River Avenue Blues

River Ave. Blues » Archives for Moshe Mandel

RAB’s Super Bowl Sunday Trivia Contest

by 22 Comments

UPDATE: We have 4 winners, who have been contacted via email. Please feel free to keep playing for fun!

With the focus of the sports world on the NFL and the Yankees mostly done tinkering with their roster until pitchers and catchers report, RAB is running a Yankees trivia contest as a diversion to keep you folks busy before the Big Game.

The Prizes:

We have 4 prizes to give away.

1. The Last Boy by Jane Leavy
2. Donnie Baseball by Mike Shalin
3. 1961* by Phil Pepe
4. Yankees Classics by Les Krantz (with a DVD)

The winners will get to choose their prizes, in order of finish (first place chooses first, etc).

The Rules:

The game functions as a sort of treasure hunt. The first question is below, at the end of this post. The answer to that question should be put into your web browser’s url area, where you should follow it with .blogspot.com. This will lead you to a page with another question, where the same rules apply. On each page, specific instructions are included to make sure you enter the right words, so be careful. Here’s an example:

Q: Who was the last Yankee to reach 3000 hits? Provide his name followed by his uniform number.

A: The correct answer is Derek Jeter, and his uniform number is 2. Enter derekjeter2.blogspot.com into your web browser, and you would move on to the next question.

There are 46 questions of varying difficulty, corresponding to the 46 Super Bowls of varying degrees of awfulness. The winners must leave a comment on the final page (not on this post!), and also email me (mandel42 at gmail) the answers to all 46 questions, so keep a list as you go along. The first four people to reach the final page, comment, and email me are the winners (One entry per person. Any attempts at multiple entries will disqualify the offender entirely).

Some of you may have played this game before, but I made a few tweaks and added a few questions, so I hope you will give it another try. Good luck, and happy hunting.

Question # 1: Let’s start with an easy one. What were the Yankees called immediately before they were the Yankees? Give the full city and team name (ie newjerseydevils.blogspot.com).

A Sigh of Relief For Mo

by 31 Comments

Last night, the Red Sox traded incumbent starting shortstop Marco Scutaro to the Rockies, presumably to free up the $6 million dollars he was slated to earn. While Red Sox fans debated what the move meant for the likes of Roy Oswalt, Mike Aviles, Nick Punto, and The Gloved Wunderkind Who Hits Worse Than Ramiro Pena™, Yankees fans breathed a sigh of relief. You see, Marco Scutaro is the David to Mariano Rivera’s Goliath. He is a middling hitter, more of a pest than anything, with a career OPS+ of 93. Against the Yankees overall, he has a thoroughly unimpressive .697 OPS. But when he digs in against the Great Rivera, the nondescript, unspectacular Scutaro, for no identifiable reason, turns into Edgar Martinez.

It all started in April of 2007. To that point, Scutaro had 6 career at-bats against Rivera, and was hitless with 2 walks. One of those walks came around to score a winning run, but the final score was 6-3 and the walk did not seem to be all that important. But on Sunday, April 15th, Andy Pettitte and Scott Proctor handed Rivera a 4-2 lead on a nice afternoon in Oakland. With 2 outs, Todd Walker singled and Jason Kendall walked, bringing the light-hitting Scutaro to the plate. On an 0-2 pitch, Scutaro turned on a cutter up in the zone and drove it off the foul pole in left, turning a certain Yankees win into a painful loss.

For a few seasons, it seemed as if Scutaro’s success against Mariano would prove to be a one-time event, a fluke that would make him the answer to a trivia question one day but nothing more. In 2008 and 2009, Scutaro faced Mo six times and reached base once, a single that was rendered meaningless by Rivera retiring the subsequent hitter. And then Scutaro signed with the Red Sox.

