Changes To The NPB Posting System Should Benefit The Yankees

Over the weekend, Joel Sherman posted a story on the latest developments in the effort to change the current posting system for players wishing to jump from the Nippon Professional Baseball league to Major League Baseball.  For years the posting rules have given no power to the player, only the MLB team who wins the right to negotiate with the player by submitting the highest posting bid to his NPB team.  Per the new proposed changes to that system, 1 team will still maintain exclusive negotiating rights if they win the bidding process, but the player will also have the option of choosing to negotiate with one of the other top 2 or 3 bidding teams.

Obviously this change would benefit the Yankees greatly in their pursuit of Masahiro Tanaka this offseason.  All reports indicate that they will be making a serious push for him and it seems reasonable to expect that they'll turn in one of, if not the highest posting bid.  Under these modified rules, which are expected to be in place by this Friday in time for the start of MLB free agency, the Yankees would still stand a solid chance of being able to work out a deal for Tanaka even if they don't win the post fee bidding.

How Do I Get Damon Oppenheimer's Job Security?

(Do you even know how to read that thing, dude?  Courtesy of The NY Daily News)

(Originally published at IIATMS/TYA)

Because if I sucked at my job as much as he's sucked at his and had been sucking at it for as long as he has been, my employer would have axed me years ago.  They especially would have done it if I were in his situation where my bosses were strongly hinting at making changes in my department, but somehow Oppenheimer survived last week's organizational meetings and will continue on as amateur scouting director next year. Real quickly, here's a list of the Yankees' 1st round draft picks since Oppenheimer took that position:

• 2006- Ian Kennedy, Joba Chamberlain
• 2007- Andrew Brackman
• 2008- Gerrit Cole, Jeremy Bleich
• 2009- Slade Heathcott
• 2010- Cito Culver
• 2011- Dante Bichette Jr.
• 2012- Ty Hensley
• 2013- Eric Jagielo, Ian Clarkin, Aaron Judge

From that group, only 2 3 players (forgot about Brackman) took the field as Yankees and neither of them will be with the organization next year, 2 of them either never signed or flamed out before they could even do anything for the organization, and the rest have never played a game above the Double-A level.

So What's The Deal With This Suk-Min Yoon Guy?

(Courtesy of Getty Images)

Masahiro Tanaka continues to be the most sought after international free agent pitcher, and justifiably so, but the Yankees aren't limiting their international pitching options to just him.  While dishing a harsh slice of truth on the state of the Yankees' reputation in the free agent world last week, Scott Boras also did some promotional work for a new client of his, 27-year-old right-handed pitcher Suk-Min Yoon from South Korea.

If you've never heard of Yoon, don't fret.  You're not alone.  He's been well under the MLB radar for most baseball fans and writers despite being one of the best pitchers in the Korean Baseball Organization for years.  His team, the Kia Tigers, did not allow him to go through the MLB posting process after the 2011 and 2012 seasons, and so this offseason he's working to finally become available as a traditional free agent.  He's obviously an unknown commodity in the MLB landscape, and he does have some legitimate concerns attached to him.  But for the right price, he could be a low-risk/high-reward asset for the Yankees to add to next season's pitching competition.

Monday Mid-Morning Food For Thought

Since Damon Oppenheimer took over as amateur scouting director during the 2005-2006 offseason, here is the breakdown of position players drafted by the Yankees who have made it to the Majors as Yankees:

• Colin Curtis- Played in 2010 (Drafted 2006)
• Austin Romine- 2011, 2013 (Drafted 2007)
• Brandon Laird- 2011 (Drafted 2007)
• David Adams- 2013 (Drafted 2008)
• Corban Joseph- 2013 (Drafted 2008)
• J.R. Murphy- 2013 (Drafted 2009)

That's it.  That's the list.  Those 6 players have combined for 172 games played and 443 plate appearances as part of the Yankee Major League roster.  72.2% of those PA were racked up by Romine and Adams this past season.  In those 443 PA, they've produced -1.3 total fWAR.

