Last year, at the encouragement of Baseball Prospectus’ Will Carroll, Alex Belth and I headed to New Orleans for baseball’s Winter Meetings. We were unlikely prospects to crash Major League Baseball’s December soiree, but three days of schmoozing and networking with other writers in the hotel lobby ultimately led the two of us to conclude that an enterprising blogger could find a nice little niche amidst baseball’s movers and shakers. Bending elbows on Bourbon Street and playing poker with some of our Baseball Prospectus pals added a colorful touch to the proceedings; recall that for a brief, shining moment, I owned BP thanks to a few lucky hands at the table.

When the prospect of coming out to Anaheim for this year’s meetings reared its head, I didn’t hesitate, even with the knowledge that my Bronx-based partner in crime wouldn’t make the trip, and that the Magic Kingdom is the polar opposite of the Big Easy when it comes to a backdrop, sanitized suburbia compared to N’Awlins’ Sodom and Gomorrah. At least I wasn’t lacking for a traveling companion, as Alex Ciepley chose to come. Alex and I flew out of Newark International on Friday and rendezvoused at LAX with Will, Mariner Musings’ Peter White, and All-Baseball’s tech guru Ken Arneson (a/k/a the poet laureate of the blogosphere, the Score Bard). We bused it to a hotel in Anaheim that’s a five-minute walk to the Marriot, where it’s all going down.

It’s a strange kind of fun, mingling among the traditional media and front-office executives while chatting with my All-Baseball and BP peers. Guys ogling other guys as they talk to other guys about other guys? It’d be completely weird if it wasn’t about baseball, but it adds up to a fascinating immersion, especially if you’re willing to listen to the people smarter than you.

The Anaheim Marriott lobby is much smaller than last year’s venue. People are more densely packed, practically on top of each other unless they spill into the bar or down the hallway. Making a loop around the room — what we do when the conversations lull — ultimately isn’t as fruitful; there are fewer surprises lurking around each corner.

But there are plenty of familiar faces to be recognized. Lou Piniella, Reggie Jackson, Jack McKeon (his cigar wafting in through the front door), Brian Cashman (allowed to make the trip this year), Omar Minaya, Felipe Alou, J. P. Ricciardi, Tony Perez, Tony Pena, Ozzie Guillen, Peter Gammons (again wearing sneakers with his khakis), ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick, SI’s Tom Verducci, the Times’ Jack Curry, and of course the respendent Tracy Ringolsby, looking like a rodeo escapee with his cowboy hat, bolo tie, and a belt buckle big enough to function as a serving plate. The smaller venue gives Ringolsby much less room to pace, perhaps limiting his special calf-roping powers.

One of the first I saw on Friday afternoon was that of Tommy Lasorda, muttering to himself as he swaggered about the room. I tried to snap off a discreet shot with my camera’s phone but ultimately got only his back and forgot to save the damn thing. I also talked myself out of just going up to shake his hand as he was unoccupied for a brief moment. Note to self: pack more chutzpah.

To the deals and rumors, which are the stuff of the meetings…

• I wrangled a media credential from… well, let’s just say that a hobo sold it to me for a tin of beans and leave it at that. Armed with my credential, I attended the press conference where the Angels announced the signing of Steve Finley for two years ($14 million, I believe) with a team option for a third year. Press conferences are just as banal in person as they are on TV; this kind exists for that photo op of the player trying on the new team’s jersey and cap. The 39-year-old Finley looks in great shape, five or seven years younger than his listed age. More importantly, this signing puts Anaheim out of the Carlos Beltran running; agent Scott Boras says they were never in. A Cubs exec told us that they weren’t going to be players in the Carlos Beltran sweepstakes unless they could move Sammy Sosa, which puts the Yankees and the Astros the clearest contenders for Beltran’s services.

• David Wells to Boston is a done deal and a steep one. ESPN’s report:

Under the terms of the agreement, Wells would receive a $3 million signing bonus and have a base salary of $2.5 million in 2005 and 2006, The Boston Globe reported. He also would have the opportunity to earn an additional $5 million in performance bonuses in each year of the contract. The deal will not be official until Wells passes a physical, reportedly scheduled for Tuesday.

I really wanted to see the Yanks make a play for him, but they’ve got their priorities and he’s not one of them. As for the ramifications, a lefty fly ball pitcher in Fenway Park has 5.00 ERA written all over it; recall that Wells loved to use the fat part of Yankee Stadium — Death Valley in left-center — but that’s a shot over the Green Monster in his new digs. Caveat emptor.

• On top of the Troy Glaus signing (4 years, $45 mil), Russ Ortiz to the Diamondback at 4 years, $33 million smacks of insanity. The broke get even more broke, and they deserve no better.

• There was a brief rumor that Carl Pavano and Yanks were close, but our sources around the room said no. He is in the house, as they say, and I would be less than surprised at a decision this weekend.

• Jason Varitek is close to returning to Sox via some kind of vesting/opt-out for the 5th year. Vaya con dios.

• Pedro Martinez and the Cardinals is a hot rumor, with St. Louis offering a guaranteed third year. Boston might have solidified their third year as well.

• There’s a Tim Hudson/Dodgers rumor going around. The Jeff Kent signing puts LA in a position where they could deal Hee Seop Choi, say, and pitching prospect Edwin Jackson to the A’s and play Kent at first. Otherwise, they’ve got Alex Cora to deal, and while he’s a handy player, he doesn’t have the upside to carry a big deal. An A’s Braves deal that includes Hudson and Marcus Giles floated by as well.

• The Mariners are leading the Adrian Beltre sweepstakes, with an offer that somebody said was along the lines of six years, $70 million. The Dodgers would likely sign Corey Koskie in that event, though I’ve heard the Blue Jays are interested as well, a move which could either put Eric Hinske at first base (to replace Carlos Delgado) or on the market.

• Shortstop rumors: Orlando Cabrera to the Angels and Edgar Renteria back to the Cardinals.

• BP’s Joe Sheehan is apoplectic about the Yanks’ Jaret Wright and Tony Womack deals. Everytime somebody mentions either the latter or a possible Tino Martinez signing, he looks as though they’re pounding a nail through his foot. Listening to him debate prospects with Baseball America’s Kevin Goldstein was one of the evening’s more entertaining diversions. Concerning Mariners 18-year-old pitching prospect Felix Hernandez (BA’s #1, I think), Joe’s banking on more surgeries than major league wins before 21 if memory serves.

• Rich Lederer of Rich’s Weekend Baseball Beat treated me and the A-B delegation to a great Mexican dinner while regaling us with tales about his father’s time working for the Dodgers in the Koufax era and the Angels during Nolan Ryan’s heyday. A big, bold guy, Rich had no hesitation to join the swarm around Scott Boras as the agent held court about his numerous clients. Tape recorder in hand, Rich brough up Angels first-roudner Jered Weaver (Jeff’s younger brother) as yet unsigned, and helped the writers fill a few more column inches. Check his great blog entry on yesterday’s proceedings.

• A good deal of the info we bloggers and BPers get flows through my roommate for the weekend, Will Carroll, who’s got the best sources of anybody I know. Check his BP blogging of the meetings for some more perspective.

I’ll be back with more when I get a chance.

Thanks in part to Buster Olney, it’s fashionable among the mainstream media to compare the character and talent (in that order) of the current crop of New York Yankees to that of the dynasty which won five four World Series in a six-year span from 1996-2001 and find them lacking. By this reasoning, players such as Tino Martinez, Paul O’Neill, Andy Pettitte, Scott Brosius, David Cone, Joe Girardi, even Chuck Knoblauch and Luis Sojo are exalted for knowing how to win in the grand pinstriped tradition. Expensive replacements such as Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, and Kevin Brown are amoral mercenaries who don’t have what it takes to make it in the Bronx, while the likes of Mike Mussina, Javier Vazquez, Hideki Matsui are competent but pricey substitutes who lack the leadership to return the Yanks to their winning ways. This is a tired trope, though the current pariah-hood of Giambi and Brown, with their bloated contracts and high-profile transgressions, makes them easy targets.

But if there’s one area where the current crop of Yanks deserves criticism for not measuring up to their glory days, it’s the bullpen. While closer Mariano Rivera remains the axle around which the Yanks’ postseason fate spins, the failure of his supporting casts has conspired to keep the Yankees championship-free in the new millenium. Though much of that shortfall is due to failures of performance — even from the once-indomitable Rivera, who saved 30 out of 32 games in the Octobers prior to 2004 — larger issues such as Brian Cashman’s roster construction, Joe Torre’s deployment of the available parts, and an organization-wide lack of vision have left the Yanks with uncomfortably razor-thin margins for error.

