RJ, Queen of the Desert
Back to the Sand People, eh Randy? Back to the land of air-conditioned sprawl and irrigation and such, of long coyote nights and hot winter days. You apparently asked, and you apparently received.
There really does seem to be plenty of evidence that Johnson wanted to get out of NYC and back to Arizona, where he lives during the off-season. The point has been referenced almost any time the proposed trade has been brought up. Johnson has also seemed to confirm it with the quotes he's been giving out.
Being a prudent type, though, I then sent Young Sip over to the Bombers' front office yesterday to get a final word. But all our hero could get out of Brian Cashman was a quick "Get out of my face, that's all I ask," a baleful look and a shove of Sip's video camera down to the Yankee Stadium carpet.
Which was funny, because as far as I know, Sip doesn't even own a video camera, and bringing one in this situation would seem to serve only to piss the interview subject off. I know, it doesn't make any sense. Oh, well.
Still, while it does sound like the type of asinine mind-reading Steve Phillips and his merry band of idiots specialize in on ESPN ("Vernon Wells looks scared at the plate..," "Something's eating Jake Peavy...," "Jay Payton must have had a really bad dream last night..."), everything we've seen from RJ backs up the notion that he's not happy with the treatment he's gotten in New York.
There was the introductory camera shove, which was your basic platinum-edition bad omen with full video and audio to boot.
There was the highly embarassing paternity miff that dominated the News and Post for the better part of a week, a story that would have disappeared had Johnson been playing anywhere but New York or Boston. But the world got to see an ugly side of the Unit it hadn't seen before.
Even worse, it got a full look at the hideous daughter he had brought into this world. To be responsible for a creature like that, and then to not even kick in for the check ... well, a lot of nice little old ladies and down-to-earth fans were stripped of any lingering respect they had for RJ at that point. Cy Youngs be damned, this guy's sour-grapes routine was no put-on.
There were the injuries and the booing, which no player -- especially the sensitive types -- really likes. There was the counterproductive feud with that little bitch Posada, which I completely support and understand, but still wasn't especially helpful to team chemistry.
Add all that onto the stuff that happened behind the scenes that we didn't see, and you've got yourself plenty of reason to ask out of the Bronx and back to a less densely populated corner of the country.
All the same, two questions need to be answered. If Johnson really wanted out, should the Yankees have let him go? And if so, was this the right price to get for an aging deadbeat asshole?
I say no and no.
Getting to the alleged deal in a second, the fact remains that RJ may well have been the Yanks best pitcher heading into this coming season, even with all the concerns about his health and age.
For one thing, every Yank starter aside from Wang and Igawa has some combination of age or injury woe to account for. I'm including the overworked Scott Proctor and the still-extremely-young Phil Hughes in that accounting. There's no obvious replacement right there, and perhaps most interestingly, no free agent left to sign.
Johnson was still a) a lefty in a division where that matters more than average and b) a fairly respectable strikeout pitcher. His 5.00 ERA obviously matters far more than those 17 wins (next time you hear someone on the radio talk about "replacing" those wins, turn off the radio), but his 172 strikeouts were still tied for the team lead and eighth in the AL as a whole.
My point is that this isn't an Al Leiter situation, where an aging guy is about to see his strikeout rate crater, start walking folks by the bushel and have to get by on guile and good luck. Johnson's stuff is still there, still among the best in the business, and in a healthy season, you can expect very good numbers.
Well, what about a healthy season, then? It's really too hard to say. Back surgery is completely unpredictable, and you can't trust any of the information teams release on stuff like this.
But you can look at the price ($16 mil. this year, plus a $10 mil. extension for '08, with something like $2 mil. going to Arizona in the trade) and say that at current market rates, the contract is reasonable enough to hold onto. Make sure that if Johnson does come back, he does it on your dime and for you, at coin you can afford.
And you can look at the dowry the Yanks drew for him, and see that they got a fairly mediocre haul. No top prospect a la Detroit's Humberto Sanchez; three low-to-middling suckers, and a middling reliever.
Luis Vizcaino will be 33 next year. He had a nice little 2006 out of the pen (3.58 ERA, 1.22 WHIP), following up on a okay 2005 (3.73 ERA, 1.47 WHIP) with the World Champion White Sox. His home run rate is down from his time in Milwaukee, and if that keeps up, he could make a serviceable middle reliever. If not, he'll lose his job by May. Middle relievers are too unpredictable to have much value.
