Winter Meetings Day One Part Two

Here are some more baeball transactions that occured (or didn't in some cases) during Day One of the Winter Meetings:

- J.J. Putz signs with the Arizona Diamondbacks
Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal on his Twitter feed announced that the Arizona Diamondbacks have just signed reliever J.J. Putz to a 2-yr deal with club option, pending physical. Prorumors.com says the deal breaks down in the following manner:

Ken Rosenthal says that Putz will be paid $4 million in 2011, $4.5 million 2012, and there's a $6.5 million club option or $1.5 million buyout in 2013.

After having a horrible 2009 with the New York Mets, Putz returned to form with his 2010 campaign with the Chicago White Sox. Putz compiled a 7-5 record with a 2.83 ERA in 60 appearances. In 54 innings pitched, Putz struck out 65 batters while walking only 15 and giving up 41 hits for a WHIP of 1.037. Putz saved 3 games for the White Sox. The signing of Putz will bring a stable arm to a bullpen that was very ineffective for the Diamondbacks this past season.

- Click Here for J.J. Putz' career statistics from Baseball Reference.com

- Aaron Harang signs with Padres
Follow the Padres on their Twitter feed announces that Aaron Harang, formerly of the Cincinnati Reds, has signed: a One year, $3.5 million plus a mutual option. Working to get terms of option. During the 2010 season for the Reds, Harang compiled a 6-7 record 5.32 ERA in 22 games. He struck out 82 batters and walked 38 while giving up 139 hits for a WHIP of 1.585. Harang seems to have fallen off from his successful years of 2006 and 2007 when he went 16-11 and 16-6 respectively. I seem to be repeating myself but as with Mark Reynolds and the pitchers traded for him in that deal earlier today, maybe the change of scenery and some hometown cooking will do him good.

- Click Here for Aaron Harang's career statistics from Baseball Reference.com

- Dan Johnson re-signs with the Tampa Bay Rays
The Tampa Tribune has reported on their Twitter feed that the depleted Tampa Bay Rays have re-signed 1B/DH Dan Johnson to a one-year contract. I believe this is an important move for the Rays since their first baseman of the last few years, Carlos Peña, is a free-agent and not seen as returning to the Rays. After spending the 2009 season with the Yokohama Bay Stars of the Nippon Professional Baseball League, Johnson returned to the Rays for the 2010 season. Spending the majority of the 2010 season playing for the Durham Bulls of the International League before being called up. (PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Nesius/Associated Press)

In very limited but important action for the Rays, Johnson batted .198 with 7HRs and 23 RBI. Though the numbers don't seem very impressive, Johnson played four positions for the Rays last year (1B/3B/LF/RF) and his versatility is needed and respected on a team such as Tampa's. I saw this kid hit two homers in a pivotal division game against the Yankees which was overshadowed by the now infamous Derek Jeter faked hit by a ball trick. This game propelled the Rays back into first place and I daresay it may have cost the Yankees the division title. I believe that we'll see more of Johnson this upcoming season in a much more expanded capacity.

- Click Here for Dan Johnson's career statistics from BaseballCube.com

- The Athletics/Iwakuma Negotiations Fall Through
In what comes to no surprise, the A's were not able to come to terms with Japanese pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma. The rights to Iwakuma go back to the Rakuten Golden Eagles and the $19.1 million dollar posting fee is returned to the Oakland Athletics.(PHOTO CREDIT http://cardsandgraphs.blogspot.com)

The story was reported by both Susan Sussler of the San Francisco Chronicle and Jane Lee of the MLBlogs network. Lee states the following as being the position of both Iwakuma and the Athletics during the negotiations:

Iwakuma and his agent, Don Nomura, were reportedly asking for a contract that would average $12 million per season over three years -- numbers that reflect the earnings of fellow Japanese pitchers Hiroki Kuroda (three years, $35.3 million) and Daisuke Matsuzaka (six years, $52 million).

However, the A's were said to have offered $15.25 million over four years -- factoring in the posting fee cost -- as a "take it or leave it" approach. By leaving it, Iwakuma will stay in Japan and become a free agent at the end of the 2011 season.

Sussler also reports in her Twitter feed that:

#Athletics made it clear to Iwakuma that they'll have interest in him next year when he is a free agent.

Whether or not Iwakuma would be interested in playing for the Athletics next season when he becomes a free agent is unknown. Without burning any bridges I would imagine that he would not want to after being quoted as saying "the Athletics really didn't want me." . This leaves a hole in the Athletics' rotation since they traded starter Vin Mazzaro to the Kansas City Royals for Jose DeJesus earlier in the offseason. We'll see where they go from here.

- Click Here for my prior post A's Win Bidding for Iwakuma. Why Bid? from November 8, 2010

- Kevin Correia signs with the Pittsburgh Pirates
According to ESPN's Jerry Krasnick on his Twitter feed, starting pitcher Kevin Correia, formerly of the San Diego Padres, has reached agreement with Pittsburgh Pirates on a 2-year, $8 million deal, pending a physical. Correia compiled a 10-10 record with a 5.40 ERA. In 26 games for the Padres, Correia struck out 115 while walking 64 and allowing 152 hits for a WHIP of 1.490.

