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Adrian Gonzalez

Quick Hits: Branyan, Bedard, Vazquez, Turner

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On this date in 1999, the Twins traded Scott Downs and Rick Aguilera to the Cubs for Kyle Lohse and Jason Ryan. Aguilera and Ryan ended their careers years ago, but Downs has a 0.84 ERA in 10 2/3 innings for the Angels this year while Lohse owns a 2.17 ERA in 66 1/3 innings for the Cardinals.

Here are Saturday's links, as Cliff Lee prepares to pitch against his former Rangers' teammates…

  • Since joining the Red Sox, the club has learned that Adrian Gonzalez is a great mentor for their young Latin players, writes Peter Gammons of MLB.com.
  • As Matt Eddy of Baseball America (via Twitter) points out, the Diamondbacks' release of Russell Branyan marks the end of his time with his tenth different club.  He's had multiple stops in the same place as well as the Indians had and traded him four different times while the Brewers and the Mariners each had him twice.
  • In today's Insider-only blog post, ESPN's Buster Olney says that any team interested in trading for Erik Bedard would have to convince themselves that he could find the same comfort zone on their team that he has with the Mariners.
  • Seattle is "almost certainly in position to ask for a top prospect" for Bedard according to Olney, who has a 3.94 ERA in eight starts this year but remains an injury risk given all his shoulder trouble.
  • Marlins manager Edwin Rodriguez indicated that Javier Vazquez is not pitching for his job today, writes Manny Navarro of The Miami Herald. Vazquez has a 7.55 ERA with more walks (24) than strikeouts (20) in 39 1/3 innings across eight starts this year, in part because his fastball velocity has disappeared.
  • Joel Sherman of The New York Post points out that the Yankees once drafted Mets' infielder Justin Turner, but he turned down a $200K offer as 29th round pick in 2005 and returned to school for his senior season. Turner signed with the Reds for $50K as a seventh round pick in 2006, then was traded to the Orioles in the Ryan Freel–Ramon Hernandez swap and was later claimed off waivers by the Mets. He went 3-for-4 with an RBI against the Yanks last night.

Top Interleague Acquisitions For 2011

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Another round of interleague play begins tonight, so let’s take a look at some players who switched leagues last winter and are off to hot starts in 2011. Here are a few of the players thriving in new leagues – and what it cost to acquire them:

Free Agents

  • Cliff Lee – It cost $120MM in guaranteed money and a first round pick for the Phillies to reacquire Lee. He has a 3.84 ERA with a 68K/13BB ratio through 58 2/3 innings.
  • Adam Dunn – After a slow start, Dunn has been hitting like his usual self this month and now has a .203/.321/.368 line. He cost the White Sox $56MM and the 23rd overall selection in this year's draft.
  • J.J. Putz – Putz, one of many relievers to sign multiyear deals last winter, is living up to Arizona's $10MM investment. He has a 2.12 ERA with 9.0 K/9 and 2.6 BB/9 through 17 innings of work.
  • Lance Berkman – Berkman wasn't out of the National League for long and he must be happy he's back. Though currently sidelined, the 35-year-old has a .349/.455/.683 line and is among the league leaders in many offensive categories. Well worth the Cards’ $8MM investment. 
  • Russell Martin – Easily one of the offseason's best bargains, Martin has a .268/.371/.480 line. Not only did he cost just $4MM, he's under team control in 2012.
  • Jeff Francis – Francis has a 4.83 ERA with a 27K/10BB ratio through 54 innings and he cost just $2MM. 

Trades

  • Adrian Gonzalez – Gonzalez has a .314/.370/.560 line back in the American League, but he didn’t come cheap. The Padres obtained top pitching prospect Casey Kelly, former first rounder Reymond Fuentes and Anthony Rizzo, who is tearing through the Pacific Coast League. Rizzo has a .371/.443/.702 line through 174 plate appearances and it won't be long before he's making an impact at Petco Park.
  • Shaun Marcum – Marcum is pitching better than ever for the Brewers and the Blue Jays are no doubt pleased with what 21-year-old Brett Lawrie’s doing to Triple-A pitching. The #40 prospect in the game, according to Baseball America, Lawrie has a .335/.395/.607 line with nine homers and as many steals.
  • Matt Garza – Garza leads the National League with 11.0 K/9 and has a 3.72 ERA through 55 2/3 innings, though it took Chris Archer, Hak-Ju Lee, Robinson Chirinos, Sam Fuld and Brandon Guyer to acquire him. We've all heard about Fuld’s hot start and Guyer homered in his first MLB game.