Marco faced Mo four times in 2010, but only twice in vitally important situations (Mo retired him in the two lower leverage spots). Scutaro reached base the first time he faced Mo in a Red Sox uniform, doubling to bring the tying run to the plate, but Mo retired the next two Sox in order to end the game. Later that season, after Joba Chamberlain blew a 5-1 lead by allowing 4 runs in the 8th, Rivera allowed 2 runs in the 9th, with a blooper off the bat of Scutaro that was ruled an error being the turning point of the inning. Marco was starting to reveal himself as a pesky hitter who could at least make contact off Rivera, but it was not until 2011 that he established himself as a true annoyance to the great Mo.

On August 7th, the Yankees played the Red Sox on Sunday Night Baseball, looking to win their first series from the Sox in 4 tries. Behind homers from Eduardo Nunez and Brett Gardner, as well as solid pitching from Freddy Garcia, Cory Wade, Rafael Soriano, and David Robertson, the Yankees carried a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the 9th. Alas, Marco Scutaro was poised to strike, doubling off the Green Monster to start the inning and eventually scoring on a sacrifice fly. The Yankees lost the game one inning later.

When the teams met again on the first day of September, Scutaro and Rivera matched up in similar circumstances. The Yankees were once again trying to take their first series from the Red Sox, with the entire country watching the two clubs clash on ESPN. They took a lead late in the contest against Daniel Bard, and handed Rivera a 4-2 advantage. After Jed Lowrie walked to start the frame, Rivera retired the next two batters before walking Jacoby Ellsbury. In stepped Marco Scutaro, already feared as Rivera Kryptonite, with a chance to extend the game and bring up Adrian Gonzalez. Marco did just that, lining a hard single to RF and setting up the Yankees for more heartbreak. However, Rivera struck out Gonzalez looking, and the Yankees finally celebrated a series victory over their rivals from Beantown.

When the Yankees faced the Red Sox late in September, Joe Girardi decided not to take any chances with Scutaro. With the game tied at 4 with 2 outs in the top of the 9th, a runner at 3rd, and the struggling Jarrod Saltalamacchia on deck, Girardi finally gave in to the Myth of Marco and had Rivera intentionally walk Scutaro. Salty struck out to validate the decision, but the Yankees eventually lost the game.

Scutaro’s resume against Rivera is a bit thinner than I thought it would be, but it is important to remember that not many hitters get to Mo at all, and that notching multiple successes against him is notable. Of hitters with at least 20 PA’s against Rivera, Scutaro’s OPS of .988 (.294/.400/.588) is 5th highest, trailing just Edgar Martinez, Aubrey Huff, Rafael Palmeiro, and Vernon Wells. As William Juliano noted, Scutaro is one of 5 players to have a walk-off homer off Rivera, and one of 8 to have at least 3 extra-base hits against him. And his IBB against him last season makes him one of the 33 hitters (36 walks) to be given a free pass by Mo, and 17 of those walks came with runners on 2nd and 3rd to load the bases and create a force play. I’ll let the WSJ contextualize that:

Since 2001, the legendary Yankees closer has issued 20 intentional walks. Thirteen were to load the bases and set up a force at home, but the rest of the list consists of the greatest sluggers of this generation: Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez, Manny Ramirez, Evan Longoria and Carlos Delgado (twice). Now add Scutaro, and his .387 lifetime slugging percentage, to that group.

Small sample or not, Scutaro was one of the few players who made me a bit uncomfortable when he dug in against Mariano Rivera. That unease may have been based on one swing from 2007, but I know many other Yankees fans shared it and are glad to see him head off to Colorado. If you asked him, Mariano might tell you that he feels the same way.

Scouting Phil Hughes

by 66 Comments

When long-heralded prospects make it to the major leagues, the exciting scouting reports on them tend to stick around long past their expiration dates. We hear about potential based on a perception of the player that is no longer reasonable or based on existing attributes. We cling to those old scouting reports, hoping that the player will eventually reach the level of performance that they promised, not willing to accept that circumstance and lack of development have altered the player’s ceiling.