In joining the Pirates, he joins a young rotation that is already made up of Paul Maholm, James McDonald and Ross Ohlendorf.

- Click Here for Kevin Correia's career statistics from Baseball Reference.com

That's all that I am posting on the first day of the Winter Meetings. If anything happens from now into tomorrow, I'll post it later.

FH

The Oakland A's Are Making Waves

Of all the teams that baseball fans expected to make noise this winter, the Oakland A's would have barely registered as a blip on the radar. But here we are on November 14th and the A's have made a handful of moves to in an attempt to improve their team.

On November 8th I posted A's Win Bidding for Iwakuma. Why Bid?, which briefly described how the A's won the bidding for Japanese pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma. The potential starting lineup for the Oakland A's is as follows: Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez, Dallas Braden, Brett Anderson and Hishashi Iwakuma. Everyone but Iwakuma is under 27 years of age with Iwakuma being 29 years old. The A's rotation has the potential to be as impressive as the early 2000's trio of Hudson, Zito and Mulder. Time will tell for the Oakland quintet. The A's did not only work on their pitching.

In a pair of moves, the A's claimed Edwin Encarnacion off of waivers from the Toronto Blue Jays. This move seems to add some punch to the A's lineup. In 96 games, Encarnacion batted .244 hit 21 homers and drove in 51 RBI. Encarnacion hit 5 more homers than Oakland's homerun leader 3B Kevin Kouzmanoff and hit more than 2B Mark Ellis, 1B Daric Barton and SS Cliff Pennington combined. The A's also traded pitchers Vin Mazzaro and Justin Marks to the Kansas City Royals for OF David DeJesus. In 91 games for the Royals, DeJesus batted .318 with 5 homeruns and 37 RBI.

The A's did not pick up the option for expensive and injury prone Eric Chavez and have chosen not to resign free agents Ben Sheets and Justin Duchscherer. Rumors also have the A's potentially making an offer to free agent 3B Adrian Beltran so the A's might not be done making moves this offseason.

In stadium news, the A's are looking at various options for a new ballpark. One is a stadium in San Jose that the San Francisco Giants are blocking since the Giants say that San Jose is part of their fan base. Jesse McKinley of the New York Times describes the issues at play in his article Gloves Come Off in Bay Area Baseball Battle dated December 30, 2009. Another option has the Oakland Planning Commission meeting on December 1, 2010 to consider a proposal for a new 39,000-seat stadium located near Jack London Square near the Oakland side of San Francisco Bay. This proposal is being reviewed along with three other areas for a new stadium to keep the A's in Oakland.

In all, A's management is trying to improve on the 81-81 record the team posted this past season and try to pose a serious challenge to the American League Champion Texas Rangers in the American League Western Division.

FH

For Further Reading:
- Click Here for the statistics on the 2010 Oakland Athletics from Baseball-Reference.com
- Click Here for MLB Trade Rumors post on the potential 2011 Oakland Athletics rotation
- Click Here for Carolyn Jones article from the San Francisco Chronicle titled Oakland proposed three sites for A's stadium dated November 11, 2010

A's Win Bidding for Iwakuma. Why Bid?

It was announced today by agent Don Nomura on Twitter that the Oakland Athletics won the bidding for the opportunity to sign Japanese pitcher Hisashi Iwakuma of the Rakuten Golden Eagles of the Nippon Professional Baseball League (NPB). Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle puts the bid within the $17 million dollar range (according to her sources). The A's now have thirty days in which they have to negotiate a contract with Iwakuma and pay the posting fee or if they don't negotiate a deal, they don't have to pay the posting fee to the Golden Eagles. For those of you who don't know why the A's (or any other Major League Team for that matter) would have to bid for the services of a player in the NPB, the contractual issues with Hideo Nomo, Hideki Irabu and Alfonso Soriano in the Nineties led to the development of the "Posting System". The roots go a bit further into history and point to the year 1964. (Photo courtesy of http://japanesebaseballcards.blogspot.com)

There was a player exchange between the San Francisco Giants and the Nankai Hawks in the form of 19-year old pitcher Masanoru Murakami. The Giants were impressed with Murakami's showing while with the minor league Fresno Giants that they decided to sign him to a major league contract making Murakami the first Japanese ballplayer in the major leagues. After the 1964 season Murakami signed a one year deal with the Giants. Upon his return to Japan during the offseason, the Hawks convinced him to stay in Japan and Murakami signed a contract with the Hawks for the 1965 season. This left Murakami contractually obligated to pitch for two teams at the same time and the Giants had paid the fee of $10,000 dollars to the Hawks to retain Murakami for the 1965 season. After some back and forth bickering between the heads of both leagues, a resolution was found. Murakami would be allowed to return to the San Francisco Giants for the 1965 season and then return to play in Japan for the Nankai Hawks for the 1966 season. Murakami would finish his career in Japan.