If you're looking for a major (maybe THE major) reason why the Yankee roster has become so old and brittle and stagnant over the last few years, there it is.  They haven't developed and inserted a single useful everyday position player into their lineup in Oppenheimer's time at the helm of amateur scouting and drafting.  That's influenced some by trades, and in fairness their results with pitchers have been better, but that's still a terrible track record to have after 8 drafts.  Even with those results and even with his mostly miss record in the 1st round, somehow Oppenheimer survived last week's meetings and will be back at the helm of amateur scouting again this year.  Welcome to Bizarro World, folks.

2013 AB4AR Season Review Wrap-Up

(Courtesy of USATSI)

I didn't get to this over the weekend, but if you missed any of the 3-week 2013 season review, here's your chance to catch up.  The "2013 Storylines" reviews can be found here.  The "What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned" reviews broken down by roster group can be found here.  And last week's group-by-group and season prediction reviews can be found below:

- The Lineup

- The Rotation

- The Bullpen

- The Bench

- The Predictions

I'm especially proud of this year's predictions.  A step in the right direction for sure, even if it was the prediction equivalent of a wobbly, tiny baby step.  The 2013 season is officially over in my eyes and the associated eyes of AB4AR.  Time to bury it and move on to 2014.

That's Quite The Shopping List

The offseason still hasn't officially started, and already the list of potential free agents the Yankees are reported to have interest in is pretty long:

• Carlos Beltran
• Brian McCann
• Masahiro Tanaka
• Jhonny Peralta
• Stephen Drew
• Paul Maholm
• Shin-Soo Choo
• Suk-Min Yoon (Korean RHP)
• Ordisamer Despaigne (Cuban RHP)
• Seung-Hwan Oh (Korean RHP)

And that's not even counting the handful of their own pending free agents who they have to make qualifying offer decisions on or the larger group of arbitration-eligible players.  Lotta decisions that need to be made and a lotta moving parts to this offseason.  Somehow I don't think that supposed $300 million is going to cover everybody...

Report: Oppenheimer To Stay On As Amateur Scouting Director

Source: Damon Oppenheimer will remain as the Yankees' amateur scouting director. Other changes in baseball ops expected to be made, however.
— Mark Feinsand (@FeinsandNYDN) October 25, 2013

I don't get it.  I really don't.  What legitimate reasons could there be to retain him?  Only thing I can think is that the team wants to give Ty Hensley and the 2013 1st round picks one full season to prove themselves before cutting Oppenheimer loose.  That's the only explanation that would make a shred of sense to me because the last few drafts haven't produced any real blue chippers and the last few 1st round picks have been atrocious.

If Oppenheimer is staying, hopefully those "other changes in baseball ops" that Feinsand mentioned are made in positions of significance.  If the strength and conditioning coach is going to be the only scapegoat for last season, that's not nearly enough change.

Friday Afternoon Linkapalooza: 10/25/13

Not including Bucker's ball through the legs, have there been 2 worse defensive plays in World Series history than Pete Kozma's dropped double play toss and Wainwright and Molina's dropped infield pop-up in Game 1?  Sweet fancy Moses, people, somebody wake up and make a fucking play!  Buck and McCarver did their best to make excuses for Kozma having to come from the other side of the bag, but the bottom line is the guy dropped an easy ball.  No reason to take your eye off it to check on the player sliding into you, dude.  Not when that player is 4-foot nothing Dustin Pedroia.  And shame on Wainwright for calling everybody off and then not making the catch and double shame on Molina for running all the way out to the mound like a jackass and distracting him.  Good thing they made up for it with a win last night.  I hate bad baseball.  Now onto the links!

- On Monday, el duque of It Is High... submitted his list of ways to improve the Yankees in 2014 and beyond.

- SG of RLYW did the same, stressing the importance of building a team that could contend beyond 2014 instead of just signing flashy names to big deals (Beltran, McCann) or repeating the 2013 approach of signing names whose flash had already worn off.

- SJK of NoMaas reiterated his belief that the Yankees missed an opportunity by not trading Robinson Cano at the deadline this year.

- On Tuesday, Joe Ferraiola of IIATMS/TYA broke down the Jurickson Profar-for-Cano trade that never was and gave hist thoughts on whether or not the Yankees missed an opportunity there.