Phil Hughes provides a good example of this phenomenon. While many of us have moved on and have lowered their expectations when it comes to Phil, we still cling to him as a guy who has long had potential and could eventually capitalize on it. However, his myriad injuries and the stunted development associated with them have altered Hughes such that the previous scouting reports no longer apply. He was a guy with a fastball at 91-94 that he had stellar command of, an excellent curveball that he could finish hitters with, and a changeup that always seemed to be on the cusp of being a usable pitch. However, the updated scouting report reads differently:

Hughes, turning 26 in June, has a classic power pitcher’s build, coming in at a solid 6’5″ and a listed 240 pounds. However, he seems to have put on a bit of weight in recent years, and the Yankees sent him to their fat camp last spring to try and shed those extra pounds. The Yankees have long liked his makeup and believe he has the mental ability to be a successful pitcher in this league, but his conditioning is something worth keeping an eye on.

As for his stuff, he is primarily a two pitch pitcher, featuring a fastball and a curveball. While he has used a cutter fairly often in recent years, he seemed to have slowly removed in from his repertoire over the course of 2011, a smart decision considering its ineffectiveness throughout the season. He occasionally mixes in a changeup, but it is not much of a pitch and is unlikely to become a major part of his arsenal.

His fastball sits at 89-92, and is pretty straight. However, he does have very good command of the pitch in the zone, and he uses that ability to draw plenty of foul balls and get ahead in counts. His curveball, once a pitch that he could throw for strikes and use to finish hitters off, has become adequate at best. It was always a bit loopy, but it had a lot of depth and hitters would swing over it. It has lost some of that depth and just tumbles up to hitters, who can usually catch up to it and foul it off or drive it somewhere. He has also struggled to throw it for strikes in recent seasons. Hughes tinkered some with a spike curve last season, but did not see great results and is unlikely to lean on it in the future.

This two pitch combination allows him to get to two strikes by way of his fastball, but once he is there he has nothing to finish hitters off with. He cannot throw the fastball by them, and they are not swinging at the curveball out of the zone. Eventually, Hughes makes a mistake and hitters are ready to pounce.

Outlook: Hughes did have a major jump in innings from 2009 to 2010, so it is possible that some of his 2011 struggles could be attributed to overuse. But unless he recovers some of his velocity, has his command go from good back to great, or recaptures his old curveball, Hughes profiles as a #4 starter or possibly a good reliever. His fastball command is still good enough to keep him in a MLB rotation, but he needs to find another positive attribute in his arsenal to surpass his current back-of-the-rotation ceiling. As he nears his age 26 season, the likelihood that he does that grows ever more slim.

That is my scouting report on Hughes at this point. I’ve discarded the one that marked him as the next Yankees ace, as those expectations simply do not match the skills that Hughes currently brings to the table. I hope to be forced to pull that old one out of the trash, dust it off, and use it once again, but I do not expect that to happen. It is time to stop judging Phil Hughes on what he could have been, and start addressing what he is.

On Joy and the Expectation to Win

by 26 Comments

In some ways, the Knicks and Yankees are very much alike. Both franchises have long been run by families that believe you have to spend to win, and have attacked the free agent and trade markets with zeal. Both have therefore been subjected to various luxury tax and revenue sharing plans that are aimed at their ability to spend at a much higher level than other clubs. Finally, both play in recently built or refurbished spaces that allow them to charge their fans exorbitant fees to enjoy the gameday experience.

However, when it comes to the most important elements, these two franchises could not be more dissimilar. The Knicks were, for a very long time, the worst run franchise in the NBA and possibly all of sports. The GM tenures of Scott Layden and Isaiah Thomas were riddled with terrible trades for aging and overrated stars, long term contracts given to injury risks, poor drafting, scandals, and worst of all, interminable losing. The Knicks were a punchline for over a decade, so much so that many Knick fans have been wary to jump back on board now that the team seems headed in the right direction.

Conversely, much like DJ Kahled and Tim Tebow,  all the Yankees do is win. Over the last 13 years, the Yankees have been run shrewdly by Brian Cashman, and with a major assist from the Steinbrenner wallet have continued to build the legacy of the winningest franchise in sports. They have numerous marketable stars and fan favorites, and have also added a solid farm system to provide the franchise with exciting young talent. They have long provided a striking contrast to the Knicks, throwing the Dolans’ failures into stark relief.

