Anybody wish these 2 were around right now? Courtesy of US Presswire & Getty Images
(The following is being syndicated from An A-Blog for A-Rod)
Interestingly enough, or frustratingly enough depending on how against the austerity plan you are, the Yankees really kicked this plan into high gear last offseason when they failed to get involved in the international free agent market. It was one of the best classes in recent memory, highlighted by Yu Darvish and Yoenis Cespedes, 2 players who, ironically enough, play the positions the Yanks most need to fill this offseason. At the time, the Yankees’ reasons for passing on both players were good ones. The history of Japanese pitchers making the transition to MLB was short on success stories, and the Yankees had been on the losing end of that gamble before, and there were questions about Cespedes’ ability to come right in and play at the Major League level.
Not wanting to commit high dollars to 2 risky options that might not have returned comparable rewards, Cash decided to play it safe with his bids on each player and the Yankees lost out on both. Darvish ended up in Texas and Cespedes in Oakland, and both of them finished in the top 3 of the AL Rookie of the Year vote yesterday, an award that they could have battled it out for had Mike Trout not come and blown everyone’s doors off. Now that their first years as Major Leaguers are over, let’s take a look back and play a little “what if?” game with each guy.
For all the talk about his weird throwing schedule and too many pitches having a negative impact on his effectiveness, Darvish certainly hit the ground running in 2012. He pitched 8.1 shutout innings with 10 K in just his 4th career start, a start that just so happened to be against the Yankees, giving Cash and everybody else in the front office a good look at what they missed out on. He did struggle with walks early in the season, and for the whole season for that matter as his 4.19 BB/9 and 10.9% BB rate were both higher than you’d like to see, but Darvish made up for that with his swing-and-miss stuff (27.1% K rate) and didn’t have much of a problem adjusting to the American game. Despite missing a handful of starts due to injury, Darvish still pitched to a 3.90/3.29/3.52 slash in 191.1 innings, good for 5.1 fWAR, which was tied for 5th most in MLB. Oh, and he’s just 26.
Now here’s where the fun starts. The Yankees weren’t as aggressive on Darvish as they’ve been in the past because of the performance questions but also because of the money. After winning the posting with a $51.7 million bid, the Rangers signed Darvish to a reasonable 6 year/$60 million deal, bringing the total AAV of his contract to $18.6 million per season. If the Yankees had won the bidding and signed Darvish to the same deal, it’s safe to assume that the Michael Pineda trade never gets made and Hiroki Kuroda and Andy Pettitte never get signed. Maybe Kuroda, since the rotation at that point would have been CC, Darvish, Hughes, Nova, and Garcia, and Kuroda was a great value at $10 mil. But I’m going to go ahead and say that Hirok and Andy would not have ended up in a Yankee uniform if Darvish did.
From a performance standpoint, there wouldn’t have been a whole lot of difference this past season. Kuroda made more starts and pitched more innings, but the rest of Darvish’s stats were better almost completely across the board. Everything going down the way it did this season, Darvish for Kuroda would have been worth about 1 more win, which would have still put the Yankees right where they ended up in the postseason and still probably resulted in an ALCS loss due to the offensive blackout.
From a financial standpoint, Darvish would have cost a little north of $6 million more against the cap this season compared to Kuroda and Pettitte’s combined value ($12.5 mil). With the raises Kuroda and Pettitte are expected to receive if they come back this season, we’ll call it $15 mil and $7 mil for the purposes of time, Darvish’s cap hit this coming season would actually be less than what the Yankees will pay to fill their rotation without him. The big ding is what would come in 2014, when Darvish’s $18+ million would almost certainly be more than what the Yankees would be looking to spend to keep payroll down. But with Darvish being young, under team control, and entering his prime, wouldn’t that have been money worth spending?
The situation with Darvish and what coulda, woulda, shoulda happened with the rest of the rotation and the payroll is clearly pretty complicated. The situation with Yoenis Cespedes is much less so. Yes, he wasn’t exactly a need for the Yankees going into this season and yes, committing that much guaranteed money (4 years/$36 mil) to an international player who you aren’t 100% sure can step right into the Majors is very risky, but I’m sure the Yankees would love to have Cespedes in the fold right now. He battled injuries a little bit too, but he showed that his 5 tools weren’t just a workout mirage, hitting .292/.356/505 (.368 wOBA) with 23 HR, 16 SB, and 3.1 fWAR in 540 PA. Cespedes would have been a perfect candidate to replace Brett Gardner as the full-time LF this season and allowed the Yankees to maintain some bench flexibility, and he would slide right into Nick Swisher‘s vacated spot in right in 2013 at just $9 million per year, a very team-friendly number. Oh, and he’s just 27 years old.
It’s easy to sit here and Monday morning quarterback this situation, and I’ll be the first to admit that I shared all the concerns about both players when they were on the open market last offseason. But it’s fair to say that passing on both Darvish and Cespedes may turn out to be mistakes in the long run. They stayed healthy, they were both wildly productive, they’re in their mid-20s, and they would have filled the greatest positions of need on the roster while still leaving room to get under the $189 million ceiling in 2014. I’m sure the Yankees were a little gun shy after the Kei Igawa disaster, and that’s understandable, but the early foundations of the future payroll plans set last offseason that contributed to them passing on Darvish and Cespedes could wind up costing them the chance to stay competitive in 2014.
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12 Responses to Reviewing Last Year’s Two Biggest Free Agent Passes
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TIQ IQ
I’m almost positive your calculations on the Darvish luxury tax hit are off. The posting fee does not count against the luxury tax. So Yu Darvish actual AAV luxury tax hit is only 10M. Which only makes your argument stronger.