As far as the young guys, Baseball Prospectus' Kevin Goldstein didn't have a single one of these three guys (Ohlendorf, Steve Jackson and the honorable Alberto Gonzalez) on his D-Backs Top 10 Prospects list earlier in the offseason. (Here's the Mets list to see how he arranges them.)
Ohlendorf is a big dude (6-foot-4, 220) with a live fastball who could be a late bloomer, but he's a goddamn Princeton guy for Christ's sake, and hating fellow Tiger Chris Young out in San Diego is already taking up enough of my mental energy. Jackson and Gonzalez are nobodies.
Basically, the situation is such that if there was any chance at all, any chance, that Randy could gut through another season in New York, you had to try and hang onto him. "A little bit homesick" or even "Not pleased at all" wouldn't have been enough for me in Cashman's situation. It's not like he was a crucial clubhouse influence before, and a slightly more salty Unit is going to suddenly poison the well. Johnson is too potentially valuable to give away at this price.
Now, I can't say for sure that he didn't pull a Sheffield and start dropping hints he was going to tank, or not work hard to come back from surgery, or threaten to cut Jeter's hamstring when he wasn't looking. All of those are very real possibilities for one of the sincerely nasty people in the game.
But there's just so little upside here that it makes me extremely wary. And if Johnson comes back and looks like a stud, then you've basically wrapped yourself around a barrel cactus.
Get it? Like in Arizona, where they have those things ... oh, never mind.
P.S. How's the package of Javy Vazquez, Admiral Halsey and Dioner Navarro look now?
There really does seem to be plenty of evidence that Johnson wanted to get out of NYC and back to Arizona, where he lives during the off-season. The point has been referenced almost any time the proposed trade has been brought up. Johnson has also seemed to confirm it with the quotes he's been giving out.Being a prudent type, though, I then sent Young Sip over to the Bombers' front office yesterday to get a final word. But all our hero could get out of Brian Cashman was a quick "Get out of my face, that's all I ask," a baleful look and a shove of Sip's video camera down to the Yankee Stadium carpet.
Which was funny, because as far as I know, Sip doesn't even own a video camera, and bringing one in this situation would seem to serve only to piss the interview subject off. I know, it doesn't make any sense. Oh, well.
Still, while it does sound like the type of asinine mind-reading Steve Phillips and his merry band of idiots specialize in on ESPN ("Vernon Wells looks scared at the plate..," "Something's eating Jake Peavy...," "Jay Payton must have had a really bad dream last night..."), everything we've seen from RJ backs up the notion that he's not happy with the treatment he's gotten in New York.There was the introductory camera shove, which was your basic platinum-edition bad omen with full video and audio to boot.
There was the highly embarassing paternity miff that dominated the News and Post for the better part of a week, a story that would have disappeared had Johnson been playing anywhere but New York or Boston. But the world got to see an ugly side of the Unit it hadn't seen before.
Even worse, it got a full look at the hideous daughter he had brought into this world. To be responsible for a creature like that, and then to not even kick in for the check ... well, a lot of nice little old ladies and down-to-earth fans were stripped of any lingering respect they had for RJ at that point. Cy Youngs be damned, this guy's sour-grapes routine was no put-on.
There were the injuries and the booing, which no player -- especially the sensitive types -- really likes. There was the counterproductive feud with that little bitch Posada, which I completely support and understand, but still wasn't especially helpful to team chemistry.Add all that onto the stuff that happened behind the scenes that we didn't see, and you've got yourself plenty of reason to ask out of the Bronx and back to a less densely populated corner of the country.
All the same, two questions need to be answered. If Johnson really wanted out, should the Yankees have let him go? And if so, was this the right price to get for an aging deadbeat asshole?
I say no and no.
Getting to the alleged deal in a second, the fact remains that RJ may well have been the Yanks best pitcher heading into this coming season, even with all the concerns about his health and age.For one thing, every Yank starter aside from Wang and Igawa has some combination of age or injury woe to account for. I'm including the overworked Scott Proctor and the still-extremely-young Phil Hughes in that accounting. There's no obvious replacement right there, and perhaps most interestingly, no free agent left to sign.