This contrast also manifests itself in how fans react and relate to the two clubs. One thing that constant winning does is breed the expectation of success from fans. We no longer hope that the Yankees can contend, but expect it, and we have not experienced an expectation-free season since 1996. We get a bit confused and upset when the Yankees claim they want to cut payroll, as they have set a certain standard and we fear that they may no longer be able to meet it. This kind of attitude lends a certain tension to each season, as high expectations also leads to a greater fear of failure. I know I am not the only one who feels a modicum of relief mingled with the joy I experience when the Yankees clinch a playoff spot or win a playoff series.

Conversely, the Knicks enter the upcoming season with a different sort of expectation. They finally put the club in the capable hands of Donnie Walsh, and he has handed things off to Glenn Grunwald, who also seems to know what he is doing. The team finally looks ready to contend, but it is hard to tell at this point whether we can expect a deep playoff run or whether they are built to win one round and then bow out. When they lost in last year’s first round, most Knicks fans shrugged it off and looked excitedly to the future. There is a great level of mystery to their upcoming season, and any success will likely be met with the pure, unbridled joy reserved for a team and a franchise that has long suffered as a laughingstock and a perennial loser.

That sense of pure joy is somewhat missing from Yankee fandom. With frequent winning comes a greater fear of failure, and that greater fear of failure will by nature cause some measure of relief to be part of the emotions we feel when the club comes out on top. There is nothing we can do about it, and I would definitely rather have the frequent winning rather than that emotion in the long run. But I look with a bit of jealousy at my 12-year old self and wish there was some way I could recapture that joy I felt in 1996.

Brian Cashman, Prevaricator Extraordinaire?

by 84 Comments

In recent days, while teams like the Marlins and Angels snapped up every big name free agent on the market, Brian Cashman preached patience and fiscal responsibility. When Yu Darvish was posted at the end of last week, Cashman said the following (courtesy of Chad Jennings):

“Sometimes, if you like somebody a great deal, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to be in a position to participate,” Cashman said. “I think, obviously he’s extremely talented. If he’s going to get posted, it’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out and how everybody on this side of the fence – meaning all Major League clubs – how they decide to or not to participate, and at what level. But that’s all for another day.”

“We’ve got a lot of depth (in the rotation),” Cashman said. “Can we add to it? We’d like to. But is it realistic? It’s not necessarily that realistic because for me to be able to push through something, I’m probably going to have to overpay to do that. And that’s a tough thing to do, especially when you’re sitting with a lot of talent, a lot of people you could slot in and (have them) do this job. It’s just, do you want to bet on somebody doing it significantly better at the expense of payroll flexibility going forward or (the loss of a prospect in a trade)? I’m OK with the balancing act. I’m OK with the decision making. I didn’t expect much, and it’s hard to improve on what we already have.”

Couple these quotes with the recent reports that the Yankees are trying to cut their payroll in anticipation of being below the luxury tax threshold in 2014, and you have the makings of another quiet offseason for a team that seems to need some established starting pitching. However, despite the fairly pervasive reports that the Yankees are unlikely to bid on Darvish, sign a free agent to a large deal, or give up major prospects to acquire a top starter, there is precedent to suggest that Cashman is simply working to muddy the informational waters.

The most famous example comes from late-2005, when Brian claimed that the Yankees were going to enter the 2006 season with Bubba Crosby as the center fielder. No one quite believed it at the time, but most fans were still stunned when Cashman stole Johnny Damon from the Red Sox a few weeks later. Prior to the 2009 season, the Yankees’ GM suggested that the rumors of the Yankees adding Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia, and either Derek Lowe or A.J. Burnett were “crazy talk” from a “fantasy land.” He suggested that even acquiring just Sabathia and Teixeira was a ridiculous idea that had no merit. A scant few weeks later, Sabathia, Teixeira, and Burnett were all in pinstripes.

