Too High a Cust Associated
The Bakery is a veritable $1.99 buffet of pastries and pies this morning. If any other blog had a fraction of this "hard" information, we'd be awestricken ...
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=== Sittin' By the Doc on the Bay ===
As San-man aptly put it :- )
Doc has been waiting on pins and needles for the seismo that the M's were still in on Jason Bay, despite the Figgins signing. And here is Geoffy, confirming exactly that.
We'll leave Matty to re-pencil the budget math on a presumption that Jason Bay is actually madly in love with the M's, as reported... he can estimate the contract as well as anybody...
The M's, per Geoffy, are going after Bay "but need to know how much money they have first." He means that Beltre has to decline arb. Yuuccchhh. Well, so Figgins' deal isn't contingent on Beltre's arb -- that's good to know -- but the deal for the 2nd bat most definitely is.
You guys aren't sweatin' it on Beltre's arb. I am. A major league MOTO bat wagered against a 19-year-old amateur with a low-90's fastball.
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Anyway, I'm being a nag :- ) ... hopefully Capt Jack's confidence in Boras' greed is well placed ... and an offense like this would be sweet like ice cream:
1 Ichiro L
2 Figgins L
3 Bay R
4-9 an improving group of youngsters
In classical, non-teamwide-OPS+ terms, the bright-lights offenses of baseball history have generally had four prime time, Marquee Playas on offense ...of course, overall runs scored is the point. But we're just sayin', the James offense from a classical "irresistible" sense is four big bats, two left and two right...
With Bay, we'd be in a position to where any one more bat would give us that. Branyan on the cheap, or Tui or Guti developing, or you're just one tweak away from being there.
=== Defensive Cust Too High ===
I/O: Forget about Jack Cust. There's a line going around that the M's would look to cash-in on a non-tender candidate after next Friday's deadline. Cust is not expected to be tendered a contract by the Oakland A's and there are people in the M's organization that know him well.
... But there is no way the M's would risk throwing Cust and his defensive sideshow out there. ... So, remember that, when listing who you feel the M's would add as a bat. That player has to be reliable enough to be used in the field.
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Crunch: Meaning, also, that Adam Dunn, Jim Thome, etc. would not be options for the M's, if Bay is unavailable.
Zduriencik was earlier quoted that a DH type was possible. Today's word is the reverse. That's fine with SSI.
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A rotodweeb like me is conditioned to value flexibility very highly. One of the yellow stickies on my wall, draft day, is a list of those 6-10 players who play multiple positions. I add 10-20% to their value.
You might have argued that Figgins' flexibility gave the M's the luxury of working with Dunn & Junior or Dunn & Thome or Dunn & Cust. But apparently, since those guys will not get 30-40 games at first base, the effect on Junior would be too drastic.
I have no problem with that.
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Incidentally, here is a case where two smart orgs -- Oakland and Seattle -- have diametrically-opposed positions. Oakland would play Cust not only at 1B, but even in the outfield. Seattle says, no way Jose.
Despite the fact that Oakland's endorsement validates the strategy as reasonable, I'll cheerfully concede that this is a reasonable use of an org philosophy.
If "we want defense on this club" means "the 5% worst defensive players absolutely will not be here, whatever the ROI," that's the M's prerogative. No complaints.
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How the mighty have fallen. Cust is now the laughingstock of the D-sector of sabermetrics. I remember just five* years ago, Jack Cust was on the COVER of Baseball Prospectus as the ultimate saber player.
He's gone from +100 to -100 in five years. And here we thought we had Truth at every point in between :- )
Cheers,
Dr D