The LoHud Yankees Blog

Here’s the latest from the Associated Press about the second game of Major League Baseball’s exhibition tour of Taiwan. Curtis Granderson had the big home run in the first game. Robinson Cano had the big hit in the second game. 

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Robinson Cano doubled in a run in the seventh inning to help an MLB All-Star team beat Taiwan’s national team 5-3 Thursday in the second game of a five-game series.

The New York Yankees’ second baseman also singled and scored in the sixth inning in the game in Taichung.

“They got a great team,” Cano said. “They played a pretty good game.”

The Taiwanese went ahead 3-2 in the fifth, scoring twice on three hits and a walk. The MLB squad tied it in the sixth and added two more runs in the seventh.

Relievers Rich Thompson of the Los Angeles Angels, Ramon Ramirez of the San Francisco Giants and Bill Bray of the Cincinnati Reds kept the Taiwanese scoreless from the sixth inning on.

In the series opener Tuesday, the MLB team won 7-0 in a game halted in the sixth inning because of rain. The teams play in Taichung on Friday before closing the series with two weekend games in Kaohsiung.

• Chien-Ming Wang is heading back to the Nationals. The Washington Post reports that Wang got a one-year deal worth $4 million to return to the Nats’ rotation.

• Don’t count on the Yankees keeping scouting director Damon Oppenheimer just yet. The Orioles still haven’t picked a GM, and the Baltimore Sun reports that Oppenheimer is among those who could still interview for the job. We learned earlier that Yankees pro scouting director Billy Eppler was apparently the runner-up for the Angels GM job.

• Yankees prospects Mason Williams and Dante Bichette Jr. were named the Topps Player of the Year in the New York-Penn League and Gulf Coast League.

• Former Yankees outfielder Juan Rivera was one of the first significant free agents to sign with a new team, agreeing to a one-year deal with the Dodgers. 

• Outfielder Jordan Parraz, who had a terrific season with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre this year, has signed a minor league deal with the Braves. It includes separate language if he makes the big league club.

• After his one-year stint in the Yankees front office, it took Kevin Towers just one year to land an extension as the GM in Arizona. 

Associated Press photo

We keep hearing — and I keep writing — that this winter’s free agent market offered very little in terms of rotation options. But just how true is that statement?

The Yankees focused on Cliff Lee and hoped that Andy Pettitte would decide to pitch again, and now that Lee is gone and Pettitte is still uncertain, there are few alternatives available. Should the Yankees have been more aggressive early? Have they missed out on legitimate pieces because of their pursuit of Lee?

Using the handy free agent tracker over at MLBTradeRumors — I prefer that one to the MLB.com version — I’ve listed every starting pitcher who has signed this winter. I’d say the idea of a thin market is absolutely accurate. This list offers very few sure things, and although hindsight is never fair, it’s worth looking back to the month and a half before Lee signed — and those frantic days when Lee was making his decision — to try to find missed opportunities. The Dodgers were the most aggressive team in the beginning of the offseason, re-signing Ted Lilly before he hit the open market and locking up two more starters before the end of November.

Off the board quickly
As you might expect, most of the early moves were re-signings.
This period covers the start of spring training through the Winter Meetings.

Hiroki Kuroda
Dodgers: 1 year, $12 million
Kuroda will be 36 this season and he’s spent his entire three-year career with the Dodgers. He’s been good for them — losing record but a 3.60 ERA and a good strikeout-to-walk ratio — and it’s hard to say whether he would have been willing to leave, especially with the Dodgers making an early push.

Jon Garland
Dodgers: 1 year, $5 million (plus vesting option)
In retrospect, this is the kind of durable starting pitcher who might have helped the back of the Yankees rotation. Nothing flashy, but Garland is consistently good for 200 innings (of course, we said the same about Javier Vazquez). His career NL ERA is 3.74. His career AL ERA is 4.47.

Jorge De La Rosa
Rockies: three years, $32 million
The Rockies had a deal to re-sign De La Rosa in place before the first of December. It was the crew at FoxSports that broke the news, and they noted that De La Rosa wanted to stay in Colorado. They also reported: “The Yankees also have checked in, as they do on most prominent free agents, but their priority is Lee.”

Jake Westbrook
Cardinals: two years, $16.5 million (plus mutual option)
The Cardinals traded for Westbrook last season, then they moved quickly to re-sign him this winter. Westbrook is a bit of an injury risk, he came back from Tommy John surgery last season and pitched well, especially after moving to the National League.

Erik Bedard
Mariners: one year, $1 million
This market has no shortage of Bedard-type starters. He’s made a total of 30 starts in the past three seasons, none of them coming in 2010. The Mariners are still hoping to get something out of him, and they moved quickly to re-sign him to a non-guaranteed deal.

Javier Vazquez
Marlins: one year, $7 million
No chance the Yankees were going to re-sign him. No chance Vazquez was going to try to come back. Best for everyone to move on, and that’s exactly what they did.

