Offseason Review: New York Mets

2x Cy Young Award winner Johan Santana returns after an injury plagued 2011 campaign

This has to be the most difficult offseason review to find substance for because the Mets have done very close to nothing. Due to a whole lot of financial turmoil and a suddenly steep level of divisional competition, the Mets activity was essentially rendered paralyzed by practicality.
 

Tim Wakefield retires

Tim Wakefield has been in Major League Baseball since 1992. I was six years old when he threw his first major league pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates. At the time of his retirement, Wakefield was the oldest active player in the majors. The most amazing thing about all of that is that he was drafted to play a position he wasn't good at and wouldn't be able to form a career around. Tim Wakefield was drafted to play first base, and when a scout told him that he wasn't going to last long playing a position he started playing around with the knuckleball.

Think about that. Tim Wakefield's career was basically fated to end when he made the inscrutable decision to start throwing the sparsely seen knuckleball. This decision established the roots of a career spanning two decades, two World Series rings, exactly two hundred career wins, over two thousand strikeouts and one career home run.... yeah that's true! His legacy won't be his domination, he wasn't that dominating pitcher. It will be a testament to determination and endurance. Thanks for a fun, and unlikely career, Tim.

Offseason Review: Toronto Blue Jays

2010-2011 AL Home Run Champ Jose Bautista

Toronto's been a pretty strange place for the past couple years. The city has been mired in baseball boredom and mediocrity, finishing nowhere above third in their division every season since 2006.  Last year a small spark of promise revealed itself in out-of-nowhere MVP candidate Jose Bautista. Bautista had been waived and traded by the Pirates, Rays, Royals, Orioles and Mets before finding a home with Toronto in August of 2008. In 2010, after never having a season with more than 16 home runs, Jose Bautista hit FIFTY FOUR FUCKING HOME RUNS, leading the entire American League in that category.

Finally the team had someone to build around, and it looks like that's what's going on now. The moves have been quiet, but impressive. They did take a stab at trying to get Japanese ace Yu Darvish but fell short to the Rangers. They also were rumored to be in on the Fielder sweepstakes, but with Bautista's surprise surge and Canadian power threat Brett Lawrie coming over from the Brewers for Shaun Marcum, the front office decided not to invest heavily in more slugging. Moves like that are wise, and indicate that the Jays are biding their time for a precise time to strike. Strategy like this is crucial when you're playing in the hardest division in baseball.

Brett "I HIT BALLS GOOD" Lawrie

The hardest impact the Jays made was to shore up the ol' bullpen. They extended Casey Janssen who posted an impressive 2.26 ERA over 55 IP last year. They acquired Francisco Cordero off of free agency, and he'll be setting up for closer Sergio Santos who was acquired in a trade for Nestor Molina from the idiotic White Sox. I'll get more in to how I feel about that when I review the Sox offseason, but I wanted to give props to the Jays for some of the voodoo shit they've been pulling off the past couple years. First expunging the stench of Vernon Wells contract for catcher Mike Napoli and Juan Rivera, and now the acquisition of a really, really good looking youngish arm in Sergio Santos. I'm not sure what baffles me more, the Jays luck/ability to manipulate trades or the teams they trade with being insistently counter-intuitive with the concept of trade value.

The Jays still have a ways to go. They extended the shaky Brandon Morrow who has yet to live up to expectation. Kyle Drabek showed a whole lot of promise in the minors and showed questionable results in the bigs, but has a while to shake it off. Patience is key. The franchise looks on the up and up and the management appears to be competent enough to keep them in that direction. I'm gonna guess the the Jays finish five games above five hundred this year. Expect to see a whole lot more dingers up in the Rogers Centre this year.

And a whole lot more goofy freakouts too.

Oh and I almost forgot that, maybe more important than anything else, the Jays got tired of their weird extreme determined Blue Jay logo and brought back this classic. Can't go wrong.

Offseason Review: Tampa Bay Rays

My pick for AL ROY 2012

This time last year the Rays were a team patching up a roster that had a budget-induced wound the size of the highest paid outfielder of all time. They replaced Carl Crawford with Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez, the latter of whom was suspended and subsequently retired amidst the deserving boos of many-a Tampa Bay fan. They lost their closer to free agency and replaced him with aging reliever Kyle Farnsworth. They lost game after game after game. ESPN posted an article written to express that, while the season started rough for many teams, it would only be a matter of time before they righted the ship. The Rays, however, were doomed.

