I have a feeling that he’s going to be a fairly hot commodity and get $12M+ per year. Those who lose out on the bidding for CC, Burnett will throw some serious money at him.

imagine if he gets a ring, he’d be a great leader! Then the Royals could finally get value out of him by trading him for Rick Ankiel!

I think Teixeira will end up getting more than $20M per year for 5+ years. I think Dunn’s salary and contract term will be more than a little smaller.

I’ve seen all kinds of speculation on how much Dunn and Burell will get. Some are thinking because of their horrible defense, old player skills, etc. they won’t even get $15M per season. Some are thinking maybe closer to $20M per season. If the truth is closer to the former than the latter, the Royals can afford them. I’m not saying it will happen or that Moore will even be interested, but it’s a possibility. Moore put in a big bid on Hunter. In the end, it wasn’t big enough. That could happen again this year. We’ll see.

They can still play, but shouldn’t be expected to play well for long and may well require too much money over too long of a period of time. And Bradley can’t be expected to play more than 2/3 of a season…ever.

…but of course the next question is what amounts to overpayment? I wouldn’t sign Dunn to a 5-year deal or give him $18M per year. But I would sign him to a 3/51 or 4/64 deal (those would be my ceilings for him). I don’t know if that would be enough to sign him, but it would be worth a shot, IMO.

It’s hard to tell what’s up. I agree that it’s unlikely that he’s THIS bad (at this point, he’s below replacement level. I never thought that would happen this late in the season). His rate stats from 2006 were even worse, but that was over only 69 games and he got hurt. (From about 1997-2002, he was uniformly awful, but he was young and hadn’t made his 2003 [age 27!] career-making breakout that he hasn’t come close to replicating since, although he’s been good].

It’s hard to tell how injured he is. I’m not saying he’s faking it. And I’m not even trying to imply it. This is the issue: if he’s really, really hurt, then it would really help if he let himself be sat for a while, or even take a trip to the DL. At a certain point it goes from being “tough” and “noble” and trying to “live up to the contract” to be just stupid and hurting the team. Especially if it’s still effecting him next spring because he didn’t let it heal this year.

I know that players (including pitchers) talk about protection (then again, some baseball players seem to think it’s better to pitch to Albert Pujols than David Eckstein], but statistically, from what I undertand it’s been show to be of little or no effect. And if anyone’s lacking protection, it isn’t Guillen — for one thing, other players on the team are clearly hitting better than him (Gordon, Aviles, DeJesus). Who’s protecting whom? Remember when Gordon hit in front of Guillen and the As walked Alex 5 times?

I don’t know how to measure the psychological effect. I’ll go out on a limb and say I don’t see how it could be worth 25-30 points of OPS+ from last year to this year.

ZeppelinDZ, in his post on BABIP, shows that Guillen hasn’t even been unlucky this year with singles. His LD rate is down. Also, his already poor plate patience has been even worse this year.

So, I guess I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t believe that Guillen’s performance this year is his new standard (Andruw Jones, anyone?). On the other hand, I find it unlikely that he’ll ever OPS+ 116 over a full season again. If he could get to around 110 (around league average for corner OFs this year), that would be nice. I think that’s much more likely than getting back to 116 or whatever, but, without putting odds on it, I’d say more likely than not he’ll be worse than that. I think 105 or so is more realistic, and wouldn’t be the end of the world. At least it would up his trade value, if the Royals wanted/needed to do that.

To me, Jose Guillen, with the exception of his first half in Cincinatti in 2003, is not a guy who you want to be the best hitter on your team. This iisn’t an insult to him personally, just a take on his skills. His OPS in his prime is good for a corner OF, but isn’t very good and certainly not great. His OPS is SLG-heavy, and OBP is more important. This is a weird way to think about it, but for a contending team, unless it has a lights-out rotation, Guillen can’t be more than the 3rd best hitter. A guy who hits fifth or sixth. And that’s assuming he’s performing on the 2007 level, which I think he’s unlikely to reach again.

Of course, he’s been lower than that over the whole year for the Royals, and they aren’t contending! Right, but that’s more a testament to his bad year than the Royals hitters. Having said that, I think that, assuming Guillen rights the ship next year, Gordon was looking more and more (before this injury) like he was going to be better than Hoagy next year anyway, against righties for sure. Butler has shown signs. Aviles is more complicated, I can see him OPSing around .800 next year. At this point, we’ll be relived if Guillen can better that. He needs to to be a league average hitter at his position. But if he can do that, and if Butler and (especially) Gordon continue to progress, that might be good enough next year, particularly if the Royals can add a decent bat to pad things a bit more.

Hoagy doesn’t need better bats in the lineup to “protect” him, but rather to put him in the role he’s suited for — closer to the bottom of the order than he’s been. There, having better OBP guys like DDJ, Butler, Gordon, maybe Aviles (against lefties), and hopefully a new bat like Dunn, Burrell, or even Furcal/Hudson, he can hit 5th or sixth, where he won’t eat up as many outs, and can bat the better hitters in. He’d be good in that role, where his OBP wouldn’t hurt the team as much (and, yes, I know that batting order doesn’t matter that much statistically, but it does more than protection!), and his ISO would be put to its best use, or something.

/talking out of my ass

…which of these two circumstances would you prefer for the Royals?

A. They have Guillen under contract for 2009 and 2010 at $12M per year

B. They have $10-12M per year to spend on other talent for 2009 and 2010 plus a mediocre prospect.

I’ll take option B without hesitation. Hopefully Moore will shop him, take what he can get in return and hopefully toss in no more than $2M. Given his likely decline curve, this was supposed to be Guillen’s best year with the Royals. Due to injury or whatever, that best year has been lost. He’ll likely rebound, but even if healthy, he’s getting older and skills diminish. If Moore can dump Guillen and the vast majority of his remaining contract, then he should do it.

When people have made league/park arguments against me when we’re both using OPS+, I’m not sure why it’s fair.

But, still, I’ve heard this point made in particular with Hudson by “people in the know” )HBT/BP columnists, I believe). And if you look at his splits in AZ, he is significantly better at AZ. Probably not as bad I made it sound (seems like I just looked at this last week). I’m not quite sure how to use tOPS+ and sOPS+, which is what they have in BP splits pages.

18M CC Sabathia 25M?

somehow LaRussa wins…. maybe all those weird things he does like hit and run or squeeze and hit the pitcher 8th actually work?