11.  Of the baseball questions he took, here’s how I’d have answered them.  With the Wizard’s 0-8 start there’s a lot of kvetching about NBA.

As always, questions are edited for clarity and I write my own answer prior to reading his.

Q: What is your “take” on Ross Detwiler and could he become a better pitcher than Gio Gonzalez?

A: My “take” on Ross Detwiler is that he’s too frail to stay healthy long enough to be counted on for heavy-duty innings, and that he throws too much across his body to get his breaking stuff to work properly.  Now, throwing across your body isn’t a bad thing (see Johnson, Randy) but Detwiler’s never been consistent long enough to be anything more than an emergency/late season starter for this team.  Can he be better than Gio Gonzalez?  Not really; Gonzalez is only a year older but has 60 more MLB starts, an all-star appearance and the talent to win 20 games in the AL.  If Detwiler was really that promising … we wouldn’t have acquired Gonzalez in the first place.  Boswell says the team likes Detwiler, but Johnson likes a lefty heavy rotation in this division.  But the team already has 5 starters signed to major league contracts, so I can’t see how Detwiler wins anything more than a bullpen spot.

Q: Is Prince Fielder really coming here?  Why is there so little market for him?

A: I’ll answer the 2nd part first; there’s so little market for Prince Fielder for several reasons.

1. If you look at the top payroll clubs, basically every team either has a long-term 1B commitment (names like Mark Teixeira, Ryan Howard, Adrian Gonzalez, Albert Pujols, Paul Konerko, Justin Morneau, and Miguel Cabrera) or is dealing with topped-out payroll or financial issues (Mets, Giants, Dodgers) that are preventing them from purchasing a big-money star.  So lots of your usual suspects are out.  He’s left trying to convince mostly 2nd-tier payroll clubs to spend like first tier clubs.
2. His agent Scott Boras is generally the “lets wait and try to build a crescendo of rumors” type of agent.  It has clearly worked in the past … but it doesn’t seem to be working now.  I think Boras’ strategy has run its course to a certain extent and teams are wary of the “mystery team” in on these major players.
3. Fielder isn’t exactly an adonis of a physical specimen.  He’s got a bad body, hasn’t really shown that he can control his weight, and has a pretty good barometer of his future physical condition in the form of his MLB playing father Cecil Fielder.  Prince may be young and may clearly be a top5 hitter in the league, but teams are not going to want to put up 8  year commitments for a player who may be washed up by the time he’s 34.  To make matters worse, Prince is a below-average first baseman AND only a handful of teams have available money and available DH spots.

Frankly, I think Prince needs to sign a shorter term deal with high AAV, get a team like the Nats to commit and then re-hit the FA market at age 30-31 when he’ll still have value.

Now, is he coming to the Nats?  If I was Mike Rizzo i’d sign him in a heartbeat for 3yrs/$75M.  I’d balk at an 8-year deal.  But, the rumors persist and have been swirling for more than 2 weeks.  So where there’s heat, there’s likely fire.  Boswell says that the key date is Jan 18th, the day that the Rangers either sign or cut bait on Yu Darvish.  If the Rangers suddenly have $120M that they didn’t think they’d have yesterday, they will sign Fielder.

Q: Baseball is set to announce their HOf inductees for 2012 today. Anyone you feel strongly about that should get in? What are your thoughts on Dale Murphy and Don Mattingly?

A: (note that I’m writing this BEFORE the 3pm announcement, so by the time you read this we’ll know who got in and who didn’t)

Who I believe WILL get elected: Barry Larkin

Who I believe SHOULD be in the Hall: Jeff Bagwell, Jack Morris, Barry Larkin, Tim Raines, Mark McGwire, Edgar Martinez.

What do I think about Murphy and Mattingly?  Both suffer from more or less the same issue: they were both great players for very short amounts of time.  Murphy was a better player all in all than we remembered and for four seasons (82-86) was probably THE best player in the game.  Mattingly retired at 33 and was solid but had the same 4-year excellence followed by less flashy seasons.  They’re good players who weren’t transcendent enough to get their own plaques in Cooperstown.  Boswell mostly agrees with the above.

Q: What do you think of this scenario: Fielder signs elsewhere, LaRoche starts out hot, we flip him to Tampa for Upton as Harper takes over in RF and Morse moves to 1B.

