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Past Free Agent Review: Kenny Lofton

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Visual proof that Kenny Lofton was indeed on the Yankees.

For the Yankees, the 2003-2004 offseason was an adjustment period. After an emotional victory over the Red Sox in the ALCS, they had fallen flat to the Marlins in a six-game World Series. Andy Pettitte would decamp for Houston; Roger Clemens would retire for the first time; David Wells was persona non grata. With prized Cuban hurler Jose Contreras in tow, the Yankees had to restock the club.

That winter would be George Steinbrenner’s last hurrah. Before taking a step back due to his health, the Boss went on a rampage. Marginalizing Brian Cashman to an extent, Steinbrenner brought in Gary Sheffield instead of Vladimir Guerrero and oversaw a trade for Javier Vazquez. Jeff Weaver, goat of the 2003 World Series, wound up in Los Angeles in exchange for the perennially disgruntled Kevin Brown. Steinbrenner, who banned Yankee officials from attending the Winter Meetings that year, had one more player in mind, and despite objections from Joe Torre, he brought him in.

That player was ticketed for center field. For Bernie Williams, 2003 was a turning point. Williams hurt his knee early in the year, and he would never be the same offensive force again. After the season, it was clear the Yanks needed some outfield help, and so the Boss brought in Kenny Lofton, against everyone’s wishes. Bernie was one of Joe Torre’s guys through and through, and the Yankee skipper wanted little to do with a 37-year-old interloper.

From the start, the Lofton relationship seemed strained. Despite assurances during a press conference that he would even park cars if the Yanks wanted him to, Lofton never really fit. He played in just 83 games for the Yanks, often sitting for stretches at a time because Torre often wouldn’t play him. He hit .275/.346/.395 but brought in for his speed, he was successful in just seven of ten stolen base attempts. He battled some injuries throughout the year and never seemed to fit.

When the postseason rolled around, Lofton had a bare role to play. He appeared in three of the Yanks’ seven games against the Red Sox, and despite some limited success at the plate, he made no appearances between games 2 and 7. When the Yankees could have used his speed, Torre kept him on the bench. The decision still haunts Yankee fans today as they assess the missed opportunities and blown chances from that historic ALCS.

When the season ended as it did, it was clear that things would change in the Bronx, and Lofton became one of the scapegoats. During the first week of December, the Yankees shipped him to the Phillies for Felix Rodriguez. Yet, Lofton had no love lost for the Yankees. He become enmeshed in controversy when he sounded off with Gary Sheffield against Joe Torre and reportedly urged CC Sabathia to turn down the Yankees. Bad feelings, it seems, run deep.

The bad feelings left over from Lofton’s tenure in New York weren’t entirely his fault. He arrived at a time of conflict between warring factions in the Front Office, and Joe Torre wasn’t about to let George Steinbrenner dictate his starting lineup. Still, the Yankees had a potential weapon in Lofton, and their field general didn’t want to recognize that. Today, the Yanks’ roster is far more balanced, and the players all have their roles. The team has certainly come a long way since the days of Kenny Lofton.

RAB’s Top Ten Posts of 2011

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As 2011 drew to a close, I poked around on Google Analytics, as I often do. We had over 16 million pageviews last year, and were it not for ALDS Game 5, we would have had more. We had a noticeably significant drop-off in traffic after the Yanks’ early departure from the October dance.

While I’m a few days late on it this year, I always like to highlight our top ten most trafficked posts of the year. As always these do not include game threads or open threads.

1. Predicting MLB Trade Rumors’ Top 50 Free Agents
Our most popular post of the year hit in November when Joe tried to predict landing spots for MLBTR’s top free agents of the winter. So far, out of his top ten predictions, he’s 2 for 9 with one still out there. That one, of course, is Edwin Jackson.

2. 2011 Preseason Top 30 Prospects
Mike ran down his top 30 prospects of the season shortly before Spring Training began. Jesus Montero and Manny Banuelos took the top two spots, and I believe they’ll do the same again next month.

3. Camp Notes: Rotation, Burnett, Jeter, CC, More
This was a post from the first day of Spring Training. While the news was bland, it was baseball. We had waited all winter for that first day of camp.

4. Brian Cashman, Prevaricator Extraordinaire?
As the Yanks’ offseason continued, it’s been one of stasis. The team, in need of a pitcher, seems committed to bringing back nearly the same club — sans Jorge and Bartolo — as last year, and Brian Cashman keeps perpetuating the notion that the Yanks are just waiting out the right move. Moshe wondered in December if it was all just a ruse to keep potential trade partners from trying to take advantage of the club with all of the money.

