Thanks to ESPN.com’s new “roster analysis” page, which automatically updates as teams’ rosters change, we can keep track of various averages for each major league roster all season long.

Baseball’s fattest team? The Chicago White Sox (and it’s not even that close) , weighing in at an average of 221 pounds. The biggest culprits include the mountainous Bobby Jenks, generously listed at 275 pounds, the bulbous Jim Thome (255), and the voluminous Toby Hall (also listed at 255).

The thinnest team is the San Francisco Giants, weighing in at a scant 195 pounds on average, proving that not only are the Giants the lightweights of the Major Leagues when it comes to hitting, but that they are also the lightweights when it comes to actual weight. (Although now with 180-pound Dave Roberts heading to the DL, their rank may change).

As for the average height of baseball teams, we see that it does not vary much, with 29 out of the 30 teams having an average height of either 6-1 or 6-2. In dead last at 6-0 is the puny Houston Astros.

Baseball’s youngest team is, unsurprisingly, the Florida Marlins, with an average age of 27.2 years, while baseballs oldest team is a tie between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets, at 30.6 years of average age.

The Blue Jays debuted their throwback uniforms last night, as they plan to do for every Friday home game this season. Behold:

They look a bit silly, but isn’t that just part of the fun? The Royals have also brought their powder blues back (though only from the waist up). Last year, the Padres busted out their old all-yellow duds. What other teams could bring back some kickass vintage duds? Let’s look at the contenders:

Read the rest of this entry »

This is one of a series of posts in which belittle each team for their befuddling offseason blunders, and possibly praise them for any prescient pre-season pickups.

The Astros were in deep trouble even before the offseason started. Even before Ed Wade started his wheelings and dealings to drive this once-proud franchise even further into the ground.

I know these posts are supposed to focus on what happened during this current offseason, but I think it would be difficult to understand exactly how fast and how breathtakingly far this organization has fallen without a bit of a recap on the past year.

It is almost hard to remember that just two years ago, the Astros were representing the National League in the World Series, and coming off nearly a decade as perennial contenders in the NL Central, including six playoff appearances in nine years.

But that all changed a year ago when the Astros had just about one of the worst offseasons imaginable. Things began when the Astros lost 2/3 of their rotation by making no effort to re-sign Andy Pettite, and consequently, lost Roger Clemens as well. The Astros attempted to fill this gaping hole with Woody Williams, but grossly overpaid for a 41-year-old pitcher whose numbers had been greatly enhanced by pitching in the best pitcher’s park in baseball for all those years in San Diego.

The Astros also tried to make a splash by signing Carlos Lee, but even at the time, many questioned giving a 6-year contract to one of the worst defensive outfielders in all of baseball who was already in his 30s and already seemed to be having signficant problems with his weight.

But the biggest blow of all was when the Astros inexplicably and bafflingly traded fan favorite centerfielder Willy Taveras as well as their two best pitching prospects, Jason Hirsh and Taylor Buchholz, to the Rockies for pitcher Jason Jennings, who had just one year remaining on his contract.

Not surprisingly, most of us here at UmpBump predicted disaster for the 2007 Astros, and our predictions were borne out in almost every way possible. While Pettite pitched well for the Yankees, and Taveras helped the Rockies reach the World Series, putative no. 2 starter Woody Williams fell off a cliff to an 8-15 record and a 5.27 ERA, Lee gained 30 pounds, won the NL GIDP title, cost the team 16 runs with his defense, and broke shortstop Adam Everett’s leg, and Jennings, who had come at such a high price, never looked right all year, posting an execrable 2-9 record with a 6.45 ERA. Overall, the team stumbled to a 73-89 mark, its worst record in eight years, and both manager Phil Garner and GM Tim Purpura lost their jobs.

Thus the Astros headed into the 2008 offseason in desperate need of a creative reboot. Despite the fact that they were locked into the bad contract with Lee and had a barren farm system, there was some reason for hope that the team might head in a new direction and launch a long awaited youth movement, now that the Craig Biggio farewell tour was over, Biggio was safely retired at least two seasons later than he should have, and the battle cries of “we have to try one more time to win a World Series for poor Craig Biggio” could be laid to rest.