I’ll spare you the epic version of the pen’s pre-2004 saga, as it’s become one of this site’s most oft-told tales, starring Jeff Nelson as the fabled prodigal son. But suffice it to say that the 2004 Yankee bullpen was an expensive, top-heavy Frankenstein-like response to the previous years’ woes. To support Rivera and compensate for the unlikelihood of Steve Karsay’s return from rotator cuff surgery, the Yanks signed pricey but proven righty setup men Tom Gordon and Paul Quantrill while re-upping two late-’03 lefty acquisitions, Gabe White and Felix Heredia, handing out over $17 million worth of guaranteed contracts.

Though the popular perception was that the Yanks finally had some setup men worthy of Mariano the Great, the reality was darker. Rivera was still the best closer in the league, setting a career high in saves while putting up another sub-2.00 ERA. Gordon was a smashing success in the first half of the season, earning an All-Star trip with a 1.78 ERA, and then showed some wear as the season went on, as 36-year-olds will. Quantrill hurt his knee in his Yankee debut and was consigned to a brace for most of the season. He was a complete mess in the second half (7.09 ERA), one which the team refused to address at the appropriate trading deadlines. Rather than give him a two-week vacation on the DL, they simply kept handing him the ball, with predictably diminishing returns. White and Heredia were both unmitigated disasters, with the former’s greasy porn-stareque countenance shipped back to the Reds for a prospect who’d gone the other way in the Aaron Boone deal and the latter banished to the minors to get his shit together, heralding the arrival of C.J. Nitkowski and his Amazing Tales of Salvation. Ugh, I’d rather read the porn star’s blog.

Torre rode his top trio — christened QuanGorMo — very hard, to the tune of 240 appearances between the three. But for all of their spending, the bullpen lacked depth, especially once it grew apparent that the lefties couldn’t cut it, and that became a huge problem for the Yanks when the team’s starters began dropping like flies. Though the rotation got a huge boost with the resurrection of Orlando Hernandez, the wait for Karsay’s return proved so interminable that fellow Yankee blogger Cliff Corcoran began referring to him as Steve Hearsay. Youngsters Brett Prinz, Scott Proctor and Jorge DePaula were given shots, but the latter succumbed to Tommy John surgery after only two outings, and neither of the other pair could throw enough strikes or keep the ball in the park enough to merit much work. As a result of all of this, much-maligned mopup man Tanyon Sturtze was given every opportunity to become the team’s number three reliever as the playoffs approached, thanks to a surprising display of late-September dominance once he learned Rivera’s cut fastball technique and reeled off a dozen scoreless innings.

Overall, the bullpen threw 105 more innings than the previous year, the workload of about two mid-level relievers. Despite the rotating cast, their strikeout, walk, and homer rates remained pretty stable, but their collective ERA rose four-tenths of a run (SP ERA is the ERA of the starters):

       ERA    IP    K/9  K/W   HR/9  SP ERA

2004  4.43  501.3  6.68  2.11  0.88  4.82

2003  4.02  396.0  6.84  2.10  0.84  4.02

2002  3.64  427.3  6.36  2.29  0.70  3.97

2001  3.38  477.0  7.98  2.66  0.72  4.34

Here’s are the key stats for the relievers who finished the season in pinstripes:

Pitcher     IP   ERA   WHIP  K/9   K/W   HR/9  BABIP  dERA

Quantrill  95.3  4.72  1.51  3.49  1.85  0.47  .332   3.67

Gordon     89.7  2.21  0.88  9.64  4.17  0.50  .235   2.41

Rivera     78.7  1.94  1.08  7.55  3.30  0.34  .279   2.91

Sturtze    77.3  5.47  1.40  6.52  1.70  1.05  .283   4.64

Heredia*   38.7  6.28  1.66  5.82  1.25  1.16  .300   5.19

Halsey*    32.0  6.47  1.72  7.03  1.79  1.13  .343   4.61

Prinz      28.3  5.08  1.48  6.99  1.57  1.59  .280   5.39

Proctor    25.0  5.40  1.72  7.56  1.50  1.80  .308   5.46

Karsay      6.7  2.70  1.05  5.40  2.00  2.70  .158   6.71

Nitkowski* 33.0  5.73  1.70  7.09  1.63  1.09  .333   5.02

I’ve included rookie starter Brad Halsey in this group for reasons I’l get to shortly. Late last week, Heredia was traded crosstown for Mike Stanton and $975K, while the Yanks picked up another reliever, Felix Rodriguez, by shipping disgruntled valet Kenny Lofton off to Philly. Nitkowski wasn’t offered arbitration, so he’s gone, praise the Lord. The stats of the two arrivals:

Pitcher     IP   ERA   WHIP  K/9   K/W   HR/9  BABIP  dERA

Stanton    77.0  3.16  1.34  6.78  1.76  0.70  .269   3.96

Rodriguez  65.7  3.29  1.37  8.09  2.03  1.10  .282   4.34

At first glance both look like serviceable arms but little more. Both of these guys walk too damn many batters, about 4 per nine innings, which won’t play well in the Bronx, or anywhere else for that matter. And there more… or less to these numbers. First Stanton, who as I said before had the second-worst performance of any reliever when dealing with inherited runners, costing his team an extra 8.6 runs. He also had a pretty low rate of hits on balls in play (BABIP), so we can expect some backsliding there; an ERA in the low- to mid-4s is likely.

The once-unhittable Rodriguez’s homer rate was up about 60 percent over his career rate, and while it’s tempting to explain it away by pointing to his pitching in that brand-new palace of gopherdom, Citizen’s Bank Ballpark, the reality is that he gave up only one homer as a Phillie and allowed seven while pitching for the Giants, who play in the single most difficult park to homer, SBC Park (insert accusatory glare at Barry Bonds here). Not good, but what we’re talking about still boils down to an extra three mistake pitches over the course of a season, something that could easily go the other way.

Once seen as a future closer, Rodriguez has lost velocity over the past few years while struggling with his command. Transaction Guy Christian Ruzich reports that he’s an extremely slow worker on the mound, a pitcher made for the TiVo age. Ugh. We could be in for a long summer in the Bronx, especially if Rodriguez is actually replacing Gordon, who was a rumored component (along with Javy Vazquez, Eric Duncan, the state of Connecticut, and a cure for cancer) of the supposedly dead Randy Johnson deal with Arizona.

If that’s not the case, then with Quantrill, Gordon, Rivera, Stanton, Rodriguez, the resurgent Sturtze (who doesn’t have enough service time to qualify for free agency) and perhaps Karsay (stop laughing!), the Yanks have a reasonably full bullpen, and that’s without picking up another lefty. They’ll likely find one, even when they’ve got a decent option for a LOOGY (Lefty One Out GuY) in young Brad Halsey, because that’s the Yankee Way. But Halsey’s performance against lefties was impressive enough that he ought to be considered for the role. Here are his numbers against lefties in the context of the other pitchers under discussion:

           AB   AVG   OBP   SLG

Halsey     28  .143  .212  .250

Gordon    162  .185  .246  .272

Rodriguez  99  .192  .308  .253

Rivera    154  .234  .287  .286

Heredia    74  .216  .333  .405

Quantrill 185  .292  .341  .432

Nitky      31  .258  .378  .419

Sturtze   153  .261  .352  .464

White      45  .422  .449  .556

Stanton   108  .269  .370  .426

That’s a small sample size, but what the hell. The kid certainly deserves a shot to build on numbers like that, especially because, if you’ll recall from his previous tour of duty in the Bronx, Stanton actually has a reverse platoon split; against righties over the last three years, he’s yielded a .646 OPS, while against lefties, he’s at .695 and that includes a pretty lousy performance against them last year. F-Rod (if we may call him that) also shows a reverse platoon split: a .717 OPS vs. righties over the past three years, and .653 against lefties.

