Hafner Signed Through 2012

That's makes me drool!

Here's the players we don't have locked up through 2010:

Sabathia
Byrd
Blake
Nixon
Michaels
Dellucci
Fultz
Betancourt
Borowski

There's a few good players on this list ... but the first list is damned impressive.  (Betancourt is under control through 2009.)

My guess is that Hafner's sub par production this season undercut his bargaining position a little, making this deal possible. Still, there have to be some concerns that this sub par production might linger.

p.s: Signing C.C is almost impossible now. Personally, I would have preferred signing C.C to $18M per year instead of Hafner ($12M) and Westbrook ($11M).  

Or maybe it was bothering his wife--and now SHE'LL let the old Pronk return.  Either way, all's well that ends well.

I think CC will answer that question the same way Manny, Thome, and Belle answered it: I'll go to whoever pays me the most.  Only Trevor Hoffman answered that question any differently - and he stayed with San Diego.

I saw the video feed of this.  CC did appeared to be both excited about it and genuine about his comments.  Encouraging but take that for what that's worth.

Shirt off my back somethingorother blahblahblah

As I understand it right now...part of the $57m is getting added to this year's contract and his option for next year (which is picked up).  Then there's a 4-year $48m-ish extension.

If CC and the Indians are doing well a year from now, I think it would be much more difficult for the Indians to do an All-Star deal with CC than it was this year for Hafner.  And a trading him wouldn't make sense for a team in the midst of contention.

If the Indians are out of it in July next year, they would consider trading him, but somebody would really want to have him badly for 2 months to give up something of significant short-term value.  In that case, the Indians would be looking at 2009 as a year of reloading, not rebuilding.

they are playing - the ASB doesn't exactly count, as teams aren't playing during that time period.  Perhaps consider the ASB as the "offseason within the season."

Probably that's not what was meant when Shapiro said that; maybe instead, "rules were meant to be broken" if it suited the purpose of improving the team.

Just my 2 cents.  :-)

They've made some very specific remarks about when they'll do it.

They've said they'll continue into the first week of the season as long as they're on the verge of making a deal.

They've said they'll do quick deal at the All-Star Break if the two sides are close.

And for Pronk's last deal, they've said they'll make a deal contingent on a player starting the season healthy.

What they won't do is hold protracted negotiations during the season.  If they're not close by the end of Spring Training, or by the end of the break, they'll stop until the next opening.  I think the reason for this is that ongoing negotiations can be both distracting and also corrosive to team-player relations.

Castrovince reported the 2013 club option, which I find very credible.

Hoynes is also reporting the 11/11/13/13 breakdown now.

Sounds better. The total # seemed high to me as well, as I thought it would max at 12 mill per year. With that breakdown, it pretty much does. We spent the money we were saving for "the big midseason pickup" on Haf, spread over a year+. Hard to argue with.

We can still trade prospects and take on a prorated salary for this year, but it won't be a big contract. I guess the big hindsight question is, if Haf hadn't slumped, would this signing have taken place? Not to get too subjective, but if he does come back to full Pronkosity the second half, the stars were truly aligned.

Again, I think it makes sense to put Hafner's numbers alongside Ortiz's 4-year extension, signed at the beginning of the '06 season.

Pre-extension:
Hafner:          Ortiz:
2007 - $8.45M    2005 - $5.25M
2008 - $9.45M    2006 - $6.5M
Extension:      
2009 - $11M      2007 - $12.5M
2010 - $11M      2008 - $12.5M
2011 - $13M      2009 - $12.5M
2012 - $13M      2010 - $12.5M

Hafner's getting more money in those two pre-extension years (but remember, Hafner has been paid considerably less than Ortiz prior to this deal).  But these are 2007-2008 dollars, not 2005-2006 dollars.  Hafner then makes less throughout the duration of the deal despite post-dating Ortiz's money by 2 years.

Be happy with this one. Better than neither of them.

How do you know it wasn't?

CC's deal is 12 or up to 18 months away.  A lot can happen in that time.

I doubt the Indians think they could get a discount by signing him this offseason.  The Indians should come out of the gate in 2008 with CC shooting for a contract and the Indians shooting for a championship.  If the Indians are out of it by July, they may be able to get something of value for him from a contender for his low-cost last 2 months of the contract.  Until then, CC is worth more to the Indians than what they could get in return for him.

While I can't say you're wrong about most of your points, I'm not sure if I agree with you.  Yet.  My jury is still out.  However, in the meantime, don't you think his "spotty" health history is more fluke than anything?

