[Westheim]

This chapter shall be titles “Juicy free agents and market size limitations”.

As the hot part of the offseason commenced, the Raccoons were 15th in WAR gains (or, at this time, losses), with a value of -7.2; three quarters of that loss were contributed by the departure of Vic Flores, while Daniel Sharp contributed 1.6 WAR.

Unless we were going to promote Ricardo Martinez (.260/.320/.422 with 15 HR, 57 RBI, 11 SB in 117 G in AAA) to debut on Opening Day as a 22-year old, we were looking at nobody fighting for the third base job. Shortstop was basically Ryan Miller over Yoshi Yamada (who was still around) by miles and miles, and at second we had Yoshi Nomura trying to hold off both Gutierrezes. Yes, there’s Jose, but also remember the Manuel, the Salvadoran left-handed utility infielder, that was up for a brief time at the beginning of the season. Jose is the Mexican right-handed second baseman. I know it’s confusing.

First base holds Quebell, unless we dump him and put Pruitt there. Of course, if you put Pruitt there, and move Castro to left, you have either Crespo or Trevino in center. Crespo is no less of a black hole, defensively, than Castro, and Trevino isn’t hitting for much of anything.

So, the shopping list for this wannabe-contending team definitely includes a centerfielder with plus ability with stick AND glove, as well as a third baseman in general. If we could find another David Brewer to stick at second, we wouldn’t necessarily refuse, but chances were unlikely, our budget being small after all. The only positions we would definitely not tinker with right now were rightfield (Duke Smack) and catcher (Bowen), because we got bang for our buck there and they will also be – comparably – cheap in 2008. Yeah, the Duke makes a million, but he raised 3.8 WAR for us. Yes, he struck out 138 times, but he also drove in 107, and nobody had done that at the Willamette in YEARS.

Then there’s the rotation. We have a pretty daft 1-2 lined up for another two years, and we don’t need to talk a lot about these guys now. Kenichi Watanabe, despite being unremarkable from the outside, has produced a 3.53 ERA and a slightly better than 2 K/BB in 63 starts over four seasons (while being saddled with a 17-29 record…). He really doesn’t look like much, but he’s more or less efficient and can happily continue trotting away in the #4 spot. Besides, this year his services will cost merely $200k again, the point we originally signed him at. He will be arbitration eligible for the first time only next fall (at age 32 then). In the #5 hole there’s Boda, there’s Fuentes, there’s possibly Brandon Teasdale (although certainly not to start the year), and in AAA there’s still Tim “Dumpster Boy” Webster, César Lopez, and even that awful Rhett Carpenter guy. We’re flush with #5 pitchers.

But we need a #3 starter.

In the bullpen, most of the old personnel is still around. Angel Casas, Marcos Bruno, Law Rockburn, Ed Bryan, Adam Riddle, Kaz Kichida – there’s no reason to trade any of them. We just want to add a left-hander.

So, that gives us the following shopping list:
• #3 starting pitcher (preferably left-handed, but can be either way)
• Third baseman
• Left-handed reliever (decent, please)
• Centerfielder with above-average qualities in the field and at the plate

At this point, we had expected expenses amounting to $16.2M, which left $3.8M to play with, however, some of that money was reserved for staff expenses – we did not have a full complement of coaches in the minors at this junction.

Top free agent starting pitchers include 33-yr old Anibal Sandoval (186-150, 3.45 ERA), 35-yr old Jesus Bautista (169-176, 3.92 ERA), 28-yr old Pancho Trevino (99-69, 3.47 ERA), 34-yr old Javier Cruz (194-122, 3.73 ERA), and an international guy, 29-yr old, with a South Korean mother and a father hailing out of old Austrian nobility, Jong-hoo Umberger. Except for Cruz, these are all right-handed and demand more than $2M per year. Bautista and Trevino are type A free agents. Sandoval has had a lot of injuries in his career and might not be the best financial investment. Trevino is a wild thing who walked more than 100 batter several times in his Thunder career.