It makes sense that the Yanks will probably be in the market for a lefty, and the name of Steve Kline, who pitched for the Cardinals last year, has been tossed about. The 32-year-old spent the past four seasons in St. Louis, where Tony LaRussa’s tiresome obsession with platoon-driven matchups limited him to 0.82 innings per appearance — about 62 innings for 75 appearances on average. He does a real number on lefties, a .587 OPS over the past three seasons, compared to .706 against the righties in that span. Below are his numbers from last season, along with those of all the other free agent relievers who pitched over 30 big-league innings, many now signed with the passage of the arbitration date. Most of these pitchers no longer pertain to the Yanks, but I’ve already pulled this together, so feel free to refer to this handy chart if you want some context for your favorite team’s signing or arbitration pink-slip (TEAM refers to the final one if a player made multiple stops last season; innings have been rounded, lefties are denoted by an asterisk):

TEAM PITCHER       IP  ERA   WHIP  K/9   K/W   HR/9  BABIP dERA  

FLA  R. Seanez     46  3.33  1.26  9.00  2.42  0.59  .288  3.16  signed SD

HOU  D. Miceli     78  3.59  1.30  9.62  3.07  1.16  .299  3.25  

FLA  A. Benitez    70  1.29  0.82  8.01  2.95  0.78  .173  3.32  signed SF

NYM  M. DeJean     61  4.57  1.69  8.85  1.82  0.30  .368  3.34  signed NYM

SDN  A. Osuna      37  2.45  1.17  8.84  3.27  0.74  .290  3.35  

TEX  D. Brocail    52  4.13  1.41  7.39  2.15  0.34  .317  3.37  signed TEX

NYM  R. Bottalico  69  3.38  1.27  7.92  1.79  0.39  .263  3.44  

LAN  W. Alvarez*  121  4.03  1.16  7.61  3.29  0.90  .276  3.53  

OAK  J. Mecir      48  3.59  1.34  9.25  2.58  0.94  .296  3.71  

STL  S. Kline*     50  1.79  1.07  6.26  2.06  0.54  .238  3.76  

OAK  C. Hammond*   54  2.68  1.29  5.70  2.62  0.67  .306  3.79  

CHC  K. Mercker*   53  2.55  1.25  8.66  1.89  0.68  .254  3.83  

ATL  A. Alfonseca  74  2.57  1.34  5.50  1.61  0.61  .281  3.84  signed FLA

PHI  T. Jones      82  4.15  1.42  6.45  1.79  0.77  .298  3.88  

DET  E. Yan        87  3.83  1.43  7.14  2.16  0.83  .316  3.94  

COL  S. Reed       66  3.68  1.35  5.18  2.24  0.95  .301  4.05  

SFN  D. Burba      77  4.21  1.25  5.84  1.92  0.82  .261  4.08  

PIT  J. Mesa       69  3.25  1.41  4.80  1.85  0.78  .312  4.13  signed PIT

PHI  R. Cormier*   81  3.56  1.19  5.11  1.77  0.78  .256  4.18  signed PHI

SFN  Hermanson    131  4.53  1.36  7.01  2.22  1.03  .293  4.20  signed CHW

LAN  E. Dessens   105  4.46  1.47  6.26  2.35  1.29  .310  4.25  signed LA

ARI  J. Fassero*  112  5.46  1.61  4.82  1.36  0.72  .325  4.30  

BAL  B. Groom*     53  4.78  1.58  5.47  2.00  1.03  .337  4.33  

KCA  D. Reyes*    108  4.75  1.52  7.58  1.82  1.00  .313  4.41  

CLE  B. Wickman    30  4.25  1.45  7.89  2.60  1.21  .333  4.43  signed CLE

BOS  R. Mendoza    31  3.52  1.04  3.82  1.86  0.88  .232  4.47  

STL  C. Eldred     67  3.76  1.31  7.25  3.18  1.48  .302  4.49  signed STL

BOS  T. Adams      70  4.76  1.60  7.20  2.00  1.29  .336  4.53  

FLA  B. Koch       49  4.41  1.65  9.18  1.39  1.10  .289  4.55

SEA  R. Villone*  117  4.08  1.42  6.62  1.34  0.92  .249  4.63  

DET  U. Urbina     54  4.50  1.30  9.33  1.75  1.17  .228  4.65  

ANA  T. Percival   50  2.90  1.25  5.98  1.74  1.27  .242  4.88  signed DET

MIN  Mulholland*  123  5.18  1.59  4.38  1.82  1.24  .336  4.88  

FLA  D. Weathers   82  4.15  1.46  6.67  1.74  1.31  .300  4.89  

NYM  J. Franco*    46  5.28  1.52  7.04  1.50  1.17  .286  4.90  

PHI  R. Hernandez  57  4.76  1.68  6.99  1.52  1.43  .322  4.90  

CIN  Van Poppel   115  6.09  1.46  5.62  2.25  1.72  .306  4.96  

TBA  J. Halama*   119  4.70  1.36  4.47  2.19  1.29  .293  4.97  

NYY  Nitkowski*    33  5.73  1.70  7.09  1.63  1.09  .333  5.02  

CIN  G. White*     60  6.94  1.41  6.18  3.42  2.11  .296  5.08  

HOU  D. Oliver*    73  5.94  1.49  5.70  2.19  1.73  .315  5.10  

ARI  S. Sparks    121  6.04  1.52  4.25  1.27  1.34  .288  5.16  

DET  A. Levine     71  4.58  1.51  4.08  1.33  1.27  .300  5.23  

CLE  R. White      78  5.29  1.49  5.06  1.52  1.72  .292  5.58  

SFN  Christiansen* 36  4.50  1.67  5.50  0.85  0.75  .274  5.59  

BOS  C. Leskanic   43  5.19  1.78  7.68  1.23  1.66  .305  5.70  

TEX  J. Wasdin     65  6.78  1.63  4.98  1.57  2.49  .294  6.23

I’d love to delve into these numbers more, and perhaps I will at a later date. As I’ve said before, I’m headed to Anaheim for the Winter Meetings on Friday. I’ll do my best to check in with at least one entry during the weekend. If you’re going to be in Anaheim as well, drop me a line so we can rendezvous.

Last night’s late news about the Yankees’ impending signings of Jaret Wright and Tony Womack set off a flurry of emails amongst a contingent of pinstripe-inclined bloggers and Baseball Prospectus-affiliated writers — the usual smart-guy suspects. The subject line of mine was “come back, Kenny Lofton! we love you! all is forgiven!”

It’s fair to say that none of us who weighed in like either deal very much, though our derision for the Womack one is more scathing. Reconstructing from what I’ve said in those emails and a few other pertinent ones related to recent Yankee deals, the main points are these:

• The Womack deal, which coincided with the Yanks cutting ties with the eventual winner of last year’s second-base sweepstakes, Miguel Cairo:

      ----Womack---   ----Cairo----

      AVG  OBP  SLG   AVG  OBP  SLG 

2004 .307 .349 .385  .292 .346 .417

car. .274 .319 .362  .273 .322 .370

What we have are two players who enjoyed career renaissances last year, Womack in St. Louis and Miguel Cairo in the Bronx. The difference is that Womack, who has more speed (26 steals last year, a career high of 72) is 35 years old while Cairo, who showed more power, will be 31 and thus a safer bet not to decline so much. Not falling in love with Cairo for his flukey season and hence not budging on their offer of a one-year, $1.5 million deal for a guy more suited to a utility role than an everyday one is sound thinking. Replacing him with the empty speed and proven veteran herbs and spices of Womack is not, even at the comparatively modest price of $4 million over two years.

The move has been attributed as a Gene Michael brainfart brainchild by the New York Post, though it’s likely Joe Torre is smiling. Womack is the type of player Torre needs a restraining order to avoid, as he will bring out his Chuck Tanner-esque tendency to bat him leadoff, a terrible idea. Womack is more suited to what my pal Nick calls the Kenny Lofton Memorial Second Leadoff Spot, i.e., batting ninth, if he must be in the lineup at all.

He’s no great shakes defensively, either. According to Baseball Prospectus’ metrics, Womack’s fielding at second base in ’04 was ten runs below average per 100 games. Cairo was actually -7 per 100 games in ’04, and Enrique Wilson was even worse (-14 per 100), so in the field this is actually a wash despite the perception of Miggy being a godsend with the glove.

• The cutting of ties with Wilson: As I told my pen pals, they finally solved their Enrique Wilson problem. It took them four years to learn that if they don’t offer him arbitration, he’s not allowed to just keep showing up like the guy from Office Space. Another flattering transaction. The Yanks did well to avoid arbitration with Tony Clark, John Olerud, Esteban Loaiza, C.J. Nitkowski, and Travis Lee, effectively ending their tenures in pinstripes.

• The signing of Wright: I was touting him back when we did a long-lost Baseball Prospectus radio, which triggered a few spit-takes among those participating (all of whom were in on this latest round of emails). I’m still high on him thanks to that great K rate and his blazing stuff, but I’m more wary of his ability to stay mechanically consistent and mentally solid without the tutelage of Leo Mazzone, and I’d feel a lot better with the pitching coach behind door number two than I would with Mel Stottlemyre, given the some of the high-profile implosions of recent years and Mel’s inability to fix them.

