Offseason roster thread 2014

[bendera3]

Very very rare for a position player to stick on an MLB team for a full year.

 

I could see a team who isn't very good or going through a rebuild (Astros, Phillies, etc) taking him and keeping him.

[Spanky99]

I still think Cole should have been priority of Tepera, oh well.

 

Yeah, that was a surprise.

[Spanky99]

I could see a team who isn't very good or going through a rebuild (Astros, Phillies, etc) taking him and keeping him.

 

That wouldn't surprise me, kid can hit.

[Spanky99]

It's cute you think Amaro will "rebuild".

 

lol

[bendera3]

I think he will attempt it. I believe I read in the Inquirer that he doesn't believe next year will be a competing year. It may not be a "full" rebuild or a correct one, it will be the most rebuilding they've done in forever.

[ElNik2013]

I still think Cole should have been priority over Tepera, oh well.

 

 

 

Shoot, I thought they had a few guys they could take off the roster to protect Cole. Oh well, maybe it'll work out in the end.

[RealAccountant]

Things are so slow right now, I guess Jays fans don't have a right to complain we have the biggest transaction of the offseason thus far, still feel like things are so slow. We usually see so much activity by late November

 

I expect the following

 

Navarro traded for a reliever

Melky signing back with Jays for 3/42

another reliever signed.

Possible infield acquisition

[Angrioter]

Things are so slow right now, I guess Jays fans don't have a right to complain we have the biggest transaction of the offseason thus far, still feel like things are so slow. We usually see so much activity by late November

 

I expect the following

 

Navarro traded for a reliever - Yes

Melky signing back with Jays for 3/42 NO

another reliever signed. - Yes

Possible infield acquisition NO

 

OF acquisition Yes

[jaysguy44]

Things are so slow right now, I guess Jays fans don't have a right to complain we have the biggest transaction of the offseason thus far, still feel like things are so slow. We usually see so much activity by late November

 

I expect the following

 

Navarro traded for a reliever

Melky signing back with Jays for 3/42

another reliever signed.

Possible infield acquisition

 

Can't see Melky signing with the Jays. I hope your right, but I highly doubt it

[wamco]

Is it time to consider a Rasmus/Pillar CF platoon?

[John_Havok]

Nope. Rasmus is gone, and they won't be bringing him back. A k rate north of 30% works if you're hitting 35 homers, not 15. Maybe last year wasn't the best example of his true talent, but the same could be said for his great 2013 also.

 

He's just too volatile a player to be relied upon.

[Governator]

At my 2yr old son's swimming lessons today, I met another guy who named their son Colby just as I did. It was a weird conversation about naming them after Rasmus, followed by cricket sounds.

[Spanky99]

At my 2yr old son's swimming lessons today, I met another guy who named their son Colby just as I did. It was a weird conversation about naming them after Rasmus, followed by cricket sounds.

 

lol

[King]

At my 2yr old son's swimming lessons today, I met another guy who named their son Colby just as I did. It was a weird conversation about naming them after Rasmus, followed by cricket sounds.

 

lol

[Ziggyy108]

At my 2yr old son's swimming lessons today, I met another guy who named their son Colby just as I did. It was a weird conversation about naming them after Rasmus, followed by cricket sounds.

 

You named your kid after Colby Rasmus? Dang

 

Don't tell him that!!

[Governator]

You named your kid after Colby Rasmus?

 

My wife suggested Cole, I said how about Colby...

 

I later hinted to my parents we're naming him after a young Jay's player who's got some potential. My dad was like "Oh I definitely know who it is." he whispers to me "Can't wait to meet Brett".

 

 

Brett would have been good.

[Abomination]

My wife suggested Cole, I said how about Colby...

 

I later hinted to my parents we're naming him after a young Jay's player who's got some potential. My dad was like "Oh I definitely know who it is." he whispers to me "Can't wait to meet Brett".

 

 

Brett would have been good.

 

Just tell your kid it's an acronym for something really cool, and you'll tell him what it is when he's older. That should buy you a few years.

[Angrioter]

Jerry Crasnick

#Rangers looking for an OF, have checked in w/ #mariners on Michael Saunders. Mild interest from Texas' end.

 

 

NO f***ING WAY!!

[BigBounceyBlueBalls]

Can anybody tell what is the most you can sign a deal in the milb for is there a limit?

 

Can you sign a free agent to a minor league deal with invite to spring training deal? Would you add a opt out clause mutually? With a bonus if they play x amount of game in the majors?

[Mikeleelop]

from Kiley McDaniel on Fangraphs

 

The Yankees Found Another Way To Outspend Every Other Team

 

by Kiley McDaniel - November 4, 2014

 

 

The Yankees have found new ways to exploit their financial advantage in recent years. For a long time, they were the team spending the most money on big league payroll by a good margin, then other teams caught up after the addition of the luxury tax along with an Hal Steinbrenner being more focused on the bottom line than his father. The Yankees never really blew things out in the draft when they had the opportunity, but now there are essentially hard caps on draft spending and extra picks are tougher to come by with recent changes to the CBA.