Unfortunately, the man the Astros hired to replace Purpura, former Phillies GM Ed Wade, was simply not the right man to take the Astros in a creative new direction.

To be as fair as is possible to Wade, he was handed a pretty bad hand, given orders from owner Drayton McClain to put a contender on the field rather than rebuild, and handed one of the worst collections of talent in baseball. If we give points for trying hard, we have to admit that Wade has certainly been very active this winter, and has tried his very best within the limits of his understanding to improve the team.

It’s just that pretty much every decision he has made has been questionable. At the very least, it would have been wise for Wade to try his best to hang on to whatever prospects he had left, but instead he completely traded away every last near-major-league-ready prospect or marginal prospect the Astros had left in order to land Miguel Tejada and closer Jose Valverde, completely emptying the cupboard and taking what had been one of the five worst minor-league systems in baseball and turning it into the absolute worst.

Wade compounded mistakes by deciding to keep Tejada at shortstop. This made no sense, since Tejada’s defense is no longer even adequate at shortstop, and the Astros already had one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball firmly under control in Adam Everett. It would have been a perfect chance to shift Tejada to third, where the Astros had a gaping hole in the form of Ty Wigginton, a player who can nominally play any position on the diamond, but only because he is equally terrible at all of them. But instead, Wade decided to keep Tejada at short, and keep Wigginton - a player even the Devil Rays didn’t want. He then actually non-tendered Everett - one of the top two or three defensive shortstops in all of baseball - losing a valuable player that was still under the team’s control and getting nothing in return, while insuring that any gain to the offense from what pop remains in Tejada’s unjuiced bat will be negated by the absolutely abominable left-side defense.

Mistakes continued in other areas as well. While Valverde is a useful player, his acquisition necessitated the trading away of the Astros’ last remaining major-league ready pitching prospect. And the whole reason Wade had needed to get Valverde in the first place was that he had traded away incumbent closer Brad Lidge to the Phillies to get one of his old favorites from his days in Philadelphia, centerfielder Michael Bourn. Although Bourn is an exciting speedster and a well-liked teammate, he is projected by most systems to be a fourth outfielder type at best so one has to wonder if will help the Astros much at all.

Finally, there is the awful signing of Kazuo Matsui to a 3-year, $16.5 million deal. I almost can’t express in words what a terrible idea this was. It reeks of big-name-itis, a desire to get someone, anyone, who might have been affiliated with the Rockies’ magic mojo of last season, and a complete lack of understanding about how ballparks might affect hitting numbers. Given that he was playing half his games in Coors Field last season, Matsui’s batting numbers are truly frightening, and we can expect a severe drop off as he returns to sea level. One wonders if Matsui’s numbers next season would be better than even another season of Craig Biggio, as bad as Biggio was in recent years.

So where do all Ed Wade’s moves this leave the Astros in 2008? In the NL Central cellar, alongside the Pirates, and with a very dim future.

The Astros offense should be okay, but with the loss of Lidge, Chad Qualls, and Dan Wheeler they have not much bullpen after Valverde, they have one of the worst infield defenses in the major leagues, and they have perhaps the worst rotation in all of baseball, despite the presence of ace Roy Oswalt (I mean seriously, Wandy Rodriguez is the number two starter?!?!). You are also talking about a team with the worst farm system in all of baseball, a meddling owner who interferes with his GM, a hide-bound GM stuck in old ways of thinking, and no hope of doing anything at all at any time in the anywhere near future.

In other words, in just two short years the Astros have gone from World Series runners-up to the worst organization in all of baseball.

