3:00 p.m. Press Conference
http://blog.cleveland.com/sports/2008/04/cleveland_indians_schedule_pre.html
The Cleveland Indians have scheduled a 3 p.m. press conference at Progressive Field. They did not reveal the reason for the press conference, but said GM Mark Shapiro, Chris Antonetti, assistant general manager, and a player from the 25-man roster would participate.
Let the speculation begin!
My fanpost apparently needs to be longer.
My girlfriend says my fanpost is long enough. Why must SB disagree/
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Comments
Beat me to the punch!
Apparently I was two minutes too slow for my post...oh well. Should be interesting to see if the Carmona speculation is accurate. I certainly hope that it is, I truly enjoy watching Fausto pitch. Memories of him dominating the Yankees in the playoffs last year will last forever.
by toby toby toby on Apr 10, 2008 10:05 AM EDT 0 recs
What is the speculation?
Burn on, big river, burn on...
by Turkmenbashi on
Apr 10, 2008 10:11 AM EDT
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That's it, we signed him and traded him to the Yankees for Abreu and a promise that they won't try to sign CC this fall.
by toby toby toby on
Apr 10, 2008 10:19 AM EDT
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signed carmona through 2014
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3339427
by emil minty on Apr 10, 2008 10:18 AM EDT 0 recs
Excelentement!
Burn on, big river, burn on...
by Turkmenbashi on
Apr 10, 2008 10:27 AM EDT
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Good karma, good karma. I've always felt like Carmona is "my" player, having watched him come up through Lake County.
Burn on, big river, burn on...
by Turkmenbashi on Apr 10, 2008 10:47 AM EDT 0 recs
Hopefully we'll be able to say the same about de la Cruz by 2010.
You know Selig? Ombudsman.
by rolub on
Apr 10, 2008 10:50 AM EDT
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Cool. Has anybody hear ever heard Fausto speak before?
by fleerdon on Apr 10, 2008 11:09 AM EDT 0 recs
He spoke briefly at a playoff rally last year - or maybe he nodded and laughed. But I can't recall really what he sounds like.
by steincat on
Apr 10, 2008 11:20 AM EDT
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He's like a Spanish-speaking Dave Stewart.
by Stinky McDingus on
Apr 10, 2008 11:41 AM EDT
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Castrovince is reporting that the full seven year deal is worth 48 million (assuming Fausto triggers all of the escalator clauses). That is seven prime years of Fausto's career at a less than 7 mil/year. And if something terrible happens, the club can get out of the last three seasons. What a deal!
by Jeffrey R on Apr 10, 2008 11:14 AM EDT 0 recs
Wow. that would be incredible. Consider that:
- The Mariners gave carlos Silva 4/44
- the Reds gave Cordero 4/46
LOL
Burn on, big river, burn on...
by Turkmenbashi on
Apr 10, 2008 11:20 AM EDT
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How in the WORLD did they get him to sign for the club options? I mean, CLUB OPTIONS?! I almost feel guilty about that.
by gte619n on Apr 10, 2008 11:19 AM EDT 0 recs
Hey, he is grateful for the teeth!
Burn on, big river, burn on...
by Turkmenbashi on
Apr 10, 2008 11:20 AM EDT
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My first thought was, "who's his agent...Master P?"
by The DiaTriber on
Apr 10, 2008 11:21 AM EDT
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Also! Looks like Carmona is the best long-term option for jersey investment!
Burn on, big river, burn on...
by Turkmenbashi on Apr 10, 2008 11:21 AM EDT 0 recs
This point cannot be stressed enough.
I'm LOOKING AT YOU, JARET WRIGHT.
by gte619n on
Apr 10, 2008 11:23 AM EDT
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My buddy just bought his jersey-tshirt last week... I told him it made up for his Kelly Holcomb jersey purchase.
You know Selig? Ombudsman.
by rolub on
Apr 10, 2008 11:25 AM EDT
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I just got a t-shirt too, but I'm thinking about an actual jersey now.