Aaron Harang
Padres: one year, $4 million (plus mutual option)
Harang is from San Diego. In the past three years, pitching in the NL Central, he’s gone 18-38 with a 4.71 ERA and a steadily increasing WHIP. If I’m the Yankees, I’d rather take my chances with Sergio Mitre, but that’s just me.

Within the Cliff Lee window
From the Winter Meetings through Lee’s signing with Philadelphia.
This seems to be when the Lee talks were at their peak.

Scott Olson
Pirates: one year, $500,000 with heavy incentives (plus club option)
Olson’s first big league season showed promise, but since then he’s been pretty bad while pitching for the Nationals and Marlins. Now it’s the Pirates who have signed him. From Florida to Washington to Pittsburgh. That says a lot.

Vicente Padilla
Dodgers: 1 year, $2 million
Early in his career, Padilla had some good years with the Phillies, but he’s since become a back-of-the-rotation starter capable of stringing together a few dominant outings. Injuries last season made him even more of a risk than usual, and the Dodgers might use him in the bullpen instead of the rotation.

Dustin Moseley
Padres: one year, $900,000
The Yankees offered Moseley a Major League deal, but he decided to shopping for a better offer and found on in San Diego, where he could land a spot in the Padres rotation. Moseley was a solid spot starter for the Yankees last season.

Kevin Correia
Pirates: two years, $8 million
News of the agreement broke on December 8. Hard to know what to expect rom Correia. He’s spent all of his career in the NL West, and his ERA has been a roller coaster the past four years, from 3.45 to 6.05 to 3.91 to 5.40.

Ryan Rowland-Smith
Astros: one year, $750,000
Last season, the young lefty won one game and had a 6.75 ERA with the Mariners. He was solid the three years before that, but he’s generally been more effective as a reliever than as a starter.

Rich Harden
Athletics: one year, $1.5 million (plus incentives)
Harden is coming off another injury plagued season that saw him pitching out of the bullpen in September. He might fall into a bullpen role again this season. When he did pitch last season, he carried a 5.58 ERA in Texas.

After Cliff Lee
Amazing how quiet the market has been since Lee came off the board.
Jeff Francis, Justin Duchscherer, Kevin Millwood and others are still out there.

Chien-Ming Wang
Nationals: one year, $1 million with heavy incentives
One day after Lee signed with the Phillies, Wang re-signed with the Nationals. You know the Wang story, so I’m not going to rehash it here. There were — and are — several Wang-type starters on the market.

Brandon Webb
Rangers: one year, $3 million (plus heavy incentives)
Webb has one big league start in the past two seasons. He was once among the best starting pitchers in the game, but reports this fall of a low-80s fastball in instructional league were not encouraging.

Brad Penny
Tigers: one year, $3 million
The most recent big league starter to come off the board, Penny is one of those risk-reward starters who have been fairly prevalent in this free agent market. He pitched well but made only nine starts last season.

Kerry Wood came up through the Cubs minor league system, and he had his best playing days in a Cubs uniform. After two years away, he wanted to be back in that organization. Apparently he wanted to be there very badly.

Today, Wood agreed to a one year deal to rejoin the Cubs bullpen. The cost: One year, $1.5 million.

Mark Feinsand confirmed what was already obvious: The asking price to pitch for the Yankees was much higher. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Wood could have played in Chicago on a one-year, $3.5-million offer from the White Sox.

Apparently more than one pitcher has chosen a team ahead of a contract this winter.

A few more links from today…

• Feinsand reports that the Yankees have had “very, very preliminary” conversations about pursuing Rafael Soriano, but Joel Sherman says those conversations won’t go anywhere. The price is far too high for a setup man.

• Bob Klapisch reported today that the Yankees were working toward a deal with lefty Pedro Feliciano. There has been rumored interest in Feliciano since early in the offseason. The Yankees might also be looking into Brian Fuentes.

• The Yankees have reportedly asked for Freddy Garcia’s medical records.

• Chien-Ming Wang is on his way back to the Nationals. As you might expect, it’s a small guarantee with heavy incentives.

• The Red Sox are still making moves, including a reported deal with reliever Bobby Jenks. They also sent Eric Patterson to San Diego as the PTBNL in the Adrian Gonzalez deal.

• Magglio Ordonez is going back to Detroit.

• Sad story about Steven Smith, a 24-year-old Yankees fan who died Monday in a three-car accident. If you didn’t know him personally, you might very well have known him as an active member of the Yankees Twitter community.

Associated Press photo

Around here, it’s hard to see the Cliff Lee signing as anything but a punch to the Yankees gut, but there’s another side to this story. What’s taking place in Philadelphia is impressive, and Jayson Stark did a nice job writing about the Lee signing from the Phillies side.

I appreciate any story that includes this quote: “Holy [colorful adjective] [colorful noun].”