On two other occasions, Cashman made forceful public statements only to later be overruled by management. He stated quite clearly that if A-Rod used the opt-out in his contract following the 2007 season, the Yankees would not participate in his free agency. And just last offseason, he declared that he would not surrender his first round pick, only to be effectively overruled by management a few days later when they signed Rafael Soriano.

The fact of the matter is that it is usually in Cashman’s best interests to be less than forthcoming with the entire and absolute truth. It does him nothing but harm to effusively express interest in a free agent or to suggest that the club has major holes that desperately need to be remedied. Furthermore, when it comes to this particular offseason, with Darvish finally on the market, it actually behooves him to actively spread misinformation:

The process of acquiring players from Japanese baseball includes a blind posting system. Interested teams get to make a single bid for the exclusive rights to negotiate with the player, without knowledge of the bids being made by other clubs. Essentially, clubs need to guess at the market and then make their bid accordingly. This can prove to be extremely difficult, as evidenced by the Red Sox’s $51 million bid for Daisuke Matsuzaka, which reportedly exceeded the next highest bid by at least $15 million.

The guesswork nature of this process lends itself towards misinformation. Teams that are interested in Darvish have an incentive to downplay their level of involvement, which could help suppress the market and lower the range of bids. Conversely, teams that have little interest might feign heavy internal consideration of a large bid, so as to drive up the price for rivals and generally push the market upwards. Taken together, this means that almost all of the information you might hear on Darvish, regarding any team, is likely to be filtered through the lens of self-interest and may be being released to influence the bidding environment. As we saw with the Daisuke situation, until the Nippon Ham Fighters announce the winner, everyone will be in the dark on the posting process.

I entered this offseason expecting the Yankees to add some pitching, and I still believe that all the talk of an austerity budget is a ruse designed to keep the bidding on Darvish reasonably low. That said, the events of last offseason, in which Cashman claimed not to feel a desperate need for pitching and then followed through by not adding a major starter all year, give me pause. The Yankees and Brian Cashman may actually feel that Ivan Nova, Freddy Garcia, Phil Hughes, A.J. Burnett, and Hector Noesi provide them with enough options to construct a quality rotation behind CC Sabathia. It’s also possible that they are running a misinformation campaign, but one targeted at next offseason and players like Cole Hamels. Whatever the truth is, Brian Cashman’s history suggests that we should not be too quick to believe what we read.

Contracts For Relievers: Paying For Consistency

by 25 Comments

Very few things in baseball receive quite as much derision as large contracts given to relievers. Relievers have come to be seen as fungible, volatile assets who are poor investments. Many view the contracts given to established closers as being entirely based on saves, a stat that is rightfully maligned and makes a poor basis for a multi-year multi-million dollar contract. However, the logic underlying these complaints has holes large enough to push Phil Hughes through, and a closer look suggests that the truly large reliever contracts may actually make a modicum of sense.

My theory is that general managers who hand relievers big money have not been looking for saves per se. Rather, they have been looking for pitchers who have provided consistent performance on a regular basis. To test this hypothesis, I decided to take a look at the largest contracts given to relievers since 2000, as well as the most consistent performers over the same time period. For the contracts, I limited my search to 3+ year contracts worth at least $7 million per season. 3+ year deals tend to reflect a level of trust by the club in the player, and $7 million struck me as a reasonable cutoff between the deals handed to top players and to those a level down on the talent chain. For measuring performance, I used a simple ERA+ and IP combination to try and isolate the most consistent performers (a search for relievers who have racked up 35+ saves on a yearly basis unearthed a similar list. Players who provide that many saves regularly tend to have strong underlying numbers, so saves can serve as a proxy for performance when addressing a multi-year sample).