 

The Yankees saw these two market opportunities dry up while their revenues stayed high and they pinpointed the international market as a target. As a result of spending nearly $30 million dollars on teenagers last summer, the Yankees now cannot sign a player for over $300,000 for the next two summers. If they get lucky with some timing, they may still be able to make this one-year international blowout even more advantageous, but their competitive advantage has mostly passed in these three markets for the time being.

 

 

 

An Under-The-Radar Market

 

With limited avenues to spend their money, where have the Yankees turned now? Minor league free agents. Starting today, free agents can sign with any club and most fans will focus on the splashy big money major league signings. Sometimes, a former standout major leaguer that’s past him prime will sign a minor league deal with a Spring Training invite and fans may hold out hope this player can regain past form. Below even this radar are the often first time free agents with little to no big league service that are signed to minor league deals with Spring Training invites and little fanfare. This is where the Yankees have been frustrating most of baseball.

 

Nearly every franchise has an internal policy for signing these players, with a hard cap for monthly salary over the five months of the minor league season. These maximums are put in place to control costs and also to give executives a hard line to use in negotiations to make the process go more smoothly; there are clubs that will have dozens of negotiations happening at the same time, so hard-and-fast rules help filter out players that aren’t a fit. This maximum ranges from $12,000 to $20,000 per month depending on the team.

 

The second tier of minor league free agents usually wait to see where the first tier signed and for how much money to then figure their market value and the best place to sign to maximize playing time and chance at a big league look. Some teams will make exceptions and sign a player above their maximum for certain situations, like an experienced 3rd catcher to play in Triple-A with a good chance for a call-up if a rookie catcher falters in the big leagues, but this is the exception rather than the rule; it’s seen as a one-time big league expense.

 

Enter the Evil Empire

 

Minor league free agency was a pretty straightforward process until the past few years, when the Yankees starting spending way more money on these players than any other team was comfortable spending. I was told last offseason that 3B Yangervis Solarte was a target for multiple teams in the minor league free agent market. Both executives, analysts and scouts from different types of organizations had pinpointed Solarte as being one of the top tier minor league free agents at this point last year. There wasn’t a huge bidding war for him alone, but multiple teams were calling his agent with offers on the first day of free agency. This also happened with a couple dozen other players deemed to be top tier free agents.

 

Logic follows that in this sort of situation, Solarte would sign with one of the teams that spends up to $20,000 per month ($100,000 for the a full season in the minors). The Yankees ended up signing him last offseason for $120,000 ($24,000 per month) with a split contract (meaning he’d make more than the MLB minimum if he is in the big leagues: $515,000 in this case instead of the $500,000 minimum), a Spring Training invite, provisions to leave for an Asian professional club during the year if he chooses and a guaranteed $66,000 salary ($13,200 per month) for the season even if he’s cut during Spring Training and he plays the whole season for another organization (or stays at home).

 

Rival clubs tell me that with other minor league free agents, the Yankees will routinely go up to $30,000 or $35,000 per month, include bonuses in addition to that salary, guarantee salaries (minor league salaries are not normally guaranteed like big league salaries) and offer bigger MLB salaries in split contracts. For the 2014 season, the Yankees gave righty reliever Jim Miller a split contract worth $210,000 in the minors ($42,000 per month) and $525,000 in the majors with a Spring Training invite. He pitched 2.2 innings for the big league team and 57.1 in Triple-A last season.

 

For the 2013 season, the Yankees paid C Bobby Wilson $180,000 ($36,000 per month) with half of it guaranteed, along with a $675,000 big league split (which he never got called up to collect) and a Spring Training invite. Wilson was the backup catcher in Triple-A Scranton that year and only collected 253 plate appearances. A source tells me that at least one other club promised him a starting role in Triple-A with a good shot at some big league time for about half as much money; this sort of decision is a common one for minor league free agents, but the salary gap usually isn’t as big unless the Yankees get involved.

 

In addition, these high salaries set the player’s market higher in subsequent seasons. That 2013 deal with the Yankees was his Wilson’s first free agent deal and in 2014, he got a split $130,000/$600,000 deal with the Diamondbacks, a Spring Training invite and picked up 4 plate appearances in the big leagues in September. For reference, in the six years of control before minor league free agency, monthly salaries max out at about $2,500 per month at the upper minors and closer to $1,500 at lower levels; each club has it’s own policy/scale for salaries by level for these players, though all the scales are similar. If you’re a player that signed for little to no bonus as a amateur, being a middle to top tier minor league free agent is actually a chance to cash in and earn market value for the first time.

 

Why Just The Yankees?

 

An executive with a medium market club told me last year that his team had a target list of about a dozen minor league free agents to target on day one of minor league free agency and the Yankees signed about half of those players to salaries that his team couldn’t come close to matching. Why don’t other teams spend what amounts to a trivial amount of money to get the minor league free agents that their scouts and analysts are telling them to target? I still haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer after asking a half dozen front office people. As mentioned above, part of it is cost control and having limits in place to make the negotiation process go smoother and more quickly with dozens of players in play for each team at any given time. The rest of it, as I’m told, are various versions of “this is the way things are done.”

