Results tagged ‘ Ubaldo Jimenez ’
Yankees Need To Make a Huge Run at Yu Darvish Should He Ever Be Posted.
The jury is still out on Yu Darvish as a major leaguer...but the Yankees need to roll the dice.
When 24-year-old Japanese ace Yu Darvish was asked last winter if he was considering making the jump to Major League Baseball for the start of the 2012 season, he offered a “no comment.”
Months later, Darvish still hasn’t commented on the matter.
But that hasn’t stopped MLB teams from scouting him and dreaming of how he might fare near the top of a big league starting rotation.
In late June, Rangers GM Jon Daniels headed to Japan to see Darvish for himself. Many other front office executives have done the same. And every major league club is at least keeping some form of tabs on the 6-foot-5 right-hander.
Darvish registered a 1.82 ERA as a rookie in 2007, a 1.88 ERA in 2008, a 1.73 ERA in 2009, and a 1.78 ERA in 2010. This season, he is 13-2 with a miniscule 1.44 ERA for the Nippon Ham Fighters.
Even with Daisuke Matsuzaka‘s failures, Darvish stands to make millions upon millions if he agrees to test out the posting process. He is Japan’s highest-paid player at $6 million annually. In the U.S., he could easily double that.
In fact, I strongly suspect the New York Yankees, despite the nightmare that was Kei Igawa, will move heaven & earth to win the rights to Mr. Darvish’s services.
Simply put, in a market devoid of quality free agent pitching for the next season and change, this is by far the most effective way to upgrade their rotation without having to hand over the keys to their entire farm system.
We have ALL seen the outlandish package the Rockies indicated they wanted for Ubaldo Jimenez and there is rampant speculation about what it would take to pry King Felix away from the Seattle Mariners.
The scenario for either would look something like this:
- The Yankees receive Felix Hernandez or Ubaldo Jimenez…
- The Rockies or Mariners receive Jesus Montero, Manny Banuelos, Dellin Betances, Adam Warren and/or David Phelps AND Ivan Nova.
The Yankees need to just forget about the disaster that was Kei Igawa and make a huge run at Yu Darvish.
I’m sorry, but that is a ridiculously high price to pay for a pitcher, even a top-tier, ace of the staff type guy.
You are giving up 4 or 5 guys who all have the looks of being major league pitchers that range from serviceable/solid to the ace of a staff, while sprinkling a 21 year old with unlimited potential at the dish on top.
Granted, prospects are just prospects until they do something to change that fact, but as a form of currency alone they are worth their weight in gold.
If you make that deal you not only strip your organization of pitching depth, but you also no longer have those trade chips to go out and make other moves that may be necessary down the road.
No, the smart play is to hold onto those young guns and see if one or more of them can be developed into your own ace of the future.
If you are the Yankees especially your best bet is to take the one currency you have in seemingly endless amounts, real currency, and throw great big bags of it at Yu Darvish’s team (and then him) to bolster your rotation should he ever be submitted for the posting process.
It’s a roll of the dice, no doubt about it.
But then again, so is any move you make. Might was well choose the one that would be the least costly should it blow up in your face.
MLB Trade Rumors: Tigers Interested in Orioles’ Guthrie, Padres’ Harang
Guthrie spent most of the season getting no run support before falling on hard times as of late.
The Tigers are hunting for starting pitching as aggressively as any team in baseball, and they’re looking at Baltimore’s Jeremy Guthrie and San Diego’s Aaron Harang as fallback options if Colorado’s Ubaldo Jimenez and the Dodgers’ Hiroki Kuroda prove to be out of reach.
Detroit is in need of a starter after shifting Phil Coke back to the pen. Charlie Furbush replaced him in the rotation, but he’s struggled mightily (to say the least) in his two starts to date.
FOXSports.com’s Jon Paul Morosi has the Guthrie news, putting him third on the Tigers’ list of potential pitching acquisitions. Morosi says the Orioles recently had a scout watching Detroit’s Triple-A affiliate. Guthrie is 3-13 with a 4.45 ERA this season, and has struggled somewhat lately after having maintained an ERA in the mid-3′s for most of the season.
SI.com’s Jon Heyman says both the Tigers and Indians have made calls on Harang, who has pitched 13 scoreless innings in two starts since coming off the DL. He’s 7-3 with a 3.19 ERA in 15 starts for the Padres.
The Tigers are currently a half-game back of the Indians in the AL Central.
MLB Trade Rumors: Ubaldo Jimenez Activity Worth Keeping an Eye on
With July 31st just a couple of weeks away, Ubaldo Jimenez is arguably the most surprising name being floated in trade rumors.
Would the Rockies actually move Jimenez less than a year after he finished third in NL Cy Young voting?
ESPN.com’s Buster Olney talked to one talent evaluator who put the chances of a deal at one in four: “It has to be something that makes sense for the Rockies [right now].” Another evaluator thinks “it’s more trolling than intent on moving” on Colorado’s part.
Here’s a comprehensive roundup of the rest of today’s Jimenez-related notes….
- The Yankees will evaluate Jimenez as a potential trade target, tweets Olney. SI.com’s Jon Heyman adds that the Rockies have talked to the Yanks, and “probably” the Red Sox, Tigers, Reds, and others as well.
- Every year there seems to be a potentially game-changing pitcher connected in trade rumors to the Yankees, and this year it’s Jimenez, says Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News.
- One more note from Olney’s article: Given Jimenez’s inexpensive price tag through 2013, there would be very little financial risk for any team acquiring the right-hander, which is one reason why the Rockies’ asking price is so high.
- Some teams interested in Jimenez believe that if the Rockies hang on to him now, he’s a decent bet to be traded this winter, when available top pitching will again be scarce and more clubs could get involved, writes Olney.
- Speaking of that scenario. If more teams get aggressively involved the asking price for young flame-thrower will be considerable. Rockies GM Dan O’Dowd tells Troy Renck of the Denver Post that the Rockies would have to be “absolutely overwhelmed” to move Jimenez. “It would have to be a Herschel Walker deal,” O’Dowd added, referring to the 1989 NFL trade that earned the nickname “The Great Train Robbery.”
It’s hard to imagine Colorado moving such a young, high upside piece that is reasonably priced for the next couple of years. But this is baseball AND it is the trade deadline so stranger things have happened.