Quick Hits: Braun, Lohse, Franklin, Wood

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Some news items as Matt Kemp is once again a walkoff hero for the Dodgers…

Red Sox Notes: Gonzalez, Ramirez, Scutaro

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The Red Sox beat the Blue Jays today, so they have now won three consecutive games for the first time all season. Here's the latest on the Red Sox:

Quick Hits: Gonzalez, Padres, Rays, Mariners

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Links for Sunday, as Grady Sizemore homers versus the Orioles in his return to the Indians' lineup….

Reaction To The Adrian Gonzalez Extension

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The Red Sox finalized a contract extension with Adrian Gonzalez today, and while the deal was long-awaited, its completion still generated discussion about how the contract impacts Gonzalez, the Red Sox and some of the game's other top first basemen.  Some of the more notable items…

  • John Boggs, Gonzalez's agent, talks to WEEI.com's Alex Speier about the history of the negotations between the slugger and the Red Sox, how the deal was almost scuttled in December before Gonzalez was traded from the Padres, and how Boggs "aged a hundred years" when Gonzalez was hit by a C.C. Sabathia pitch last Sunday.
  • In a separate post, Speier looks at Gonzalez's extension in the context of the biggest contracts ever.  Boston officials note that the Sox have been willing to spend big on players before signing Gonzalez and Carl Crawford. The Red Sox were prepared to commit over $20MM per season to Alex Rodriguez and Mark Teixeira.
  • In a video report for FOXSports.com, Jon Paul Morosi said Gonzalez's deal "ratchets up the pressure" on Albert Pujols if the Cardinals slugger hopes to get a milestone free agent deal this winter.  If Gonzalez has a better season than Pujols, then it will harder for Pujols and his agents to justify asking for a larger contract than the deal the Red Sox gave the younger Gonzalez.
  • Morosi also says "it's possible" Boston could still be in the market for Pujols or Prince Fielder as a DH, as the Sox would part ways with David Ortiz.  Pujols and Fielder have both said they want to continue playing first base, but Morosi notes that Victor Martinez and Adam Dunn said the same thing last winter before becoming the primary DH option for the Tigers and White Sox, respectively.   
  • The theory exists that Gonzalez and the Sox had this extension worked out months ago but waited until now to announce it so the club could avoid paying a luxury tax penalty.  Morosi speculates that the new collective bargaining agreement might contain a later deadline than Opening Day for the luxury tax calculations since "the spirit of the law isn't being honored here."

MLBTR's Ben Nicholson-Smith also contributed to this post

Red Sox Extend Adrian Gonzalez

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After months of anticipation, the Red Sox have signed Adrian Gonzalez to a contract extension, the team announced. The deal is for seven-years and $154MM, according to Sean McAdam of CSNNE.com. 

Gonzalez gets a $6MM signing bonus, $21MM per year from 2012-16 and $21.5MM in 2017 and 2018, according to ESPN.com's Buster Olney (Twitter links). The contract includes a partial no-trade clause, according to Olney. Gonzalez can block deals to two teams, according to Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports (Twitter link). Those teams are prohibited from acquiring Gonzalez and flipping him to the Yankees.

It's the second nine-figure contract the Red Sox have agreed to since December (Carl Crawford signed for $142MM) and the second-biggest guarantee in franchise history. Only Manny Ramirez ($160MM, eight years) signed for more guaranteed money.

The Red Sox progressed toward an agreement with Gonzalez's agent, John Boggs, after acquiring the first baseman from the Padres in a December trade. The sides didn't finalize a deal and talks continued earlier in the spring. As Alex Speier of WEEI.com pointed out in December, the Red Sox may have waited to announce the deal because they save on the luxury tax by waiting.

Gonzalez underwent shoulder surgery in October, so the delay also gave Boston time to evaluate his health. The 28-year-old has a .268/.362/.439 line in 41 plate appearances so far, though his career line is a more robust .284/.368/.506.

The extension means Gonzalez won't hit free agency after the season, when Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder are expected to test the open market for the first time in their respective careers. Ryan Howard, who signed an extension with the Phillies last April, would have been eligible after 2011 as well.