A: Sounds great.  Except that this scenario really only serves the perfect world desires of the Nationals.  In reality LaRoche is a slow starter and we may really hear the boo-birds early.  Morse was great in 2011 but most predict a sliding back.  Harper probably needs some MLB adjustment time.  We’ll see what happens.  Boswell likes this scenario. Sure, who wouldn’t?  But it does sound a bit too convenient.

Q: Is there ANY chance Boras goes for something like 3yrs/$75mil for Prince?

A: Yeah, I think there is a chance, as described above.  He’ll push for longer though until the last possible minute, so this won’t play out for a while and we’ll continue to hear rumors for weeks.  Boswell says it’ll “never happen.”  And lays out a doomsday payroll scenario for the team.  Which I don’t entirely buy; we’ve been at $60-65M in payroll for 6 years … despite being in a very wealthy market.  At some point, this team will be good, will draw fans to the park and will increase revenues.  And the payroll should rise to reflect that.

Q: Where are the Nats finding the (approximately) 60 runs they’ll need to add (assuming pitching stays constant) in order to go from 80 to 90 wins?

A: A good question.  Some from Zimmerman, some from LaRoche, some from natural improvements from Desmond, Espinosa, and Ramos, and some from a rebound year from Werth.  That’s a LOT of assumpions.  Fielder would *really* help in the run creation department (he created 35 more runs than Morse last year … that’d be 5-6 wins all by himself).  Boswell echos much of the above.

Q: Where do you (as an assumed HoFame voter) draw the line between admitted and suspected when it comes to steroids and the HOF?

A: If it were me, I’d go based on existing evidence.  That’s all you can do.  And the Mitchell Report is not really “evidence,” but more heresay and he said-she said.  So Palmeiro and McGwire have some warts.  Bagwell does not and it is generally unfair to lump him into the steroid-poster boy club.  Boswell agrees with the above … too bad he doesn’t have a vote to defend year after year.

Q: Given what we  now know about the Steroid era, is there any reason to suspect Cal Ripken of using?

A: (The allegation also being that Ripken was friends with Brady Anderson, whose 50 homer season seems awfully suspicious in hind-sight).  Nobody’s ever said a word about Ripken and PEDs.  You have to think he was well aware of his legacy the closer he got to 2130 games.  I’d be shocked if he was shown to be a user.  Him and Derek Jeter would be probably the two most shocking PED revelations in the history of the game, if they turned out to be true.  Boswell doesn’t think Ripken profiled to a typical user.

Q: Why isn’t there more narrative about how the Werth contract is really killing this team, when considering the future payroll implications of having Werth, Zimmerman and Fielder potentially signed to long term, $20M+ AAV contracts?

A: I’m sure it is internally.  It certainly is everywhere else in the blogosphere.  The Werth contract is pretty indefensible, certainly was at the time it was signed and is even more so now.  I just hope the guy has a bounce back season and really contributes.

Q: How does the TV money rise so much in the MASN deal?  Aren’t viewer numbers abhorrent?

A: Good question.  I don’t know.  Boswell has the answer; the contract is tied not to revenues or ad money, but to comparable RSN sizes in other markets.  And right now Houston and Dallas (our two closest sized cities) get 2-3 TIMES the money out of their RSNs.  I cackle at watching Angelos have to write checks to the Nats, but really wish they’d cancel the contract altogether.  I hate the fact that we’re enriching Angelos day after day.

Q: Why do the HoFame voters suddenly agree to induct a player?  If he’s good enough on the first ballot, he should be good enough on any ballot.

A: Because there’s a cache to being a “First Ballot Hall of Famer” and LOTS of voters exclude guys on the first vote as a result.  There’s never been a unanimous selection, and there never will be.  But there’s plenty of guys who were very good players who got in on #2 or #3 ballot.  Guys like Blyleven and Rice who languish for a decade on the ballot are rare.  Boswell agrees.

Q: Is Toronto a more likely landing spot for Fielder, since they were all-in for Darvish and lost out?

A: Makes sense frankly.  They could be sensing weakness in the Boston and Yankees lack of activity this off-season … Boswell says it makes sense but makes a good point; does Fielder want to commit to Toronto, knowing they’ll get outspent year after year by Boston and New York?  Does he commit to a team that hasn’t made the playoffs since the divisions split?  Would you?