5. Yankees made bid for Darvish, high bidder could be announced tonight
That bid, we learned today, was for a meager $15 million, but everyone wanted to talk about Darvish.

6. Report: Indians, others have interest in Swisher
Despite the fact that he’s a very solid right fielder who fits well into the Yankee lineup and comes with a very affordable price tag, Yankee fans have searched high and low to find ways to trade Nick Swisher. Just before Christmas, word got out that a few teams, including the Indians, would be interested in a deal. Of course, trading Swisher just opens up another hole in the Yankee lineup and one not easily filled. He’ll be around on Opening Day.

7. 2011 Draft: Yankees take Dante Bichette Jr. with 51st overall pick
Many raised eyebrows and a good number of complaints were silenced by a stellar Gulf Coast League debut for the now-19-year-old Bichette.

8. Hideki Irabu, 42, found dead in Los Angeles home
The troubled former Yankee took his own life after a battle with his own inner demons and lofty expectations. Irabu was a heralded Japanese import who never lived up to his reputation.

9. Repeating History with Yu Darvish
Considering the Yanks were never that into Yu Darvish, he certainly garnered a lot of discussion this fall. He and the Rangers, by the way, have yet to work out a deal, but indications are that he will sign. Can he front a rotation that’s been searching for a true ace for a while?

10. Yankees win bidding for Japanese shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima
The Yanks put in a $2 million bid on Nakajima seemingly as an afterthought, and scouts say he’s not much of a hitter or fielder. Right now, it doesn’t sound as though a deal is on the horizon, but the two sides have until Friday to work out a contract.

So the hot topics were mostly about free agency and the winter of our discontent. The Yanks lost an ALDS they could have won and have yet to make a splash with Spring Training just a few weeks away. We yearned for Darvish; we got Nakajima; and we’re still waiting for some of those top 50 free agents to sign. It was a great ride in 2011, and we’ll be here again, of course, for 2012.

Remember Hideki’s arrival as Darvish slips away

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All of the recent brouhaha over Yu Darvish, I got to thinking about Hideki Matsui. Unlike many high-profile Japanese players who made the jump to the states, Matsui hit the Majors as an unrestricted free agent. There was no blind bidding process and subsequent negotiation. Hideki was free to pick whatever team he wanted. It almost made sense.

For Darvish, the decision to push his team to post him was a calculated risk. As ESPN.com’s Patrick Newman and Eno Sarris showed (in an Insider-only piece) on Tuesday, Darvish probably could have made more had he waited a few more years. If his deal with the Rangers ends up being at an annual level of around $12 million, there’s a good chance he would earn more in the long term by returning to Japan this year and entering the States via bidding process. Teams wouldn’t have to pony over sunk dollars on a posting fee, and Darvish would stand to make all of the money from his contract.

Yet, the allure of guaranteed dollars is a tough one to resist. It’s why pitchers are willing to sign seemingly below-market deals earlier in their careers. The threat of injury lurks, and easy access to millions is too tempting to turn down. Darvish will sign a deal that locks him up for five or six years, but if he’s as good as advertised, he’ll cash in again in his early 30s. That said, he would be wise to sign a high-dollar, low-year deal with the Rangers and hit free agency at 29. Texas, though, would rather lock him up for longer.

Anyway, I digress. The erstwhile World Series MVP was my original focus. I realized a few days ago, as the Yanks continued through a silent off-season, that I missed Matsui. Now, I don’t believe the Yanks should bring him back, but I miss his presence in left field and his bat in the lineup. Bring back the glory days of Matsui, the player who hit .292/.370/.482 on the Yanks, and I’ll be happy.

So how anyway did the Yanks land Hideki? It was the more traditional path. By the end of 2001, Matsui’s name was bandied about as a future Major Leaguer. He was the highest paid Japanese player at the time, and the next stop for him would be the States. The first time the Yanks were tied to him arrived in August of 2002 when Jack Curry reported that Jean Afterman was scouting Matsui. Over the next few months, rumors of the Yanks’ interest hit the news. Would the Bombers land both Jose Contreras and Hideki Matsui prior to 2003?