Cruz, who spent his entire career with the Blue Sox, throws 99mph heat, resulting in between 19 and 27 home runs allowed every year since 2001. He was hurt in 2000. Before that, he led the Federal League in home runs allowed three out of four years. He struck out 200+ five times in his career, but the last time he achieved that was in 2003. He pitched part of both of the last two seasons out of the bullpen (and still allowed 27 homers in 2006, over 152.2 innings).

Here is it again, the picture of a little boy playing with matches in a dynamite factory.

Good news is, he doesn’t walk too many. Let’s make a mental note and look at third basemen. We want at least average defense at the hot corner. Hell, Daniel Sharp had league-average defense and still botched routine plays routinely. Having Whitebread compile a list of the top free agent third basemen revealed that both Vic Flores and Sharp ranked near the top. There were a few more 30+ year olds to take a look at.

There was Bob Hall (.281, 136 HR, 861 RBI), who would be 35 on Opening Day, Sonny Reece (.313, 182 HR, 1,197 RBI), who was 35 already, but had a lot of silverware accumulated in his career, two Hitters of the Year, four Gold Gloves (including the third base glove in the FL three straight years from 2004 through 2006!), and timeless glory for walkoff home runs in two Game 7’s in the same postseason. Career Cyclone Dennis Berman (.274, 166 HR, 771 RBI) was 31, and Ramón Garza (.285, 54 HR, 858 RBI) almost 35 as well. Those four were ALL type A free agents, and all demanded north of $2M.

There was one less tear-jerking guy in the pool. Nelson Chavez had wandered around his career, had even played in A ball for 15 games in 2006, but at 31 he was a sound option, a career .259 batter with 48 HR and 304 RBI, but also with three Gold Gloves since 2002. He basically won the Gold Glove every year he played a full season, except in 2007. Compared to the others, he’s for sale, with a contract demand of $330k. I don’t really care about him being type B compensation eligible (although it begs the question why he is eligible for compensation and Vic Flores is not!). Chavez is certainly a defensive-heavy option. Whitebread warns that he hasn’t batted at even league-average level since 2003, and a is poor career batter at 90+ omelets per second (or something like that).

But here’s a thing. Chavez can also cover first and second base more or less well. If nothing else, he could be a defensive backup to Ricardo Martinez. That’s a thought worth harboring, and at $330k you can’t err so hard it will make you cry, right?

Good centerfielders were few and far between. The top free agent of the entire league was ex-SFW Earl Clark, who was perhaps slightly above average in the field, an unstoppable force at the plate, and who demanded a contract approaching $35M over eight years. Yeah, thanks, we’ll use our chumps.

Left-handed relievers with oomph in turn were scarce from the start. The list was headed by – hold onto something – Domingo Moreno! He had been raked with the Aces in 2007, allowing 36 walks in 66 innings, and had been charged with a 5.16 ERA, though. Maybe, at almost 34, he was going down?

Whitebread looked into that a bit more. While the 36 walks were worrisome, he had also been betrayed by a butcher’s defense, with a .361 BABIP against him, leading to a 1.75 WHIP. While part of that were the walks (merely doubled from his 2003-2006 average in Portland), he also allowed more than 1 H/9 for the first time in his career, and THAT was the calamitous defense behind him. His $405k demand was not unreasonable. There was a groundball pitcher available in Donald Sims, with consistent numbers indicating that you wouldn’t get much better than a 4.20 ERA out of him. He also demanded more money than Domingo.

Well, no matter which way you comb this one, obviously the Raccoons’ cash won’t be enough to sooth all sores. We could perhaps make it work by going for Cruz, Moreno, and Chavez. Our money should be sufficient for that.

Hey, bright sides! At least we are LOOKING at free agents! A few years ago we just shrugged and looked at other teams’ refuse piles.

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You might have noticed, or perhaps not, but the offseason goes slow this year. This is despite me being at home the whole last week (my semi-traditional World Series vacation, with the World Series ending uncomfortably early). Well, on Tuesday I found a little game called Rimworld, a self-described sci-fi colony sim, which has since sucked all life out of me. Don’t buy it, your productivity will drop to zero. As usual when this happens, I am very sorry, but now excuse me, I have to get his mountain over there mined out, and there needs to be another storage to be erected, and, and, and …