Offseason Grade: D

Additions: SS Miguel Tejada, CL Jose Valverde, 2B Kazuo Matsui, CF Michael Bourn, CF Darin Erstad, OF Jose Cruz Jr., RHP Shawn Chacon, UT Geoff Blum, RHP Oscar Villareal, RHP Doug Brocail, RHP Geoff Geary, RHP Chad Paronto, OF Reggie Abercrombie

Losses: 2B Craig Biggio, RHP Brad Lidge, SS Adam Everett, RHP Chad Qualls, 3B Mike Lamb, OF Luke Scott, 2B Chris Burke, UT Eric Bruntlett, LHP Trever Miller, RHP Matt Albers,

Projected Lineup, Rotation, and Closer:

CF Michael Bourn - .277/.348/.378, 18 SB
2B Kaz Matsui - .288/.342/.405, 32 SB
SS Miguel Tejada - .296/.357/.442, 18 HR
1B Lance Berkman - .278/.386/.510, 34 HR
LF Carlos Lee - .303/.354/.528, 32 HR
RF Hunter Pence - .322/.360/.539, 17 HR
3B Ty Wigginton - .278/.333/.459, 22 HR
C J.R. Towles - .375/.432/.575, 14 ML games

RHP Roy Oswalt - 14-7, 3.18
LHP Wandy Rodriguez - 9-13, 4.58
RHP Brandon Backe - 3-1, 3.77
RHP Woody Williams - 8-15, 5.27
RHP Chris Sampson - 7-8, 4.59

CL Jose Valverde - 47 SV, 2.66

-Hot Offseason Action Index-

Today is Valentine’s Day, a day for loving the ones you already love, but also for loving the ones you hope to love even more in the near future. So it’s fitting that this year, Valentine’s Day is also the day that pitchers and catchers report, bringing an end to the deadest two weeks in American professional sports, and signaling that spring is finally here.

Because spring training is baseball’s time of love. There is plenty of love to go around for both the veterans you already love, and the young prospects you hope to love very soon. It is a time when every aging veteran has just come back from a new conditioning program and looks better than he has in years. Every rookie seems to have a bit of pop in his bat or a fastball with some good late movement. Everyone seems to have an shot to make the team, and every team seems to have a shot to make big things happen.

What is Spring Training?

Spring Training is Ryan Dempster guaranteeing that the Cubs will win the World Series this year.

It is 2-time AL MVP Juan Gonzalez showing up in the Cardinals camp as a non-roster invitee, two years removed from his last pro season, in which he managed to get only one at-bat.

It is Manny Ramirez embarking on a grueling new workout regimen, promising to be on time to spring training, and boldly declaring that he wants to “be like Julio Franco and play until I’m 48.”

It fans dreaming just how good Clay Buchholz or Joba Chamberlain might be this year.

Spring Training is teams like the White Sox and Astros actually thinking they have any chance of contending. And really, who’s to tell them that they don’t?

Now I know somewhere in the back of my mind that not quite everything is perfect in Baseball Land, and that there was some pretty nasty business going down on Capitol Hill yesterday. And I’ll admit that I myself was riveted to the screen watching it.

But that was before. That was what we clung to for some semblance of entertainment during the dark and dying days of winter.

Today pitchers and catchers have reported, and I am already forgetting. Now there is only the crack of bats, the smack of leather on leather, blue skies, and the smell of fresh green grass. It is officially springtime, baseball is back, and anything seems possible.

ASTROS - pitching depth.
Besides Oswalt, Houston’s rotation currently features Woody Williams, Brandon Backe, Wandy Rodgriguez and Felipe Paulino. That’s a lot of finger crossing.

The ‘Stros have Jose Valverde closing games. And that’s awesome. But other than Valverde, the bullpen offers little beyond Doug Brocail. Geoff Geary and Oscar Villarreal do not inspire confidence.

It’s easy to point to the bevy of all-star names in Houston’s lineup and think that the team’s offense might make up for it’s crappy pitching, but players like Tejada and Berkman are past their primes, while Kaz Matsui is overrated.

Verdict: The Astros need one more top of the rotation starter and some middle relief help.

CARDINALS - starting pitcher.
Go to the ESPN.com stats page. Check out the NL batting stats. The top 75 players from 2007 include just one Cardinal — Albert Pujols. That’s gotta change in 2008. How is that going to change? Three things have to happen. 1. Troy Glaus has to stay healthy. 2. Rick Ankiel has to live up to the Babe Ruth comparisons and 3. Chris Duncan has step up his game. If all three of those guys hit, and Pujols continues to be Pujols, the Cardinals will be dangerous.