Brian Cashman wasn’t quite as colorful in his Phillies assessment, but he made the key point.

“They have evolved into one of the more premier franchises, and that’s a credit to Dave Montgomery,” Cashman said during this afternoon’s conference call. “It’s an attractive place to play. It’s healthy competition, and it’s good for baseball.”

Not a lot of “mystery teams” end up with the top free agent on the market. The Phillies made it happen. Give credit where it’s due. It’s a heckuva signing.

A few other links:

• Cool post over at MLBTradeRumors about the lessons of the Lee signing.

• Even before Lee signed, Jack Curry was already reporting that the Yankees did not consider Zack Greinke to be a legitimate Plan B. I talked to quite a few Yankees officials today, and one of them suggested it’s more likely the team will mix and match a few different upgrades rather than try to find a Lee replacement.

• The A’s have finalized their Hideki Matsui signing. He’ll get one year and less than $6 million.

• Austin Kearns is on the Diamondbacks radar, according to Jon Paul Morosi. So is former Yankees outfielder Xavier Nady.

• Jerry Crasnick says the Rangers have discussed signing Chien-Ming Wang.

• The Mariners have signed Royce Ring to a minor league deal. When it rains it pours, huh?

• Former Yankees prospect Dioner Navarro has signed with the Dodgers.

Associated Press photo

It’s pretty well established — and difficult to argue — that the Yankees need Cliff Lee. They have their ace, but the rest of the rotation is either relatively inexperienced (Phil Hughes), unreliable (A.J. Burnett), untested (Ivan Nova) or unnamed (is Sergio Mitre the fifth starter right now?).

Didn’t the Yankees just rebuild their rotation two years ago?

It was at exactly this time in 2008 that the Yankees signed Burnett and CC Sabathia, landing two premier free agents who immediately helped them win a championship. Now the Yankees are in desperate need of pitching help again. What happened to that group of starters?

CC Sabathia
Good as advertised
Whatever rotation problems popped up in the past two years, they weren’t Sabathia’s fault. Two years into a seven-year deal, Sabathia has 40 wins and a couple of top-four finishes in the Cy Young voting. The No. 1 spot in the rotation is secure.

A.J. Burnett
Worst-case scenario
Burnett had a hit-and-miss reputation when he came to the Yankees, but he also had five-straight seasons with a 4.07 ERA or lower. He made it six straight in his first Yankees season, then he made arguably the most important start of the 2009 postseason. Of course, 2010 was a different story altogether, the idea of a repeat performance makes his spot in the rotation unreliable at best. Burnett has three seasons left on his deal, and he could bounce right back, but last season was cause for significant concern.

Andy Pettitte
The inevitable question
When Pettitte re-signed before the 2009 season, it was with the understanding that he was nearing the end of his career. One year. Two years. Three years. However long the wait, Pettitte’s spot in the rotation was never built to last, so the fact he’s considering retirement certainly comes as no shock. The question of whether Pettitte would come back was inevitable. Of all the current rotation questions, this one was most predictable.

Joba Chamberlain
The tough decision
Chamberlain had some good moments in his first full season as a Major League starter, but his 4.75 ERA wasn’t exactly inspiring and last spring he was bumped back to bullpen by the emergence of Phil Hughes. After years of back-and-forth questions, the Yankees finally made a decision on Chamberlain, declaring him a full-time reliever, and they don’t seem likely to stray from that approach. He’s essentially been replaced by Hughes, giving the Yankees one young, homegrown starter instead of two.

Chien-Ming Wang
Still trying to recover
That 2009 season was supposed to be a return to form for Wang. He was supposed to be healthy, and a healthy Wang was supposed to mean another season of effective sinkers and close to 20 wins. Instead, Wang won one game that year and he hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since. In reality, the two-year unraveling of the Yankees recently rebuilt rotation started with Wang. He couldn’t make it through the season, Chamberlain’s future was in the air and no one knew how much longer Pettitte would pitch. The Yankees rotation had been rebuilt heading into 2009 season, and by that winter there were already significant longterm questions.

Associated Press photos

As much as I’d love to see Brian Cashman put on an elf costume and climb down a building in Connecticut, I’m instead making my way to Orlando for this week’s Winter Meetings. That means one thing: Cliff Lee.

Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera are done, and the Yankees focus will shift to the rotation, which is the team’s most glaring need. Of course, the Yankees aren’t the only team interested in Lee. The Rangers are also going to make a push, and the Dallas Morning News took a look at the backup options should Lee sign elsewhere.

They’re basically the same for the Rangers as they are for the Yankees.

1. Trade the farm for someone like Zack Greinke.

2. Hope for a remarkable resurgence from someone like Brandon Webb or Chien-Ming Wang.

3. Try to catch lightning in a bottle with an internal candidate. I’m looking at you Ivan Nova.

Obviously, the preference is Lee. My guess is you’ll hear his name a lot this week.

Associated Press photo