Q: How similar is Harper’s call-up situation to Mickey Mantle’s situation?

A: Not very.  Completely different baseball climates.  Harper has his millions already, and there’s very specific service time implications.  Mantle played under the reserve clause, there was no service time issues, no arbitration, no free agency.  So the Yankees could do whatever they wanted with him year after year.  Boswell doesn’t really comment.

Q: Does Fielder make sense if the Nats are planning on building a cost-controlled dynasty?  The 1998 yankees didn’t have any 30-homer players, let alone a big bopper at $25M/year.

A: Fair.  Lots of Nats bloggers keep coming back to the payroll implications of Werth, extending Zimmerman and buying Fielder.  And they’re fair.  That doesn’t even talk about what to do with other big-time stars we have to deal with potentially.  But i’ll respond by saying this; we don’t KNOW what the owner’s payroll limits are.  All we have to go by is the past payroll figures.  What if this team is just biding its time before blowing out payroll to $120M?  Boswell says this is well put and signs off.

Can we please elect one of the best hitters of the last 30 years? Photo via bill37mccurdy.wordpress.com

On November 30th, the BBWAA announced the 2012 official Hall of Fame ballot.  Let the cavalcade of Hall of Fame opinion pieces begin! (just a few early examples here, here, and here).

We all knew who was eligible for this ballot, thanks to the excellent work at baseball-reference.com.  All the anticipated ballots are available for perusal along with statistical summaries of each player’s career and a few Bill James-inspired metrics created to give simple statistical measures of Hall-worthiness.

2012’s ballot is the last year before the Steroid accused superstars start becoming eligible (Bonds, Sosa, Piazza, and Clemens are all on the 2013 ballot for the first time, in addition to Schilling and Biggio) and the narrative about Hall of Fame voting turns to morality voting for the next decade or so.  Gee, I can’t wait.  All these players played in an era where there was no testing against PEDs and no MLB-specified rules against PEDs, but voters continue to penalize these players as if testing WERE being done, as if there WERE rules at the time they played.  Meanwhile nobody talks about the PEDs that were prevalent for the last 30 years or so (amphetamines, or “greenies” in baseball parlance), and many players from the latter part of this decade freely talk of playing on speed.  Frankly, it isn’t fair.  We didn’t penalize Bob Gibson and put an asterick next to his accomplishments for pitching in a pro-pitcher, massive ballpark era did we?  No; that was the game at the time.  We don’t talk about how baseball fields used to be caverns with 480 foot distances and 30 foot walls, making triples far more common than homers.  No; that was the game at the time.  And frankly. the steroid era will eventually be remembered for what it was.  Sometimes I think the anti-PED crowd is just a bunch of middle-aged white guys who are really peeved that an arrogant black ballplayer in Barry Bonds broke the cherished home run records of storied players from their youth (Babe Ruth and the far more likeable Henry Aaron).  But I digress.

That being said, I like doing these Hall of Fame blog posts, if only because I usually disagree with the rest of the baseball blog-o-sphere on what really constitutes a Hall of Famer.  I’ve been watching baseball long enough to form my own independent opinions on players and not depend on revisionist historians turning mediocre players into other-worldy hall-of-fame electees (see Blyleven, Bert and my stated opinions on his Hall-worthiness ahead of the 2011 ballot, and especially read the comment section where people refuse to address any aspect of Blyleven’s playing career and only use statistics to canonize him).

Notwithstanding that comment, I believe we’re being too parsimonious with Hall of Fame elections.  Nate Silver from the NY Times wrote on this same topic in January of 2011, pointing out another interesting fact about the Hall of Fame (namely that roughly 13% of active major leaguers at various points in the 1930s and 1940s are now in the Hall).  I’m not advocating that we need to be looking at 10% of current active major leaguers for the hall, but I am advocating that we be less “parsimonious” with the voting.  This may seem contradictory to my opposing the candidacy of Blyleven; not so.  There are a number of very deserving candidates who are not getting the votes they need.  There seems to be several reasons for this:

• Players whose accomplishments in the pre-Steroid era are being discounted for the lack of “big numbers” (Larkin, Raines, Trammel, McGriff to certain extents).
• Players who toiled in the Steroid era are either users/suspected users (McGwire, Palmeiro), or are being caught in the steroid web (Bagwell).
• Players who are suffering from a conflict of opinion in the voter base for various reasons (Smith, Morris, Martinez).