Johnson was still a) a lefty in a division where that matters more than average and b) a fairly respectable strikeout pitcher. His 5.00 ERA obviously matters far more than those 17 wins (next time you hear someone on the radio talk about "replacing" those wins, turn off the radio), but his 172 strikeouts were still tied for the team lead and eighth in the AL as a whole.
My point is that this isn't an Al Leiter situation, where an aging guy is about to see his strikeout rate crater, start walking folks by the bushel and have to get by on guile and good luck. Johnson's stuff is still there, still among the best in the business, and in a healthy season, you can expect very good numbers.
Well, what about a healthy season, then? It's really too hard to say. Back surgery is completely unpredictable, and you can't trust any of the information teams release on stuff like this.But you can look at the price ($16 mil. this year, plus a $10 mil. extension for '08, with something like $2 mil. going to Arizona in the trade) and say that at current market rates, the contract is reasonable enough to hold onto. Make sure that if Johnson does come back, he does it on your dime and for you, at coin you can afford.
And you can look at the dowry the Yanks drew for him, and see that they got a fairly mediocre haul. No top prospect a la Detroit's Humberto Sanchez; three low-to-middling suckers, and a middling reliever.
Luis Vizcaino will be 33 next year. He had a nice little 2006 out of the pen (3.58 ERA, 1.22 WHIP), following up on a okay 2005 (3.73 ERA, 1.47 WHIP) with the World Champion White Sox. His home run rate is down from his time in Milwaukee, and if that keeps up, he could make a serviceable middle reliever. If not, he'll lose his job by May. Middle relievers are too unpredictable to have much value.
As far as the young guys, Baseball Prospectus' Kevin Goldstein didn't have a single one of these three guys (Ohlendorf, Steve Jackson and the honorable Alberto Gonzalez) on his D-Backs Top 10 Prospects list earlier in the offseason. (Here's the Mets list to see how he arranges them.)Ohlendorf is a big dude (6-foot-4, 220) with a live fastball who could be a late bloomer, but he's a goddamn Princeton guy for Christ's sake, and hating fellow Tiger Chris Young out in San Diego is already taking up enough of my mental energy. Jackson and Gonzalez are nobodies.
Basically, the situation is such that if there was any chance at all, any chance, that Randy could gut through another season in New York, you had to try and hang onto him. "A little bit homesick" or even "Not pleased at all" wouldn't have been enough for me in Cashman's situation. It's not like he was a crucial clubhouse influence before, and a slightly more salty Unit is going to suddenly poison the well. Johnson is too potentially valuable to give away at this price.
Now, I can't say for sure that he didn't pull a Sheffield and start dropping hints he was going to tank, or not work hard to come back from surgery, or threaten to cut Jeter's hamstring when he wasn't looking. All of those are very real possibilities for one of the sincerely nasty people in the game.But there's just so little upside here that it makes me extremely wary. And if Johnson comes back and looks like a stud, then you've basically wrapped yourself around a barrel cactus.
Get it? Like in Arizona, where they have those things ... oh, never mind.
P.S. How's the package of Javy Vazquez, Admiral Halsey and Dioner Navarro look now?
posted by Cheddar Ben at 9:04 AM
11 Comments:
"Now, I can't say for sure that he didn't pull a Sheffield and start dropping hints he was going to tank, or not work hard to come back from surgery, or threaten to cut Jeter's hamstring when he wasn't looking. All of those are very real possibilities for one of the sincerely nasty people in the game."
I'm not sure how far it progressed, but I do know that Johnson's brother died recently, and for that reason he mentioned to Cashman that it was important to him to spend more time with his family. I believe I also read that that was the extent of it -- there was no trade demand or any such thing, but there was the intimation that he'd prefer to play for a team out west, and the Yankees seem to have honored that request.
ahaha That picture is nutz...The very first one....
"Johnson's stuff is still there, still among the best in the business"
Johnson's slider is flat and now lives in any power righty's kill zone, and his velocity is down across the board. He just had serious back surgery. I'm not sure what you're talking about "his stuff is... still among the best in the business." Maybe he's a savvy veteran, maybe he just quote unquote knows how to win, but his 2006 stuff was relatively harmless and I can't imagine back surgery righting all ills. At the same time, his value is fairly good as SM pointed out yesterday, and maybe the Diamondbacks think they have a shot to contend with LA in the otherwise pathetic West. Let's see what kind of contributions Drew and Quentin can make over a whole season. With Webb and otherwise dogshit pitching, they're going to need to hit a lot.