Olney On Castro, Escobar, Wells, Pineda

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The Red Sox should complete a seven-year extension worth $154MM or so with Adrian Gonzalez at some point in the next ten days, as ESPN.com’s Buster Olney reminds us. On a lighter note, Olney points out that Boston appears to be functioning despite a winless week for the Red Sox. Here are the rest of Olney’s rumors.

  • Starlin Castro has “made the adjustment” to the big leagues and is no longer phased to be playing at the highest level, Cubs GM Jim Hendry says. 
  • Another young shortstop, Alcides Escobar of the Royals, may be the best defensive shortstop in the American League, according to at least one scout. 
  • Angels fans may not like hearing it, but one evaluator says that in sending Mike Napoli elsewhere they “traded a player who would've given them similar production to what they'll get out of Vernon Wells , except it'll cost them about $75 million more." 
  • Instead of delaying Michael Pineda’s service time and/or arbitration, the Mariners called him up to start the season in Seattle. "He earned the right to be on the club," GM Jack Zduriencik said. "We actually talked about calling him up last September."

Jon Daniels Discusses Adrian Gonzalez Trade

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Rangers GM Jon Daniels was in his first offseason on the job five years ago, though he made what is arguably his second most memorable trade to date. In December 2005, Daniels agreed to trade Adrian Gonzalez to the Padres as part of a three-player package for Adam Eaton and Akinori Otsuka. Gonzalez was only 23 at the time, but he had just completed his third year in Triple-A, hitting .338/.399/.561. Mark Teixeira, then 25, was coming off an All-Star season that saw him hit .301/.379/.575 with 43 homers. There didn't appear to be room for both.

Daniels spoke to WEEI.com's Alex Speier about the trade, admitting that they made the move to bolster their short-term playoff chances.

"Our error in that was not so much our evaluation of Adrian," Daniels said. "Our biggest miss in that situation was really our evaluation of our club, where we were competitively and in the division. We thought that there was a window there in ’05-’06 to really push. We won 89 games [in 2004], were a .500 club in ’05, hadn’t made too many changes. Our [front office] group came in in ’05. We probably tried to step on the gas before we were ready. Not probably – we did.”

Daniels added that other teams had inquired about Gonzalez before the trade went down, but Texas didn't project him to be the star-caliber player he's become. As funny as it sounds now, Daniels said the question then "was how much power" Adrian would provide. In the five years since the trade, only eight players have hit more homers than Gonzalez, who's been stuck in Petco Park. "Clearly, had we known [how good he'd become], we would have found a way to make it work," said Daniels.

Every GM that's been on the job long enough has horror stories. Brian Cashman traded a young Mike Lowell for three pitching prospects that contributed next to nothing at the big league level. Theo Epstein acquired an awful half-season of Eric Gagne for three young players, including David Murphy, who drove in the game-winning run against Epstein's Red Sox yesterday. Shin-Soo Choo was traded for Ben Broussard. The list goes on and on. Daniels made up for it less than two years later, when he made his best deal to date by acquiring five young players for Teixeira and Ron Mahay. That deal netted closer Neftali Feliz, shortstop Elvis Andrus, starting pitcher Matt Harrison, and catcher turned trade chip Jarrod Saltalamacchia. No one can win them all, but you'd like the losses to not include a player of Gonzalez's caliber.

Red Sox Notes: Gonzalez, Atchison, Kalish, Wakefield

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Daisuke Matsuzaka joins a growing list of Japanese players who have made donations to fund disaster relief in their homeland. Dice-K donated $1MM to the Japanese Red Cross Society though the Red Sox Foundation, according to Tim Britton of the Providence Journal. Here are a few other Sox-related notes:

  • ESPN.com's Buster Olney (Insider-only link) expects the Red Sox and Adrian Gonzalez to get an extension done for the slugger in the second week of the season, sometime during the club's first homestand. Olney points out that it might be in Gonzalez's best interest to nudge the Sox toward finalizing a deal sooner rather than later, since his market value could be hurt by an injury.
  • Boston optioned a handful of players to the minors today, including Scott Atchison and Ryan Kalish, as Rob Bradford of WEEI.com writes.
  • While the Sox still have a few pitchers whose Opening Day fates are in limbo, it doesn't sound like Tim Wakefield is among them. WEEI's Alex Speier has quotes from Terry Francona discussing how the skipper hopes to maximize Wakefield's effectiveness this year.
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