I’m not sure how to resolve any of these situations frankly.  But I’d hate to have these players languish on the ballot and age off of it and have to wait for some nebulous Veterans committee to enshrine them after they’re dead (see Santo, Ron).  Some people advocate modifying the voting methodology, but in reality there’s no easy fix.

Back to the 2012 ballot: the only candidate eligible for the first time this year worth any discussion is Bernie Williams.   For me, Williams was a nice player who retired early instead of facing the inevitable end of his Yankee career.  He was part of a great core group of home-grown Yankees that formed the core of the late 90s dynasty team and will certainly be remembered as a great franchise player.  That’s not enough; he was never the best player on his own team, he never sniffed an MVP vote and he never accumulated enough production to warrant being a focal point in the opposition.  He had a great 5-year run … but if we were electing people on 5-year runs then Juan Gonzalez would already be in.

For the rest of the remaining candidates, I’ll borrow some from last year’s version of this post.  I’m not going to go into major statistical analysis for each candidate (that analysis is freely available on most every major baseball blog site out there), but will state my opinion with a few choice links.  On my hypothetical ballot I’d vote for:

• Jeff Bagwell: a career 149 OPS+.   That’s a career averaging nearly 50% better hitting than the average MLBer.  That he’s being lumped in with actual PED users without a shred of proof has become the latest hall of fame “cause” on the internet, starting with this excellent article accusing BBWAA writers of “plagiarism” (when I think he really means laziness, frankly).  At least I support this one.  Here’s an excellent case for Bagwell.  You won’t find anyone penning a “case against” him that doesn’t claim that he’s a PED user without the proof.
• Jack Morris.  The “anti” sabrematrician selection.  Here’s a link to the most canonical case against Morris, as well as Joe Posnanski‘s anti Morris (and anti-other) rant.  And here’s a case for Morris from former Washington Post writer Richard Justice, now with MLB, which goes a lot towards my way of thinking about the guy.  Lots of people seem to be spending as much time arguing AGAINST him as they did arguing FOR Blyleven.  I wonder why that is?  Maybe there really just is a kind of pitcher who you had to see in context versus looking at his stats after the fact.  Nolan Ryan “only” had a 112 ERA+ for his career and was barely a .500 pitcher, yet was a first ballot overwhelming hall-of-famer.  There’s some disconnect here.  For me, the vote for Morris is about the “feeling” of a dominant pitcher, just as Blyleven was about the “feel” of a mediocre pitcher, no matter what his eventual career stats looked like.  For people who say this is fallacy, I say this: judgement of a player can not ONLY be done by looking at his stats.  Morris had a reputation for “pitching to score,” though sabrematricians have attempted to debunk that pitching-to-score exists for some time (see this link on baseball prospectus, then note at the bottom that despite 3500 words he says “none of this proves it doesn’t exist.”) but he also had a reputation for being the “Best pitcher of the decade.”  Bill James published a list of factors to consider, when evaluating a player’s candidacy, and the one takeaway I got from that list was (paraphrased) whether or not a player was the best on his team, the best in his league, a guy that the other team was afraid of.  Morris was that, for a period of more than 10 years.  His last two seasons took him from a 3.70 era to a 3.90 career era, and may have pushed him over the edge to his current stat-nerd polarizing stance.  For me, he was THE pitcher of the 80s, led one of the most dominant teams ever (the 1984 Tigers) and pitched a 10-inning complete game win in one of the best games ever played.  Those things stand for something, and should add up to more than a clinical analysis of his era+.
• Barry Larkin: lost in the shadow of Ozzie Smith for so long, that people forget that he was an excellent defender AND a great hitter.  Long overdue for enshrinement.  Here’s a pretty stat-heavy analysis FOR him.
• Tim Raines.  Case for.  Its hard to find cases against.  Raines, like guys like Trammell and Larkin, played in the shadow of Rickey Henderson for so long and was always judged to be 2nd best.   But his accomplishments, especially during the earlier part of his career, should be enough to get him into the Hall.
• Mark McGwire: He was a lock before the PED ensnarement.  I say “ensnared” despite him using a completely legitimate supplement at the time.   He didn’t try to hide it either.
• Edgar Martinez: I recently watched one of the games from the great series “MLB’s greatest games” of the last 50 years, and one of the games was the great game 5 playoff in 1995 between the Mariners and the Yankees.  David Cone in that broadcast said that Martinez was “the best right handed hitter he ever faced.”  And it struck me; Martinez indeed was one of the most feared hitters of his day.  Look at his career: he didn’t play a full season til he was 27 and he played a ton of DH.  He also retired with a career slash line above the mythical .300/.400/.500 targets.  For those that discount his heavy use at DH I ask one simple question: if you think Martinez didn’t contribute that much by just being a DH, then how can you possibly support the inclusion of a one-inning relief pitcher/closer?  Who do you really think contributes more, a DH with his 650 PAs or a relief pitcher with 60-some innings in a season?   In reality, you can’t.  It just takes an uber-DH like Martinez to press the issue.