Also, I don't appreciate the lack of even a single shout out on the recent posts despite probably being your most persistent reader. Sour grapes for me.
and RJ's 2006 ERA+ was 88 over 205IP. not good.
if the Yankees can make use of Vizcaino for the year and bring Ohlendorf up in, say, 2008, for any measure of middle relieving success, this will have been one of Cashman's strongest recent trades. they just cleared, what, 14M, i think, dealing a guy that most bet will struggle to perform above league average ever again and gaining a few serviceable arms and adding to their newfound depth in the minors.
cashman has so much money that he can cover up his mistakes often, but this is flat out a strong move for the yankees as i see it.
Speaking of trades: I sometimes wonder...if a genie had jumped out of a bottle when I was 25 years old and offered me a package consisting of Randy Johnson's left arm (and all the fun, glory and money associated therewith) but also his face -- if you've ever dealt with genies you know there's always a catch -- how tempted would I have been to take it?
I'd like to see a Y2K poll on that one.
Lister, you certainly have a shout-out coming your way. I blame others for the oversight. That's on them, as we say.
As far as stuff, I just think everyone's thrown off by context. Johnson's peak was so far above basically every pitcher in history that it's tough to see what he is now, and what he is now is an unpredictable talent who was fairly unlucky last year (his ERA was a full run higher than his peripheral stats would have predicted) and has a decent shot at being pretty good this year.
Again, I might feel differently had the Yanks got back something they really needed (a catching prospect like Miguel Montero, say). But I think if you're trying to win in 2007, and they certainly are, that this was a mistake.
thanks for the response, ben. i'm used to getting ignored here.
::pouts::
"(his ERA was a full run higher than his peripheral stats would have predicted)"
i saw this too but i don't believe it. the peripherals in question here being that his BABIP with runners on base is something like .130 points higher than with the bases empty. this is weird, but i don't think you can just call it unlucky, not when it's that big of a difference over such a big sample of IP.
maybe his back bothers him more out of the stretch. maybe, his arm angle slots in differently out of the stretch and hangs that slider even more. maybe when he is forced to attack hitters he can't blow them away any more.
sure, luck probably played some role in his terrible ERA - i mean he wasn't even close to league average: like i said, ERA+ = 88! but still, the fact is when he allowed runners on, he allowed them in at a shocking rate. you can't behind by bad luck over the course of a whole season.
about trading him, yes it might hurt them slightly in the short-term, but i think the yankees want to see what phillip hughes can do this year. i think he'll get 20+ starts and that he'll be awfully good.
wang pettite mussina hughes pavano? at least until the rocket spawns himself back in the bronx.
Roger Clemens is a pedophile. and a ghey one dat does roidz and kisses his sons in the mouth.
No, I don't think it's a bad thing to get Hughes involved at all, even though I'm beyond skeptical about putting Proctor or Karstens in the mix. If it's me, and all I'm getting in return is guys I could get elsewise, I hang Pavano on the clothesline (sunk cost!) and take a flyer on the HOFer. Maybe the back is better, maybe the slider starts sliding again. Again, it's not a chance most teams should be taking, but I would think the Yanks would be one of those teams.
You couldn't be more wrong. Getting Johnson out of NY was a great move by Cashman who continues to get rid of the "Steinbrenner doctrine" players. Now I'd like to know what the Mets are planning on doing with their rotation as I'm much more concerned about them than the Yankees.
i think karstens is at least serviceable already, if not even league average. i'm with you about procter, however.
i wouldn't mind having karstens in AAA for us ready to spell some innings as a "5th" pitcher, though. he's not another chacon, i think he can have a real career...
anon, what are we going to do about our rotation? well, for most of april you only need 4 starters, and it seems quite likely that glavine duque and maine will all be there. it would take a very bad, not just up and down, st for perez not to make it. when we flip on a fifth guy, i'd expect mike pelfrey to have the inside track with dave williams as the safety valve (if pelfrey cannot get it done).
i can't imagine humber, despite the fact that he is "closer" pitching in shea in april/may simply bc they are going to have to keep his innings/pitches WAY down and continue to bring him along cautiously. as good as he was and as fast as he rose last summer, the guy has like 85 pro innings in him total.
2008 - humber can chuck all he wants as far as im concerned...
Post a Comment
<< Home