12/5/13

Mack’s Noon Report – 12-5 – Posting, Non-Tenders, Nelson Cruz

 

It looks like Major League Baseball and Japan have agreed to a new posting system, which will shortly be in place.

The Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) is expected to approve a system in which a $20ml cap will be placed on every posting fee charged to American ballclubs.  The Japanese player would be free to negotiate with any team or teams that posted the maximum bid, though, since they already posted the maximum bid, I’m not sure what they would additional be negotiating about.

This will control the cost of rising posting fees ($51.7mil for Yu Darvish; $51.1mil for Daisuke Matsuzaka) and allow the MLB team to count a greater percentage of the overall payment for a Japanese player against the $189 million luxury tax. 50/50 splits between teams and players go out the window and the overall money will now go into the hands of the Japanese players.

How will this affect the Rakuten Eagles and their star righthander Masahiro Tanaka is yet to be seen.

How does this affect the New York Mets? Well, my guess is for you to look for much more interest in this market by the Mets. 

Non-Tenders –

When Atchison wasn't sidelined last season due to bone spurs and a strained groin, he was posting numbers comparable to his work as a utility arm with the Red Sox. There's nothing special about his game: He keeps the ball in the yard, throws strikes, and does enough work against lefties and righties alike to avoid the specialist tag. Granted, he's a 37-year-old with a cranky elbow, but teams could do worse than adding him as the sixth or seventh arm in the pen. 
The rest of the group is a mixed bag. Valdespin marries minor-league production with major-league attitude, hence the Mets cutting the cord despite him not yet being arbitration eligible. Turner should find work as a potential extra infielder with the ability to hit for average and willingness to play all over. Quintanilla and Hefner are organizational depth. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22338

            Mack – A reminder… there are still five (5) openings on the 40-mn squad and all of them are not going to be filled with Rule 5 players. No, hopefully, one of these slots will be used for Curtis Granderson and two more for another starters and shortstop. Past that, I look for possible signings of players that were non-tendered by other teams. In either case, there will be five new Mets here in some form or shape. 

Nelson Cruz

            While Nelson Cruz might be one of the least favorite of available free agents among nerd faces, it’s hard to ignore what he does rather consistently for your fantasy squad — and that’s hit home runs and drive in runs all while hitting for a decent average. The often injured (or suspended as it were) outfielder has posted an ISO below .240 just once in the last five seasons and has yet to hit below .260 as a major league regular. Cruz has hit 135 home runs in the past five years and he’s really only played a full season once.

That last line pretty much sums up all of the risk with Nelson Cruz. When he’s on the field, he can be a productive outfielder for your fantasy squad. While his days of hitting 30+ home runs and stealing 20 bases is probably over, he nonetheless projects as a player who can rack up 25+ home runs and flirt with 85-90 RBI fairly easily to go along with a career .268 batting average. Even in his PED suspension-shortened season of just 456 at bats, his 27 home runs, 76 RBI and .266/.327/506 slash line was good for 43rd overall and roughly $11 bucks http://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/nelson-cruz-defies-real-world-value/

            Mack – You need to keep reading up on this guy. The longer it takes to get a Granderson deal done, the closer we get to a Cruz signing.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mack, first off, thanks, I think your site has been tremendous this off-season, I've really enjoyed coming here.

As I commented over at "2 Guys," in terms of pure bargaining position, it's important for Sandy Alderson to have several irons in the fire -- to at least appear interested in Nelson Cruz as an option, for example, gives him a little leverage. Likewise, I keep hoping for Ryan Braun, that the Granderson negotiation is a signal to the Brewers that the Mets are prepared to move on if they won't come off the asking price (yes, wildly speculative, I know).

I'm saying: I hope they don't really want Nelson Cruz.

James Preller ("2 Guys")

Daniel said...

How the new posting system will work is that the money going to the japanese team (the posting cost) is capped at 20 million. But the actual player can get as much as he can. So the player would negotiate with all teams that made the max posting fee and then decide where he wants to sign.

Unknown said...

The richer teams should still be able to get most guys, they can still offer more money than the small markets. It just counts against the salary cap. That really doesn't affect to many just yanks and dodgers this year.
I want no part of nelson Cruz at the price he is asking, I would go as high as 3yrs @ 36mil. I would rather have Beltran.

David L. Whitman said...

off of the top my head prediction:

Red Sox-Granderson
Tigers-Cruz
Mets-Beltran (2 yr deal with option for 3rd) by mid-season of 2015 he's our starting 1B.

There written in stone! LOL

David L. Whitman said...

Well the offseason of head-scratching trades continue.

Brewers dealt Aoki to Royals for lefty reliever Wil Smith. Brewers will slot him into starting rotation. If a lefty starter is what the Brewers ultimately wanted, well the Mets couldn't help them there. So much for the Braun fantasy coming true.

Mack Ade said...

James -

thank you for the compliment.

I also agree other meetings need to be attended, but I'd really like to see the outfield situation put to bed before the meetings start. Then, Sandy can concentrate on trades.

I'm told this is normal for a Boras negotiation. It's been compared to rebuilding the Suez Canal.

Anonymous said...

Granderson is reportedly trying to get 4 yrs/$64M.

I'm hearing the Mets have a 4 year/$55M contract on the table right now.

If he accepts the Mets offer that's a HUGE win for the team to get him at a AAV of $13.75M

David L. Whitman said...

So the Mets want to go $13.75 mil per yr. and Granderson is seeking 16 mil. They should be able to come up with some kind of agreement, say $15.25 mil for 4 yrs. If they can't bridge a gap of a couple million dollars a year it's going to be a long offseason.