Hideki was a new — and seemingly rare — breed of Japanese players. He used a quick bat to pull the ball and was a power hitter more in the American baseball mode. As the offseason wore on, both the Yankees and the Mets emerged as potential suitors for Matsui’s services. As the Yankees tried to determine if they wanted Bartolo Colon or Roger Clemens for 2003, they stepped up their pursuit of Matsui as well, and by mid-December, they seemed poised to land him for three years and $20-21 million. It was an easy negotiation and an easy deal. Godzilla came to New York.

Since Matsui’s arrival, no Japanese player has made quite the same impact on Major League Baseball. Daisuke Matsuzaka and, to a greater extent, Kei Igawa failed to deliver as advertised, and no power hitters or All Star position players in the Ichiro or Matsui mold have arrived on U.S. soil. Now, it’s Darvish’s turn, and in Texas, where the defending AL Champs are in bad need of pitching, he’ll get a chance to star. The whole world will be watching.

Mailbag: How much for A-Rod, the free agent?

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(Photo by Nick Laham/Getty Images)

Brian writes: Just curious. If A-Rod was a free agent this offseason, what would his value be in terms of years and AAV?

When Albert Pujols signed his contract with the Angels, amongst Yankee fans, it put the spotlight back on A-Rod’s massive deal. The two 10-year humdingers aren’t what I would call good contracts, and the Yanks have seem A-Rod, who is going to get paid through 2017, break down considerably over the past three years. There’s no doubt that if A-Rod were a free agent today, he wouldn’t get a six-year, $143-million deal — essentially what he has now with the Yanks.

But what, as Brian wrote to us, would he get? I asked Joe, Larry, Mike, Moshe and Stephen to chime in on this one, and what follows is a RAB roundtable on this intriguing question. While opinions differ as to his likely landing place, everyone believes A-Rod would get three guaranteed years and decent money to boot. Keep reading for our predictions. [Read more…]

Heyman: Yanks ‘seem to like Kuroda best’

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As the Yanks await word of their bid on Yu Darvish and seemingly plan for a 2014 austerity budget in order to save a few million dollars, pitching is still a major concern. After CC Sabathia, the Four Horseman of A.J., Freddy, Phil and Ivan do not exactly scream out “confidence.” That’s one of the reasons why we’ve been keeping an eye on Hiroki Kuroda, the 36-year-old right-hander. Mike made the case for Kuroda in both May and December.

Still, as the free agent market remains at a standstill, the Yankees, according to CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman, like Kuroda best of the available pitchers. Unlike John Danks, for whom the White Sox asked for two of Dellin Betances, Jesus Montero and Manny Banuelos, Kuroda would cost only money and would likely to be willing to sign a shorter deal. We already know he’s willing to pitch on the East Coast, and the Yanks seem at least interested, if not eager, to have him.

Kuroda is a pitcher who could do well in Yankee Stadium. He gets strike outs and keeps the ball low. He’s been fairly durable too, throwing nearly 400 innings over the past two seasons. He earned $12 million last year and would likely be in line for a similar deal this year. To shore up a shaky rotation, the Yanks could do much, much worse.

Building a better posting system

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As the afternoon hours tick away in Japan, Major League Baseball and its fans are eagerly awaiting word of the Yu Darvish sweepstakes. The bidding ended at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, and we know the Yankees posted a bid. Some reports say the Yanks’ bid isn’t very substantial, and Jon Heyman called it a “modest bid.”

Right now, all we know is basically nothing. No one has yet leaked the winning figure or the winning team. We don’t know what the Yanks submitted. Maybe they went low in the hopes of preempting a skittish field. Maybe, after four years of scouting Darvish, they weren’t willing to bid high and then follow up that bid with an equally lucrative deal for an unproven commodity. Of course, the recent failures of Daisuke Matsuzaka and Kei Igawa could be fresh in their minds, but those are inexact comparisons at best.

As we wait out the results, though, I pondered the posting system earlier today. Spurred on by an article in The Times, I realized just how ludicrous a system this is. A team in Japan posts a player, and then Major League Baseball clubs submit a blind bid for the exclusive right to negotiate a deal. If the negotiations fail, that player simply returns to Japan, and the team gets its money back. There’s no incentive to give the player a fair market deal, and the team winds up spending its assets on the posting fee rather than the player.

The agents certainly don’t like the system as they suffer tremendously. “The system has already failed,” Scott Boras said to The Times, “and that type of thing is only going to increase. I lived through it with Matsuzaka. As it stands, this system doesn’t benefit anyone.”

