Taking a look at free agent starting pitchers
The Twins’ starting rotation was one of the weaknesses of the team in 2009. For the five spots in the 2010 rotation, they currently have these players available:
- Baker
- Slowey
- Blackburn
- Perkins
- Liriano
- Bonser
- Swarzak
- … and maybe some crappy fill-in guys from AAA
That last bit was supposed to be kind of funny … except that it followed “Perkins, Liriano, Bonser, and Swarzak,” who just so happen to also be crappy fill-in guys from AAA. I think it’s fair to say that the Twins could use another starter (or two).
Given that the top pitchers on the market invariably get huge deals from desperate teams with lots of money who mistakenly think that pitchers will get better if you pay them more money, I’m going to go ahead and count the Twins out of the Lackey sweepstakes. And I don’t view that as a big problem.
I think we should take a look at some of the free agent possibilities this year. I’ve decided to break the potential candidates down into a few different categories; my opinion on the value of each category differs from the Twins’ organizational opinions … don’t worry, I’ll try to explain.
High upside injury risks
- Ben Sheets
- Rich Harden
- Erik Bedard
- Justin Duchscherer
- Carl Pavano
League average “innings eaters”
- Jon Garland
- Jason Marquis
- Joel Pineiro
Pieces of shit
- Daniel Cabrera
- Brett Myers
- Brad Penny
- Jarrod Washburn
First, I’d like to address the “pieces of shit” part of the market. For one thing, there are a lot of them; I’ve only included a few of the “more interesting” ones here. I’m going to file guys like Sidney Ponson and Adam Eaton in the “I sure hope the Twins know better” file,* and just move on.
* Yes, I know they don’t know better. Just leave it alone. Know this, though: if they do sign somebody idiotic, I’m going to fly off the handle, and it’ll probably be a spectacle. So if you come here hoping to read one of my angry screeds, the Twins just might do something such that you’ll stop being disappointed. I’m just warning you.
Daniel Cabrera used to be a highly touted prospect, and still has a big arm and great stuff. He’s just spent the last 7 years totally collapsing; his ERA+ “peaked” at 96 in 2005-2006, and has been on a fairly steady decline since then. But he still throws a fastball in the mid-90’s with good movement, and should be available for a song. The Twins might even be able to stash him in the minors to start the season. I think it might be worth a shot, to see if anybody in the Twins organization can fix this guy. But since it’s not likely, it’s worth pointing out that he should absolutely not be counted on for anything (except an ERA north of 5).
I’m calling Myers and Penny “pieces of shit” here, when in reality they’re not terrible pitchers. The thing is … Myers beats his wife and gets in bar fights and gets arrested and throws his (superior) teammates under the bus and is generally regarded as a big douchebag. And he’s not that great. The whole package? Kind of a piece of shit … and really not the kind of guy I’d expect the Twins to go after. Penny throws hard and has talent, but at the same time he got shelled in his brief stint in the AL in 2009, and when he was released he basically had the option to go to any team; most players say stuff like “I want a chance to win,” or some other such lip service to what old men like to hear player say. Instead, he said “I don’t want to be in a pennant race because of the pressure, and I don’t want to be in the AL because the hitters are better.” So, in response, I say this to Brad Penny: Fuck off. A contender in the AL, like the Twins, shouldn’t touch this guy with a twelve foot clown pole.