Come October, they proved them wrong. The upstart Tampa Bay Rays played solid, determined baseball through the entire second half of the season. The incentive of a championship was so far removed from a logical conclusion that the determined, focused style of play exhibited by Tampa Bay can only logically be attributed to immense talent. They didn't make it out of the first round, but the fact that the ragtag Rays even made it to the postseason was landmark.  I remember the night when they locked down the wild card, as does anyone else who cares about baseball. It was epic, and the only team who I wanted to see win the whole goddamn mess more was my hometown Brewers.

Today is Monday, February 13th, and I hate the Tampa Bay Rays. And why is that? Why would I hate a team with such a Cinderella conclusion to what should have been a totally shitty season? Why would I hate a team that does all of the little things a team with a tiny budget has to do to stay competitive? A team with an elite pitching staff, won of whom took home rookie of the year for last season and another one who I'd put money on to do the same this year, why?! A team that in many ways is structured the way my hometown team was for years, why the hate?! Here is why.

 

 Two pretty quiet and inconsequential moves brought a sex offender and red faced racist to the team. Former Oriole Luke Scott was picked up out of free agency after a totally unimpressive years where he batted .220 with a .301 OBP and 9 hate fueled home runs. He also took time away from his mediocrity to tell a reporter that he didn't believe that Obama wasn't born here, and throw plantain chips at his black teammate while telling him to stop behaving like an animal. Then there is Josh Lueke. Acquired from the Seattle Mariners for catcher John Jaso. A relief pitcher with great stuff, major league promise without a doubt. He's also a TOTAL RAPIST.  I don't want to get too in to the details because it doesn't really have to do with an offseason review, just Google Josh Lueke and it'll come up almost immediately. I usually don't let ethics or opinions interfere with my ability to like an athlete or a team, but rape and blatant, vocal hate cross lines. It's one thing for an athlete to be a prototypical jock, or say something stupid in the heat of the moment, but what happened with these dudes is totally inexcusable. I've said it before and I'll hold to it if it ever occurs, if people like this were on my team, I'd root for someone else.

ITS KEPPINGER TIME!

I'm gonna step down from my pulpit and actually analyze the moves they've made. They are scarce so there isn't much to say. Jeff Keppinger provides some depth to an already pretty decent infield. Luke Scott is replacing Johnny Damian at DH... I can't really explain that one, pretty dumb given Damian's affordability and maintaining solidity. Carlos Pena returns to Tampa which is a step up from Dan Johnson as far as offense is concerned, and since they let Casey Kotchman walk defense obviously doesn't mean shit to them, so that's cool. The best thing they did was locking up Matt Moore for five years at $14MM. Moore at just 17 days of major league experience and 10 innings of purely brutal postseason madness and proved the quality people had expected of him. Assuming he stays healthy, $14MM over five years is gonna look awfully affordable for that dude.

"Baseball genius" Joe Maddon

Also extended this offseason was the Napolean of a roster with consistently hemorrhaging talent, manager Joe Maddon. Year after year this dude brings it to the table and proves that he ain't nothin' to fuck with, bringing his small market team a .509 W/L record in the toughest division in baseball. This extension TOTALLY RULES for Maddon. It puts slack on the pressure that comes with being largely accountable for the performance of a team totally stilted by a low budget. If young'n GM Andrew Friedmen's luck runs out, it doesn't necessarily spell the end of Maddon's tenure as manager, even if it does diminish his credibility.

So where does that leave the Rays for 2012? In a competitive seat for sure. No one in the AL East is ever definitively behind the steering wheel, but the talent that exists in the Rays (no matter how loathsome some of it is on a personal level) can't be denied. Keep an eye on Desmond Jennings and Matt Moore if you're interested in seeing some crazy electric talent in its blossoming stages.

Offseason Review: The New York Yankees

The Yankees destroying the Brewers in a 2011 interleague game

Uncharacteristically, the Yankees have had two consecutive pretty slow offseasons in terms of the exploiting the free agent market. Not that they hadn't tried. Last year it was all but certain that Cliff Lee was going to be wearing pin stripes until he took a pay cut to pitch for the Phillies, and the same thing happened this year with C.J. Wilson turning down more money to go to the Angels. I'm not totally sure about how actively they pursued Yu Darvish but all reports suggested unambitiously low bids.

