Winter Meetings Follow Up

Well, the craziest time of the Baseball offseason has passed with Winter Meetings. Although this year they were overall relatively uneventful. The truth is that the days following Winter Meetings have been far more exciting baseball wise, capped off with the most recent announcement that the Rays-Royals pulled off a major deal sending James Shields and Wade Davis to the Royals for a great prospect package headlined by highly touted (and coveted) prospect Wil Myers.

But prior to Winter Meetings I made my own bold predictions about what would transpire, let's see how I fared:

1. Brewers make quiet additions. Well I was right about the quiet part. But I was wrong about the additions. The Brewers in fact made a subtraction when they lost infielder Eric Farris in the Rule 5 draft. In the end though this was good news, I particularly applaud the Brewers on their reported resistance on offering free agent Ryan Dempster anything more than 2 years, a limit I advocated Milwaukee put on free agent starters back at the beginning of the offseason when I first took a crack at how Milwaukee might go about the winter season. I'm glad Melvin did nothing desperate. Job security can prevent a GM from rash signings. In the end, things were quieter than I thought leaving me half right.
2. Twins will sign at least one starter and trade/sign a second. Again, I was half right. But I was stunned at how it happened. The Twins, shortly after handing Ben Revere CF by trading Span for a low level prospect (a move I criticized) Ryan turned around and sent Revere off for a starter now and a starter later. This is in fact the kind of return I was expecting on a Span trade. It was bold, but Ryan should perhaps get some credit for maximizing the trade value of CF's right now. Most blogs I have read see this as a better deal for the Twins. I think that will largely depend on how either one of their current players or someone brought in fills in the CF whole (particularly if top prospect Hicks can step up) and if the prospect Ryan got gets his control under control (pun intended). The immediate addition of Worley I am not excited about as he has been rather overrated. In each season he has pitched his ERA, WHIP, and B/9 have risen and his k/9 has gone down. Plus he's never thrown 135 innings in a season. But he is young and cheap, and certainly could improve and likely could not be worse than what Minnesota put out there. Coupled with the prospect he is a solid bottom rotation addition. The bigger issue is finding someone to really step in and help man the top of the rotation. The name that came up the most in mlbtraderumors.com winter meetings coverage with Minnesota was Liriano, and the team even made a formal offer to him. Yikes! Since that deal was never finalized, perhaps we should be happy that I was again only half right.
3. Yankees will resign Ichiro. Well, who could have predicted that the Yankees would perhaps be the most stingy team at Winter Meetings, so much so that agents were speaking out about their lack of seriousness? It is no secret they want under the luxury tax next year, but they are apparently going to extremes to get that done. But what is so astonishing is they are being so tight when now with ARod's surgery the Yankees have holes in their lineup in RF, 3B, and C (combine Martin, ARod, and Swisher's 2012 and that is a lot of offense lost too). Ichiro I have advocated for some time as the ideal match. So I'm a bit puzzled this has not happened yet, perhaps the Yankees have someone in mind and are waiting for things to happen to change the market. Either way, I was wrong.
4. Phillies will make a big move. I was right. The Phillies garnered a lot of attention dealing for Revere and also setting in motion a deal that was finalized afterwards due to a no-trade clause and MLB approval of money involved which sent Michael Young to Philly. It's not the deals I was expecting, but the Phillies made two of the larger moves. And they deserve a lot of credit, when Upton and Pagan were signed leaving Bourn as perhaps the last true CF leadoff hitter (and the most expensive) they avoided having to pay a lot of money for a lot of years (Bourn is after all a Boras client) by getting a high contact, high speed, high defense player (Revere) who is controllable for many years and currently costs the league minimum. Then in a weak 3B market they essentially got Michael Young for a relief pitcher and a low prospect. But the beauty here is they got most of Young's contract covered. They avoided overpaying (and overcommitting) mediocre players from the market with Young who while he had an unimpressive 2012 has through his career and as recently as 2011 (when he led the AL in hits and was 3rd in batting) shown he can be a quality hitter. He has more upside than probably ever free agent 3rd baseman not named Kevin Youkilis. The Phillies made noise not with the big signing but with smart trading, and they certainly took a lot of attention in winter meetings just as I said. I was right.
5. Seattle trades for a big name hitter or signs Nick Swisher. I was on the right track. Seattle is trying hard to improve their offense. They are rumored to be trying to make a deal for Mike Morse and were through much of winter meetings reportedly among the favorites to sign Josh Hamilton. I outright thought he was too rich for them. While they have been connected to Swisher, they do not seem front runners, and either way did not achieve either of these at the Winter Meetings. So while we're thinking alike, ultimately I was still wrong.
6. Zack Greinke signs with LA. I was right in that he did - ultimately signing with the Dodgers. I was wrong in that it did not happen in Winter Meetings but in the days following. No doubt much of the groundwork was laid at the meetings, and since I'm judging my own predictions to which I am partial I will call this eventually right.
7. Zack Greinke does not beat CC Sabathia's record contract. I was right on this front too. I was in fact double right in that I predicted he would set a new record for right hander's (surpassing Matt Cain's contract extension signed early this year). Technically Greinke set a record for annual salary, but I was talking about overall value, to which CC is still the holder of that particular record. I was worried I was going to be wrong here as much of the rumors during winter meetings suggested it would break the record, but luckily it didn't, and again the contract did not come until after winter meetings, but in general I'm willing to call myself right twice.
8. Juston Upton gets traded. This one looked for a while like it was going to be true, and I think it eventually will be. I just don't see him as a Diamondback on opening day. Especially if the Rangers lose out on another free agent (like Hamilton). It doesn't seem to be a matter of if at this point, but when. That said, as of now, I'm wrong.
9. Pierzynski wears a new uniform. Again, particularly because he makes sense in New York to me I thought this would have happened. I just recently read that the Yanks don't like his defense. But they have a lot of offense to replace this year, how many free agent catchers will be either so good defensively or have that great balance to make it worth passing up on AJ? It's not like Jorge Posada was some defensive whiz during his days in pinstripes. But I can complain all I want it doesn't change the fact that I was wrong.
10. A Cy Young Winner gets traded. Again I thought for a while it was going to happen. Interestingly both Cy Young winners were rumored to be available for the right deal. Compare that to last year's winners of Kershaw and Verlander (two players who are virtually untouchable). It still might. At this point it will most likely be Dickey and not Price since the Rays traded Shields away. But as Rosenthal illustrates, determining Dickey's trade value is rather difficult given that he is an aging knuckleballer, but a cy young winner in a thin pitching market. My gut is he gets traded, but the Mets are so slow on anything they do lately they may wait too long and find they have no suitors. If that happens then they need to extend him. So while we oddly had both Cy Young winners available for trade, no one made the offer that couldn't be refused when I thought someone would, leaving me wrong.

Not the best batting average out there. It was the most uneventful winter meetings in recent memory. This is likely due to the trend of signing stars to extensions, leaving the free agent market with a far more mediocre crop. So long as the offseason as a whole still has some excitement in store and the 2013 season is unpredictably awesome, then I can live with a quiet winter meetings.