Specific Names i’d leave off and why:

• Alan Trammell: I just don’t think he was a dominant enough player to warrant inclusion.  I’d place him well behind his peers at shortstop for the ERA.  There’s plenty of support for him in various forums though, with good arguments for him.
• Lee Smith: My tried and true argument; closers are incredibly overvalued, and especially closers with lifetime ERAs in the 3.00 range and with a career whip that’s closer to a league average than it is to dominant.  Sorry; Smith isn’t a HoFamer for me.
• Larry Walker: the whole “he played in Colorado” angle probably isn’t as true as we think, but he still enjoyed a bump in his stats because of it.  Otherwise he’s in the hall of Good, not the Hall of Fame.
• Rafael Palmeiro: its less about his idiotic stance in front of congress as it is about his method of “accumulating” his way to historic numbers.  Much like the discussion we’ll eventually have about Johnny Damon (who is only a few hundred hits away from 3000 but clearly isn’t a transcending player), Palmeiro was always a good, solid guy but never that much of a game changer.
• Don Mattingly: I would love to vote for Donny Baseball, but being the Captain of the Yankees just isn’t enough (well, unless you’re a NY writer).  Retired too early, not enough power for a first baseman, peaked at 25 and struggled into his 30s.

Let the comments calling me an idiot for supporting Jack Morris begin.

If you squint, this almost looks like an Angels uniform already. Photo: unknown via fantasyknuckleheads.com

Here’s Tom Boswell‘ weekly Monday chat on 12/12/11.  Despite being in the baseball off-season, the chat had a TON of baseball questions.  Of the baseball questions he took, here’s how I’d have answered them.

As always, questions are edited for clarity and I write my own answer prior to reading his.

Q: Is Albert Pujols a cautionary tale for the Nats signing Ryan Zimmerman to a long term contract?

A: Its not *quite* the same; Pujols is better but older, and if you believe the scuttlebutt/internet rumors may be even older still.  Zimmerman will hit his walk year at age 28 with a good 3-4 years of “peak” in him (assuming that your “peak” is somewhere around age 31).  So the Angels just bought 10 years of almost-certain decline for Pujols while the next deal that Zimmerman signs will still include his most productive years.  The Cardinals were nearly $40M off in the end, AND didn’t offer up something like the personal services contract that guarantees the retired Pujols income into his 50s.  So there’s more at work here, honestly.  In the respect that the Cardinals “played chicken” to a certain extent with Pujols, then yes there is a cautionary tale for how the Nats treat Zimmerman.

But there are some issues with extending Zimmerman.  He’s injury-prone.  He’s missed nearly 150 games in 5 seasons, had two surgeries and a third major injury (his labrum) that could have been surgical.  Is his 2009 season (33 homers, 106 rbi and a 133 ops+) the best possible case or is that his sustainable production?  The team wants to extend him (if you believe the beat reporters) but the team has also rebuffed Zimmerman’s agents’ attempts to negotiate this off-season (if you believe ex-Nats gm hack Jim Bowden).  Me?  I’d see what happens in 2012 and make a decision next off-season.   Boswell assumes the Nats will offer Zimmerman a Troy Tulowitzki type deal, and so do I frankly.