Of course, those are a lot of maybes. And even if all of those things happen, that still doesn’t change the fact that St. Louis’ starting staff includes Anthony Reyes and Braden Looper.

Verdict: The Cardinals need one more top of the line starting pitcher. And a lot of luck.

BREWERS - steroids
This offseason, Milwaukee acquired Guillermo Mota, Eric Gagne and Mike Cameron. They already had Derrick Turnbow. That’s three relievers who were mentioned in the Mitchell Report, plus one CF who will start the season suspended. How do they sleep at night?

Verdict: The Brewers need to stay one step ahead of the drug testers.

REDS - Jay Bruce
Rumors abound that the Reds are considering trading their entire farm system — including OF prospect Jay Bruce — for Baltimore ace Erik Bedard. This would give Cincinnati a scary rotation led by Bedard and Aaron Harang. But it wouldn’t solve all of the team’s problems.

Last season, David Ross cought 107 games for the Reds. His OBP was .271. So there’s that.

Also, Ryan Freel is penciled in as the team’s starting CF, now that Josh Hamilton has been dealt. But what happens when Ken Griffey Jr. gets hurt? The Reds need Bruce to get major league ready quick, allowing Freel to serve as a super-sub and giving the team a little more depth and power. If Bruce pulls a Ryan Braun and shows up swinging, the Reds could be contenders, even without Bedard. (Of course, nobody in history has ever pulled a Ryan Braun to the extent that Ryan Braun pulled a Ryan Braun in 2007. But I digress.)

Verdict: The Reds need to keep Jay Bruce.

CUBS - an ace.
Outside of the continuing development of CF Felix Pie, the Cubs’s question marks are all on the pitching side. A handful of relievers, including Kerry Wood, will battle it out to be this season’s closer. Meanwhile, Jason Marquis will attempt to return to form after 2007’s late season collapse.

Chicago has a few good starting pitchers, like Rich Hill, Carlos Zambrano and Ted Lilly. But the team really needs at least one of those guys to step up and pitch like an ace.

Verdict: What the Cubs really need is for Carlos Zambrano to cut down on his walks.

PIRATES - a miracle.

Strengths: ummmmm…
Weaknesses: oy!
Verdict: sigh.

Houston GM Ed Wade has gotten a lotta crap for the moves he’s made this offseason. Nick, who is not prone to hyperbole, just wrote a post describing Wade’s “overwhelming incompetence.” And his is a pretty popular sentiment on the internets.

I’ve defended Wade in the past. But not today. I think his moves this offseason have been, at best, shortsighted. But I will point out this simple fact: the Astros finished 2007 in fourth place. And they’ll enter 2008 with a real shot to win the NL Central.

Now, granted, the Astros playoff chances could only exist in the NL Central, which is a piss-poor division indeed. But we can’t blame Ed Wade for that, can we? Ok, maybe we can blame him for one-sixth of the division’s crapiness. But I digress.

The Astros ended the offseason with an infield lineup that included Adam Everett, Ty Wigginton, and Mark Loretta. Ewwwwwwwwww. They’ll presumably go into 2008 with an infield that still has Wigginton, but now boasts Miguel Tejada and Kaz Matsui, not to mention RBI machine Lance Berkman. That’s a solid group, at least offensively.
The outfield corners will be manned by Hunter Pence and Carlos Lee, both potential all-stars. And Michael Bourn, acquired in a trade with the Phillies, should be, at the very least, a capable defensive player in center and could develop into a threat at the top of the lineup. Plus the team will have Geoff Blum coming off the bench. And now they’ve got a dominant closer to finish games with a flourish.

Now, I know, I know, the Astros still don’t seem to have enough pitching —  though the way Wade is going, nobody would be surprised if he signed a big name in the next few days (Carlos Silva?) or traded the team’s next five first round draft picks for Erik Bedard.