So what might happen? In the piece, David Waldstein noted that changes may be coming to the posting system. He writes:

The posting system was introduced after the experiences of Hideo Nomo and Alfonso Soriano, who escaped their Japanese teams via loopholes. Then in 1997, the Chiba Lotte Marines, who had a working agreement with the San Diego Padres, agreed to let them sign Hideki Irabu, who refused to play for San Diego and forced a trade to the Yankees. “It wasn’t fun,” recalled Arizona Diamondbacks General Manager Kevin Towers, who was the Padres’ general manager at the time. “I think that episode annoyed a lot of people, and that’s why we have the system we have now, as flawed as it might be.”

But it might change within a couple of years. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, a committee will be established to discuss a worldwide draft, including changes to the current system along with Nippon Professional Baseball.

Boras suggested a sliding scale whereby Japanese players can negotiate with any team and their Japanese teams would receive a percentage of the contract. For instance, if a player leaves after one year, the Japanese team would get 80 percent of the contract, 50 percent after five years and 20 percent with just one year remaining before free agency. “A lot of Japanese players aren’t successful here because they aren’t comfortable in their situation,” Boras said. “If they could choose where they want to play, their success rate would definitely increase.”

Who knows if Boras, as he often does, is just selling a load of hooey. Maybe Japanese players aren’t successful because they are siphoned off to one team and have to negotiate with little leverage. Maybe they’re not successful because they just can’t beat Major League competition. Either way, the posting system is a bit of a strange beast, more akin to the amateur draft than anything else. Veteran players aren’t given the option to pick their next team. How peculiar.

For now, though, we’ll wait it out for a little while longer. At some point soon, Yu Darvish’s potential future employer will be announced. I’m not too optimistic it will be the Yankees, but as a famed broadcaster likes to say, sometimes, you just can’t predict baseball.

Biz Round-Up: Sweet Lou returns, MLB rule changes

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Report: Lou Piniella set to join YES Network team

An old familiar face is getting ready to return to the Yankee family. One-time Yankee player and manager Lou Piniella will be rejoining the Yankees as a spring training instructor and YES Network analyst, Bob Raissman of The Daily News reported yesterday. Piniella, who served as a San Francisco Giants’ consultant last year, wanted to stay in baseball but also wanted to be close to his home in Tampa. The Yanks were the perfect fit.

According to Raissman’s report, Piniella will do “a limited number of appearances” on YES. The News scribe expects the former skipper to be in the booth come Opening Day in the Trop, and he’ll do a handful of other series throughout the season. The Piniella deal isn’t final yet, but a YES Network spokesperson confirmed to Bryan Hoch that the two sides were working toward a contract. It’ll be good to hear Sweet Lou, who served in the MSG broadcast booth in 1989, back on TV.

Rule tweaks dominate new MLB Basic Agreement

Later this week, the MLB Owners will ratify the new Major League Baseball Basic Agreement, and as the Players Association approved it today, it will become the law of the baseball land. We’ve heard a lot about the changes to the luxury tax, the amateur draft and international spending. Now, courtesy of the Associated Press, we learn about the myriad minor rule changes as well.

Many of these rule changes are common-sense. The Yankees, who should have played the Wild Card Rays this year in the playoffs but did not, would under a rule that allows teams from the same division to meet in the Division Series. MLB, as was reported earlier this fall, will expand instant replay to include “trapped” catches and some more fair/foul calls. The All Star Break will now be four days, and the game may move to Wednesday beginning in 2013 as well.

For players, MLB has banned tattoos with corporate logos and obscene nicknames written on equipment that may be visible to fans at the stadium or at home. Furthermore, David Ortiz will no longer be allowed to whine about his RBI total as players are banned from requesting scoring changes from the official scorer. Only MLB may hear an appeal now.

My favorite new rule change concerns uniforms though. Here’s how the AP describes it:

Quick uniform number switches will be a thing of the past. Players must tell the commissioner’s office by July 31 of the preceding year if they want a new jersey. That is, unless “the player (or someone on his behalf) purchases the existing finished goods inventory of apparel containing the player’s jersey number.” As in, every replica jersey, jacket, T-shirt, mug and anything else with a number that’s anywhere in stock.

How utterly vindictive.

Finally, one popular team practice has been eliminated as well: Clubs may no longer summon Minor Leaguers to the Majors without activating them. In other words, no more will top prospects be allowed to watch the rest of the regular season unfold in late September from the bench. The Yanks have done this in the past with their youngsters ranging from Derek Jeter to Jesus Montero and beyond. All told, though, these rule changes seem fairly reasonable to me.