There’s been a lot of talk this offseason about Washburn coming to the Twins; after all, he’s left handed, he’s from Wisconsin, he’d love to play for the Twins, so it’s fucking perfect. Well, here’s the deal, folks:
- He started last season in Seattle, where they had a historically great outfield defense
- He’s a flyball pitcher, and that defense turned a huge percentage of those fly balls into outs
- He got lucky, and gave up the fewest HR/9 in his career (0.7) in that half-season in Seattle
- Because of those three things, he put up a mirage 2.64 ERA in the first half of the year
- He then moved to the Tigers
- He faced better hitters, and there was the pressure of a playoff race (for those of you who care about such things)
- His outfield defense was merely good, as opposed to one of the best ever assembled
- He got less lucky (2.5 HR/9)
- He put up a 7.33 ERA
Now, look. I do think he got unlucky in Detroit, and according to him, he was injured the whole time. (See, he is just like Perkins!) On the other hand, we don’t know how Target Field is going to play — it could be a pitcher’s park, or it could be a band box, we just don’t know. But it wouldn’t be wise to bring in a guy who can only succeed in a cavernous stadium. On the other, larger hand, the Twins’ outfield defense this year doesn’t figure to be very good. Wait, I don’t need to sugar-coat this … the Twins’ outfield defense in 2010 stands to be one of the worst in the league, again. Frankly, Denard Span is not a good defensive CF. Michael Cuddyer is not a good defensive RF. (I think his defensive numbers paint a too-gloomy picture, but that doesn’t mean I’m high on his defense.) Delmon Young is absolutely atrocious out there, one of the worst in the league, capable of turning outs into singles, singles into triples, doubles into home runs … wins into losses. That is not the outfield you want if you’re going to bring in a flyball pitcher. His 7.33 ERA in Detroit … well, with the Twins, he might be lucky to repeat numbers that low. For the Twins, Washburn would be a piece of shit. And an expensive one, at that.
I don’t really want to talk too much about those innings eaters — they’re boring, they’ll fit in fine in the 3/4 spots in the rotation, and they’ll probably get contracts just out of the Twins’ budget, because most teams fill out their rotation with $12M/year veterans rather than $0.4M/year pre-arbitration guys like the Twins do. If they sign one of those guys, good for them, nobody gets fired for bringing in an innings eater to help out the youngsters — it’s just not going to put anyone over the top or anything.
And now that I’ve wasted all my breath talking about what the Twins should not do, we get to the interesting and fun part: the high upside guys!
Sheets and Harden figure to be the most fascinating starters on the market: both of them are more than capable of putting up a +4 win season and being a viable 1/2 starter in a rotation … if they’re healthy. Bedard could do the same, except he’s even less likely to stay healthy, which is saying a lot.
Since Sheets missed all of 2009 and Harden broke down badly towards the end of the season, it’s likely that neither of them will be able to demand big contracts this year, even in a thin free agent market. If the Twins can get their hands on either one of them for a 1-2 year contract in the $8M/year range, it’s a deal they simply have to jump on. More than that, though, and the risk is probably too great. It’s possible that some foolish team lavishes riches on these guys, so you can’t necessarily consider it a failure if the Twins don’t bring them into the fold; but Bill Smith had better be using some rollover minutes talking to their agents.
I put Pavano on the injury risk list, largely because nobody really trusts him to stay healthy on any sort of long contract. That lack of trust may or may not be warranted — but the Twins benefited greatly from Pavano’s work in the second half of 2009, and he apparently really enjoyed pitching for the Twins and would like to come back. That’d be a good idea for the Twins, who don’t have much of a rotation without him. If he’d accept a 2 year deal for $10-15M to stick around, it’d almost certainly be worth it. I don’t know if he would, though: in the three seasons he’s been healthy enough to play, he’s been a 3.4-4.4 win starter, which would be worth over $15M a season. (The risk, of course, is that in the 5 seasons he’s been too injured to play, he’s been a 0.0-0.8 win pitcher, and that’s not someone the Twins can afford to be paying big dollars.)
Pavano doesn’t have the upside of Sheets, Harden, or even Bedard. But he’s probably less of a health concern and the Twins have the inside track to signing him (which is probably not true of the other guys).
I’d say the Twins need one of the high upside guys on this list, and it barely matters which one. I’d stay away from the rest of the market, unless one of the innings eaters comes really, really cheap. And as for the pieces of shit? Well, Terry Ryan is still Smith’s senior advisor, and I’m sure he’s pushing hard for guys like Braden Looper, Vicente Padilla, Eric Milton, and Livan Hernandez. The real test is whether Bill Smith can resist.
