I was scanning through Tweetdeck while enjoying lunch until I happened upon this story from NESN. I don’t know what it is with reporting from the northeast corridor of the country lately, but my daughter’s last diaper didn’t smell as bad as this article. The first two paragraphs started out factual but things took a quick turn south:
Now things get tricky. The Rays are no longer looking like World Series contenders. The ‘09 edition of Joe Maddon’s ballclub saw the defense regress, the pitching staff break down and the Yankees and Red Sox cruise to the playoffs. The Rays won 84 games for a decidedly mediocre third-place finish in the American League East.
What exactly does a World Series contender look like in late November? How can anyone objectively make that kind of judgment about a team when free agency is all of two days and one signing old? 40 man rosters were just finalized for the purpose of the Rule V draft but that by no means suffices as final rosters for the upcoming season. As far as the defensive regression, the Rays’ team UZR/150 in 2008 was second best in baseball at 11.0 and in 2009, it was again second best in baseball at 10.6 . Maybe the writer has the Rays confused with the Red Sox who went from 4.7 in 2008 to -2.4 in 2009; that’s defensive regression. Admittedly, the pitching staff did tire down the stretch as it was filled with two rookies and three guys coming off a very long 2008 season at young ages which helped the Rays underachieve Pythagorean win-loss record by two wins.
The article continues by making the critical mistake of quoting an already widely dispelled rumor:
With the Rays out of the playoff hunt for the time being, it makes sense to cut payroll. And Crawford, who was given a $10 million option for 2010, logically looked like the first to go. But on Nov. 9, the Rays threw Crawford a curveball, agreeing to pick up his option and denying the outfielder the chance to join Jason Bay and Matt Holliday on the free-agent market this winter.
It’s hard to be unhappy about being guaranteed an eight-figure paycheck. But Crawford wants more than that — he wants long-term job security. And he thought he was getting it.
“He had a handshake agreement with management that they would renegotiate the contract instead of picking up the option, and they went ahead and did it anyway,” a source told a New York baseball blog last week. “He’s pissed beyond belief.”
To rehash, Crawford’s current deal was worked under the former management team which means Andrew Friedman was under no such obligation to honor said deal and even if he was, there is no way the Rays would have held onto Crawford this long. The depth in the free agent outfield class is what caused Crawford to be a Type B free agent – something that the club could have seen back in July. If there was some kind of secret deal, the smart move would have been to trade Crawford at the trade deadline rather than let him walk after the season for a supplemental second round draft choice. Someone, anyone, find me a team that is willing to let a player in his prime walk away from the club without any compensation when they had a contractual way of keeping that player for another season thus creating a 12 month exclusive window of negotiations with that player. The fact this rumor continues to perpetuate is mind-boggling because when you view it in context, it makes as much sense as taking your family to Somalia for Christmas vacation.
The story goes on:
But both sides have good reasons to get a deal done. Crawford wants to get moving on finding a long-term deal, and as for the Rays, they have no use for a $10 million outfielder when they have little hope of making a playoff run with him. A mutual breakup seems to make sense.
But it won’t be easy to find a team to take Crawford off the Rays’ hands. The usual suspects don’t look like likely suitors. The Red Sox aren’t looking to unload their young pitching prospects in a trade — what they really have to offer for a left fielder is money, and re-signing Bay is their top priority. The Yankees have an opening with Damon on the market, but it’s hard to imagine them putting together a trade package enticing enough to land Crawford.
According to fangraphs, Carl Crawford’s 2009 production would have been worth $24,000,000 on the open market lat season; the Rays paid him $8,500,000. He gets a 15% raise for 2010 and even if he produces 50% of what he did in 2009, he is still coming to the Rays at a discount so I believe the Rays have a strong usage case for Crawford in 2010 despite what the fan of the off-season champion Red Sox writer wants to believe. With the talent the Rays have coming up the ladder, they are building the team into an annual contender, on a budget, and trading Crawford within the division would be counter-productive to that goal. If Crawford is going to end up in Boston or New York, it is going to be through free agency this time next year and not a trade. Since the inception of the franchise, the Rays have made the following trades with Boston and New York:
- 7/21/99 – sent Julio Santana to Boston for a PTBNL
- 5/24/06 – Sold Nick Green to the Yankees
In 11 seasons, those are the only moves the club has made to the teams that have dominated the top of the AL East. If anything, it could easily be argued the Rays have avoided dealing with those two clubs at all costs. The final point of the article is one I cannot argue with – that Crawford is a franchise type player and the Rays should make every effort to sit down and make a deal. This is what I would like to see happen and that is why the club exercised the player option to get a full season to work out the deal. The initial publication of the rumor was bad enough, but to use it as the basis for a separate article is more egregious. If the story had any merit, Andrew Friedman would immediately become the dumbest general manager in baseball for letting Carl Crawford walk away from the club after the best season in his career and get nothing in return. Simply put, the entire situation is not grounded in any kind of reality and serves as nothing more than folly to critical readers.