If the three-year, $21 million price tag is accurate and is broken down uniformly (which Yankee contracts rarely are), they overpaid for Wright in dollars and in length. Two years, $12 million with a fat team option and a reasonable buyout would have been a preferable route to take (say $5.5, $6.5, $9/1) to get to that price point.

The New York Daily News says that the Yanks are aggressively pursuing Pavano, who shares a history of arm trouble and late-bloomerhood with Wright but seems like a very different pitcher — less power, but also less baggage, with no dependence on a guru. Unless they pay ridiculously for him (not an unlikelihood, alas, given how many teams bidding) he’d still be a better signing than Eric Milton, who will have us all playing Russian roulette by July 4. I addressed the starting pitching in depth here, here and here.

• The impending loss of Jon Lieber, who appears headed for Philadelphia as part of a three-year, $21 million deal: I think this is a classic case of overthinking on the part of the Yanks’ front office. Unwilling to pick up Lieber’s $8 million option for another season, the Yanks tried to shoehorn their second-most-reliable starter into a two-year deal worth $10-12 million. But doing so brought a host of suitors to Lieber’s door, and not surprisingly, he got better offers. The Yankees’ move was designed to save them an extra million dollars or so once the luxury tax was figured in, but once it’s all said and one, they’ve robbed Peter to pay Paul. If the reports of them signing Eric Milton to a three-year, $25 million deal are true, they’re effectively trading a pitcher with a 3.77 dERA for one with a 5.18 dERA and going two years and $17 million deeper into the hole — even more once the tax is considered. From penny-wise to pound-foolish. Brutal, Juice.

• The Mike Stanton-Felix Heredia deal: I’m working on my Remaking piece on the bullpen, but I’ve been beaten to the punch, at least in part, by a pair of transactions. The Stanton-Heredia deal I characterized via email as “my manure for your dungheap.” At one point an essential cog — the leading lefty — in the Yankee pen, Stanton was jettisoned in a harsh bit of negotiation hardball and landed in Shea, where his performance in dealing with inherited runners (2nd worst in the majors last year, -8.6 runs below expectation) was the second-worst in the majors and made him reviled on the level of Hitler and Derek Jeter by the Shea faithful. Reacquiring him is likely to pay a dividend similar to the Jeff Nelson Reunion Tour, which is to say he’s better than what came before — certainly not limited to the LOOGY role in which Heredia was uncomfortably cast — but still a pricey shadow of the team’s former glory and yet another example of the Yankee brass’ stunning lack of imagination. I’ll have more to say on the Yankee pen… soon.

• The Kenny Lofton-Felix Rodriguez trade: I wish the Yanks would have utilized Lofton better, especially in the postseason when we had to watch Ruben Sierra and Tony Clark imitate each other’s flailing incompetence. While his best days may be behind him, Rodriguez is a solid haul, another durable reliever (with a good K rate, though lots of walks) for what was essentially a spare part. Again, more on this when I cover the Yankee pen in detail.

• • •

A quick welcome to those of you coming here via the latest Soxaholix comic strip. Though I revile Curt Schilling even moreso today than I did back then, I’m neither flattered by association with the imbroglio which led to that reference, nor am I eager to relive it. I could have just as easily removed the posts pertaining to the whole affair or deleted all of the comments, but I choose to leave them up as a continuing reminder to myself (and other participants) not to write angry or to go throwing rocks at hornets’ nests. Nearly all of the hatchets regarding those exchanges were buried in the immediate wake of the incident, and I count several of those who criticized me there among my allies in the quest for enlightened baseball coverage despite our partisan leanings. Which is one of the things being lampooned in the strip, I realize, but nonetheless, I think we’ve all got better things to do than to dwell on that not-so-flattering snapshot, which showed nobody’s best side.

One of the recurring themes in the baseball blogosphere is the difference between what we bloggers do and what a traditional newspaper reporter does when it comes to covering a team. The key issue is access; we bloggers are unlikely to get a chance to ask a player, manager or executive for their perspective on a play, a game or a trade. While that might be seen as a minus by a good portion of baseball fans who really want to know just how Alex Rodriguez puts on his pants, how many games Derek Jeter is looking ahead, or how the Yanks would take to the addition of [insert ace pitcher here], the truth is that the lack of access is pretty liberating. We don’t have to endure the banality of manufactured quotes, the pressures of deadlines and unreasonable editors, press box cuisine, the constricting style of a game report, or the possibilility of being frozen out for criticizing the team.

Furthermore, many of us have a thorough disdain for some of the reporters who do have that access because we suspect that it corrupts their viewpoints and prevents them from approaching things with the necessary objectivity. One can’t write honestly about Derek Jeter’s defensive shortcomings and the wealth of data on same, to use an example, because one can’t afford to alienate Jeter, his teammates, or the mainstream readership who take his defensive excellence as gospel. Further, one can’t show much imagination in the role of a reporter because of the inevitable need to keep the five W’s in mind. Whereas here in the blogosphere we can ramble at length, on our own schedules, about any topic that feels worthy of exploration without worrying what Jeter — or even the scribes who cover him — has to say.

Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts has a compelling guest piece from L.A. Times reporter Bill Shaikin on the topic of blogging. Weisman, a former beat reporter himself, solicitied Shaikin’s participation for his “Disposable Baseball Blogger” piece a few weeks back, and while the newspaperman couldn’t meet his deadline, he’s offered up some detailed and enlightened thoughts about the contrast and even synergy between the two types of writing:

The strength of baseball blogging, then, is that it expands a fan’s options beyond moaning about the newspaper coverage or calling a talk show and waiting on hold to deliver a 30-second opinion. Write your own analysis. Use the blessing of unlimited space. I might get four paragraphs to discuss which free-agent pitchers the Dodgers or Angels are pursuing, with room for nothing beyond names and stats, certainly not for the analysis that the best blogs provide.

Shaikin comes off as more openminded to and less threatened by what the blogs have to say than his peers do, and he acknowledges their value to him as a writer.

While some bloggers can be content providing links to various media stories and offering a few comments – and those blogs can be invaluable to baseball writers, myself included – others provide detailed analysis and debate.

Those blogs can be invaluable to baseball writers too. No one writer can think of everything, and if someone else spots a trend before I do, more power to them. The seed planted by a blog can lead a writer to use his access and ask questions of the appropriate parties. I agree with the Dodger Thoughts perspective that the blogs that stand out offer original reporting – not just a “take” and not necessarily comments from players, agents or general managers – but insight and commentary not found elsewhere. I also agree that the site of the late Doug Pappas represented blogs at their best – “baseball news you can’t get anywhere else,” to borrow the motto of Baseball America.

While many blogs tend to use sabermetric tools in analysis and commentary – and often make compelling points in doing so – the best bloggers understand that decisions are not made in a statistical vacuum. After the Dodgers-Marlins trade July 30, I read blogs in which DePodesta was crowned as the winner of the trade on the basis of VORP alone. But there are many other factors that even DePodesta would tell you he would consider – salaries in current and future seasons, eligibility for salary arbitration, minor league depth at various positions, the upcoming class of free agents, etc. that statistics alone do not tell the story.

Good stuff. I was pretty neutral on Shaikin before reading the piece; he’s not one of the odious Dodger bashers at the Times like Bill Plaschke or T.J. Simers, but he’s never particularly distinguished himself to me. Which is actually a positive; I can point to several Plaschke or Simers articles which have pissed me off, but I don’t recall anything Shaikin’s written provoking similar ire. Reading what he has to say in that piece, I think the chances are pretty good he’s stopped by here before, so I’m going to make a point of trying to meet him at the Winter Meetings this coming weekend in Anaheim.

If you missed them, here are Part I and Part II of this series, with the latter containing the big chart of starters on the market.

Looking back at the list of free-agent and trade-bait starters, one of the first thing that stands out is the dearth of lefties (indicated with asterisks, as is the custom) and the, er, craptacularity of the ones beyond Randy Johnson who seem to be on the Yankees’ radar. Of those nine southpaws, only four have dERAs appreciably better than the league average ERA (4.30 in the NL, 4.63 in the AL): Johnson, Glendon Rusch (who reupped with the Cubs), David Wells, and Odalis Perez. The two vaunted Oakland lefties, Barry Zito and Mark Mulder, straddle that AL league average, while Al Leiter, Eric Milton, and Shawn Estes are well above the NL average.