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Since when is Span a poor centerfielder? I assume some esoteric stat told you this? Span is good defensively, and Cuddyer is fine too. Young, though, is terrible, no two ways about it. Still I don’t see this as one of the worst outfields in baseball, not by a long shot.
Span is roughly average defenively in center, but was well above average at the corners. If we can’t use stats to measure defense what do we use? I saw him make a diving catch one time so he is good?
The loss of Gomez makes our defense much worse. Don’t get me wrong, I like the trade, but we lost a lot defensively. Not only losing Gomez, but then having to move span from a spot where he is above average to a spot were he is right around or slightly below average.
Is there any stat you wouldn’t consider esoteric?
We don’t have all that much data to go on, and it’s always possible that the current numbers are a small sample size fluke, but here they are:
So maybe he’s on okay CF, but all the evidence that currently exists says he’s not.
Some other numbers…
If you believe, even a little bit, in UZR/150 as a statistic, it’s pretty obvious that the Twins’ outfield is going to take a huge hit in 2010: they go from +14.2 to -13.8 in CF, then they go from +16.7 to -18.9 in LF. For a team with a flyball-heavy pitching staff (Slowey, Baker, Swarzak … pretty much everyone on the team other than Blackburn), that’s a disaster waiting to happen. They’re going to need to score a lot of runs (and I think they will).
I presume you believe that the outfielders have different defensive skills? And not that they’re great and any stat that disagrees is therefore obviously incorrect?
Gomez was a great CF, and that was obvious; Span made great plays in the corners and seemed to not make them in CF … and the numbers back that up. Maybe he wasn’t used to CF because he didn’t play it regularly, or maybe he was nervous, or maybe there’s some other explanation. But “Span is good defensively” simply does not explain anything.
Frankly, I’ll be pleased if Span logs some good CF numbers in 2010 … but I’ll also be a little surprised. Oh, and if he does? We’ll probably have to trade him. Because a player who’s good defensively in CF and hits like an elite corner outfielder costs a metric shit ton of money, even in arbitration.
If you’ve ever played baseball you understand that the biggest difference between center and the corner OFs is range – i.e. you need to cover much more ground in CF than in RF or LF. Span is one of the fastest guys on the team – not Gomez fast, but quick nonetheless. He has great range. You still get to use a glove in CF, really it’s not that much different. He’s a fine centerfielder. Do you honestly believe that he catches the ball worse in center than left? The guy’s a good fielder, period. Watch him play baseball. I don’t have a problem if you guys are interested in UZR and WAR, but how come I’ve never heard a player or manager or GM or announcer or analyst mention them? Go tell Gardy or Mauer or Cuddy that “all the evidence that currently exists says [Span's] not [a good center fielder].” They’d get a good chuckle out of that one.
Range is factored into UZR. It doesn’t just calculate how many balls he drops vs how many he catches, i.e. how many errors he makes. I watched him play over 100 times last season and he is better in left (or right) than he is in center. Period. So moving him to center makes our defense worse. He is replacing someone who was the best defensive center fielder in the game.
Cuddyer played the baggie at the dome well, and has a good arm. I’ll give him that. but all corner OFs appear to have better range when someone like Gomez is covering significantly more ground than the average CF.
Appealing to the authority of old-school people who have willfully kept their heads buried in the sand regarding modern analysis of baseball is not going to win any arguments around here; frankly, appealing to authority in general isn’t going to work. Just saying. (And I have heard TV analysts mention advanced stats like UZR during games. Just not Dick & Bert, who not only haven’t heard of the internet, but it’s possible they haven’t even heard of reading. I wouldn’t judge how much someone knows about baseball based on what those guys haven’t heard of. That really tells you nothing.)