 

One exec said if his team spent an extra $1 million to get all of their targets and none of those players ended up contributing to the big league team, it would open him up to scrutiny for taking money from another department, trying something different and wasting $1 million. On average, most teams will get a couple useful big leaguers if they sign their dozen top targets, but risk aversion decision making, akin to how NFL coaches treat fourth down decisions, seems to be holding back even the most forward-thinking clubs in this area.

 

Limits, Risks & Rewards

 

Executives caution that there is a theoretical limit to how much a team can pay a minor league free agent, with speculation that both MLB and the Players’ Association would tell a club that wanted to pay a minor leaguer a $300,000 salary that he should just be given a major league deal to avoid creating a big/small market disconnect in Triple-A. The Yankees haven’t gone that high yet, but they also don’t have much sustained competition in this market, so you’d have to think at some point this may become an issue if another team joins them.

 

Stockpiling deep upper minors rosters is the reason the Rule 5 Draft was created, but there is a way to work around these rules. These big minor league deals are often signed after the early Rule 5 Draft in December; both Wilson and Solarte signed their contracts in January. If the player is signed before the Rule 5 Draft, he could be taken by a team that doesn’t mind paying his big league salary, as happened in 2004 with Chris Gomez. In Miller’s case, his minor league split was so high, the Yankees could feel safe that he wouldn’t be selected; Miller signed in November.

 

A Yankees source told me they could break even financially with a $500 million payroll expenditure (including luxury tax), so this minor league free agent expenditure is still a trivial amount of money for them, though it would be less trivial for a small market club. Credit is still due to the Yankees for being open-minded enough to do the rational thing and spend their considerable resources in whatever way is available. Not every team does this, normally for bureaucratic reasons; you’d be surprised how difficult it is to move a seven figure sum from one department to another even within baseball operations.

 

It’s peculiar to me that, for a small amount in the scope of player acquisition budgets, a club could almost surely get an additional big league contributor and very few clubs seem inclined to shift their strategy to do it. In the case of the Yankees 2014 minor league free agent class, Solarte was good for the Yankees, then was half of what acquired Chase Headley for the 2014 stretch run, who himself created almost three wins in less than half a season with the Bombers. The profit from just the one-year Solarte signing/trade transaction is about $10 million, or roughly enough to pay for this minor league free agent strategy for another ten seasons.

[RealAccountant]

Jays very interested in Hamels according to Jayson Starks of ESPN

[jaysguy44]

Jays very interested in Hamels according to Jayson Starks of ESPN

 

I'd be scared of what the asking price would be. Hamel's would be a huge upgrade in our rotation though

[guylaroche5]

I'd be scared of what the asking price would be. Hamel's would be a huge upgrade in our rotation though

 

RAJ is the equivalent of a 13 year old playing dynasty mode on MLB the show. you can fleece the s*** out of him on the lesser known guys but when it comes to his darling ace he'll ask something along the lines of stroman, sanchez, and one of norris/pompey all while demanding we take on hamels' entire salary.

[Angrioter]

Ken_Rosenthal

Reported that #DBacks among most aggressive on Tomas with #Braves, #Padres, #SFGiants. But in this case, #MysteryTeam cannot be ruled out!

 

Sources: Tomas weighing short- and long-term offers. If he took three-year deal, would become free agent at 27.

[JaysRap]

RAJ is the equivalent of a 13 year old playing dynasty mode on MLB the show. you can fleece the s*** out of him on the lesser known guys but when it comes to his darling ace he'll ask something along the lines of stroman, sanchez, and one of norris/pompey all while demanding we take on hamels' entire salary.

 

That isn't too far off what Stark is aluding to.

 

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11932327/is-right-philadelphia-phillies-trade-cole-hamels

[JFD]

any rumors about the Jays going after a top of the rotation starter? isn't that what we need most?

[RealAccountant]

Rays just dfa Sean Rodriguez. Having this guy on the bench takes care if two spots both infield utility and outfield utility. We have clowns like valencia and izturis and pillar. Rodriguez would replace all 3 put him anywhere

 

 

With the large injuries we had last year I think this is the time to add some depth

[Governator]

No.

Our 5th starter, whoever it is (we have like 100000), is likely 1-1.5 WAR. You'd be bumping that down.

 

Disagree... Depends on who the ace is and that 5th reliever would be bumped to the pen not off the roster to preserve some value and fill a hole. A proven ace over JA Happ is a large upgrade.

[reedjohnsonfan]

Rays just dfa Sean Rodriguez. Having this guy on the bench takes care if two spots both infield utility and outfield utility. We have clowns like valencia and izturis and pillar. Rodriguez would replace all 3 put him anywhere

 

 

With the large injuries we had last year I think this is the time to add some depth

 

Totally agree, Rodriguez would be a nice pickup if they can make room for him.

[BigBounceyBlueBalls]

Huh? Just because his last name is Rodriguez, otherwise hell Noooooo! Yes cause a older version of ryan Goins is what we need! Lol FML!