But even if Wade does nothing, and Houston enters 2008 with a rotation consisting of Roy Oswalt and a bunch of question marks, he has succeeded in putting together a lineup that could be successful and surely will be entertaining. And, if you’re an Astros fan coming off a season that offered little excitement beyond the Craig Biggio farewell tour, that probably sounds pretty good right now.

Josh Byrnes of the Diamondbacks is quickly establishing his credentials as the best general manager in the game today. Has this guy made a bad move yet since he took over as D-Backs GM after the 2005 season?

First, he deserves huge credit for putting his faith in his highly talented young prospects last year rather than signing at least a few big-name “experienced veterans” like almost every other GM would have done if handed a similar squad so inexperienced across the board.

This put the D-Backs in a position to win last year, and while it is true that the D-Backs were a “fluke” last year in terms of run differential, it was Byrnes who got them to a place where they could be such a fluke if a few bounces went there way, and this in only his second full season as GM after taking over a team that was one of the worst in baseball only a few years prior.

Now comes the news that Byrnes has just pulled off two stunning trades that markedly and clearly improve his team, acquiring bonified ace Dan Haren from the A’s for six prospects and getting Chris Burke, Chad Qualls, and triple-A starting pitcher Juan Gutierrez from the Astros for closer Jose Valverde.

I am especially shocked by the Dan Haren trade, because it was made with Billy Beane, and normally we are used to seeing Beane be the one fleecing the other team. In Beane’s defense, all six players can be reasonably projected to become major leaguers someday, but all six are grade-B prospects who are projected to be fourth starter or fourth outfielder types.

So while Beane did acquire a significant quantity of talent for his ace, and can be credited with spreading out his risk over 6 prospects rather than getting one mega-prospect who might get hurt or flame out while taking a bunch of flyers on a bunch of grade-C players, I’m just surprised that Beane felt this was the absolute max he could get for Dan Haren.

I mean, this is Dan Haren! The one player I would actually have rather my team traded for more than Johan Santana. Consider that Dan Haren 15-9 with a 3.07 ERA last hear and hurled 222.2 innings. Those are numbers you can put right up there with Santana’s and moving that guy into a much weaker league and a much weaker division is just downright scary.

But most of all, whereas Santana is going to be a free agent, and is due for a ginormous payout, Dan Haren is locked up for the next three full seasons, at the ridiculously reasonable price of just over $5 million per season!

So with Santana attracting big-league names like Jacoby Ellsbury, Jon Lester, Phil Hughes, and Melky Cabrerra as possible return values, it amazes me that in exchange for Dan Haren Billy Beane didn’t even get one name that anyone has ever heard of, and Josh Byrnes didn’t even have to give up one player that had any chance of appearing on the D-Backs’ major league roster next season.

I am almost as impressed by the trade Byrnes pulled off with the Astros, who continue to get themselves torn to shreds by Ed Wade’s overwhelming incompetence. In this case, Byrnes shrewdly leveraged the overvalued stat of the Save to sell Valverde and his 47 saves to Houston for two very useful major league players and a 24-year old pitching prospect already on the verge of contributing in the big leagues.

Burke had a down year last season, but is just hitting his peak years at age 27 and still has the potential to become the player the Astros thought could replace Craig Biggio at second base, and Gutierrez was ranked by Baseball America as the #4 prospect in the Astros system last season, praised for his plus fastball and promising changeup.

But the key to this deal is Qualls. Byrnes is clearly gambling that Qualls is the equal, or near equal of Valverde, only minus the bling of a 40-save season to his name. Qualls has quietly racked up a fine career ERA of 3.39 in 284 major-league innings while pitching half his games in a hitter’s ballpark, and had outstanding strikeout and groundball rates last season, which bodes well for his future.

But even more importantly, Qualls has three years left before free agency to Valverde’s two, so Qualls could make this trade even out all by himself, even if he only provided 70 percent of the value that Valverde does per season over the next three years.

With the Padres and Dodgers treading water and the Giants and Rockies backsliding, I think these trades have to instantly catapult the D-Backs to the status of favorites in the NL West by a large margin. The D-Backs’ pitching was already pretty strong last season, but now they have a second ace to pair with Brandon Webb, giving them a one-two punch similar to the one they had with Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling back when they won it all in 2001.