Newest Yankees slaughterhouse, Michael Pineda

The Yanks quietly pulled off some of the more important/impressive/risky moves of the offseason. C.C. Sabathia was expected to opt out of his contract, but GM Brian Cashman wasted no time offering a hearty $25MM one year extension (with an additional $25MM vesting option with a $5MM buyout) to his contract. The Yankees also engaged in, almost without question, the weirdest trade I've ever seen. On January 23rd, the bombers and Mariners traded top prospects. Promising young slugger Jesús Montero was traded along with Hector Noesi for a highly touted pitching prospect named Michael Pineda, as well as another young pitcher Jose Campos. In my personal opinion the Yanks stole the show on this one. I happened to watch one of Pineda's starts last year and almost everything about it looked smooth and dominating. Lot's to look forward to regarding that trade.

Realistically there isn't much the Yanks had to do. They shedded the soon-to-be-traded A.J. Burnett from the rotation and added in Hiroki Kuroda, good move. People always assume that New York automatically has to pull off some ape shit move in the offseason, totally forgetting that they still have an amazing first infield, amazing-ish outfield (I could see Curtis Granderson contending strongly for MVP for the next three or four years), amazing closer, solid bullpen and pretty decent rotation. The thing is I think they still may pull off the craziest shit ever and put some enormous money in front of Yoenis Cespedis. For those of you don't know who Cespedes is please click the video below. He had a weak  showing in the Dominican League this Winter but that wasn't totally shocking as it came off a year hiatus from the game. I've heard comps to a young Bo Jackson. If that happens, this dude is going to slay everything in sight for years.

 

THIS VIDEO IS TOTALLY RIDICULOUS! WATCH!

Offseason Review: Baltimore Orioles

The Orioles played a crucial part in the biggest night in baseball last season. September 28th, crawling towards midnight, Jonathan Papelbon blows what would be his last save opportunity in a Red Sox uniform. One strike away from securing the wild card and the unlikely combination of a Nolan Reimold game tying double and Robert Andino walk off single secured a season ending dagger for the Sox.

Since then they've done almost nothing besides piss South Korea off by signing their top pitching prospect Seong-Min Kim out of protocol. There isn't much Baltimore can do though besides be very patient and rebuild. Unfortunately for Buck Showalter and Dan Duquette it looks like management will have to symbolically turn over a few more times before the talent and farm system produce talent that can be even remotely competitive. Signing Ayala, Betemit and Larish are this years Derrek Lee are Vlad Guerrero contracts, pithy bandages and desperate looking trade chips for a team that can't possibly compete.

Adam Jones and Nick Markakis are legitimate trade candidates, and I think both good grab a good haul. Guthrie just got traded to the Rockies for next to nothing. The process is going to be slow and frustrating, especially when fans have to see these guys chase the unabating juggernaut Yankee and Red Sox.  Expect the Orioles to finish dead last. Next year too.

Offseason Review: Boston Red Sox

I know there is a good chance that we'll see some last minute trades and signings, but with the 2012 season just weeks away I figured I'd start recapping the offseason team by team. I'm going do it Eastern, Central, Western, American League first.
 

BOSTON RED SOX

Perennial MVP Candidate Adrian Gonzalez

Last year I picked the Red Sox to beat the Phillies 4-1 in the World Series. WOOPS! This year I predict that the Boston Red Sox are going to beat the Phillies 4-1 in the World Series. Here's why: the Red Sox went all out in acquiring and signing Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford respectively. And while there was a bust in Crawford, Gonzalez did exactly what he was expected to do, and that is smash the living shit out of the ball.  The starting three pitchers should be, at the very, very least competent enough to win games assuming they stay healthy. By my estimation it would be a very reactionary move to identify a team of this caliber with last year's late season collapse.

The Red Sox let iconic fist pumping, death glaring closer Jonathan Papelbon walk and responded by acquiring Mark Melancon from the Astros and Andrew Bailey from the Athletics. They are replacing a mediocre/aging J.D. Drew with possible breakout candidate Ryan Sweeney who is trading in the cavernous Coliseum for the hitter-friendly Fenway Park. There is a weak back two spots in the rotation but Oswalt is a likely candidate to help shore that up, and with the likely departure of (probably former) captain Jason Varitek, a door opens for promising catching prospect Ryan Lavarnway.

THE POWER OF RYAN LAVARNWAY



The only major issue is at short. The Sox...for whatever reason... traded away Jed Lowrie in the Melancon deal and Scutaro for RHP Clayton Mortensen. They have Nick Punto, but I can hardly type that out without wanting to punch a whole in my goddamn computer screen for how goddamn stupid it is to not even trying to rely on Nick goddamn Punto to play the hardest defensive position in baseball... still I'm sure they will figure it out. Worst case scenario, Pedro Ciriaco is in their system and for some dumb reason I have faith in that guy.

Nick Punto in all his wobbly glory

Seriously though, you have my prediction. Boston Red Sox in five.