The Atlanta Braves are picking up right where they left off after a sizzling September to close last season, blasting the Chicago Cubs for a 16-5 opening day victory. The day was highlighted by budding-superstar rookie Jason Heyward, who lived up to the hype by connecting on a three-run homer in his first major league at bat. A perfect start to manager Bobby Cox final season before heading into retirement.
Heyward Leads Braves To Victory
The day belonged to Jason Heyward. After ripping the cover off the ball at every level off the minor leagues, Heyward left the Braves’ organization no choice but to give him the starting nod, supplanting starter Matt Diaz in right field.
Beating out Diaz was no easy task, as he batted .313 with 13 homers in 2009 after supplanting Jeff Francoeur and sending him packing to the New York Mets
Heyward jumped from Single A to Triple A in 2009, bringing along with him comparisons to baseball greats Ken Griffey and Alex Rodriguez who arrived in the big leagues early. At age 20, Heyward stands 6′4″ and 220 pounds. He has multiple tools, hitting for average, hitting for power and stealing you a base when you need it.
The next big star.
Heyward and his teammates have the radar set on the Philadelphia Phillies. While the Braves made a number of moves to improve in the offseason with the acquisitions of Melky Cabrera, Troy Glaus and Billy Wagner, they have coupled budding stars with seasoned veterans to make a big run in 2010.
On the otherhand, the Phillies stood pat. They swapped Cliff Lee for Roy Halladay, which is just an even swap and they added an aging Placido Polanco to replace Pedro Feliz. With the biggest problem being their bullpen, the Phillies chose not to fill that hole and enter 2010 with a bullpen believed to be worse than one of baseball worst pens in 2009. And struggling closer Brad Lidge has started the season on the DL.
If Opening Day is a sign of things to come, the Phillies may be struggling to keep up with the Braves in 2010. While the Phillies have made it to back to back World Series, they did so in unimpressively in many baseball insiders eyes. Thanks to an unbalanced schedule that increases the number of divisional games to 18, the Phillies were able to tee off on the struggling NL East teams. In contrast, St. Louis and Chicago had to struggle to get into the playoffs in the much tougher NL Central and the Dodgers and Rockies had to fend for their lives in the NL West. The Phillies benefited tremendously with 72 games against their NL East combatants.
The Phillies won’t have that luxury this season thanks to the Braves, as well as the improved Florida Marlins and New York Mets. During the Phillies’ World Series Championship run they recorded a losing record against winning-record teams and in 2009 they posted just a breakeven record against the best team’s in baseball. The shortened rotation and rosters in the playoff disguised an incomplete team that struggled over the course of 162 game season. At 19 players, the Phillies are the best team in baseball. At 24 players, they are just slightly better than average.
The Phillies now have more competition that will gnaw at the weaknesses by making the regular season more grueling. With the increased prominence of the Braves and other NL East teams, the Phillies no longer have rollover games against Triple A laden squads. The glaring holes at the back of the rotation and in the bullpen will be ever present for the Phillies this year and Jason Heyward, along with his Braves, are ready to take their place at the top of the heap.
Reports have begun to swirl of an imminent trade that will bring pitcher Roy Halladay to the Philadephia Phillies in a three-team trade that includes both the Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners. The deal hinges on Halladay signing a three-year contract extension reportedly worth $60 million. The contract is expected to include performance vesting options that can trigger to extend the deal beyond the three years.
To make the deal happen, the Phillies reportedly will trade its pitching ace and postseason stud Cliff Lee to the Seattle Mariners and send three minor leaguers believed to be catcher Travis d’Arnaud, outfielder Michael Taylor, and top prospect pitcher Kyle Drabek to the Toronto Blue Jays. The Phillies would receive two minor leaguers Phillippe Aumont and Tyson Gillies from the Seattle Mariners farm system.
The deal is a head scratcher. Cliff Lee proved during the postseason he is an ace, someone you hand the ball when you need to win a game. Without Lee, the Phillies get swept by the Yankees in the World Series. While Halladay has an impressive resume, he has pitched in relative obscurity in Toronto without big game pressure and media focus on every pitch. There are huge question marks on Halladay’s mental makeup to handle such pressure, as the New York Yankees and Boston have taken off the table talks of a contract extension until Halladay proves he can pitch on a bigger stage.
The subplot lost in this story are the additional price tags with the prospects. Kyle Drabek was the unquestioned top pitching prospect in minor league baseball in 2009, a guaranteed major leaguer believed to have ace potential. Michael Taylor was to be the guy to take over in left field in Philadelphia after batting .320 with 20 HRs and 21 SBs in 2009. Given Raul Ibanez’s awful decline in the second half of last season, Taylor was the guy to potentially push Ibanez into early retirement. These guys are not prospects, they are major leaguers in waiting.
