[Westheim]

Beware. Long post. The mind was flowing freely this morning.

Salary arbitration were again scheduled for mid-November. We have six arbitration cases, and three free agents. The free agents are done with quickly. Jackie Lagarde, Juan Martinez, and Mauro Granados all were late additions to this 71-91 cast, none played quite convincing, and none of them will be brought back. Granados is the only player among them who is compensation eligible, a type B free agent. We will offer him arbitration to get the compensation.

The six arbitration cases include (service time; 1999 salary; estimate):
SP Jose Rivera (8-5, 2.58 ERA) – 4.003 - $330k - $600k
MR Antonio Donis (5-1, 1.76 ERA, 1 SV) – 3.167 - $190k - $219k
1B/3B/LF Cesar Gonzalez (.250/.356/.421, 19 HR, 81 RBI) – 3.141 - $650k - $822k
SS Conceicao Guerin (.304/.356/.389, 2 HR, 23 SB) – 3.034 - $120k - $399k
LF/RF Stephen Buell (.238/.311/.299, 1 HR, 14 SB) – 3.051 - $120k - $180k
OF Luke Newton (.238/.325/.362, 3 HR,) – 4.116 - $180k - $189k

Rivera is expected to get a hefty increase for being hurt half the season. We will have to swallow that, I guess? Can’t give up on him, but I wouldn’t want to sign him to a multi-year contract right now.

Donis comes in rather cheap, but has pitched himself into the closer conversation with Daniel Miller as the main adversary. There is no doubt about the abilities of Gonzalez and Guerin. We might want to try to sign Concie to a longer deal, four years, to buy out a year of free agency. We should be able to get that done for under $2M, which is the value of the contract that Marvin Ingall signed a few years back, also for four years.

Newton is a serviceable backup to Neil Reece, we have nobody else available (Taramillo – heck, no!) and will be kept around, especially since $200k or so sounds like a sound prize for a semi-decent backup outfielder.

Buell will get an offer, but more and more I am on the conquest to get him out of here. If you win a Gold Glove, you still lose your team 1.2 wins, and are NOT a shortstop or catcher, then there is no excuse. An outright pathetic .610 OPS is beyond terrible for a corner outfielder.

We submitted the following offers: Rivera $600k; Donis $240k; Gonzalez $830k; Guerin $375k; Buell $180k; Newton $195k; I think that Donis is severely undervalued at $219k, but $400k sounds like a lot for Guerin.

I hit up with Guerin in early November. He was all over a long term deal. 5 years, 5 millions. I almost choked. Let’s go to arbitration.

It made me think, though. What’s a top shortstop actually worth, especially one batting leadoff? The first guy that came to my head was Boston’s Daniel Silva, that little terror. The news were shocking: Silva had been awarded $420k through arbitration last year, and the Titans had already signed him to a 1-year deal for 2000, for a whopping $700k! Well, Silva has more power than Guerin and steals even more bases (31 in 1999, over 40 the two previous years). But that still means that the true value for Concie might lie in the region of $500k to $600k. We hurriedly adjusted our arbitration offer to $450k and hoped no one would notice.

What else did we do in early November? Well, it’s less than a month to the rule 5 draft and we have A LOT of young guys to protect. We started off by cleaning the 40-man roster of long time DL occupants. Miguel Lopez had already been put on the 60-day DL during the season, but Jose Rivera hadn’t. Also, Jason Kent, that no-good outfielder, and his bum leg, casted hip to foot for a busted knee, still lingered on the 40-man roster, and he was moved from the 7-day minor league DL to the 60-day DL as well. This was not a permanent solution, but I am always in when it comes to delaying problems for four months. I will gladly figure out what to do about the clogged 40-man roster in March.

Figuring in the departure of Lagarde, Martinez, and Granados, that made 33 players on the 40-man roster.
Young hotshots that HAVE TO BE put on the 40-man roster: SP Nick Brown, SP Tyler Sullivan, SP Dwight Williams, MR Juan Diaz, OF Cal Lyon, LF/RF George Wood
Young hotshots we WOULD LIKE TO BE put on the 40-man roster: SP Ray Conner, SP Julio Romero, MR Joe Key, INF/RF Eisuke Sato
Other players not on the 40-man roster: SP Esteban Flores, MR Dan Epps, C Brad Gray, C Wayne Lister, 1B Harry Jackson, 1B/2B George Morris

Doesn’t work out. But well. If we protect three young starters in Brown, Sullivan, and Williams, that should do, and we can live with losing Conner, Romero, and Flores. That thins out the issue slightly. Gray and Lister don’t need to be protected if we are going for an upgrade at backup catcher anyway. Fifield should be kept around. Jackson and Morris have no room in our plans. To be honest, even Sato hasn’t. We could scratch by, I think, by protecting the first group, plus Key. That’s 40. Unless I forgot something.

