While San Diego GM Jeff Hoyer worked the Adrian Gonzalez deal with his ex-Boston employers with one hand, he made what could be another nice deal with the other. Aaron Harang signed a one-year deal with the Padres. As bad as his numbers have been at times in Cincinnati’s home run haven, a lot of those fly balls will result in outs at Petco. I look for a nice rebound for Harang in 2011, but don’t look for Heath Bell to be saving any of his games. Rumors out of San Diego have the Padres committed to trading him before the season.
A story out of Oakland on Friday had the A’s offering a huge deal to Adrian Beltre. I wonder what a "huge" deal is to Billy Beane? Of course they were also "on the verge" of signing Lance Berkman, and he ends up going to St. Louis on a one year, 8 MM deal. I heard that and immediately thought of how tired Colby Rasmus will be next season, chasing down all those fly balls that Berkman and Matt Holiday can’t get to.
With the Gonzalez trade, Boston moves Kevin Youkilis back to third base, and can now throw most of their remaining resources at Carl Crawford or Jayson Werth. They have already re-signed Jason Varitek as a back-up catcher, but do they really want to go with Jarrod Saltalamacchia as their #1 guy? He may be a post-hype break out at some point, or may only remain the MLB player with the most (6) syllables in a last name?
Earlier last week the World Series Champion Giants signed Miguel Tejada to play short, after the Dodgers took Juan Uribe to play the position for them. Jhonny Peralta re-ups to play short with the Tigers, and the Derek Jeter soap opera is done in the Bronx with his new deal. What ever happened to having a guy at the position that can actually get to ground balls?
STATS Inc. devised a number that measures the "Range factor" for fielding. It is determined by taking putouts + assists and dividing that number by 9 innings. It is one excellent way of judging how good (or bad) a fielder really is. It takes into account how many balls a player actually gets to, as opposed to just looking at what they did once they got a ball in their glove. In a list of all of MLB short stops last season, these are the range factor rankings for the 4 shortstops named above:
#59 is Peralta, in 46 games.
#66 is Tejada, in 58 games.
#87 is Uribe, in 103 games.
#89 is Jeter, in 151 games.
There is no way to sugarcoat this list – they all suck defensively. It’s hard for me to believe that any of them (except for Jeter) will remain the primary short stop for their teams in 2011.
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