The details and sensibility of this trade goes beyond just the players being mentioned here, as you have to consider in the equation the cost of the Cliff Lee service rental. To obtain Lee for their unsuccessful World Series run, Philadelphia unloaded half of their minor league system. Included in that deal were Carlos Carrasco, Jason Donald, Lou Marson and Jason Knapp. When you add this into the deal, it means the Phillies have given up six of their top eight prospects for Halladay.
The Phillies are clearly gambling for short-term wins and mortgaging their long-term success. With a team that is aging and moving from its prime into sunset years, lets hope for Ruben Amaro Jr’s sake the moves payoff. If they don’t, he’ll be the fall guy and Phillies fans will pay a significant price for years to come.
Recently announced by ESPN’s Buster Olney, the Yankees just completed a three team trade that will bring Detroit Tigers All-Star centerfielder to New York in an eight player trade. As part of the deal, the Arizona Diamondbacks get Edwin Jackson from Detroit and Ian Kennedy from New York. The Detriot Tigers get Max Scherzer and Daniel Schlereth from Arizona and Phil Coke and outfield prospect Austin Jackson from New York.
So what does this all mean?
First, it appears that Johnny Damon played his hand very poorly and once again Scott Boras has screwed one of his top clients. As I recently projected in my assessment of the top free agents, Damon will be this year’s Bobby Abreau and will be playing for peanuts next season.
Second, in the matter of just two days, the Yankees have dumped both Brian Bruney and Phil Coke from their vaunted bullpen. This signals that Joba Chamberlain’s days in the starting rotation have come to an end or he’ll be pitching in Toronto next year.
Third, the Yankees clearly are making starting step for future moves. Get ready for a Roy Halladay landing in New York City.
But getting back to Granderson. The move is puzzling. Here is a guy entering into the prime of his career and in three consecutive years the guy has regressed since getting his big contract with the Tigers. His batting average has dropped from .302 in 2007 to .280 in 2008 to a pawltry .249 in 2009. Worse, his OPS, which really defines a player’s offensive contribution, has plummeted from .913 to .859 to .780 in the same span. What that means is he is not getting on base and not hitting when it counts. All this occurred while having the luxury of Placido Polanco, Magglio Ordonez and Miguel Cabrera batting behind him.
Digging deeper into his stats, Granderson has displayed an absolute inability to hit lefties. Over the last three seasons, he has posted a .202 batting average against lefties while displaying almost no power with only registering a homer in every 44.6 at bats. Get two strikes on him, and he almost an automatic out. Over the last three seasons, he registered just a .198 batting average once the pitcher gets in the command position. This is not to mention his 393 strikeouts, which ranks as the worst among leadoff hitters in major league baseball.
In contrast, Johnny Damon delivered a .268 batting average against lefties, his power dropoff is significantly less and when he’s down in the count, has a batting average 25 points higher than Granderson. When he gets a full count, he has an OPS of 1.061. Damon was clutch and carried pitchers into the count to his benefit, not his detriment.
Beyond his stats, Granderson has shown to lack the intangibles. Detroit was a team lacking player leadership. Miguel Cabrera was a lost cause is this area, confirmed by his after hours drinking escapade at the end of the 2009 season. Granderson was they guy Jim Leyland needed to turn to the keep them in the mix and he totally let his coach down. As the Tigers collapsed in the last 4 games of the regular season, Granderson delivered a 2 for 15 showing leading his coach to drop his All-Star centerfielder to 7th in the order in the must win game 162. In summary, Detroit gave up on Granderson.
Granderson is a platoon player at best for the Yankees given his drawbacks. While he is an improvement in the area of fielding over Damon, that is pretty much it. Age doesn’t much matter in the equation, its what you do on the field. Ian Kennedy, Phil Coke and Austin Jackson was a lot to give up for a platoon player that will likely bat 9th in the Yankees order given his poor on-base percentage.
In this trade, the person I am happiest for is Ian Kennedy. He has wonderful stuff and Joe Girardi really mishandled him to set him back. Heading to Arizona is a great fresh start for the kid and he’ll finally get his chance for a team that knows how to bring along young pitchers. Kennedy is going to a quality pitcher in the bigs.
The Yankees are definitely going to be in the market for a right-handed outfield bat to rotate into the mix. One obvious choice is to re-sign Xavier Nady given his ability to play all outfield positions. The Yankees also need to start thinking about bullpen support as well. If they pick up Halladay in a trade, either Chamberlain or Hughes is gone, along with a budding future star at catcher in Jesus Montero.
Right now, the Yankees are not looking good for a repeat without a few more najor moves to fill in the holes they now have in the outfield.