And with a team full of still developing young players with big upside up and down the lineup, Byrnes appears to be building the Diamondbacks into a perennial powerhouse that will put together strong playoff runs for years to come.

Every December and every July for the past few seasons, Miguel Tejada has been a standby of the trade rumor mill. No longer. The Orioles, looking to start afresh, are shopping all their big-name players this winter and today, they traded Tejada to the Astros for five younguns: Luke Scott, Matt Albers, Troy Patton, Dennis Sarfate, and Mike Constanzo. The reaction at UmpBump was swift and scathing:

Nick to UmpBump Staff - 1:52 pm

Re: Tejada to the Astros

Is there anything more fun than watching Ed Wade run the Astros into the ground?

Paul to UmpBump Staff - 2:01 pm

Re: re: Tejada to the Astros

Yes. Watching Ed Wade run the Phillies into the ground. I miss those days.

Other blogs concur. “That’s a fine haul for Baltimore,” notes MLB Trade Rumors. “The Astros pretty much cleaned out their farm system for two years of an average-hitting third baseman.” Bugs and Cranks takes a quick look at the kiddies’ numbers and concludes that “the Houston Five are a couple lefthanded bats with some pop - particularly Scott, who had 18 homers last year - and three pitchers with varying degrees of promise.” Over at the Fanhouse, the consensus is the same: “For a team that’s short on young players, the Astros dealt a lot of them for two years of Tejada. Everyone knew that the Orioles were desperate to move Tejada’s salary. To get so much in return for a player coming off a down year is a feather in the cap of Andy MacPhail.”

But in Baltimore, the reaction has been very different. On the Baltimore Sun’s blog, Bill Ordine laments:

The Orioles sent Miguel Tejada to Houston, and for all those who thought the four-time All Star shortstop would be tasty trade bait, well, think again.

There are five guys coming here — outfielder Luke Scott, pitchers Matt Albers, Troy Patton and Dennis Sarfate and third baseman Michael Costanzo.

If there’s a household name in there, it’s Luke Scott. And if it is a household name for you, you must live in Scott’s neighborhood.

The deal must have been a hard one for O’s fans who, just a few years ago, were being offered Manny Ramirez and Matt Clement for their four-time All-Star shortstop. And some of these players aren’t exactly hot young prospects with tons of upside—Scott is 29.

But—and now it starts to get interesting—some of those who think Baltimore’s haul for Tejada is suspiciously slim think the Orioles were desperate to unload a player who is sure to be named in the Mitchell report tomorrow. Tejada was linked to Rafael Palmeiro’s steroid probe two years ago, and the blogosphere is rife with conspiracies about Baltimore dumping him today before his name became as poisoned as Barry Bonds’, who is currently out of work and under indictment. FanNation notes that Pettitte also signed his contract today—and has also been mentioned as a possible Mitchell reportee. And for its part, the Associated Press tried to ask about the timing of the deal vis-a-vis the Mitchell investigation, and got stonewalled.

So what do you say UmpBumpers? Who got the better of this deal? The Astros, who get Miguel Tejada for a bunch of guys who aren’t that good anyway? Or the Orioles, who get a cadre of new young(ish) players, divest themselves of Tejada’s salary, and manage to pull it all off just before what little value he has retained takes a nosedive?

1. The Phils couldn’t have done any better. Considering what was available on the free agent market (very little) and what Gillick was willing to part with (not much) this is a pretty good deal. Brad Lidge was once one of the game’s premier closers and has shown that he still can be.

The most important thing about this trade is that the Phillies dealt three guys with little potential for one guy with HUGE potential.

Who knows? Michael Bourn may one day be a star, but the best case scenario has him morphing into Juan Pierre, while the more realistic scenario has him becoming the next Endy Chavez.

I don’t know much about 3B prospect Mike Costanzo, but here’s what Baseball America has to say about him, via http://phuturephillies.com/category/players/mike-costanzo/:

He earned comparisons to Russell Branyan for his prodigious lefthanded power and erratic play at third base, where he committed 34 errors.

