MLB offseason spendstravaganza

[simonus]

Tis the season for baseball clubs to tie themselves down to long contracts that will eventually lead to having old unmovable broken-down players blocking youngsters and eating roster budgets!

Bonus: For the 4+ biggest spenders (Yanks, Tigers, Mets, Red Sox, White Sox) these new contracts have the potential to either push them into the luxury tax or make it crazy. In 2007 the Yanks pay about $24M in luxury tax (1 Teixeira, 2 Barry Zitos, 1 Florida Marlins), while the Red Sox only paid a little more than 1 Coco Crisp worth of tax. Luxury tax figures for 2008 have year yet to be announced, but this year only the Yanks should get hit. One more Sabathia sized contract could potentially throw the other 4 teams mentioned above into the tax.

Merry Winter Meetings To All!

Per NY Post via Boston Globe - Sabathia to sign 7 year $161M deal with Yanks.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/reds..._yankees_2.html

[old] K Rod to Mets for 3 years, $37M. This puts the Mets within sniffing distance of the Cap. NY to subsidize the entire southeast

http://www.ajc.com/services/content/printe.../basenotes.html

PS - expect the Yankee tax to go down even with Sabathia. Yankees can depreciate new stadium expenses against the luxury tax.

PPS - As far as payroll implications (the Yankees do have a budget, even if it is very high), the cost of Sabathia is defrayed somewhat by expiring contracts - especially the end of the Pavano deal which saves the Yanks ~ $10M.

[CerebusClone]

At least the Yankees are investing on pithcing, I can't believe how poor theirp pitching staff has been over the last few years despite spending so much money... and this time they also signed a young veteran entering his prime, who has always remained healthy, and has been quite steady over his career (i.e he's not a young year wonder like Pavano).

Of all the stupid contracts signed in the MLB, this one looks very good on paper for New York... but that roster remains weak, at least on paper. After Sabathia, Chamberlain, and Wang, there are only question marks...

[simonus]

At least the Yankees are investing on pithcing, I can't believe how poor theirp pitching staff has been over the last few years despite spending so much money... and this time they also signed a young veteran entering his prime, who has always remained healthy, and has been quite steady over his career (i.e he's not a young year wonder like Pavano).

Of all the stupid contracts signed in the MLB, this one looks very good on paper for New York... but that roster remains weak, at least on paper. After Sabathia, Chamberlain, and Wang, there are only question marks...

C.C. is certainly a very good pitcher, but one must analyze this contract with the awareness that pitchers are generally the most difficult players to project over the long term. Sabathia has been durable to date, but over a 7 year term it is quite plausible that he will suffer a performance altering injury. This is possibly a bigger concern with Sabathia given his weight and heavy usage in his career to date. MLB is littered with high performing pitchers who, through natural degradation and injury, have aged quite poorly.

As to the annual cost of the contract, it is important to note that Sabathia has a career year last year (not at all uncommon in the final year of contract) and that his season statistics were immensely improved by his time in the NL. While he had a 2.70ERA for the year, he had a 3.83 ERA in the 2008 AL - performance in line (i not slightly worse) than his career AL numbers. Now the NL has improved over the last few years, I am not yet prepared to declare it offensively superior to the AL. Will the Yanks get the Milwaukee Pedoresque CC or the Cleveland CC with the 3.83 ERA and 1.234 WHIP. Probably somewhere in between. They are paying him, however, like a Pedro.

He will most probably be a very good (not fantastic) pitcher for the Yankees for the first 3 or 4 years of that contract but this contract either means the Yankees don't care about overpaying him at $23M+ in the final 3 or 4 years of the contract (quite possible) or that they have misvalued him.

I don't want to sound as if I think CC is not a very good pitcher and that he will improve the Yankees and will make the 2009 season harder for the Red Sox and Rays, but I do not think the guy is one of the top 3-5 pitchers in baseball - which is how he is being paid.

[CerebusClone]

I agree with you that pitchers are always a very risky investment, Sabathia has been lucky so far to avoid injuries although it seems to me - and I may be completely wrong about this, I haven't researched this - that once a pitcher makes it to the late 20s without injuries, chances are that he'll be just fine until 35+ years old. Pitchers who have problems probably simply have poor form, and have problems within a few seasons whereas others with proper pitching form such as Livan Hernandez, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine... avoid those types of injuries during most of their career.

Also I did say that it was a stupid contract... ... but at least this one makes more sense, and should provide a strong return for the Yankees for several years (unlike Pavano)

[simonus]

I agree with you that pitchers are always a very risky investment, Sabathia has been lucky so far to avoid injuries although it seems to me - and I may be completely wrong about this, I haven't researched this - that once a pitcher makes it to the late 20s without injuries, chances are that he'll be just fine until 35+ years old. Pitchers who have problems probably simply have poor form, and have problems within a few seasons whereas others with proper pitching form such as Livan Hernandez, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine... avoid those types of injuries during most of their career.

The importance of form v. luck as a predictor of future injury is an interesting subject, but I'd tend towards luck. I'd think that most pitchers who excel in MLB at age 28 have relatively good form. There is an exclusion bias in your theory, I think, since pitchers who are still in the game at 35 obviously didn't have permanently debilitating injuries earlier in their career. What one would need to do is look at all pitchers who are good performers at a given age and see how many of them continue to ~35 with minimal injury. Glavine and Maddux represent the portion who successfully navigated this time period - the paucity of high performing 35 year old pitchers relative to 28-30 year olds tends to suggest that most players are unable to maintain their pitching ability into their mid 30's. Whether this is because of injury or age-related degradation of ability is somewhat irrelevant when projecting a young pitcher. I think baseball prospectus did some research on future injury rates of successful pitchers - I'll see if I can find it.

EDIT: I know that one of the best predictors of future injury is number of pitches thrown when tired. BP uses Pitcher Abuse Points as an admittedly poor measure of number of pitches thrown when tired (late in games after high pitch counts have been accumulated). These tired pitches might be thrown with poorer form than early pitches or may simply put greater strain on the muscles, but they seem to create a lot of pitcher injuries. I think Sabathia has accumulated a lot of abuse points at this point in his career.

[MAK]

Too much hype on the New York Mets new and improved bullpen.

[simonus]

Too much hype on the New York Mets new and improved bullpen.

between Putz and Sabathia, you have some pitchers that really seem to love the idea of playing in New York.

[Quebecois]

I can't buy into the fact that the yankees overpay for anyone. In the literal sense, yeah they can give too much money to a particular player, but in a figurative sense, the yankees can't actually overpay for anyone as they have a (seemingly) unlimited budget. I really don't think they even care what CC is doing for them 4-5 years down the line, if they still get great numbers from him then perfect, but if he starts to lag and is a mid-rotation guy, then they can just go out and get somebody else.

Seems like the economic times are just making the rich even richer.

Jays only seem to be in the market for Furcal at this point, and with Marcum out for the year the rotation is looking weak after Halladay and a hurting McGowan.

Ahhh MLB...when will you get a cap

[jetsniper]

Yankees add Teixera today, 180 mil for 8 years. Can't forget Burnett who I don't think was mentioned here.

Makes me not want to watch baseball anymore.

[Quebecois]

Makes me not want to watch baseball anymore.

I'm really feeling the same way. I love the sport and i'll be all over fantasy baseball when it comes along, but I'm having a hard time getting fully invested in the Jays (ex-Expos fan).

It's just not fun being in a division with the sox and yanks. And with the economic downturn we can't even pretend to compete financially.

Of course Riccardi sucks too so everything is against us.

[JoeLassister]

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/yank...ng_new_vacation