Q: What are your opinions on the seemingly arbitrary Hall of Fame voting process?

A: My issues with HoF voting include the following:

• Voters who are voting on morals/ethics stances and not productivity on the field (say, Roberto Alomar).
• Voters who are swayed by revisionist-historian sabremetrics nerds who canonize players 25 years after they played but forget that those same players were essentially mediocre during their day (i’m looking at you Bert Blyleven).
• Voters who use the HoF vote to penalize players that stiffed them or were mean to them during their career (how else can you explain some of the voting results for players that should be sure-fire near 100% electees?  Willie Mays only got 94% of the vote, Mickey Mantle an even more ridiculous 88%.
• Voters who fail to vote for players who have never had any sniff of PED controversy but who played in the era (Jeff Bagwell).
• Voters who have now elected nearly 13% of active players from the 30s and 40s but who can’t find a place for the best players from the 80s (Raines, Larkin, Morris and the like).

As for the election of Ron Santo, he is another case of a guy who slipped through the cracks and who should have been elected by the veterans committee long before he passed.  What sense does it make to canonize a guy right after he dies?  So that his wife can be happy?  I don’t get it.  Santo was the same guy, with the same stats, ever since the day he retired.

Boswell says he agrees with the “first ballot hall of fame” distinction and supports NOT voting for guys who aren’t the uber-elite on the first ballot.  He also mentions that Blyleven’s candidacy was clearly helped by outside lobbying.

Q: Where — if at all — does Yu Darvish fit within your “pay up for quality” theory in last weekend’s post-Pujols signing column? Also, How likely are the Nats to make a serious bid for Darvish?

A: Boswell’s theory in baseball free agency is simple: you pay up for quality because the rest is junk.  A good working theory in some respects; he figures that “going for it” and failing is better than just dipping your toes into the FA water.

I think the Nats will put in a legitimate offer, but that it won’t be close to the $51M that it took to sign Dice-K.

My personal concern with Darvish is the fact that many have come before him from Japan and very few have succeeded.  There’s yet to really be one impact pitcher that has come from the Japanese leagues.  And even those that do come over with great pedigrees (Dice-K as the most recent high profile example) tend to burn out quickly.  It isn’t a race thing; its more of a level of competition and a different pitching routine in the Japanese leagues (starters go on 5 days rest, not our traditional 4).  For me, the risk is not worth it.  I know these teams have scouted the hell out of Darvish and believe what they believe, but the fact is that the NPB is a AAA-quality league and the minors are FILLED with guys who dominated AAA but who couldn’t get guys out in the majors.  If it was just a FA signing (4yrs $50M) that’s one level of risk, but throwing in nearly that amount just in posting fees and suddenly you’re compensating a guy at the level of an elite Ace in this league without any proof that the guy will actually live up to that level.   Boswell uses the same comparisons as I do, and predicts that the Nats will be over-bid by the major market teams that are looking for starters.

Q: How much should St. Louis fans be remonstrating about Pujols leaving?

A: Not much.  For all those that say that athletes should take less money to be “the man” for their first team, I say, “put yourself in his shoes.”  He was offered more money in Los Angeles.  Plain and simple.  If it was a few million dollars over 10 years that’s one thing; $30M over 10 years plus the personal services contract?  That’s a lot more.  Everyone who thinks that Pujols “owed” something to St. Louis, or that he should have wanted to stay there his whole career like Stan Musial needs to remind themselves of one thing; If Musial played in the Free Agency era instead of the reserve clause era, would he have stayed in St. Louis his whole career?  In my opinion if St. Louis couldn’t come up with the per-year payroll, they should have gotten creative with perhaps points in the team or something along those lines.  If St. Louis really wanted Pujols to be the face of the Cardinals for the next 50 years, they could have made it happen. Boswell agrees with me, for the most part.

Q: Do you agree with the Washington Post preventing its writers from voting for Baseball Awards?  (post-season and hall of fame, the typical BBWAA awards)?

A: I think its ridiculous that the Post, and the Post alone apparently, takes this stance.  The whole point of using baseball writers to vote on these awards is because baseball writers are the BEST people to use; they cover teams, go to the games, and see the stars in action to a greater extent than anyone else besides the team officials and players themselves.  Boswell points out the obvious conflicts of interest, but those same conflicts exist for every writer in every market.  Honestly I think the way the NFL does things (with a nominating board of senior national writers) is a far better way to determine who gets in to the Hall of Fame.