You’re right, I just went and checked it. Don’t know why I keep confusing the luxury tax rules. Thanks for pointing that out.
glad that got straightened out as it had me confused. I advocated signing Darvish and thought that it was an advantage for the Yankees to pay half the cost of the contract up front without any luxury tax implication and carrying a lower AAV into 2014 made signing the best free-agent possible acquisition of a pitcher.
but anyone, while I agree that had the Yankees signed him then it was likely that hey wouldn’t have made the Montero-Pineda trade, but are we really sure that they wouldn’t have gone ahead and signed Kuroda?
cashman seemed to think that they needed two additional starters last year and Darvish only adds up to one….and Kuroda on a one year deal was no great additional expense.
You’re playing Monday morning quarterback with two signings that which involved paying unproven talent like they were proven MLB contributers. Given that Darvish’s posting fee doesn’t count toward the luxury tax and Cespedes’ salary looks very team friendly now, these signings might have helped in getting under the $189 million target. But how much harder would it be to make it to $189MM if they signed these guys and they hadn’t panned out and you had an additional $15 million in deadweight? I’d never criticize the Yankees for not gambling on guys like Darvish and Cespedes, even if Cespedes looks like he would have been a great signing in retrospect. I still don’t know about Darvish. Let’s see if he can stay healthy over that contract and if there’s any regression after pitching so many innings last year.
The yanks don’t want anyone who is not a geezer in deep decline.
Great article, Brad. Two huge mistakes on ownership’s part. This conservative money approach only makes me wish for the old days of George and his super competitive, go for it style of ownership.
Great post and I felt strongly at the time that passing on both players was a huge mistake. I think they overreacted on both players. After getting burned in the past they surely knew what areas to look for that could be potential problems. The Yanks have made much bigger bonehead moves on players right here.
At the time I fully behind signing Cespedes, I felt he’d be a nice DH/platoon outfield candidate for last season and then could take over for Swisher in RF for the coming season. However I was more hesitant with Darvish, I understood the level of domination he had shown in Japan but I wasn’t fully behind throwing tons of money at the guy just for the right to talk to him. I felt then that I wouldn’t be mad if we won the bidding, but I wasn’t mad when we didn’t either.
The one I still don’t understand is Jorge Soler. I figured since it was the last real chance we’ll have to flex our money muscles internationally a guy that young was worth the gamble. Coming away from that situation with none of the top 4 international names to come up last year is dissapointing no matter how you slice it.
Cashman has been in nap mode this offseason.
He loses David Ross to the shitas s Red Sox, Scott Baker to the shitas s Cubs.
Baker posted a 3.14 ERA and a 1.173 WHIP with 123 strikeouts and only 126 hits in 134 2/3 IP across 21 starts and 23 games for the Twins last year. He’s 63-48 with a 4.15 ERA for his career and is only 31 years old. He’s also only $5.5M base plus $1.5M in incentives for the Cubs. I would imagine if the Yanks had made an offer to him, he could’ve been had for as little as $4M base (the 2012 salary for Freddy Garcia and Pedro “I Never Threw A Single Pitch For The Yankees” Feliciano) and $1.5M in incentives. Even if he still wanted $5.5M base, he’d be worth it for his age and 2012 ERA-WHIP-H:SO-IP/GS.
Despite these stats, Cashman allowed him to go to the Cubs. Theo Epstein is a better GM than this clown ever was or will be (two World Series championships with a team he built to Cashman’s ZERO World Series championships he built as Cashman has never won a World Series without The Core Four drafted and signed by Gene Michael.)
Think about it folks:
Ross for two years at only $3.1M a year. He’d have cost the Yanks $4.4M less than 2012 Martin in 2013 and $1.3M less than 2012 Martin for 2013-14. Now the Yanks have painted themselves into a corner. They have to either re-sign Martin for whatever he wants or sign Napoli or Pierzynski for whatever they want.
Baker for only one year at $5.5M base plus $1.5M in incentives for only $7M, $1.25M less than the cost of 2012 Feliciano (his $4M salary for 2012 plus $250K buyout plus Garcia’s $4M.)
Ross is old but cheap, Baker is young but cheap, both are low-risk, high-reward, and Cashman let them sign with inferior teams.
Oh but he did pick up Eli Whiteside LOL.
Error begets error. It should have been clear when Igawa was signed that he was already declining. He had a lot of strikeouts in Japan, but his ERA wasn’t that good. They foolishly overpaid the posting fee and foolishly signed a long-term contract to justify the posting fee.
Darvish was obviously a far superior player than Igawa. Sadly, the Yanks compounded their error in Igawa by not siging Darvish.
I was rooting for Darvish to be a Yankee from the start. I understood the arguments for not bringing Darvish to the Yankees.
If he stays healthy and continues to improve, it will appear to be a major mistake unless Campos develops and becomes a #1 or #2 starter for the Yankees. That’s baseball; it’s a gamble at times.
Seeing Darvish succeed was annoying when you realize what he did. However, you didn’t note that he played MUCH better at home than on the road. With those demanding Yankees fans and the big stadium, you never know how the environment would have affected him.
I think the Yankees planned on moving Montero from behind the plate permanently, but if he could catch and hit like that, it woulda been perfect as a Martin replacement. Spoiled with Posada for years, I just realize how rare it is to have a catcher that can hit. Mike Piazza, Pudge Rodriguez, Pudge Fisk, so rare.