Johnson we’ve discussed previously. Boomer you know all about — how his amazing control (5.05 K/W) and ability to work fast (to his fielders’ delight) cover up for a subpar strikeout rate and a lack of conditioning. Even at 42 (which he’ll turn in May), even with all of the headaches he brings, from reneging on handshake agreements to getting in brawls when he should be in bed, he’s still not the worst idea out there. ESPN Insider reports that six teams, including the Padres, the Yankees, the Dodgers and the Phillies are all interested. At last report the Phils have improved what was originally a $5 million offer.

As I wrote in a Baseball Prospectus Triple Play, I’m surprised that the 27-year-old Perez isn’t drawing more interest. Young lefty pitchers who have averaged 201 innings over the last three seasons at an ERA 12 percent better than the league average, and with decent peripherals to boot… well, there aren’t many of them on the market. He’s shown glimpses of brilliance for the Dodgers, and pitched well in some big games down the stretch as well. But it’s likely that his postseason shellacking at the hands of the Cardinals knocked him down a peg. Furthermore, concerns about his shoulder — a stint on the DL with rotator cuff inflammation (though he still made 31 starts), and enough workload-related issues that Will Carroll red-lighted him as an injury risk — may keep him there.

In the context of the starter market, the two Oakland lefties look like little more than LAIMs — League-Average Inning Munchers — with unimpressive strikeout rates, mediocre control, and a vulnerability to the gopher ball. Both have track records that show better days on their resumes, but it’s certainly fair to wonder if their heavy workloads have caught up with them, Oakland’s vaunted reputation for “prehab” or no. Zito has averaged 222 innings a year over the past four seasons, and while his strikeout rate regained a bit of lost ground, his control is really nothing to write home about, and his homer rate spiked up about 50 percent higher than his career average. Ick. He’s been getting by in part due to extremely low BABIP numbers (.245 in 2002, .239 in 2003), but luck and defense caught up with him this past year, and he now looks like a far cry from the carefree Cy Young Award winner of 2002. Pass.

Poring over Mulder’s stats, it’s more of the same except for the shiny W-L record. Falling K rate? Check. Decreased control? Big check (his K/W went from 3.2 to 1.69 last year). Rising homer rate? Check. Injury concerns? Mulder was a mess in the mechanics department and was lacking velocity as well. His ERA after the All-Star break was 6.13. That may not spell injury, but it certainly hurt the A’s, and I wouldn’t touch him in a deal right now.

The two lefties who have been linked with the Yanks in rumors are two lefties that have been linked with the Yanks before — both were products of the team’s development system but were traded away. Al Leiter came up to the Yanks in 1987 and spent parts of three seasons in pinstripes, showing some promise but ultimately serving as trade fodder like so many other Yankee farmhands of that era (the more things change, the more they stay the same). Sent to Toronto for Jesse Barfield, he soon underwent elbow surgery, and it wasn’t until 1993 that he made a real dent in the majors. He was a teammate of Kevin Brown’s and Gary Sheffield’s on the 1997 World Champion Florida Marlins, starting Game Seven of the World Series but geting a no-decision. During the team’s post-championship fire sale, he was traded to the Mets in a deal which sent A.J. Burnett the other way.

After seven successful seasons in Shea Stadium — where he averaged 30 starts a year and was under the adjusted league average in ERA each time — he’s become involved in a very public drama over the Mets declining his $10.2 million option. It’s typical. The 39-year-old Leiter is intelligent and well-spoken — he made a fine analyst in the postseason — but his reputation for being a clubhouse lawyer and his media savvy make him one of those players whose situations always get played out in the papers. A poor man’s Curt Schilling, perhaps.

If only he could pitch that well, he might be worth the gamble. Leiter put up a low ERA last year, but he averaged less than six innings per start, and along with a declining strikeout rate (from 7.6 in 2002 to 6.9 in ’03 to 6.1 last year), he walked a ton of batters (5.03 per 9) and threw the most pitches per hitter (4.33) of any ERA qualifier. His low ERA would also appear to be a product of luck as well, as batters hit only .240 against him on balls in play. All in all, his peripherals scream that his chickens are rounding third and heading home to roost. At one point, the Yankees appeared convinced that Leiter was determined to return to Shea, and the Marlins reportedly put an offer on the table for $7 million a year. Now the Yanks are reportedly offering him a one-year deal between $5 and $6 million plus incentives. Pray he skips town.

If Leiter looks like a gamble, then Eric Milton looks torn from the Big Book of Bad Ideas. The team’s first round draft pick in 1996, Milton was traded to the Twins in 1997 in the Chuck Knoblauch deal. Throughout his career, he’s never really risen above the level of a LAIM; his career ERA+ is at 99, a tick below the adjusted league-average. His biggest problem is gophers; he allowed an astronomical 43 homers last year and 1.45 per nine innings over the course of his career. His strikeout rate is respectable — it was actually the best of his career — but he walks too many batters, and coupled with the long balls, that’s a recipe for disaster.

Two weeks ago it appeared that the Yanks were headed for a deal with Milton in the range of two years at $6-7 million per. That urgency subsided long enough to offer some hope that reason would carry the day, but the wheels seem to be turning again even with the team’s renewed interest in Leiter. Just because the Yanks scouted and drafted Milton is no reason they should be obsessed with him now. They made the right decision to trade him seven years ago, and those three championship and four pennants that Knoblauch helped them win should serve as a reminder no matter where the Lil’ Bastard is these days.

The bottom line among these unmulleted lefties is that there isn’t a single one who offers a whole lot of upside without a great deal of risk, all of which puts even more pressure on the front office to work out a trade for the Big Unit; right now the big sticking point is how much of Javy Vazquez’s $34.5 million the Yanks would assume.

In any event, it appears we have three basic scenarios to fill out the Yankee rotation. In order of desirability:

1. Trade for Randy Johnson with a package that includes Vazquez: If the Yanks do this, their need to hook another big free-agent starter dissipates; they could get by with secondary signings. With Johnson and Mike Mussina at the top of the rotation, they can bring back Jon Lieber and Orlando Hernandez, perhaps take a flier on Odalis Perez (though they’re more likely to wind up with Leiterfluid or Milton), and hold onto Kevin Brown until the market settles a bit. They’ll have to sign Johnson to a one-year extension, which will likely not be the worst $17 million or so they spend in 2006 unless the wheels fall off. It will be another old rotation, and they’ll still need to scare up an insurance starter once they jettison Brown.

2. Sign Pedro Martinez: While not as appealing as acquiring Johnson — Martinez can’t carry a team on his broad shoulders anymore — this is probably a necessity if they can’t swing a deal with Arizona. The bonus is that it would hurt the Red Sox, at least in the short term. To do this, the Yanks will need to go beyond the Mets’ entry into the sweepstakes, a three-year, $38 million guarantee with a vesting option for a fourth year. Of course, they’ll also need the Sox not to dramatically increase their offer, and for the two parties to decide not to go to arbitration. All of this is doable; in fact the Yanks are perfectly poised to swoop in should they desire, though they’re certain to overpay for a pitcher whose long-term outlook isn’t so hot.

With Martinez, Mussina, and Vazquez in the fold, the Yanks will need to find themselves a lefty, and again, I’ll reiterate that David Wells is a far better choice than the two ex-farmhands. They could resign Lieber and Hernandez, figuring that they’ve got some insurance against balky backs and cranky shoudlers, or they could choose one of the two and save some money for the great Carlos Beltran chase while scaring up insurance elsewhere.

3. Scramble if they can’t land their ace: If they can’t get Johnson or Martinez, the Yanks will use smoke, mirrors, and cash to divert attention away from that fact. The danger in this scenario is that somewhere it becomes as much of a PR move as a baseball one; the Yanks have to come back and say, “See, we did get our man,” and they’re not going to impress anybody with the likes of a Jaret Wright or a Matt Clement as their shiny new toy. Call it a hidden cost of New York, that every move will get scrutinized to death by the dozens of wags who just love to pile on the Yanks. C’est la vie.

If it comes to this scenario, my money is on Carl Pavano. Though their strikeout rates tell the opposite story, Pavano is probably a better long-term bet than Wright from a makeup standpoint. The most recent Baseball Prospectus Triple Play had this to say about the two contrasting views of Pavano today:

[H]e is an excellent example of a player over whom scouts and statheads will clash, and his great 2004 will give the scouts more ammo. You might look at Pavano and see a guy who’s been healthy and effective for a full year exactly once in his career, with a declining strikeout rate and a career year probably helped by a fluky low BABIP. I might look at Pavano and see a workhorse with the cojones for big-game success and some serious heat that he can bring again and again.

This writer will throw a dissenting voice into the mix and say that there is something to what the scouts see. Some pitchers are just late bloomers, and don’t deserve to have their history held against them too strictly. Unfortunately, the attention being lavished upon Pavano right now all but guarantees that whichever team signs him will fall prey to the Winner’s Curse.