Q: Is is just me, or did it seem obvious the Cards didn’t really want to sign Pujols?

A: No, to me the Cardinals set their price and when the price went above it, they waved good bye.  Now, you can argue that the price they set was far too low (If Pujols was looking to beat AAV of Alex Rodriguez‘s contract just on principle, then he’s a fool and was never going to beat that), but in the end the Angels just offered more money than made sense to St. Louis from a long term financial viability perspective.  Fair enough.  There’s lots of articles out there saying how much St. Louis privately breathed a sign of relief that they’re not going to have to go through the “oh my gosh how overpaid is Pujols” phase 8-10 years from now… Boswell thinks St. Louis was banking on a home-town discount.

Q: Should the Nats be looking to sign guys like Clippard and Storen long term (as they should be doing with Strasburg)?

A: No.  Not that I don’t like these two players, but relievers (outside of the uber-elite, guys like Mariano Rivera) are mostly replaceable.  I’ve posted time and again about how overvalued relievers and (especially) closers are.  You just should not over-spend for these guys; you can always find more of them in your farm system.  Boswell says you can’t sign them all.

Q: Do you see Ross Detwiler making the 2012 rotation?

A: No, not at this point.  The team is clearly trying to find another FA starter, which puts Detwiler‘s spot directly in their cross hairs.  Look for Detwiler to be traded as soon as a new pitcher is signed, now that they’ve locked up Gorzelanny as the lefty long-man/spot starter already; I can’t see both Detwiler and Gorzelanny in the bullpen.  Detwiler is out of options and can’t be stashed in AAA.  Of course, he could come down with a mystery soft-tissue injury that delays the inevitable.   Boswell says the same thing, but doesn’t talk about Detwiler’s lack of options.

Q: Did the Nats lack of winter meeting activity indicate that the Lerners are cheap and that the team is going nowhere?

A: Wow, fail to sign a $200M player and you’re a failure.  Lets have some patience here; the team may have really been on Buehrle but wasn’t on anybody else that has already signed frankly.  Oswalt is still out there, as is Darvish.  As is Fielder, who could be the massive run-creating machine that this lineup needs.  Boswell says the need to sign Oswalt is bigger now, and I’d tend to agree since he was the guy I wanted in the first place.

Q: Any idea whether the Nats ever made Buerhle an offer or whether there really was any interest in Reyes? Do you think the Nats will make a move on Darvish or the Cuban CF Cespesdes?

A: Nats definitely made Buehrle an offer; it just wasn’t very close.  I don’t think there was interest in Reyes; they really like Desmond at 1/20th of the cost right now.  I think the team will definitely post a reasonable bid (perhaps $25-$30M for Darvish) but probably gets out-bid.  And yes I think the team will be in the Cespedes bonanza, but may be out-bid by another team as well that has a longer-term view on the guy.  Boswell mirrors what I’ve said here and also says they’re “serious” about Oswalt now.  But are they serious enough?

Q: Do you expect the Nats to try and bid on Zack Greinke next year?

A: Yes absolutely.  If Greinke hits the open market, this team will be all over him.  If they sign Oswalt this year and Greinke next, you could be looking at a 2013 rotation that goes Strasburg, Zimmermann, Oswalt, Greinke and a death-match struggle between our best 5-6 starter prospects for the #5 spot.  That’s scary good.  Boswell says he hopes the team doesn’t pass on the rest of this off-season just to wait for the next one.

Q: Did the Marlin’s offer too much or did the Nationals not offer enough for Buehrle?

A: A little of both probably; Buehrle reportedly liked DC and liked the money,  but a 4th year and nearly $19M more was too much to match.  3yrs/$39M has an AAV of $13M, which was actually LESS than he earned on his last contract.  So that doesn’t sound right; would we have offered him a pay cut?  Boswell says the Marlins went too high, which was my initial reaction until seeing the AVV.

Q: Braun’s steroid test showed twice the level of any other sample. Ever. That has to be a false positive… or some other such type of error. What does that mean medically? Did they take the blood sample from the same cheek and 5 minutes after Braun shot up?