Burn on, big river, burn on...
by Turkmenbashi on
Apr 10, 2008 11:49 AM EDT
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castrovince says:
The value of the four-year guarantee was not immediately known. But it is known that if the deal goes the distance, Carmona will earn $43 million over the seven years, with escalators pushing its potential value to $48 million.
It is the highest-ever guarantee to a pre-arbitration-eligible starting pitcher and the highest-ever guarantee to a starting pitcher with only one full year of service time. It is similar to the contract the Rays recently gave to starter James Shields, albeit with a higher potential value.
he says 48 if the deal goes the distance (i.e through the options). but then he says it's the highest guarantee to a starter with one full year of contract time. is 48 the 4 year guarantee? what's going on?
by emil minty on Apr 10, 2008 11:27 AM EDT 0 recs
Read the first paragraph again. The maximum seven year value is $48 million.
I agree it's odd for him to state that it is the highest-ever guarantee when he acknowledges that the value of the four-year guarantee is not known. Maybe he knows more than he reported.
by Jeffrey R on
Apr 10, 2008 11:32 AM EDT
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his first two FA years are, i think, 13 and 14. I have trouble believing the options for those years are less than 10 each. the option on the final arb year must be at least 8. that doesn't make the guarantee seem all that sizable.
by emil minty on
Apr 10, 2008 11:51 AM EDT
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Hoynes is reporting that the guarantee is 15 million.
by Jeffrey R on
Apr 10, 2008 11:59 AM EDT
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Ouch. Dontrelle got what, $25M for his arbitration years?
by crazymoloh on
Apr 10, 2008 12:22 PM EDT
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Jay called this last year
and the man was correct, again ...
Nice work.
by SpringTrainingFun on Apr 10, 2008 11:34 AM EDT 0 recs
fausto!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sizemore-Shapiro 2008. The Official Red Bull of Let's Go Tribe Game Threads.
by Gradyforpresident on Apr 10, 2008 11:43 AM EDT 0 recs
How good do we have it?
Here are the players who will become free agents before the 2009 and 2010 season....
1) Before 2009 - Sabathia, Borowski, Blake, Byrd, Futz (haha)
2) Before 2010 - Betancourt, Dellucci, Michaels
For the next three years we'll have most of the 2007 core in an Indians uniform! If the combination of Adam Miller and Laffey/Sowers can replace Sabathia/Byrd's production, we're golden!
T.J Houshmazili...... championship!
by crazymoloh on Apr 10, 2008 11:45 AM EDT 0 recs
If you're curious about salary commitments to the players on 2007 team, I have an old post up that looks at the payroll picture through 2011. If there was ever a time that we could afford C.C, its the next 4 years.
by crazymoloh on
Apr 10, 2008 11:48 AM EDT
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You take out CC and Raf, and that's a Who's Who of crapiness right there.
by supermarioelia on
Apr 10, 2008 11:53 AM EDT
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Guess how much the crappiness costs?
(Borowski+Byrd+Dellucci+Michaels+Fultz) = $19.5M
(Sabathia+Betancourt) = $14M
Blake = $6M
by crazymoloh on
Apr 10, 2008 12:16 PM EDT
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Its not like getting this deal done took miraculous skill that only our FO possessed. Plus, I doubt there are any FO haters on LGT to begin with.
by crazymoloh on
Apr 10, 2008 12:20 PM EDT
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The deal itself isn't, but that they were in this kind of position in the first place is symptomatic of a good farm system and good player management. And who was that dude a few days ago who said we couldn't compete because the FO didn't make any moves this offseason?
by maledicta on
Apr 10, 2008 12:23 PM EDT
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That was Gladiator, whose take on this is probably that it is just another example of the team standing pat and not trying to improve.
by Fiddlesticks on
Apr 10, 2008 12:54 PM EDT
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No. But, it takes guts to sign a young pitcher to a long-term deal. If Carmona gets hurt (please, no!), this turns into Mark Prior. If he doesn't, it's genius. Did the Tigers (universally praised possessors of front-office brilliance) sign their young arms to long-term deals? Not like this one, I don't think.
by peter m on
Apr 10, 2008 3:29 PM EDT
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Prior's deal can't be compared directly. He got $10 million coming out of the draft and lived up to it, making the All-Star team in just his second year as a pro.