Costanzo evokes Branyan also for his strikeouts (157 in 508 at-bats), and his grooved swing will continue to produce holes that pitchers at advanced levels can exploit. He has the athletic ability to adjust and the raw power to hit homers even without squaring up the ball, but he must show the ability to make more adjustments and lay off pitches he can’t hit.

Defensively, Costanzo has the tools to play third, most notably a plus arm. But he has yet to make the adjustments that would make him an average defender. He lacks consistent footwork, and scouts question his agility and infield actions.

Not an inspiring description.

Finally, there’s Geoff Geary, who was shuttled between the bigs and the minors last season. He’s a back of the bullpen guy. A throw in. Whatevs.

2. Philadelphia is a tough place to pitch. If you’re not nervous about Brad Lidge’s mental makeup, than you must know something I don’t. If Lidge thought pitching in Houston was tough, wait until he gets to Philadelphia. Lidge is going to need to get off to a good start, or he might not last long.

3. More work to be done? More good news today, as the Philly Inquirer reports that the team is close to resigning setup man J.C. Romero. Romero was a force for the Phils down the stretch last season.

Romero went 1-2 with a 1.24 ERA in 51 appearances last season for the Phillies, who signed him to a minor-league contract after the Boston Red Sox released him.

So that’s welcome news. Read the rest of this entry »

This may not be a game everyone is interested in playing, but let’s face it: the World Series is over, the Red Sox won, and readers of this particular blog do not need further discussion to know how glorious and awesome the Red Sox are.

Now it is time to focus on the offseason and next year, and Item 1 on the agenda is A-Rod, thanks to the stunt he and Boras pulled last, announcing his opt out during game four of the World Series.

So let’s go ahead and start handicapping where A-Rod might end up…

3-1 New York Mets

Omar Minaya and the Mets are the reigning kings of offering massive, mindblowingly large contracts to whoever are the biggest names on the market at the time - just think back to Carlos Beltran, Pedro Martinez, and Carlos Delgado. Not only can the Mets definitely afford A-Rod already, but they are getting a new stadium and lots of new revenue in 2009. Plus, they’ve shown interest in A-Rod several times in the past, and you know that Minaya is going to want to do something big this offseason to appease the fans and the back pages after the team’s historically epic collapse down the stretch.

5-1: Anaheim Angels of Anaheim

Arte Moreno has shown repeatedly that he is the kind of crazy individual owner that will throw caution to the winds and order the signing of a big-name star to a ridiculous contract that a team under corporate ownership would be less likely to offer. He is much the same sort of gunslinging cowboy owner Tom Hicks was when he signed A-Rod to his last contract in Texas, before Hicks was reined in by his investment partners. Angels attendance and revenue growth have both been phenomenal in recent years, so they can definitely afford A-Rod, and with the way they use their players as interchangable parts, they can easily shuffle people around to make room at third base.

7-1: Boston Red Sox

Flush with even more cash from their World Series victory and facing a possible hole at third base with the free agency of Mike Lowell, it would be easy to imagine the Red Sox going after A-Rod. Although this would definitely anger many Sox fans, a certain subsection of Red Sox Nation has been crying out for the Sox to get A-Rod all season long, and Theo has shown in the past that he is willing to ignore the desires of the fans and go get long-running obsessions like Drew and Lugo. Considering how close the Sox came to acquiring A-Rod in 2004, it would be folly to assume that that option is not in Theo’s mind right now. I still think we are more likely to see Lowell manning the hot corner in Fenway next year, but if he dithers and doesn’t sign pretty much the first contract offer made to him, it might well be A-Rod instead.

9-1 Detroit Tigers

The Tigers are suddenly flush with cash the past few years, having cleverly marketed and leveraged their new ballpark, and owner Mike Illitch has shown that he is not at all afraid to take huge gambles and blow massive amounts of that cash on players nobody else is even trying to sign, such as Magglio Ordonez and his injured knee, or Ivan Rodriguez and his suspect back. Both of those deals worked out rather nicely for Illitch, so if for some reason all the other teams hesitate too long to sign A-Rod due to excessive contract demands or character questions, don’t be surprised if Illitch swoops in and make A-Rod a ridiculous offer even he can’t refuse.

