The Futility Infielder

Towards the end of a recent Baseball Prospectus Radio roundtable in which I participated, BP's Joe Sheehan made a comment that came ringing back to my ears on Saturday:

The willingness the Yankees have to assume contracts is such a huge advantage over just about every other team in baseball that any hole that develops, they can probably fill. It actually doesn't matter. If George Steinbrenner decides he wants to go out and assume a contract, he can fill a hole, even if Jeter goes down, Soriano, Posada, the Lofton/Williams platoon in centerfield. I honestly think that we may be seeing a perpetual success machine... I now realize money simply isn't going to be an object. With so many teams willing to give up contracts regardless of the talent they get back, the Yankees are in a great position.

Less than two weeks after Joe said that, the Yankees are taking on the biggest contract in professional sports history, that of Alex Rodriguez, who will switch positions and play third base. All it will cost them is one star player, Alfonso Soriano, and a player to be named later, likely an unspectacular minor league pitcher, the withered fruit of a relatively barren farm system. And when it's all said and done, the Yankees will have paid less for the last seven years of A-Rod's contract than the Rangers did for the first three. All while the Red Sox, who spent weeks trying to acquire him this winter, tantalizing their fans, look on.

After working my jaw back into its hinge, where do I start talking about this deal?

Money: If ever a deal showed that trades in professional sports have more to do with exchanging payroll obligations than they do with swapping talent, it's this one. Sheehan was right: the Yanks' willingness and ability to take on contracts separate them from the pack. While it's not a mismatch on the talent front -- clear edge to the Rangers, but not by as much as you'd think -- this deal is a mismatch on the salary front: the Rangers owed $179 million (out of $252 mil overall) over seven years; Soriano is due $5.4 million on a one-year deal and has two more years prior to free agency.

The mismatch is in the money. Or maybe it's the brains behind that money. Texas GM John Hart spun the deal by saying "It's about flexibility. We're trading the best player in the game and we're getting tremendous financial flexibility." What the Rangers are getting is the flexibility to droop their tails even further between their legs while paying $67 million to watch their mistake of a blockbuster signing play ball for a team that probably didn't need the extra help. That's over one third of the contract's remaining value.

For the Rangers', you know, flexibility, the Yanks make out like bandits. Here is the annual salary breakdown between the two teams, in millions:

       TX   NY

2001   21

2002   21

2003   21

2004    3   15

2005    6   15

2006    6   15

2007    7   16

2008    8   16

2009    7   17

2010    6   18

bonus  10

defer  24

-------------------

      140 112

The Yanks end up paying less money -- 40 percent of the total contract, an average of $16 million a year -- for seven years of A-Rod than the Rangers will for three. The Rangers' cost: $46.7 million per year in uniform, a Texas-sized sum in the annals of the sport's financial history.

What's more, the highest paid player in the history of sports won't even be the highest-paid player on his own team for another six years. Here's a comparison of the major Yankee contracts, including Jeter, Jason Giambi, and Mike Mussina, their biggest other commitments (* denotes club option):

      AR   DJ   JG   MM

2004  15   18   10   14

2005  15   19   11   17

2006  15   20   18   17

2007  16   21   21   17*

2008  16   21   21

2009  17   21   22*

2010  18

That comes out to a maximum of $70 million for just four players on the 2006 payroll, and $75 million on the 2007 if they pick up Moose's option. As my late grandfather would say, "My aching back."

In terms of what this means for the 2004 Yankee payroll, it isn't much. Soriano's $5.4 million comes off of the books, and you can rest assured Aaron Boone isn't getting his $5.75 million anymore; the Yanks will probably pay him the $900,000 or so they owe him plus a pair of mylar balloons that say "Get Well Soon!" and "Thanks for the Memories!" That alone will raise their payroll about $4.75 million, and probably even less assuming that Tyler Houston's 900K minor-league deal won't pan out, and while you're at it cross Drew Henson's $2.2 mil off of the list. That's down to a less than $2 million dollar increase. But it does push the total dollars of Yankee contract commitments to around $650 million. Yowzah.

Onto the talent portion of our competition...

At the Plate: If one only looked at their triple crown stats, this deal would look like something of a wash, a powerful and speedy leadoff hitter being traded for a powerful middle-of-the-order bopper who's pretty nimble as well. But once you peek under the hood, the differences are apparent. Soriano is pretty decent man with the stick, thought he's got some serious holes in his game, primarily in his inability to draw a walk and a fatal lust for low-and-away. A-Rod? Well, hitters don't get much better than him, period.

      Sori  A-Rod

AVG  .290   .298

HR     38     47

RBI    91    118

SB     35     17

OBP  .338   .396

SLG  .525   .600

OPS+  128    148

EQA  .296   .325

RARP   55     78

The difference between the two is substantial but not staggering; A-Rod is worth about two more wins with the wood than Sori. Looking at the WARP numbers (which include fielding), he had 11.6 WARP1 last year to Sori's 9.2. That's "two and a half wins" to you and me.

Soriano's visible weaknesses at the plate and in the field made for easy scapegoats as the Yanks lost the World Series last year. Joe Torre's inability to resist the temptation to bat him leadoff exposed his flaws all the more, since he couldn't get on base enough to suit the needs of a would-be offensive juggernaut, and by the end of the World Series, that had all placed a ridiculously unfair amount of pressure on a talented if slightly limited player.