I'm sympathetic to you Chuck, but I think there are reasons to remain positive.  Yes, Hafner is old, but what makes Hafner successful are skills which tend to age well (plate discipline and power).  Yes, Hafner's current season hasn't been great, but he's do for a bounceback as much as just about anyone in the league and he seems to be doing better of late.  Plus, over the past three season's Hafner's average OPS+ was over 170.  Right now, Hafner has the third-highest career OPS+ of any Indian, better than Ramirez, Thome, and Bell.  Yeah, those represent his prime years and will probably come down a little, but Pronk has been fantastic.  Speaking of Thome, a player with similar skills and an even more troubling injury history than Hafner, here's how he fared in his age 31-35 seasons (OPS+): 191, 151, 148, 83, 156.  I'll take it.

Hard to compare this to the Twins losing Ortiz, because at the time he wasn't David Ortiz -- he was just another guy who could hit ~20 home runs from the DH spot (or play a crappy 1B). It's not like he was leaving behind a 40-HR/40-2B hole in their lineup.

Also, if the Twins had wanted to sign Ortiz, he most definitely wasn't out of their price range (the Red Sox paid him $1.25 mil in 2003) -- but they released him.

Chuck, I understand your concern, but I have a few things to add. Like Andrew said, Pronk's skills are skills that age well. Even if the guy hits "only" .265/.390/.520 with 30 homers and 100 rbi in the next few years, I feel like $12 mil is a very reasonable price.

Plus, there is the (admittedly ambiguous and vague) notion that Pronk is a good clubhouse presence. Without getting too cliche, I think the guy does a lot for the team, and is a player other players really want to be around and can learnm from. He's just an all-around good guy, and that combined with his ridiculous baseball skills makes him worth the money, IMO.

I understand the "buyer's remorse" feeling you get after a major announcement like this. I had the same thing with the Westbrook deal.

BUT, in today's marketplace, where teams are holding onto premium players and others are overpaying for marginal ones (JD Drew, Moises Alou) .. you need to decide which way you want to go.  Keep the fan favorite or roll the dice and hope for an Ortiz/Ordonez-type of success story?

I'll take our chances on Travis.

 

You've got to overpay for quality, dude (as Szym put it on the BTF thread for this signing). Efficient rosters are constructed by paying top dollar for elite players and filling out the rest of the roster with cheap and productive players from your (or somebody else's) minor league system.

Shapiro & co. have done a great job of keeping clear of deadweight contracts since the Matt Lawton debacle (although I'm personally not a big fan of Lee's extension.) It's those middling veterans for multiple years that kill you, and if you stay away from them you can afford a contract like this one.

And even with this deal we still have what you'd call "salary flexibility", since IIRC only Peralta and Sizemore are signed out that far, and all three of those players will be extremely tradeable commodities if it comes down to it.

I don't see how we can feel it's too much money, given the contracts given to Matthews (50) and Drew (70), let alone Wells (126) and Soriano (136).  Despite being three years from free agency, Pujols still got $100 million.

So the Indians clearly got a significantly below-market deal here.  And position or no position, Hafner has been worth 7.2 marginal wins per season per WARP.  Even this season, he's on pace for 5.2 -- that's assuming no bounce-back.  I'm not saying you give him this deal based on 5.2, I'm saying he's a 5.2-in-an-off-year player.  And if you search your memory, I'm sure you'll find that that's how these things usually turn out.

The questions that remain are:

1. Given the scale of the financial risk, is any All-Star caliber playing worth extending into their free agent years, even at a substantial discount?

2. Is Hafner a significant risk for injury or collapse, compared to other places the Indians free agent money would go, i.e., the Byrds and Delluccis of the world?

3. Is Hafner a fungible asset?

4. Is the value in building a mareketable team identity around a core of persistent players, and is adding Hafner to that list a significant hedge against C.C.'s likely removal from it?

Well, we have the Indians' answer on these questions, and if nothing else, we know they answered them thoughtfully.

Point me to a player without any possible flaws? You sound like George Steinbrenner when he refused to go after Vlad because of "back issues"...oops

I've always thought that if you had to pick, though, it would be better to extend just CC than just Westbrook and Hafner.

That said, I'm happy to have Westbrook and Hafner locked up, and I'm actually still pretty optimistic that CC will sign (another) extension this offseason. Especially if we make the playoffs this year, which should a.) convince CC that this team is worth sticking with, and b.) bump up the team's revenue significantly.

Good insight. Link to actual entry since those guys post pretty often.

3:45

3:45 eastern. streaming off of the mlb website.

if only i lived close enough to the area to justify it. grabby hands at ticket plans

This is really strange. I'm clicking on the link at the indians website but nothing happens. Anyone know why?

It was kind of fun, yeah, but I would like a reasonable explanation for why Travis couldn't do the interview shirtless, wearing The Belt.

I just checked, and "locker house" is definitely a go for the whole second half.

It's forsooth. I forsooth it!

*not = now (bad spot for a typo)

Wait - wait - we're taking about "emotions"?  Isn't that a code word for "feelings"?  I thought that we didn't talk about "feelings" in this blog.