I think it takes guts -- or actually, discipline -- to negotiate this deal, but it's easy to sign it. It's only $15 million, it can't possibly become a significant bust compared to the going rate for free agent pitchers. If Carmona had a career-ending injury next week, nobody could ever really criticize this deal.
The Tigers, you're right, do not have any deals comparable to this. Bonderman was two years from free agency before they gave him a multi-year deal, four years guaranteed for $38 million. Dontrelle's deal is similar, not that that's the Tigers' fault. Verlander signed a major league deal coming out of the draft, like Prior (and Porcello), and he will reach arbitration after 2008 and be eligible for free agency after 2010.
It may be more accurate to say that the Tigers have not developed a pitcher like Carmona, and thus have not even had the opportunity to do a deal like this. It's one thing to develop a pitcher out of the first round of the draft, quite another to sign a player at age 17 and develop him into an ace at 23.
by Jay on
Apr 10, 2008 3:58 PM EDT
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It's also a sign to guys like Laffey, Sowers, and Miller that if they come to the bigs and produce, they'll potentially have the opportunity to get a big pay day prior to arbitration. The Rays did this kind of signing with Shields last year, and it does build momentum and confidence within an organization.
It sets precedent for young players coming up through the system that the Tribe FO will be fair if you put up the numbers.
by SpringTrainingFun on
Apr 10, 2008 4:43 PM EDT
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When I hear of other teams making signings/extensions, I rarely pay attention, but do any other teams sign these types of deals as often as we do? My buddy who is a Jays fan asked me this aft how we sign Grady/Jhonny/Vic/Fausto to these types of deals while his boy JP signs Aaron Hill to an extension and throws wads of cash at Rios and Wells....and besides that these contracts are one of our organizational philosophies, I really had no answer for him. Is it that we have more young talent than the average team which lends itself to these types of deals? Are we signing/drafting players based on their agencies' relative willingness to sign these type of deals? Could other teams be making these deals too, and just choosing not to? A combination of the three?
by supermarioelia on
Apr 10, 2008 9:17 PM EDT
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First, yes, we really have had a glut of very talented, very young players over the past four years. Victor, Pronk, Grady, Jhonny and Fausto all put up star performances in their first full seasons. That kind of quick success makes it easier to commit to a player at a younger age, and earlier in his career, which means before and further from arbitration -- which all adds up to a contract for fewer dollars covering younger, more productive seasons.
If a player doesn't break out as quickly – like anyone ranging from Broussard and Garko – then it's harder to commit as early, so you end up paying more later if the player pans out. That is what happened with Rios -- he simply wasn't productive enough, and later not healthy enough, for the team to make a real commitment. I think they possibly could have gotten a steal of a deal out of him a year ago, and they chose not to, but you can't entirely blame the Jays for not wanting to risk it.
They then aggravated the situation by not cutting such a great deal for themselves, but that's a separate issue. Shapiro and Antonetti consistently cut better deals for the Indians than can be expected reasonably, in my view, and I can only guess that the reasons are (1) they're better and more disciplined negotiators, and (2) they effectively leverage the work the Indians do year-round to be a high-quality organization, one that consistently communicates well with players and treats them with respect, one that surrounds each player with a clubhouse full of high-quality people, in uniform and out, one that maintains an elite medical staff, etc. These things create intrinsic value for each player in committing long-term to the Indians, and that pays off at the negotiating table.