Since there were tense moments in the dealings between the leagues due to the Murakami situation, the leagues adopted the U.S.-Japan Player Contract Agreement which was also known as the Working Agreement in 1966. The agreement called for both sides to respect each other's contracts, rules and agreements between the teams and their players. In essence this prohibited the raiding of players by both leagues. This agreement stood in place until the year of 1994 with the retirement of Hideo Nomo from the NPB and his signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers of MLB.

Robert Whiting of the Japan Times has an amazing four-part series on the Hideo Nomo's legacy both here in the U.S. and Japan. I'll leave it to you to read them since Whiting covers all the bases when it comes to Nomo and the factors that caused him to leave the NPB to play in MLB. What I will say is that in conjunction with Japanese-American agent Don Nomura, a loophole in the NPB player contract was exploited allowing for Nomo to become a free agent. Nomo retired from the Kintetsu Buffaloes following the 1994 season. If he chose to return to play in Japan, then the Buffaloes would still own his rights. This didn't mean that Nomo couldn't take his services to other baseball leagues including MLB. (Photo courtesy of http://japanesebaseballcards.blogspot.com)

Two other players represented by Don Nomura tested the Working Agreement and led to it being changed. In 1997 the Chiba Lotte Marines and the San Diego Padres worked out a trade for pitcher Hideki Irabu. Irabu refused to play for the Padres and insisted that the only team he wanted to play for was the New York Yankees. The Padres eventually traded Irabu to the Yankees (and we all know how that trade worked out). The second player was Alfonso Soriano of the Hiroshima Carp. Soriano wanted out of his contract with the Carp after the 1997 season and hired Nomura to get him released from his agreement with the team. Soriano would end up signing with the New York Yankees after MLB commissioner Bud Selig deemed him to be a free-agent leaving the Carp with no type of compensation.

In 1998 the system was changed by both MLB commissioner Bud Selig and NPB commissioner Hiromori Kawashima. Rob Smaal in his article Unraveling the mysteries of the posting system on the Asahi Shimbun english website describes the Posting system as follows:

Under the system, a player contracted to an NPB team, who wishes to move to the major leagues prior to reaching free agency, can request that his Japanese club post him. If--and that's a big "if"--his NPB club agrees, the MLB Commissioner's Office is informed and a "silent auction" is held.

Any major-league club wishing to attain the posted player's exclusive negotiating rights then submits a sealed bid through the MLB Commissioner's Office. Once the secret bids have been opened, the player's NPB team is then told the top bid amount, but not which MLB club made the highest offer.

If the NPB team agrees to the posting fee, the MLB club that made the winning bid is revealed and that club then has 30 days to work out a deal with the player, which is separate from the posting fee.

If the two sides can reach a deal, then the NPB club is paid the entire posting fee, which have so far ranged anywhere from $300,000 (25 million yen) up to the staggering $51.1 million the Boston Red Sox paid the Seibu Lions in 2006 for the negotiating rights to right-hander Daisuke Matsuzaka.

If the NPB club is not satisfied with the bid amount, or if no deal can be worked out between the player and the bid-winning MLB team, or if no MLB teams bid on the player, then his NPB club retains his rights.

Is the system fool-proof? Absolutely not. What it ensures that the NPB is allowed to retain their best talent for a number of years before players turn their sights towards MLB. It allows for the teams to recoup part of their investment in players after the players leave for the majors. If the posting system wasn't in place, then most of Japan's best players would be "cherry-picked" by MLB teams leaving the NPB a shell of what it is now. As we've seen in the examples of Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui that the Japanese players can play and succeed in the majors.

Going back to Hisashi Iwakuma, Iwakuma in a 10-year career with the Kintestu Buffaloes and the Rakuten Golden Eagles is 101-62 with a 3.32 ERA in 1422 innings pitches and 46 complete games and 5 shutouts. He has struck out 1085 batters while walking 323 and allowing 1408 hits. Iwakuma's best season came in 2008 when he was 21-4 with a 1.87 ERA in 201.2 innings pitched with 5 complete games and 2 shutouts. He struck 0ut 159 batters while walking only 36 and giving up 161 hits. We'll see if the A's can hammer out a deal with Iwakuma's representatives within the next 30-days. If they can, the A's are lined up to have a very impressive starting rotation for the upcoming 2011 season.

FH

For Further Reading:
- Click Here for Rob Smaal's article titled Unraveling the Mysteries of the Posting System from the Asahi Shimbun english webpage dated 09/30/2010
- Click Here for Rob Smaal's article titled Work in Progress from the Asahi Shimbun english webpage dated 10/02/2010
- Click Here for Hisashi Iwakuma's statistics page from the NPB english website
- Click Here for Masanori Murakami's statistics page from the BaseballCube.com website
- Click Here for Hideo Nomo's statistics page from the BaseballCube.com website
- Click Here for the Hideki Irabu statistics page from the BaseballCube.com website
- Click Here for the Alfonso Soriano statistics page from the BaseballCube.com website
- Click Here to access Robert Whiting's articles from the Japan Times website
- Click Here to access Patrick Newman's thoughts of Hisashi Iwakuma from Fangraphs.com dated 10/18/2010