Yankees buy on small sample size

Yesterday the Yankees made an interesting move and added Chan Ho Park to the roster for $1.2 million and $300,000 in incentives. This gives them some options regarding Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes and could result in one going to Triple-A to start the year. The question is does Park really bring anything to the Yankees?

Park is one of those players who benefited early in his career from park factors in Dodger Stadium from 1996-2001, long before FIP or QERA was around to let the masses see what was really going on. His FIP in LA was 4.33, but he looked much better with an ERA of 3.77 and clearly a factor of his low number of home runs against.

In 2002 he moved to Texas and things have never been the same. His ERA since leaving has been 5.22, but in a very small sample size of 50 IP last year he looked to turn things around. Was this change for real giving the Yankees a new bullpen threat or was it nothing but sample size issues and a regression in Yankee Stadium sure to come?

Reaching into the MailBag

This one courtesy of James, aka “jgr jgr”. James submitted a few puzzling questions, though this one made me think the most:

“Is there some hitter or pitcher out there under the radar that you think will be wearing a new Boston uniform in 2010?”

Well, going off this question, we’ll avoid talking about the likely suspects, including Bay, Holliday, Harden, or Scutaro who have all received a great deal of coverage not only on this site, but on Sox discussion boards ‘Nation’ wide (Yes, that was a pun. No, I won’t apologize.)

As for truly under the radar names, we must look really deep into the free agent roster, probably to the point of back-end bullpen types or bench hitters. While these moves may not be exciting to the average layman, these are the transactions that make championships. Depth and injury/slump insurance is perhaps one of the most underrated aspects of building a championship team. John Henry could grab any fan off the streets to build a team that could win 100 games if everything were guaranteed to go as planned. However, the true talent and meddle of a front office is tested by their contingency planning.

When a team has the type of financial resources the Sox have, it’s difficult to pick a truly “under the radar” name that will make an impact, as the players the team is likely to sign are usually the top free agents, too big to fly below the hard deck.

But there is still value to be that the rest of the baseball world is not discussing. Here’s a few that I think the Sox may settle on before the off-season ends:

Value at Starting Pitcher

Assuming that the Cubs re-sign Rich Harden, while Ben Sheets and Erik Bedard find other suitors, I would love to see the Sox sign Carl Pavano. Though his 5.10 ERA left much to be desired, Pavano actually turned in quite a season in 2009, with a 4.00 FIP ERA to go along with a 3.77 K:BB rate. While his 6.64 K/9 was merely average, a 1.76 BB/9 rate is more than adequate.

If you have burning questions about Red Sox Baseball, please submit your questions to Mike_Silver_FireBrandAL@yahoo.com. We’d love to hear what’s got you thinking!

The Low-Down on Arbitration

So, who got offered arbitration by the Red Sox?
Trot Nixon did not get offered arbitration. Mark Loretta, Gabe Kapler and Doug Mirabelli were also not offered arbitration. The lone offer [...]