Here’s the list of pitchers who had at least 3 seasons with an ERA+ of 150 or better and at least 65 innings pitched:

1 Joe Nathan
2 Billy Wagner
3 Mariano Rivera
4 Francisco Rodriguez
5 Keith Foulke
6 Mike Adams
7 Joakim Soria
8 Carlos Marmol
9 Jonathan Papelbon
10 Jonathan Broxton
11 B.J. Ryan
12 Juan Rincon
13 Brad Lidge
14 Francisco Cordero
15 LaTroy Hawkins
16 Luis Ayala
17 Eric Gagne
18 Jason Isringhausen
19 Octavio Dotel
20 Armando Benitez

It is important to note that when the search was expanded to players with at least 2 seasons of this sort of performance, an obvious drop in quality could be perceived. To my eye, 3 seasons turned out to be a very good parameter by which to evaluate consistent success. Looking at the list, Adams, Soria, and Marmol have not yet reached free agency, while Broxton, Dotel, Rincon, Gagne and Ayala all suffered injuries that hurt their performance and value before they could cash in. That leaves us with 12 pitchers relevant to our purposes.

Here is the list of relievers who have received large contracts, meaning deals for 3 or more seasons at an AAV of at least 7 million dollars (this is the list I was able to construct. It may not be complete. Please correct me if possible):

Jonathan Papelbon
Mariano Rivera
Rafael Soriano
Francisco Rodriguez
Francsico Cordero
Joe Nathan
Heath Bell
Brad Lidge
Billy Wagner
BJ Ryan
Armando Benitez
Jason Isringhausen

Soriano and Bell are the only players on the “got paid” list not on the “consistently performed” list, and Bell has two seasons of requisite performance and a third that falls just short (146 ERA+). Soriano is the only real outlier here, as he has never had a season meeting the performance criteria yet was paid like the more consistent elite performers. Conversely, Foulke and Hawkins are the only two of the 12 relevant players from the “consistently performed” list who failed to make the “got paid” list, and Foulke missed it by .25 million (3 years, 20.75 million).

Basically, when looking at the two lists, we find that the pitchers who have performed at a high level on a regular basis are the ones who are getting the big money. Now, correlation is not causation, but it does seem reasonable to say that large contracts for relievers have been largely reserved for pitchers with established levels of consistency and performance. Now, the next question to ask is whether it makes sense to be giving those pitchers large contracts. The obvious retort to this is that:

1) relievers are a volatile commodity, and
2) past performance does not guarantee future results, and
3) relievers are fungible and good relief can be acquired cheaply.

As for #1, Stephen Rhoads addressed this very issue in this space a few weeks ago:

In any walk of life, one quick way to open yourself up to embarrassment is to assume that those around you are either unable or unwilling to comprehend the complexities of your worldview, to borrow a turn of phrase from Confederacy of Dunces. I’d wager that most General Managers have a pretty good idea that relievers are volatile creatures, and that they are also aware of the failure of these relievers to live up to the contracts given to them. So, avoiding the arrogance that would suggest that they’re just irrational actors, what would drive a GM to pay a premium for a reliever? It boils down to predictability.

Paradoxically, the volatile nature of relief pitchers drives GMs to pay big money for relievers whom they don’t believe will be volatile. Thus, relievers with a long track record of health and consistently superb performance are the most likely candidates to get big money.

Essentially, reliever volatility actually makes handing big contracts to those relievers who have proven to be more of a sure thing a logical decision. As for #2 and #3, they can both be answered by the same point. While it is easy to look back at the end of a season and find relievers who provided great results for few dollars, it is much more difficult to identify those pitchers ahead of time. For every Joaquin Benoit there are 10 Buddy Carlyles and Lance Pendeltons, pitchers who are blanks in the game of reliever roulette. Additionally, while some of these large contracts have flopped, that is a risk that comes with any free agent contract. In the right context, it makes sense for clubs to take that risk rather than cross their fingers and hope to stumble upon the right reliever. Although past performance does not guarantee future results, it does make good results significantly more likely and predictable.

Relievers being fungible and volatile does not mean that their talent changes yearly. It means that in a small sample, you can often get statistical anomalies in both directions. Since relieving is by nature a small sample, there is more volatility and more risk. But if you have identified relievers who you think are more talented and more consistent, you lower that risk of volatility. There is value in that certainty, such that it makes sense to pay those relievers more than a pure talent to dollars evaluation might suggest. This added level of predictability is why general managers have been paying a premium for top relievers on the free agent market.