- Chad Jennings of LoHud had the most details I've seen on the mysterious A-Rod legal team press conference that got Taffered before it could happen.

- On Wednesday, Greg Corcoran of Bronx Baseball Daily went back over the last 6 Yankee drafts and updated the progress of each player, signed and unsigned.  Hell of an effort by Greg, and the results are as depressing as you'd expect.

- On Thursday, Chris Mitchell of Pinstripe Pundits, in an act of extreme self-masochism, reviewed Eduardo Nunez's brutal defensive season.

- Mike Axisa of RAB posed an intriguing and not often talked about trade possibility to address the potential hole at third base next season.

- Michael Brown of Pinstriped Bible mused on some ways the Yankees could bring the "evil" back to the Evil Empire next year.  His post was meant to taken somewhat jokingly, but he may be onto something.  It would be nice to see a little attitude back in the team.  They've become very boring.

- On Friday, Daniel Burch of The Greedy Pinstripes looked ahead to 2014 and what kind of production we should expect from the returning Mark Teixeira.  30+ homers and 100+ RBI would be nice.

This Friday's jam is one from the treasure trove of awesome cover songs that is Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine.  If you aren't familiar with Mr. Cheese, he takes popular rock, rap, and top 40 songs and remakes them as Vegas lounge music.  A song of his came on my iPod a month or so ago when my girlfriend was in the car and I was shocked to find out she had never heard of him.  Damn near stopped the car in the middle of street.  She'll never know how close she came to getting kicked out of the car right there on the spot.



Enjoy your weekends, everybody.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Predictions

(Still my favorite image of the season)

Well we made it.  We've come to the end of the 3-week season review extravaganza, and I don't know about you readers but I've been exhausted by it and I'm glad it's over.  We finish it off, as always, with a review of my preseason predictions and some honest self-reflection about my skills as a baseball prognosticator.  Admittedly, my track record in making season predictions is not a sparkling one.  2011 was a tough year, 2012 even tougher.  I honestly didn't even go back and recap my 2013 predictions post before I started writing this and there's no way I could remember them all off the top of my head, so this should be interesting.  Here we go...

Early Offseason Happenings Not Kind To Hughes

(Originally published at IIATMS/TYA)

I'm short on ideas today so I'm going back to an old standby, Mr. Phillip Hughes.  It probably seems pointless to talk about Hughes in relation to the Yankees anymore.  He very likely pitched himself out of contention for even a qualifying offer from them let alone a new multi-year contract offer, and his reputation as the organization's biggest developmental pitching flop would make it very difficult to bring him back with any expectations of success.  The Yankee have already set their sights on a bunch of other free agent targets. Time spent considering Hughes as part of that mix would be time wasted.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Bench

(Courtesy of Robert Sabo/NY Daily News)

The Yankee bench wasn't going to be very good this year.  We knew that going in when they started scraping the bottom of the barrel to bring guys like Juan Rivera and Matt Diaz into spring camp to compete for a spot.  The whole lotta nothing that the team did to address its holes in the lineup trickled down big time to the bench, where guys who were better suited for part-time roles got forced into everyday duty and there was nobody left to replace them on the bench.  Well, nobody who could produce at a replacement level.

It was a non-stop revolving cast of characters on the Yankee bench this year, necessitated by injuries, poor performance, ownership's tight grip on the payroll, and sometimes just the need to have a warm body at a position.  If you read the "What We Thought We Knew/What We Learned" post from last week, you know this isn't going to be pretty.

Surprise, Surprise. Yankees Still The Most Valuable MLB Franchise By A Wide Margin

(Originally published at IIATMS/TYA)

Quick, how much money do you think this down year cost the Yankees in terms of franchise value?  If you answered any amount of money, you're wrong.  According to Bloomberg's latest calculations, the Yankees are valued at approximately $3.3 billion.  That's $1.2 billion more than the next most valuable MLB franchise (the Dodgers), and almost $1 billion more than what Forbes valued them at back in March.  Despite the scaled back payroll and subsequent failure to reach the postseason, stadium attendance that was down from 2012, and TV ratings that were the same, the Yankees are still the gold standard when it comes to professional baseball value and are still practically printing their own money.