Oh yeah, minor league free agency. Of the guys listed above, Conner, Lister, and Gray were eligible for minor league free agency.

(shakes head) Well, you can’t have everything.

One thing to think about was a bigger deal with another team. What do we want? An impact bat at LF or RF. 20+ home runs, average OBP, .800+ OPS. Something like another Gonzalez or Reece. Handedness? So far the lineup might look like this (vs. RHP): SS Guerin – RF Brady – CF Reece - ?? Gonzalez – 1B Martin – 2B Ingall – C Mata - ?? ?? – P; With Ingall and Brady switched vs. LHP. Or Brady not playing at all against LHP. Now, in the middle of the order, that gives us (vs. RHP) Reece, right-hander, then switch, which means left, and another left-handed bat in Martin. While a left-handed bat would certainly make it a very difficult lineup to navigate for a right-handed pitcher, we would suffer vs. left-handed pitching. I think a right-handed bat would be a more balanced option.

So. A right-handed batter with 20 homers, .800 OPS, decent defense of course, that doesn’t strike out rabidly.

We can offer Buell, plus any of the score of prospects above, even a starting pitcher. A rotation has only five slots after all, and we already have six players taking swings at each other as it is.

So, Vince quickly compiled a list for me. (Searching for 20 homers and .800 OPS directly seems to be involving a subtle trick I do not master in OOTP. Instead I searched for POW 12+, K 12+, LF Def 8+.) It showed a dozen players, one of which (Gonzalez) already a Raccoon. There were a few players on there with contracts that made them unaffordable for the cash-strapped Raccoons: BOS Dave Reid and NYC Avery Johnson both were due to make more money than Neil Reece next year, and we can’t spend that much.

That left: WAS Jesus Rivera, TIJ Arturo Lopez, IND David Lopez, TOP Martin Horn, SAC Preston O’Day, LAP Owen Warner, SFW Roland Moore, ATL Jesus Árias, IND Carlos Paredes;

Of these, HR champion David Lopez, Paredes, and Rivera were certainly unavailable for the junk I had to offer, as they were still on minimum contracts or entering arbitration for the first time. Horn and O’Day were in their mid-30s and I was looking for someone a few years younger. Moore and Árias were bound for free agency. Thus the list rapidly condensed to two names: TIJ Arturo Lopez and LAP Owen Warner.

The Condors had already bought out Lopez’ final year of arbitration eligibility for $800k. That was just barely palatable for us. Lopez had however never had more than 378 AB in a season, failing to really break through. Warner had bounced between the AAA level and the majors as recently as last season, despite being already 30. He had signed a 4-year deal that was cheap in 2000 and 2001, but would escalate to $1.1M by 2003. Both batted left-handed.

Hum. How about rightfielders? It didn’t change the selection much. It added Boston’s Gonzalo Munoz to the mix, who was 23 and had been a rookie this year, batting for a .751 OPS. He was also a left-handed batter.

And what about third basemen? We only got four results according to Vince, including our Cesar Gonzalez. The other three players were David Lopez (again), as well as Indy’s Matt Brown and ROTY Takahashi Higashi.

Do we see us trading for Matt Brown?

We finally let go of the “doesn’t strike out rabidly” thing and went back to leftfielders. Vince was able to present a healthy selection of 39 names. Filtering for right-handed batters condensed the list to 13, including Neil Reece and a few guys mentioned before. Near the top of the list was MIL Bakile Hiwalani. We also turned up old friend Royce Green. I was tempted, but he was due $1.14M both of the next two years, and we just can’t…

However, money increasingly looked like the limiting factor in the quest. Going back to Tijuana’s Arturo Lopez. Yeah, he bats left-handed, but we have already established that it doesn’t look any better for right-handed batters if you can’t throw in any money. Kisho Saito’s retirement freed up $1.1M of budget space, but the six arbitration cases alone will eat up approximately $715k of that – without us taking any nasty hits in arbitration. Add the escalating contracts we already have, and of the $1.1M of “free” budget space, only about $300k remain unspent, and we finished 1999 already slightly over budget. We only got $300k more to work with this year. Taking on a $1M contract would require us to actually dump $400k in salaries, just to stay *slightly* over budget.

It’s not the greatest of jobs these days.

Lopez’ career OPS is .751. With him never having played a full season, it makes a $800k investment a bad idea. But whom can we add then!?

I have no clue.