Should the Yanks desire Pavano, they’ll obviously have to outbid several teams to get him, including the Red Sox and the spend-happy Orioles. If they fail to net that particular fish, a late run at Brad Radke would make sense given that the Twins are scrambling to adjust their bid (3/$20) in the wake of the Mets’ drastic overpaying for Kris Benson.

If they sign Pavano, they’ll have Moose and Javy on board, of course. The lefty Wells would make the most sense in this context, as he’s the only available southpaw who’s anything close to a front-of-the-rotation type, and without a true ace, having one more of those wouldn’t hurt. Again, they could do Lieber, Hernandez, or both here.

I should add that while I’ve put the decision on the Yanks’ shoulders regarding Lieber in all three cases, he may choose to go elsewhere given the way they’ve handled his situation. Considering they’ve pencilled him in for about $6 million a year, not signing him gives them some money to play with, and they could plausibly net Wright with that kind of scratch. Failing that, there’s a whole mess of options which could be cheaper and perhaps less desirable, but not entirely without merit.

For example, I haven’t even broached the three available starters — Cris Carpenter, Woody Williams, and Matt Morris — who helped take the Cardinals to the World Series. Journeyman-turned-ace-turned-bystander Carpenter had a heck of a year before a biceps strain sidelined him for October; concerns that the injury could actually be similar to Brad Penny’s — a nerve irritation — may cloud the issue. Williams has had an unheralded run in St. Louis, and though he’s 38, he could probably provide something Lieberesque at the back of the rotation. Morris is only 29 but he’s been on the decline for four straight years, and I wouldn’t go there.

Anyway, expect the Johnson/Martinez dramas to hang over our heads for another couple of weeks, first past the December 7 arbitration deadline and then likely into the Winter Meetings of December 10-13. The Yanks may hedge by signing either Milton or Leiter before then, which is sure to leave us banging our heads in distress until the big news comes down.

When we last left the Yankees, they had only three starters under contract for 2005: Mike Mussina, Javier Vazquez, and Kevin Brown. I wrote that I thought it likely either or both Vazquez or Brown could be traded. As I began writing this piece, I was convinced Vazquez would likely be wearing pinstripes next season — either the midnight blue ones of the wealthy team in the Bronx or the purple ones of that bankrupt team in the desert, as the key component in a deal for Randy Johnson. Relatively young, with a track record of success (at least until his second-half collapse), a clean bill of health, and an upside that may yet place him among the game’s elite pitchers, Vazquez would appear to be a desirable commodity for a team trading its ace.

But beyond the fact that Javy’s owed $36 million on his contract, ESPN’s Peter Gammons has offered up a couple of compelling reasons why a trade involving Vazquez wouldn’t make sense for the D-Backs. First, as a player traded in the middle of a multi-year contract, Vazquez would have the right to demand a trade at the end of next season. Second, the Snakes’ new CEO, Jeff Moorad, is a former agent who Vazquez fired two years ago. I’ll buy that line of thinking, especially the first reason, but I’m getting off the bus at Gammo offering up the possibility that the Yanks could substitute Tom Gordon and Kenny Lofton, both dealable to other clubs in exchange for young talent. There’s no way in hell they get away with perhaps the game’s best pitcher for the price of a top setup man and a lame-duck backup centerfielder. Somebody had better check Gammons’ medication.

On the topic of Brown, while the Yankee brass may desire to toss him in the first ditch that offers them salary relief, that clearly won’t be easy, given that he’s got a no-trade contract. More than any fine or punishment they could have levied, the Yanks would have done well to strongarm Brown into waiving that clause back when he decided to spar with a clubhouse wall. As is is, they have a distinct lack of leverage in holding a $15 million dollar no-trade contract on a surly gimp, and it may take until springtime to make him somebody else’s problem.

So whether it’s two starters or three, or four, let’s just say that the Yanks are in the market in a big way, and with four years since their last World Championship, they’re looking to make a splash. A potential Johnson deal would be one way to do it, signing Pedro Martinez away from their heated rivals would be another, and luring Roger Clemens out of yet another retirement to haul his Texas-sized derriere back up to New York… well, that ain’t gonna happen.

But the incredible thing is that if we look at all of the pitchers on the free-agent market and rank them by DIPS ERA (dERA), which has been shown to correlate better with the following season’s ERA than the pitcher’s actual ERA, there’s the Rocket, seventh Cy Young Award under his arm, facing the sunset of his incredible career, and yet still at the top of the list. That’s in part because of his strikeout rate, which is still better than one batter per inning. Strikeout rate is the best predictor of a pitcher’s longevity and future success. Strikeouts don’t become hits, they almost never become baserunners, and they never go over the fence; they take the element of chance out of the equation, and that helps to keep runs off the board.

Johnson, who we may as well include on our free-agent list since he’s likely to depart Arizona once somebody antes up, rates even higher than Clemens does, not only because his K rate is higher by 1.5 per nine innings, but also because of his astounding control — more than six times as many walks per strikeouts. Throw that in with a low homer rate and you’ve got a pitcher who’s still dominant and may well be into his mid-40s. Were it not for the BBWAA’s obsession with won-loss records, Johnson, who went 16-14 for a team that lost 111 games, would have tied Clemens by winning his sixth Cy Young Award earlier this month.

But besides those two, there aren’t too many strikeout pitchers on the market. Of the 31 free agent starters who threw more than nine innings last year, only nine of them averaged more than seven strikeouts per nine innings — a number not too far above the league averages of 6.45 in the AL and 6.74 in the NL. Toss in the fact that at least three of those pitchers in the sevens have some issues — we’ll get to ‘em — and it’s reasonable to say that while this market is deep, it’s hardly spectacular.

Along with the 31 plus Johnson, I’m also going to list the relevant stats for Oakland’s big three of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito, because the conventional wisdom is that GM Billy Beane will make a trade involving at least one of these hurlers, and if there’s a deal to be made, you can guess that the Yankees might be interested. So here are the 35 in all:

Team Pitcher       W  L   IP  ERA   WHIP  K/9   K/W   HR/9  BABIP  dERA

ARI  R. Johnson*  16 14  246  2.60  0.90 10.62  6.59  0.66  .264   2.42  trade rumors

HOU  R. Clemens   18  4  214  2.98  1.16  9.15  2.76  0.63  .275   3.18

ATL  J. Wright    15  8  186  3.28  1.28  7.68  2.27  0.53  .292   3.39

OAK  T. Hudson    12  6  189  3.53  1.26  4.91  2.34  0.38  .297   3.58  trade rumors

FLA  C. Pavano    18  8  222  3.00  1.17  5.63  2.84  0.65  .282   3.60

CHC  G. Rusch*     6  2  130  3.47  1.23  6.25  2.73  0.69  .287   3.65  signed CHC

BOS  P. Martinez  16  9  217  3.90  1.17  9.41  3.72  1.08  .291   3.70

MIN  B. Radke     11  8  220  3.48  1.16  5.86  5.50  0.94  .293   3.70

PHI  K. Millwood   9  6  141  4.85  1.46  7.98  2.45  0.89  .327   3.75

NYY  J. Lieber    14  8  177  4.33  1.32  5.20  5.67  1.02  .323   3.77

NYM  K. Benson    12 12  200  4.31  1.31  6.02  2.20  0.67  .295   3.87  signed NYM

CHC  M. Clement    9 13  181  3.68  1.28  9.45  2.47  1.14  .279   3.95

NYY  O. Hernandez  8  2   85  3.30  1.29  8.93  2.33  0.96  .284   3.98

STL  C. Carpenter 15  5  182  3.46  1.14  7.52  4.00  1.19  .277   4.00

SDN  D. Wells*    12  8  196  3.73  1.14  4.65  5.05  1.06  .274   4.16

STL  W. Williams  11  8  190  4.18  1.32  6.22  2.26  0.95  .286   4.18

LAN  O. Perez*     7  6  196  3.25  1.14  5.87  2.91  1.19  .263   4.21

ATL  P. Byrd       8  7  114  3.94  1.24  6.22  4.16  1.42  .288   4.25

CHC  R. Dempster   1  1   21  3.92  1.40  7.84  1.38  0.44  .254   4.27

BOS  D. Lowe      14 12  183  5.42  1.61  5.17  1.48  0.74  .327   4.40

OAK  B. Zito*     11 11  213  4.48  1.39  6.89  2.01  1.18  .291   4.53  trade rumors

OAK  M. Mulder*   17  8  226  4.43  1.36  5.58  1.69  1.00  .286   4.67  trade rumors

