The Futility Infielder

Last night's late news about the Yankees' impending signings of Jaret Wright and Tony Womack set off a flurry of emails amongst a contingent of pinstripe-inclined bloggers and Baseball Prospectus-affiliated writers -- the usual smart-guy suspects. The subject line of mine was "come back, Kenny Lofton! we love you! all is forgiven!"

It's fair to say that none of us who weighed in like either deal very much, though our derision for the Womack one is more scathing. Reconstructing from what I've said in those emails and a few other pertinent ones related to recent Yankee deals, the main points are these:

• The Womack deal, which coincided with the Yanks cutting ties with the eventual winner of last year's second-base sweepstakes, Miguel Cairo:

      ----Womack---   ----Cairo----

      AVG  OBP  SLG   AVG  OBP  SLG 

2004 .307 .349 .385  .292 .346 .417

car. .274 .319 .362  .273 .322 .370

What we have are two players who enjoyed career renaissances last year, Womack in St. Louis and Miguel Cairo in the Bronx. The difference is that Womack, who has more speed (26 steals last year, a career high of 72) is 35 years old while Cairo, who showed more power, will be 31 and thus a safer bet not to decline so much. Not falling in love with Cairo for his flukey season and hence not budging on their offer of a one-year, $1.5 million deal for a guy more suited to a utility role than an everyday one is sound thinking. Replacing him with the empty speed and proven veteran herbs and spices of Womack is not, even at the comparatively modest price of $4 million over two years.

The move has been attributed as a Gene Michael brainfart brainchild by the New York Post, though it's likely Joe Torre is smiling. Womack is the type of player Torre needs a restraining order to avoid, as he will bring out his Chuck Tanner-esque tendency to bat him leadoff, a terrible idea. Womack is more suited to what my pal Nick calls the Kenny Lofton Memorial Second Leadoff Spot, i.e., batting ninth, if he must be in the lineup at all.

He's no great shakes defensively, either. According to Baseball Prospectus' metrics, Womack's fielding at second base in '04 was ten runs below average per 100 games. Cairo was actually -7 per 100 games in '04, and Enrique Wilson was even worse (-14 per 100), so in the field this is actually a wash despite the perception of Miggy being a godsend with the glove.

• The cutting of ties with Wilson: As I told my pen pals, they finally solved their Enrique Wilson problem. It took them four years to learn that if they don't offer him arbitration, he's not allowed to just keep showing up like the guy from Office Space. Another flattering transaction. The Yanks did well to avoid arbitration with Tony Clark, John Olerud, Esteban Loaiza, C.J. Nitkowski, and Travis Lee, effectively ending their tenures in pinstripes.

• The signing of Wright: I was touting him back when we did a long-lost Baseball Prospectus radio, which triggered a few spit-takes among those participating (all of whom were in on this latest round of emails). I'm still high on him thanks to that great K rate and his blazing stuff, but I'm more wary of his ability to stay mechanically consistent and mentally solid without the tutelage of Leo Mazzone, and I'd feel a lot better with the pitching coach behind door number two than I would with Mel Stottlemyre, given the some of the high-profile implosions of recent years and Mel's inability to fix them.

If the three-year, $21 million price tag is accurate and is broken down uniformly (which Yankee contracts rarely are), they overpaid for Wright in dollars and in length. Two years, $12 million with a fat team option and a reasonable buyout would have been a preferable route to take (say $5.5, $6.5, $9/1) to get to that price point.

The New York Daily News says that the Yanks are aggressively pursuing Pavano, who shares a history of arm trouble and late-bloomerhood with Wright but seems like a very different pitcher -- less power, but also less baggage, with no dependence on a guru. Unless they pay ridiculously for him (not an unlikelihood, alas, given how many teams bidding) he'd still be a better signing than Eric Milton, who will have us all playing Russian roulette by July 4. I addressed the starting pitching in depth here, here and here.

• The impending loss of Jon Lieber, who appears headed for Philadelphia as part of a three-year, $21 million deal: I think this is a classic case of overthinking on the part of the Yanks' front office. Unwilling to pick up Lieber's $8 million option for another season, the Yanks tried to shoehorn their second-most-reliable starter into a two-year deal worth $10-12 million. But doing so brought a host of suitors to Lieber's door, and not surprisingly, he got better offers. The Yankees' move was designed to save them an extra million dollars or so once the luxury tax was figured in, but once it's all said and one, they've robbed Peter to pay Paul. If the reports of them signing Eric Milton to a three-year, $25 million deal are true, they're effectively trading a pitcher with a 3.77 dERA for one with a 5.18 dERA and going two years and $17 million deeper into the hole -- even more once the tax is considered. From penny-wise to pound-foolish. Brutal, Juice.

• The Mike Stanton-Felix Heredia deal: I'm working on my Remaking piece on the bullpen, but I've been beaten to the punch, at least in part, by a pair of transactions. The Stanton-Heredia deal I characterized via email as "my manure for your dungheap." At one point an essential cog -- the leading lefty -- in the Yankee pen, Stanton was jettisoned in a harsh bit of negotiation hardball and landed in Shea, where his performance in dealing with inherited runners (2nd worst in the majors last year, -8.6 runs below expectation) was the second-worst in the majors and made him reviled on the level of Hitler and Derek Jeter by the Shea faithful. Reacquiring him is likely to pay a dividend similar to the Jeff Nelson Reunion Tour, which is to say he's better than what came before -- certainly not limited to the LOOGY role in which Heredia was uncomfortably cast -- but still a pricey shadow of the team's former glory and yet another example of the Yankee brass' stunning lack of imagination. I'll have more to say on the Yankee pen... soon.

• The Kenny Lofton-Felix Rodriguez trade: I wish the Yanks would have utilized Lofton better, especially in the postseason when we had to watch Ruben Sierra and Tony Clark imitate each other's flailing incompetence. While his best days may be behind him, Rodriguez is a solid haul, another durable reliever (with a good K rate, though lots of walks) for what was essentially a spare part. Again, more on this when I cover the Yankee pen in detail.

• • •

A quick welcome to those of you coming here via the latest Soxaholix comic strip. Though I revile Curt Schilling even moreso today than I did back then, I'm neither flattered by association with the imbroglio which led to that reference, nor am I eager to relive it. I could have just as easily removed the posts pertaining to the whole affair or deleted all of the comments, but I choose to leave them up as a continuing reminder to myself (and other participants) not to write angry or to go throwing rocks at hornets' nests. Nearly all of the hatchets regarding those exchanges were buried in the immediate wake of the incident, and I count several of those who criticized me there among my allies in the quest for enlightened baseball coverage despite our partisan leanings. Which is one of the things being lampooned in the strip, I realize, but nonetheless, I think we've all got better things to do than to dwell on that not-so-flattering snapshot, which showed nobody's best side.