And I have played baseball, and I’ve played all three outfield positions; there’s more to the difference than just range, but that’s a good place to start. I’d like you to think about it this way:
Say you’re making skill rankings like in Madden, or some other video game. (These numbers are going to be totally made up, just bear with me.) All outfielders have a “range” skill rating that describes how much ground they can cover. An average CF, say, would have like an 85, whereas an average corner outfielder would have like a 70. A great CF like Gomez, in this example, would have a 93 or something.
Now, what I’m saying is that Span’s “range skill” is around 80-85 or so; in CF, he’s a little bit below average … but if you have that guy covering the easier ground in the corner he’d be incredible. Span’s range makes him something of a “tweener” in the outfield: really awesome in the corner, not quite good enough in center.
I never argued that anyone else on the team should play CF instead. I think it’s obvious that’d be a mistake, and also that Span is our best option in center. My point is that Span isn’t close to as good as Gomez in CF, and Young isn’t close to as good in LF as Span. I completely fail to understand how that can be misconstrued as “I don’t watch any baseball games and the only thing I pay attention to is some crazy ass numbers that Gardy and Mauer, the two people on the forefront of understanding and elucidating baseball, have never heard of.”
But, yes. Just on the level of “I watch the games and this is my feeling,” well, this is my feeling:
Span seems to make catches in LF and RF that I almost never see other corner outfielders make; that’s why he gets so many web gems when he plays in the corner spots. At the same time, when he plays in CF, I don’t remember seeing him make any plays where I thought “wow, other CFs wouldn’t have made THAT play!” Rather, I found myself often thinking “boy, I wish Gomez were in for that one.”
I never said Span is “a bad centerfielder,” or “bad defensively.” I said he is not a good centerfielder; and I believe there’s a gap between “not good” and “bad.” Nobody would ever describe Delmon Young as “not good in the outfield.” They would say, instead, that Delmon Young “is a fucking nightmare out there,” or “is a bad defensive outfielder.”
And you’re probably right that Gardy wouldn’t believe that Span’s less than great in center. And it doesn’t matter how he’d react if I told him … he’d probably react with confused indignation if I told him the sun will probably rise tomorrow (that’s just how people react to me saying things). He wouldn’t believe it no matter who said it. And I think that’s a problem. It’d be much better if he understood but said “yes, but he’s our best option,” or “yeah, and I wish we had a pitching staff that fit our defense, but we don’t.” That’d be more promising than “I’m not listening, and if I call our pitchers groundball pitchers, then they’ll induce more ground balls!”
I concede that the Twins will not be as strong defensively this year as they would have been with Gomez in center and Span in left. But also remember that Gomez was basically not a starter, so the Span-Gomez-Cuddy comparison isn’t really valid anyway. I still maintain that their OF defense will be very good this year (sorry I can’t quantify that).
And I must apologize for invoking Gardy as a definitive baseball mind – bad example. He does know the game, just not how to manage it. For the record, though, I did NOT mean to imply that Dick & Bert are in any way baseball experts. By analysts I meant guys who actually study and offer thoughtful insight into the game (ie Peter Gammons), not talkative cheerleaders.
Gammons is a something of a dinosaur. When I think of a real baseball analyst, Gammons doesn’t come to mind. Rob Neyer, Dave Cameron, Aaron Gleeman, Joe Posnanski, Tom Tango, Bill James, Jayson Stark … those are the names that come to mind. And those guys understand baseball extremely well, and they’re all pretty bright, and yes, they all talk about WAR and UZR, among other things.
And you’re right that Gomez was mostly used as a defensive replacement down the stretch in 2009, once Gardy realized that his terrible offense more than negated his awesome defense. But Young-Span-Cuddyer (and Young-Span-Kubel) was one of the worst defensive outfields in major league baseball in 2009, and there’s little reason to expect it to be better in 2010 unless everyone is wrong about Span’s ability to cover ground in center. And that simply remains to be seen.
We also have to remember that our outfielders will be playing in a new outfield. That might make them better or worse. I can’t imagine it making much of a difference though.