CIN  P. Wilson    11  6  184  4.36  1.39  5.73  1.86  1.27  .284   4.67

ATL  R. Ortiz     15  9  205  4.13  1.51  6.29  1.28  1.01  .282   4.77

LAN  J. Lima      13  5  170  4.07  1.24  4.91  2.74  1.74  .268   4.89

NYY  E. Loaiza    10  7  183  5.70  1.57  5.75  1.65  1.57  .311   4.91

COL  J. Wright     2  3   79  4.12  1.61  4.69  0.91  0.92  .277   4.96

NYM  A. Leiter*   10  8  174  3.21  1.35  6.06  1.21  0.83  .240   4.98

STL  M. Morris    15 10  202  4.72  1.29  5.84  2.34  1.56  .273   5.08

PHI  E. Milton*   14  6  201  4.75  1.35  7.21  2.15  1.93  .263   5.18

ANA  A. Sele       9  4  132  5.05  1.62  3.48  1.00  1.09  .313   5.26

COL  S. Estes*    15  8  202  5.84  1.62  5.21  1.11  1.34  .301   5.46

FLA  I. Valdez    14  9  170  5.19  1.48  3.55  1.37  1.75  .282   5.84

LAN  H. Nomo       4 11   84  8.25  1.75  5.79  1.29  2.04  .314   6.03

TOR  P. Hentgen    2  9   80  6.95  1.64  3.70  0.79  1.79  .266   6.36

Of the righthanders on this list, the biggest name, of course, is Pedro Martinez. The longtime ace of the Red Sox is hitting the market following the expiration of a seven-year, $90 million deal which saw him not only net two Cy Youngs and a World Championship while in Boston, but also establish himself as one of the greatest pitchers of all time. Over the first six years in Boston, Martinez’s ERA+ was an astounding 210, meaning that his ERA was less than half of the adjusted league average. But last year, although he threw the most innings he had in four seasons, his line was considerably more ordinary. He allowed 26 homers, one more than he had in the previous three seasons combined. On the other hand, while his strikeout rate has steadily eroded from a high of 12.57 per nine innings, it’s still above one hitter per inning. The same thing can be said about his control; his K/W rate was a criminally insane 8.88 back in 1999 (313 K to 37 walks) and it’s now “down” to 3.72.

Those are still numbers that most of the 32 pitchers on this list who have fewer Cy Youngs than him would give their throwing arms for. They perfectly illustrate the reason why power pitchers last longer, career-wise, than finesse pitchers — they have much more margin for error, much further to fall before they become “average”. Pedro Martinez may no longer be one of the game’s elite pitchers, but he’s still pretty damn good.

That said, Martinez has long had questions about his health, particularly his shoulder. His inability to pitch late into ballgames is well-documented, though he did last a half-inning longer per start in ’04 than the previous season, and his splits don’t show the same dramatic falloff that made Grady Little’s decision to stay with him in the seventh game of the 2003 ALCS so infamously lunkheaded in retrospect. Consider:

#   1-15  16-30  31-45  46-60  61-75  76-90  91-105  106-120

PA   111   127    123    126    123    127    100       43   

OPS 1.017 .470   .714   .695   .733   .744   .533     .621

It looks as though Martinez has a tendency to find trouble instantly but gain strength as the game continues, and the Sox clearly were a bit more cautious in cutting him off if he wasn’t sailing along past the 90-pitch mark.

Beyond that, Pedro has a flair for the dramatic, both on and off the field, to say the least. The Red Sox tended to let him play by his own rules, especially regarding travel to the Domincan Republic around the All-Star Break, slack that Martinez seems loathe to acknowledge in his public comments regarding negotiations. The Sox initially offered him a two-year deal worth $25.5 million, with a $13-million option for a third year and $2 million in performance bonuses. Pedro took his show on the road, meeting with George Steinbrenner in a move that many have speculated was done less out of desire to join forces than to help for both parties to gain leverage — Martinez with the Sox, the Yanks with the Diamondbacks in a possible Johnson deal. Since then, reports have emerged that the Yanks have offered a four-year deal worth $50 million but that Pedro’s seeking $60 million, money he likely won’t get out of the Yanks, to say nothing of the Sox.

Is Pedro a good fit for the Yankees? I detest him, frankly, and so do over 70 percent of the New York Post readers who responded to a poll on the matter last week, not that I’m eager to lump myself in with that crowd. But putting the emotional issues aside, I still think he’s a high risk, especially long-term. The man can still pitch, though I doubt he’ll garner the late-career Cy Youngs that Clemens and Johnson have because of his physical makeup — he’s smaller (nearly a foot shorter than Johnson) and has always been less durable than either of them. There would likely be friction as he tries to fit in with the Yanks — moreso than when Clemens came over.

But there’s an added value in taking him away from the Red Sox, not only on the level of psychology but simply because it requires Boston to come up with another frontline pitcher. On that note, I’d rather see the Yanks overpay a bit for a two-year deal, even if it means coming close to to the astronomical, archaic salary he drew in 2004 ($17.5 million). I’d be extremely nervous if they go three our four years, because I doubt Pedro’s shelf life as an elite pitcher will last much longer than that. That said, I think he’s likely to use his Yankee leverage to extract a bigger deal out of Boston at the 11th hour, keeping that little corner of the universe intact for awhile longer.

Among the rest of the righties, the name which is generating the most buzz is Carl Pavano — ironically, the key player in the deal which sent Pedro from Montreal to Boston in the first place. Coming off of a fabulous 2003 postseason in which he helped the Marlins beat the Yankees in the World Series, Pavano had a breakout year in 2004, setting career highs in innings, strikeouts, and wins. His K rate is rather pedestrian, especially for a big guy (6’5″, 240 lbs). Instead he’s a groundballer with good control who avoids the long ball, and he’s very efficient, averaging only 3.47 pitches per batter, good for ninth among qualifiers (162 innings; Yankee pitcher Jon Lieber was third with 3.40). That efficiency helped him eat innings, an average of 7.17 per start, worth noting for a team that overused its bullpen because it couldn’t get length out of its rotation.

Injuries have kept Pavano from throwing a lot of innings historically, but he’s got a clean bill of health at the moment, and on the verge of turning 29, he’s got only two years of 200+ innings under his belt, something that might be considered a positive after Javy Vazquez’s struggles. He’s going to be hotly pursued, with the Sox, who drafted him, appearing to make the most noise. Given that he’s from Connecticut and has been exposed to the game’s top East Coast rivalry, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him end up on whichever of the rivals doesn’t sign Pedro.

Matt Clement, 30, has been overlooked amid a Cubs rotation that featured Mark Prior, Kerry Wood and Carlos Zambrano, but he fit right in among that high K-rate bunch. He’s a bit gopher-prone, but his control has improved considerably over the last few years. He suffered a second-half meltdown by trying to pitch through a sore shoulder and yielded a 6.10 ERA over the final two months of the season; his workload was enough of a concern that he got a yellow light from Will Carroll. All of that plus the fact that his 9-13 record doesn’t look too impressive (he was one of the unluckiest pitchers in the majors in that regard) will keep his market value down and likely scare a team like the Yanks away. I’m told that he shaved that nasty pubic beard he was sporting, but even growing it in the first place is another strike against him. Toronto seems poised to snare him, and they can have him.

Of the tier of younger pitchers reaching free agency, the one I’m most intrigued by — almost in spite of myself — is Jaret Wright. For a kid who started a seventh game of the World Series at 21 (Cleveland,1997), his career certainly hasn’t panned out as expected. After promising beginnings, arm troubles cost him the better part of three seasons, and he wound up in the bullpen as a last-ditch effort. An 8.37 ERA in 47.1 innings in San Diego in 2003 looked like the end, but the Braves, particularly coach Leo Mazzone, saw something they liked in him — a high-90s fastball — claimed him off waivers, instructed him to keep the ball down, and he threw 13 innings of late-season relief, allowing two runs and striking out a man per inning. This year they put him in the rotation and he finally put together a season of the caliber that’s made him a first-round draft pick, with a good K rate, reasonably good control, and an extremely low HR rate — figures that add up to the lowest dERA of any starter on the market without a Hall of Fame pedigree. But despite of the fact that the Braves literally resurrected his career, he seems to be pricing his way out of Atlanta. Can he repeat his performance elsewhere? With his reputedly lousy mechanics, can he stay healthy? If the Yanks had a better pitching coach — a Rick Peterson, a Dave Duncan, hell, a Leo Mazzone, I’d recommend they take a shot. As it is, I think more solid bets abound.