Though occasionally the most frustrating, Soriano was the most exciting, electric Yankee to watch over the past two years, and he may well go on to hit 500 home runs and steal 500 bases in the major leagues. Bless him if he does, because he's a fantastic talent, and a good, likeable kid to boot. He deserves to go someplace where he'll be appreciated for what he is rather than scrutinized and scorned for what he isn't. Godspeed you, Alfonso Soriano.

In the Field: Rodriguez's offer to move to third base is the politically correct one, but from coast to coast, it's got statheads snickering in unison. The joke is that Jeter is possibly the worst defensive shortstop in the game, while A-Rod is very good, if not one of the best. Looking at some of the more new-fangled defensive measures:

      DJ   AR

BP   -22    5  Baseball Prospectus Fielding Runs Above Average

UZR  -31   11  Ultimate Zone Rating runs above avg. 

               (including arm) 4-yr. weighted

WS   1.3  4.7  Defensive Win Shares per 1000 innings

I won't take the time to explain the methods behind those measures right now, but they're all a hell of a lot more advanced than Fielding Percentage, Range Factor, and Zone Rating, they all have a lot of good thought behind them that's far beyond the simple stuff, and they all say the same thing: Jeter's D stinks like a hyena carcass rotting in the desert sun, while A-Rod's pretty good.

The even more politically correct thing would be for Jeter, the captain of the Yankees, to take one for the team and realize he should be switching positions. While the man is as uncontroversial, well-mannered and team-oriented as anybody in the game, that simply isn't going to happen in 2004. Jeter's pride has its limits, and his past overall performance, role as captain, and lack of time to consider a move buy ought to buy him one year of this arrangement with little griping. Given a full season and a winter to think about it, the situation might change, but hey -- so might the Yankee willingness to send Derek to... well, let's not go there just yet.

The real question for the coming season is what the Yankees do with the hole at second base. While somewhere there's a Yankee fan throwing up his hands in despair like he really does care, it isn't going to matter much. They could run third base coach Luis Sojo, stunt double Enrique Wilson, futilityman Miguel Cairo, or even yours truly out there every day and still win 95-100 games. It wouldn't surprise me to see them give forgotten prospect Erick Almonte a taste of second, but this being the Yankees, they'll probably up the ante and pick up somebody with a little more upside, at least with the leather. Might as well get one glove man in there to field those ground balls.

One option, depending on the results of Boone's surgery and subsequent rehab is to scuttle through the first several months of the season with Your Name Here and then have Boone, who played 19 games at second last year, take over the job when healthy enough. From the standpoint of offense, this might be the best option. Defensively, not so much.

Irony: The Red Sox hopes were crushed last fall by one swing of Aaron Boone's bat. They labored for weeks trying to get Rodriguez in a deal for Manny Ramirez. Because of several factors, the deal fell through. Later Boone tore up his knee and Red Sox Nation uttered a collective Nelson-esque "ha-ha" as the Yanks sifted through the Enrique Wilsons, Tyler Houstons, and Mike Lambs of the world, looking for a third baseman that could take them up to the trading deadline. Boone's injury turned out to be the Sox worst Bucky F-ing Dent nightmare once Rodriguez told the Yanks he'd be willing to play third base.

More Irony: That the deal went down so fast goes to show that being Bud Selig's Public Enemy #1 has its advantages. The spin on the Red Sox foiled A-Rod deal was that the Players' Association wouldn't agree to the way Rodriguez's contract was restructured. But it doesn't take a genius to read between the lines and see that while there were ways of restructuring the contract that met MLBPA's rules, that restructuring would have put the Sox over the luxury tax threshold this year, joining only those big bad bullies from the Bronx. Since Bud had hand-picked the John Henry-Tom Werner-Larry Lucchino ownership group, they were essentially bound by his wishes to stay in line while the so-called Evil Empire broke the bank.

Even More Irony: The deal happened so quickly that the cottage industry of pundits who placed their round-the-clock reportage at the center of the affair were nowhere to be found this time around. Can a blockbuster deal happen without Peter Gammons telling us about it ten times a day? The answer is a resounding "Yes!"

The second base hole left behind by Soriano notwithstanding, there's simply no way of looking at this as anything but a clear and solid win for the Yanks. Faced with a lineup with several question marks from the age/injury standpoint, this trade goes a long way to improve their long-term outlook, giving them at least one star player who's not on the wrong side of 30 yet. Rodriguez is 28, about 13 months younger than Jeter, who's got considerably more question marks attached to his name already.

They're getting a good if not equivalent player in Soriano, but the Rangers are the big losers here. Tom Hicks has shown that hubris is a quarter-billion dollar industry these days. The Red Sox chalk up an "L" as well, as this deal instantly overshadows the legitimate improvements the Red Sox made this offseason (Curt Schilling, Keith Foulke and, um... Pokey Reese?) while giving both their brass and their fan base an uneasy feeling of what might have been in the sport's most heated rivalry. The Mets, who passed up a chance to sign A-Rod three years ago, are forever in the loss column on this one. The Dodgers, who under better ownership would have known a marquee attraction when they saw one, missed the boat as well.

It will be a matter of no small debate in the papers and online as to whether the other 25 major league teams lost here as well. Hands will wring. But one thing is clear: the way the last Collective Bargaining Agreement targeted the Yankees with its luxury tax has done more to exacerbate the so-called problem than it has to solve it. Winning ballclubs make money, especially when they want to win even more. Bud, who knows less about building a winning ballclub than the Butcher of Baghdad, did everything he could to alienate Steinbrenner and the Yanks during the construction of that CBA. He'll offer even more reactionary ideas the next time around -- a 50% Pinstripe tax, perhaps. The other owners might want to think twice about listening to him.