Changes To The Game Suggest Darvish Is The Right Move

by 122 Comments

One thing Yankees fans are great at is fitting an attractive player for pinstripes before he is a free agent. We see a Joe Mauer or Cole Hamels or Felix Hernandez on the horizon, and we start dreaming up the various ways in which the player will become a Yankee. We often take it as a given that the Yankee will acquire the players they need, whether via trade or free agency. In recent seasons we have added prospect hype to the equation, assuming that the farm system will eventually produce a big bat or a top of the rotation starter who will allow the Yankees to eschew free agency. Somehow, the Yankees will end up with the great talent necessary to continue contending on a regular basis.

However, recent events have seemingly conspired to make the acquisition of top young talent more complicated for the Yankees.  The new CBA will make it more difficult for the Yankees to pursue elite talents in the later rounds of the draft, as well as entirely destroy their ability to target top international free agents. They can no longer buy Austin Jackson types out of scholarships in the later rounds by going well over the recommended slot money, nor can they throw big contracts at the next Jesus Montero or Gary Sanchez. Furthermore, while the new luxury tax might actually help the Yankees in the short-term, its lack of adjusment for inflation makes it likely that it will curtail the Yankees ability to expand their budget in the middle of the decade. With a number of aging players slated to earn large paydays during that period, the Yankees might find their ability to compete on the free agent market hindered to some extent.

Finally, from a purely anecdotal perspective, it seems like more and more teams are locking up their young stars before they ever hit free agency. Contracts that buy out a few years of free agency and give the player some financial security are all the rage, and the ramifications of that trend are obvious. Most of the players who make it to free agency are of the CJ Wilson, Zack Greinke, or Francisco Liriano ilk, players with elite talent who have some questions surrounding them that make teams fearful of handing them huge contract extensions. There are fewer elite talents hitting the free agent market, and when they do make it to free agency, the competition for them is likely to be significantly stiffer.

However, with all of these factors suggesting that the Yankees will have a difficult time acquiring exciting young talent, there is one loophole that could allow the Yankees to make a splash. As Mike said in the CBA post linked to above:

Players under 23 years old and with less than years of professional baseball experience will be considered amateurs and count against the spending cap. That means guys like Yoenis Cespedes and Japanese veterans will be treated as a true free agents. Japanese players run through the posting system will not count against the cap.

Cespedes is something of a wild card whose price seems to be rocketing out of control, and I simply do not know enough about him to advocate that the Yankees throw a ton of cash at him. Yu Darvish, however, is an exciting 25 year old Japanese pitching prospect who is likely to be posted this offseason. Unlike Cespedes, Darvish fits an obvious need for the Yankees, as they have a hole near the front of their rotation that Darvish should be able to fill even if he is only 75% as good as he was in Japan. Furthermore, while his total cost will be prohibitive (likely in excess of 100 million dollars), a large chunk of that money (the posting fee) will not be counted against the luxury tax. That makes Darvish a cheaper long-term option than a guy like CJ Wilson.

There are obvious risks associated with a large outlay for Darvish. Japanese pitchers have not exhibited sustained success in the majors, and some have suggested that the routine for pitchers differs enough between NPB and MLB to make the transition a difficult one. Furthermore, any large amount of money spent on a pitcher who has never thrown a major league pitch represents a major gamble, particularly when reliable veterans such as Mark Buehrle and Roy Oswalt can be had at a significantly cheaper rate.

Despite the risks, the changing nature of the game makes taking a chance on Darvish the right play for the Yankees. They will have a more difficult time acquiring top draft and IFA prospects, making the development of elite talent significantly more complicated. Throw in the fact that the alternative is the shrinking free agent pool, and taking a risk on a 25-year old with Darvish’s stuff is something the financially powerful Yankees should strongly consider. This is one area where the club can still throw around their dollars to grab a young player, and it would behoove them to jump at the opportunity.