While it is good news in the grand scheme of things - I'd much rather the Yankees be the most valuable franchise instead of one of the least - it does present an easy opportunity to revisit the topic of Hal's plans for the team.  If you'll allow me a few minutes to beat a dead horse again, this valuation from Bloomberg and continued growth of the franchise's worth makes this payroll slashing, luxury tax avoiding plan seem all the more ridiculous than it did the first time I heard about it.

Update On Tyler Austin's AZFL Exit

Yep.  It's a problem with his wrist.

The word on Tyler Austin is it's the wrist flaring up again. It's not serious, but they wanted to shut him down for precautionary reasons.
— Josh Norris (@jnorris427) October 23, 2013

Oh it's not serious?  That's good news.  Except that if it wasn't that serious you wouldn't be removing him from the fall league so he wasn't at risk of re-injuring it.  Ask Mark Teixeira about those non-serious wrist injuries.  See how well rest and recuperation worked for him.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Bullpen

(Courtesy of Getty Images)

It's no coincidence that the Yankees have had both Mariano Rivera and a consistently strong bullpen for the last 18 seasons.  When you've got the G.O.A.T. out there closing down the 9th inning, that makes the rest of the 'pen much easier to construct.  The Yankees have excelled at constructing strong support staffs in front of Mo in his time as closer, through free agency and their own farm system, and with Mo finally deciding to show mercy on the rest of baseball and retire after the 2013 season, that support staff was going to be put to the test as part of a transitional period to a new era of Yankee relief pitching.

As usual, the Yankee 'pen wasn't short on depth in 2013.  In fact, they had more viable options than available spots near the end of Spring Training.  What it didn't have was the strong depth of talent that it usually does and the end result for the group in Mo's final season was a step down from what we've come to expect.

MLBTR's Arbitration Projections And Not Paying Too Much For Mediocrity

(Originally published at IIATMS/TYA)

MLB Trade Rumors released their projected salaries for the Yankees' arbitration-eligible players yesterday.  While they are only projections, MLBTR has been pretty accurate with their numbers the past few years.  Typically these deals are an afterthought in Yankeeland, but with signs still pointing towards the $189 million luxury tax threshold being the main goal for them this offseason they become much more important.  Here's what MLBTR projected for the Yankees' 7 eligible players:

• David Robertson- $5.5 million
• Brett Gardner- $4 million
• Ivan Nova- $2.8 million
• Shawn Kelley- $1.5 million
• Jayson Nix- $1.4 million
• Francisco Cervelli- $1 million
• Chris Stewart- $1 million

That's $17.2 million of potential salary added to next year's total, and when you're trying to cut costs on a team that already has almost $85 mil tied up in 6 players, that can make or break you.  The decision to offer arbitration or new deals to these players isn't as simple as it usually is for New York, and they need to be smart about these decisions.

Report: Tyler Austin Removed From The AZFL

Even when the season is over the Yankee organization can't escape injury problems.  At least that's what appears to be happening with Tyler Austin.  Josh Norris reported yesterday that he has been pulled out of the Arizona Fall League after playing in just 4 games.  Austin hasn't played in over a week, and based on his injury problems earlier in the year and now the decision to remove him from the fall league, it's only logical that a setback would be the cause.

You'll recall that Austin missed a large chunk of time due to a wrist injury and he was dinged up late in the 2012 season.  If this does indeed turn out to be health-related, and especially if it turns out to be a setback with his wrist, that's another bad look for the Yankee training/medical staff.  They've gotten burned a lot by rushing guys back before they were ready to play in both the Major and Minor Leagues and another setback to a top prospect makes them look even worse than they already do.  Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be something serious that could impact Austin's ability to start the 2014 season on time.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Rotation

(Courtesy of Reuters)

The Yankees got a pretty good collective effort from their starting rotation in 2012, and they appeared to be primed to at least repeat and hopefully improve upon that in 2013.  The same 5 faces were back for another run, giving the rotation a familiar blend of right and left handers, old and young guys, and plus stuff and plus command from multiple sources.  We thought the biggest issue surrounding this group coming into the season was injury concerns and how each of them would hold up physically.  We learned that the issues ran much deeper than that, and the rotation as a whole was unable to build on 2012's performance.