11-1: San Francisco Giants

With Barry Bonds getting the boot, the Giants may well be looking for a new megastar to keep butts in the seats at Pac Bell, er, SBC, er Whatever-it’s-called-now Park. Their overpaying for Barry Zito last year certainly suggests that they are thinking along those kinds of lines. Plus, San Francisco fans have already proven that they are more than willing to embrace a superstar that the rest of the nation hates.

13-1: Philadelphia Phillies

The Phillies are not the first name that usually gets mentioned when people talk about where A-Rod might end up, and he is certainly not the kind of player that you would expect to be popular with the Philadelphia fans, but the Phillies have been on the edge of something big for years now and have been looking for something to get them over the hump, so Philadelphia might actually be the team who would be helped the most by adding A-Rod. The Phillies can definitely afford A-Rod, especially with their still-new stadium and several millions in contracts coming off the books over the next two years (including the $7 million they were still paying to Jim Thome this past season), and they don’t have a strong incumbent at third base (as Wes Helms could easily be shunted to the bench). Plus, as a baseball fan, it would kind of be exciting to see A-Rod added to an infield that already has 3 MVP types in Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins, creating what would indisputably be the greatest infield quartet ever assembled.

15-1: Houston Astros

Faced with a weak NL Central there for the taking and a gaping hole at third base, the Astros are another team which could really be helped immediately by adding A-Rod. They’ve already shown a willingness to drop ridiculous dollars on big-name star power with their pioneering the whole pro-rated Clemens contract thing, and Drayton McClane is the kind of owner with the actual authority to wake up on the other side of the bed tomorrow morning, decide he wants A-Rod, and make it happen. Plus it’s Texas, and Texans like big things.

17-1: New York Yankees

Common sense says that despite their repeated sworn statements that they would not pursue A-Rod if he opted out, the Yankees are the team that most can afford A-Rod, and perhaps the team that most desperately needs him, given their current state of disarray, so they should therefore eat some crow and humbly go back to the table with Boras. But I don’t think this is going to happen, because guys like Randy Levine and Hank Steinbrenner strike me as a men possessed of large amounts of pride, and not particularly excessive amounts of common sense.

20-1: Los Angeles Dodgers

The Dodgers always get mentioned, because we know they can afford A-Rod if they really want to, and plus, they have a huge hole at third base right now. But we have to remember that after the whole JD Drew opt-out thing, Ned Colletti has a huge hate-on for Scott Boras, to the point where he refused to talk to Boras for several months and foolishly didn’t offer Greg Maddux arbitration (thereby losing free draft picks), just because Maddux was a Boras client. Although Colletti has gotten over the worst of his hatred at this point, he is unlikely to have much patience for Boras’s negotiating tactics unless he gets a direct order from Frank McCourt or something.

25-1: Chicago Cubs

The Cubs showed last offseason that they are willing to drop big bucks on free agents. The don’t really have a need at third base, but shortstop has been a black hole for sometime now, so they could try to entice A-Rod with the chance to move back to the premier defensive position on the diamond. That said, one get’s the feeling that the Cubs blew their wad on Soriano last year and especially with the sale of the team getting a lot closer now, they are less likely to give Hendry the free reign to make such a huge financial commitment

30-1 or higher: Baltimore Orioles, Washington Nationals, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates

Nobody saw the Texas Rangers coming last time, so these four teams are my dark horse candidates this time around. The Orioles have always shown a propensity to make sporatic, unpredictable, and irrational plunges into the free agent market, but what they really need is pitching. The Washington Nationals don’t seem to be getting mentioned much, but they are getting a new stadium in a few years, and might see A-Rod as the perfect guy to have as their centerpiece going into their new digs. The White Sox could probably afford A-Rod, although Kenny Williams has not shown much of a tendency to go after guys like this in the past. I’m throwing the Pirates in here, because the Pirates as an organization are certifiably bat-shit crazy. Nobody has been able to understand what they are doing for the past 15 years, and nobody can ever predict what they are going to do next.