Look at Jhonny as a test case. He hasn't remained a total stud, but what we've gotten from him basically represented his downside espectation as of the end of 2005. So we do the deal with him, knowing that he's very unlikely to do worse than what (in retrospect) he has done. And what made him very unlikely to do worse than this? The simple fact that he put up star numbers at 23. He's basically been the worst performer of any of the Indians' lockup deals (since Jaret Wright), and if that's the worst, then you've signed a bunch of really good deals.
Wells is a whole different type of deal -- it's not like Hafner's April 2005 deal – 3 years/$7M (2005-07), plus $4.75M 2008 club option -- but rather like Hafner's July 2007 deal – 4 years/$57M (2009-12), plus 2013 club option. In other words, it was a deal that covered only years in which the player would be a free agent, not a lockup deal. It is similar to Rios situation, however, in that they waited a little too long to strike a deal, and then also didn't do a great job negotiating.
It is fair to say that the Jays have not (a) cultivated enough players who break out at a young age, making them worth committing to while a great deal still can be had, (b) committed early enough to locking up or extending certain players, (c) created an environment in which players place significant intrinsic value on being a part of the Blue Jays organization, and (d) negotiated particularly good terms for themselves. So you can tell your buddy, those are the differences.
by Jay on
Apr 10, 2008 10:25 PM EDT
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Jay makes some very good points. I would add though that the Indians are possibly better talent evaluators, do more thorough analysis of players at a young age, and possibly have better training tactics, and have had better luck.
As Jay mentioned the Indians have had a very high success rate in signing young players and having them continue to perform. That's VERY important - they haven't really been burned, yet. The FO looks good because they haven't had any blowups.
If a player like Sizemore would have crashed into a fence and permanently damaged his knee the year after he signed his extension, while you couldn't be too critical of the signing, it's possible that the FO would be less willing to do another deal along the same lines.
I guess my point is that there's also a degree of luck involved where you're hoping a young player doesn't get hurt. You really can't guard against that.
by SpringTrainingFun on
Apr 11, 2008 6:28 AM EDT
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Hello everyone,
Great points by Jay and STFun - one point I would add is that the Blue Jays' philosophy of drafting players over the last several years has been mostly with lower-ceiling college players.
While the Indians have gone with more college players of late, I think they'll still a little more apt to draft HS players. In addition, I'm not entirely sure, but I think the Indians' Latin American academies are either more advanced or have produced more productive players than the Blue Jays' academies have, especially of late.
Combine both the fact that the Blue Jays' Latin American academies haven't been as productive as the Indians, plus the fact that the Jays prefer to draft more college players, and I think the chances of them having a player break out as young as several of the Indians' players (Sizemore, Peralta, Carmona, etc.) have are less, which is also a major reason why the Jays don't make as many of these types of signings as the Indians do.
Just my 2 cents. :-)
The "cream of the crop" doesn't always rise to the top.
by indiansfan on
Apr 12, 2008 10:50 PM EDT
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This might be one of the most thorough in-post comments I've ever read here. Phenomenal stuff, and I'll certainly be citing many of these points in conversations for the next while.
by supermarioelia on
Apr 11, 2008 4:04 PM EDT
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Also! Jay don't you think this is worthy of it's own post? I fear your great thoughts will be buried at the end of this thread.
by supermarioelia on
Apr 11, 2008 4:05 PM EDT
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Hm, I thought about whether it should its own post, but I don't think it stands on its own. It possibly should be part of a post on a larger topic. Sometime.
by Jay on
Apr 11, 2008 4:28 PM EDT
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Fair enough. Just stow it away though when this topic comes up again. It's definitely the framework of a great piece.
by supermarioelia on
Apr 11, 2008 6:42 PM EDT
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Thanks, Mario, but you know, lots of people will tell you, I can crank out seven paragraphs of front office shilling pretty much at the drop of a hat.
by Jay on
Apr 11, 2008 9:04 PM EDT
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