Also in the less-than-solid bet camp, but with a much longer track record, is Kevin Millwood, who turns 30 in December. Once a mainstay of the Braves’ rotation, he was traded to Philly in a much-ridiculed deal which sent catcher Johnny Estrada in the other direction. One All-Star catcher versus $21 million of league-average pitching later, it’s the Braves who are laughing. At first glance Millwood’s numbers look fairly enticing — high strikeout rate, reasonable control and HR rates (especially for the new Citizens Bank Ballpark, a homer haven). But his ERA was over a run higher than his dERA due to a high hit rate on balls in play (.327), in part because he gave up a high rate of line drives, leaving hitters a lot more smackable pitches. That’s not good. Worse, he was limited to a mere six innings pitched after July due to a sprained ligament and tendon in his right elbow, eliciting a well-earned red light from Will Carroll. The Yankees don’t need this kind of trouble.

Finally, among the righthanders who might plausibly be on the Yanks’ radar, Tim Hudson. The lanky A’s hurler is in the final year of a deal which will pay him $6 million, and like Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada before him, Oakland GM Billy Beane isn’t sure he can sign him. With youngsters Rich Harden and Joe Blanton emerging, Beane can afford to take a shot at trading one of his big three of Hudson, Zito and Mulder, and since the former is in his walk year, dealing him makes a certain kind of sense, especially since the A’s seem poised to take on a big chunk of salary with the impending Jason Kendall deal. After three years of 235+ inning workhorse pitching with an ERA+ of 147 (spell that A-C-E), Hudson had a bit of a rough season in 2004, missing about seven weeks due to an oblique muscle strain. He was still pretty good, though a bad September roughed up his ERA a bit. But his strikeout rate — never his strong suit — fell off considerably, and his control suffered a bit too as he compensated his mechanics to deal with his injury.

As always, it will be most interesting to see how Beane plays this hand. The Yanks don’t have the ingredients to pursue a direct deal with Oakland, because it’s inconceivable the A’s would take on Javy Vazquez and his contract, and even if NY ate most of Kevin Brown’s salary, he’s unlikely to approve a deal to a west-coast team. The most tradeable Yankee hitter at this point, Jorge Posada, plays a position the A’s are on the verge of filling, and the Yankee farm system is in dreadful shape from a major league-ready standpoint. The bottom line is that it would take a third team, one likely interested in Vazquez, to get a deal done, and that would still leave the Yanks eating a considerable chunk of salary. I wouldn’t put it past Beane to wrangle such a trade, but I simply don’t see it happening.

Since this piece is approaching epic-length, I’m going to hold off on the lefty portion until my next post, in which I’ll also run through a few possible scenarios to see how this all maps out for the Yanks.

• • •

A couple of technical notes: the DIPS ERAs used in this article were generated via Voros McCracken’s DIPS 2.0 recipe except that actual numbers for batters faced were used instead of estimates. Strikeout and walk data within that formula was not park-adjusted, but the homer data was, according to this method. Since I have now done this for three years in a row, I used a three-year Park HR factor, weighted 3-2-1 for 2004-2003-2002. The only exceptions were for Cincinnati, which is only two years old so I used a 3-2 weighting; and for Philadelphia and San Diego, which opened last year, and for which I calculated as two parts 2004, one part neutral.

Also, I am grateful to Larry Mahnken of the fine Replacement Level Yankees Weblog and The Hardball Times for some assistance in the data-gathering phase of this endeavor. Thanks, Larry.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

I’ve been keeping some exciting news under my hat for the past two weeks. The night before I left for Seattle, I received an email from Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus inviting me to join the Prospectus Triple Play rotation, writing a trio of team-themed teasers on a monthly basis. And while the Yankees were already spoken for, Joe even offered up a platter of teams that included the Dodgers. How could I say no?

For those unfamiliar, the Prospectus Triple Plays are free features, quick bullet-pointed hits that acquaint readers with BP’s excellent suite of advanced metrics and lead them into the more heavy-hitting premium content. Along with the Dodgers, who are near and dear to my heart, my trifecta includes the Giants, the Dodgers’ archrivals in the NL West, and the Twins, who’ve played the Yankees in the past two postseasons. The Dodgers have Paul DePodesta as their GM, and I’m fascinated by watching him apply some of the Moneyball tricks he learned in Oakland to a team with a larger budget. The Twins feature an impressive crop of young talent which is managed in ways that tend to confound the folks who thought Moneyball was the best thing since sliced bread, and the Giants, who… have Barry Bonds, who’s sure to generate an endless stream of eye-popping stats as he closes in on Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. There’s really not a dud in the bunch — though I need to brush up on the 24 guys besides Barry.

Anyway, I’m pleased to announce that my first Triple Play is up today. Though it runs without my byline, readers of this space will no doubt recognize me harping on about Yhency Brazoban’s inclusion in the Jeff Weaver/Kevin Brown trade and my strategic use of the strikethru tag. Little ol’ me, with a regular (albeit once a month) paying (a bit o’ scratch) gig. How ’bout that?

• • •

Also on BP today, albeit in the premium section, is a good, solid refutation of Buster Olney’s Productive Outs nonsense that we had so much fun with last spring. I had hoped a BP writer who could do play-by-play data analysis was willing to filet this particular sacred cow, and somebody finally has, with enough steak for everybody. Anthony Passaretti examined play-by-play data from 1999-2002 and quantified the incremental gains and losses — “the little things” — via the appropriate Expected Run Matrix.

The top team of that period, Passaretti found, was the 2002 World Champion Anaheim Angels, who added 23.2 runs above average by advancing runners on productive outs. The second-place team was the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who won a record 116 games; they improved their situation by 21.7 runs. Among the teams on the other end of the spectrum are the 2000 World Champion Yankees, who cost themselves 15.5 runs due to a lack of productive outs. And while the top 10 teams posted a better winning percentage than the bottom 10 teams, across all four years the correlation between runs from productive outs and winning percentage was a mere 0.16, “not even close to being significant,” as Passaretti writes.

The meager magnitudes of those run totals should make one pause for a moment. A good general rule of thumb in sabermetrics is that a shift in 10 runs from one column to the other is worth one win. So the gain from those Angel runs is just over two wins, which ain’t chickenfeed, but the 10th place team on that list, the 2002 Expos, is at 10.4 runs, roughly one win. The bottom 10 range from -19.5 runs (the 2000 Indians, who just missed a Wild Card spot by half a game) to -12.4 (the 2000 Tigers). That leaves 100 teams from those four years in the range of about plus or minus one win. It’s a big deal if you’re the 2000 Indians, sure, but hardly worth the commotion Olney set off.

Passaretti also quantified individual players’ performance, publishing the top and bottom five for each of the four years. The highest total was Matt Lawton, with +8.8 runs in 1999, the lowest Dante Bichette, with -8.9 in 2001 — close to one win in either direction, but most of the guys in those quintets are at about 5-7 runs, about a half-win. Johnny Damon made the top five in two of the four years, while Brad Ausmus made the bottom five in two of those years (“And you didn’t think Ausmus could look any worse,” quips the author). Oh, and the sainted Derek Jeter, who “does all the little things” as the McCarvers and Kays of the world are wont to remind us ad infinitum, shows up at -6.6 runs in 2001 and -5.4 runs total across the four years.

Passaretti then hammered one more nail into the case by analyzing whether productive outs are a repeatable skill. For each player with 50 or more opportunities, he checked their adjusted run performance with no outs and compared it to their performance with one out — e.g., how well they advanced the runners in either case. His finding was a correlation of .01, which translates back into Enlgish as nuthin’.

So while we now have a better understanding of the number of runs at stake in those productive out arguments, we also know those numbers really don’t add up to a hell of a lot in the end. Of course, it’s still more likely that a particular productive out in some ballgame in June will catch the attention of the Olneys and Harold Reynoldses and John Kruks of the baseball world before that article will, but it’ll be nice to have those numbers handy the next time one of those Flat Earth Society clowns crosses your path.

It has very little to do with baseball other than the usual cast of NYC-based blogging suspects and a good portion of our evening’s chatter. But Alex Belth has a writeup of a group dinner expedition he and I made to Queens on Saturday along with our significant others as well as my pal Nick and Cub Reporter/foodie Alex Ciepley. So wowed and satisfied by the authentic Thai food at Sripraphai were we that even trekking back in the rain, we all kept saying to each other, “This is why I love New York City.” At one point on our 7-train ride back to Manhattan we looked over at Ciepley, who was gazing up from the menu and off into the distance, completely lost in reverie. Good food, good folks, good times.

If you’re anywhere near the area, Sripraphai is definitely worth the trek.