Cy Young Winner On the Move?

With the baseball winter meetings set to commence next week, plenty of trade rumors will begin to sprout and circulate. Most of them are bogus, but every now and then a rumor does come to fruition. The key to navigating through the myriad of smoke screens is following the transaction wire for supposedly minor deals leading up to the meetings. Today, one of those "minor" deals went down with the Athletics signing free agent starter Esteban Loaiza to a multi-year contract. The acquisition of Loaiza is not a big deal but why the A's acquired him is.

With Esteban Loaiza, Oakland now has seven legitimate starters on their 40 man roster: Barry Zito, Rich Harden, Dan Haren, Joe Blanton, Kirk Saarloos, Joe Kennedy, and now Esteban Loaiza. Only five will actually be starters for the Athletics next year. So, who are the two odd men out? Certainly not Loaiza, since the A's just signed him. It is hard to imagine Harden, Haren, Blanton, or Kennedy being left out either, considering how young they are and, more importantly, how good and inexpensive they are. As for Kirk Saarloos, he has a fair amount of experience coming out of the bullpen, so he could very well start the season as a long reliever until one of the starters inevitably misses a start. That leaves only one pitcher unaccounted for: Barry Zito. Most teams would drool over the possibility of acquiring a Cy Young Award winner, especially one with several prime years left like him. Furthermore, the A's could save money by dealing him and other teams would consider his $8.5 million salary a bargain thanks to the ridiculous free agent market set for pitchers this year (see this for more on the market).

So, when Barry Zito's name comes up in trade rumors, believe it. Since the A's signed Esteban Loaiza, it is all but a foregone conclusion that he will pitch elsewhere in 2006.

Holy $$$$ Batman, look at those free agent closers!

Today the Mets announced the signing of Billy Wagner to a 4 year, $43 million deal. Last week, the Blue Jays announced they had signed B.J. Ryan to a 5 year, $47 million contract. Both are quality closers, pretty clearly the top two free agent relievers this year. However, since when is any reliever worth $10 million a year? The answer is never. These may go down as the two worst deals of this offseason and here is why.

For argument's sake, let's say that both Billy Wagner and B.J. Ryan average 50 saves per year for the length of their respective deals (needless to say, that should be a ridiculously high overestimate). For B.J. Ryan to do that, he would have to save 250 games over the length of his contract and the Blue Jays would pay $188,000 per save. As for Billy Wagner, he would have to convert 200 save chances and the Mets would pay him $215,000 per save. For perspective, each team could call up any rookie pitcher from the minor leagues and let him close games out for less than $350,000 a year.

So, realistically, both the Blue Jays and Mets will probably end up paying their closers more per save than they could pay a rookie to do the same job for the entire year. Though Ryan and Wagner are clearly superior options to any prospect in any system, are they really 30-35 times better? No way. Unless either of these teams win the World Series in the next four years, they will both regret these ludicrous signings for a long, long time.

The next Ichiro?

Today, it looks like the Mariners made the first significant move of the offseason. Kenji Johjima, a 29-year-old Japanese catcher, has reportedly signed a 3 year, $16.5 million contract with the Mariners and he comes with impressive credentials, as he has won seven straight gold gloves and averaged over 30 home runs and a .300 batting average over the last five years. While the Mariners obviously feel Johjima is major-league material, other clubs were not sold on him, considering the language barrier and the fact he knows nothing about any of the hitters. Mariners' GM Bill Bavasi acknowledges the language barrier, but he also added that Kohjima only needs enough English and Spanish to talk about baseball matters with a pitcher, not enough to "split an atom."

Though there are risks in signing Kenji Johjima, I think this is a great move for the Mariners. First of all, he should be an upgrade offensively. Just look at the following numbers:

	Johjima's Projected Stats*			2005 M's Catchers
AVG	.270			.215
OBP	.319			.249
SLG	.413			.312

*Projected stats from www.lookoutlanding.com
Kenji Johjima is more than capable of hitting better than the projected statistics. Personally, I think he will. Simply put, there is absolutely NO way he does not improve the Mariners, even if his defense is horrific (which it will not be) because he is ridiculously superior to last year's hodgepodge of catching crap. Johjima would be a noticable upgrade for only a little over $5 million a year. As for the whole language barrier issue, there are plenty of Latin catchers who have succeeded despite not knowing English, so it only follows that a Japanese catcher could do the same. If the Mariners do sign Kenji Johjima, and it looks like they will, it could turn out to be the best move any team makes in the offseason. Even if the Mariners were to sign A.J. Burnett, I doubt he would improve the team as much as Johjima simply because the Mariners' catchers last year were exceptionally terrible.