Yanks Suddenly Have All The Leverage In The Cano Contract Talk

(Hopefully money ain't too much of a thang for Robbie.  Because he isn't getting anything close to $300 mil now.  Courtesy of Cano's Twitter)

(Originally published at IIATMS/TYA)

It's been a little under a month since Robinson Cano and his camp came out with their initial contract figures.  That A-Rod-ian 10 year/$305 million proposal was met with a hefty chunk of scorn from the Yankee fanbase and blogosphere and relative silence from the Yankees, who simply referred back to the offer they made Cano earlier in the year - 7 years/$161 million - as their starting point for negotiations.  The most we've heard since last month was Hal reiterating on his recent media tour that the Yankees would not be willing to go 10 years for Cano, which would be a wise move considering the mess they're in with the A-Rod contract.  Other than that it's been all quiet on the Cano front.  Somehow, in the midst of all the silence between the 2 sides, the Yankees have seemingly made a big gain in the leverage department and are now in the driver's seat heading into the official start of free agency.

A-Rod's Legal Team Is Straight Up Putting In Work

I know I said a long time ago that I wasn't going to use AB4AR to post every little A-Rod story, but it's hard not to when there's new stuff like this coming out every other day.

"Alex Rodriguez’s lawyers were blocked from holding a news conference Monday with a person they described as a 'Major League Naseball whistleblower' when the commissioner’s office obtained an order from the arbitrator hearing the case.

More than an hour after the scheduled start of the news conference, one of Rodriguez’s lawyers read the substance of the order from arbitrator Fredric Horowitz to the assembled media.

The lawyers would not say whether the 'whistleblower' worked for Major League Baseball, one of its teams or some other affiliate. They also said the 'whistleblower' had facts not directly related to the substance of the case."

Staying on the offensive against MLB at every turn.  Love it.  I can't wait until this thing runs its course and ends up as the base storyline for an episode of "Law & Order" in a few years.

New Yankee Ticket Prices For 2014 Are ... OK, I Guess?

The Yankees announced their new ticket prices for 2014 yesterday, and on the surface it looks like they're doing everybody a solid.  From the team:

"Prices for 96 percent of tickets will either remain the same or decrease.

Approximately 39,000 tickets (78 percent) will have the same price in 2014 as they had in 2013, while approximately 9,000 tickets (18 percent) will have a decrease in price. There are approximately 2,000 tickets (four percent) that will have an increase in price."

I don't want to come off like a complete malcontent here, because having 96% of tickets either stay the same or decrease in price is a good thing.  Everybody who's been to the new Stadium knows how much of a strain it can be on the wallet.  That's a lesson I learned the hard way during my Yankee weekend trip back in early September.  Keeping ticket prices as affordable as possible for the majority of the common fan is a good thing.

But when I read about how the 4% of ticket prices that are going up are doing so because the team is creating more suites and more specialty field-level seating, that makes the efforts on the other 96% of prices ring a little hollow.  The lengths the Yankees go to now to cater to the deep-pocketed, bougie baseball fans has gotten a bit tiresome and it'd be nice if they would take the hint from this past season that maybe they need to do a little more for the rest of us.  Yankee Stadium attendance was down over 9% this year, a little over 3,000 fans per game, and that decrease has just as much to do with the insane prices as it did the mediocre product on the field.  Adding more luxury seating to the stadium hardly feels like the right move given the current state of the organization, but what are you gonna do?  It's Hal's team now and he can do whatever he wants with it.

2013 AB4AR Season Review: The Lineup

(Too many ABs for these guys.  Courtesy of the AP)

I gotta be honest, people.  These first 2 weeks of season recap posts have been much tougher to write than I thought they'd be.  I figured after taking a week off from the long, slow, disappointing but ultimately predictable death that was the 2013 Yankee season, I'd be recharged and ready to look back on everything that happened with a sharp analytical mindset.  Instead, I've just ended up reverting back to the feelings of sadness and boredom I had while covering this team this year.