A: Fair point.  That’s kind of what i’m thinking frankly.  The test doesn’t seem to make sense.  I will say that its awfully irritating to read all these posts already assuming he’s guilty.  Boswell didn’t have much of an opinion yet.

Q: So, is Fielder completely off the table for the Nats? Seems weird that we were one of the teams linked to him all season, and now, nada. Boras power play at work here?

A: Boras clearly uses us to play for his clients.  But I also don’t think the team is completely out of it for Fielder.  The team needs offense, can stay with Morse in left for a bit and just can eat it on LaRoche.  Maybe.  Boswell doesn’t know what to think.

Q: Have you heard of any more interest in Edwin Jackson from the Nats?

A: Interestingly no.  I would have thought the Nats would be full bore over the guy, based on past interest.  But nobody’s printed a single word of Jackson rumors this offseason.  Perhaps his representation is just waiting out the big names before shopping their guy.  He did seem to come up rather ineffective in the post-season, dampering his value, so perhaps the team has soured on him.  Boswell says Oswalt is better option.

Will Bagwell be a first ballot Hall of Famer? Photo bill37mccurdy.wordpress.com/

As noted in my previous Bert Blyleven rant post, from the looks of the baseball blogosphere lately, it is part of my duty as a baseball blog writer to put in my 2 cents on the 2011 Hall of Fame ballot.

On Jan 5, 2011, Hall of Fame BBWAA voting will be announced and we’ll have an entire week of blog postings doing post-vote analysis.  Its a great little way to fill the time in-between insignificant FA signings but before pitchers and catchers report.

I posted previously just about Blyleven, one of the most talked about candidates in some time.  I don’t think he’s a Hall of Famer but I think he’ll get voted in.  Here’s a quick rundown of the rest of the ballot.

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First, the returning candidates from previous years

– Roberto Alomar: Received 73.7% of the vote in his first year in 2010.  Probably penalized for being a complete jerk to sports writers for most of his career, and for the infamy that has followed him since he retired (HIV infection lawsuits and restraining orders).  Unfair that he wasn’t a first ballot hall of famer.  10 gold gloves puts him in pretty restrictive company.  12 straight all star games, numerous MVP vote gathering seasons.  Retired rather early for a middle infielder at 36.

Verdict: Should be a lock for HoF.

Other’s on returning ballots:
– Jack Morris: i’d vote for him before Blyleven.
– Barry Larkin: unfair comparisons to current power-hitting short stops are leaving Larking behind.
– Lee Smith: Saves are overrated to begin with, and Smith never seemed like he was as dominant as his contemporaries.
– Edgar Martinez: great guy, great hitter, one dimensional.
– Tim Raines: Why he has lost candidacy points i’ll never know.  Probably due to his later Yankee years souring the east coast sportswriter crew on his career in general.

– Trammell, Mattingly, McGriff, Parker, Murphy: all these guys are probably destined to be eventually included by some veterans committee 30 years from now, when we have recovered from the steroids era and we realize that a guy like Murphy and his 398 career homers isn’t that bad.

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Requisite Steroid-Accused HoF Candiates.

– Mark McGwire: Yeah he used.  But he was also quite a hitter prior to his using.  5 years run of 52-58-58-70-65 home run seasons.  A shame.  He’ll never get in.

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First time on 2011 Ballot.

– Rafael Palmeiro: probably the dumbest steroids user on the accused list.  He’s the punchline of the era and I’ll be surprised if he garners 10% of the vote.

– Jeff Bagwell: He should be a HoF lock, the first we’ve had in a while.  But i’m hearing rumbling that not a ton of guys are supporting him.  It may just be a matter of time before he gets in but he’s deserving.

– Larry Walker: excellent career OPS+ numbers clearly inflated by playing in Colorado.  He really could hit though, leading the league in batting average 3 times and homers once.

– Juan Gonzalez: one or two great seasons and then a mess of a career.  Hey at least he made a ton of money.

– Kevin Brown: amazing to think he’s been retired for 5 years.  His career will be defined by his ridiculous 9-figure contract.
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No one else on the 2011 ballot in my opinion will be close.

In summary, If I had a vote here’s my ballot: Alomar, Bagwell, Morris, Larkin, Raines, McGwire, Trammell.