But whatever, we've reached the final week and it's time to look back on the 2013 edition of the New York Yankees.  We've reviewed the major storylines that defined the season, we recapped the lessons learned, now it's time to put it all together and put a bow on it.  The Yankees entered 2013 with a lineup that had been decimated by their intentional downgrading of it through a few key free agent decisions and the unintentional and unexpected rash of ST injuries that cost them more than a few of their big names.  It was an uphill battle for the lineup for most of the season and a battle the lineup was incapable of winning.  Years from now, people will look back on this season and recall how they got to watch some of the worst Yankee lineups ever to take the field.  That tells you everything you need to know.

This Week's Tampa Meetings Could Bring Major MiL Changes

(Originally published at IIATMS/TYA)

As the start of the offseason draws closer with the World Series set to begin this week, the Yankees draw closer to a potentially franchise-altering few months, one unlike anything we've seen in any of the past 5-10 years.  They've got a ton of money coming off the books, a significant chunk of additional money that could be coming off sometime in the next month or so, the current cornerstone of the franchise who may or may not leave via free agency, almost an entire starting rotation to rebuild, a floundering farm system that could finally be in for some major changes at the top, and as competitive an environment in the AL East as we've seen in years.

Scott Boras Comments On The Yankees' Standing In The Free Agent Market

What Boras said to The NY Post last week:

"It’s the first time in a lot of years the Yankees have to prove to major free agents they will be competitive next year.  That’s never really been a question in New York, but they have so many spots to fill. It’s a different place."

That may sound like the words of a man who's still butthurt about losing his 2 biggest Yankee clients to other agencies, but there's a lot of truth in Boras' words.  The Yankees weren't really that active in the free agent market last offseason beyond re-signing their own guys and they stood mostly pat at the trade deadline.  The perception they've created around the game in the last year is that they're more concerned with the bottom line than with winning ballgames, and players can and will pick up on that.  They know the Yankees haven't been spending much and they know they have a lot of holes to fill this offseason.  The chance for big money in pinstripes isn't as high as it was just a few years ago.

It would be one thing if free agents thought they could get the most money from New York while playing for a team that may not make the postseason next year.  It's another when even that is no longer a guarantee and the team looks closer to falling into the AL East basement than climbing back to the top of the division.  If they want to maintain the allure they've always had to big time free agents, the Yankees do have to do some work to prove their willingness to compete.

2013 Season Review: What We Thought We Knew & What We Learned (The Recap)

2 down, 1 to go.  The storylines have been revisited, the lessons have been learned, and next week we'll start the final week of the 2013 AB4AR Season Review series.  Most, if not all of the lessons learned in 2013 were learned in a negative light and many of them paint a potentially harrowing picture for what might be in store in 2014.  If you missed any of this week's positional lessons, here's the recap to prep you for tomorrow.

- The Infield

- The Outfield

- The Rotation

- The Bullpen

- The Bench

$300 Million Spending Spree? I'll Believe It When I See It

So everybody's all aflutter after this Andrew Marchand story came out yesterday about a supposed $300 million spending spree on the horizon.  According to Marchand's sources, the Yankee front office has laid out a plan to re-sign Robinson Cano, sign free agents Masahiro Tanaka, Brian McCann, and Carlos Beltran, AND stay under the $189 million luxury tax threshold.  Before I dive into the details and the numbers and how that could even conceivably work, all I'm going to do right now is sit and wait for the Yankees to prove that this is something more than just another phony report designed to draw pageviews.

Last offseason, when this scheme to get under the luxury tax limit really started to become a front office focal point, the only thing the Yankees showed a willingness to do was cut payroll and work to cut more payroll for 2014.  They they didn't show any commitment to spending money that had a positive impact on the on-field product.  Adding all 4 of those players mentioned would certainly do both of those things.  It would also go against everything the Yankees just finished doing this past offseason and against what they've shown their new top priority to be.

I'm on the record as wanting Cano back next year and for the remainder of his career.  I think the Yankees should absolutely go after Tanaka and fully recognize that both McCann and Beltran would be major upgrades to 2 positions that are in need of upgrades.  If this is the plan they're going with, and they think they can do it while staying under their 189 number, I'm on board with it.  I'm just not going to say much about it until I actually see actions from the front office that are in line with Marchand's words.