As far as I know, I really like the Juan Cruz signing. Not a ton of money for a pretty decent reliever. He strikes out a lot of batters, which is nice, and hopefully pitching at The K will mask his tendency to give up the long ball. This is the signing GMDM should have made first, before the Kyle Farnsworth abomination – or maybe instead of it.
The flip sign of signing Cruz is that the team had to clear off a place on the roster, and chose to DFA Esteban German instead of, oh, I don’t know…Tony Pena?
Some further thoughts..
Our shiny new utility infielder-and-sometimes-outfielder, Willie Bloomquist, has never been worth more than 0.5 Value Wins (via FanGraphs). German has contributed over one whole win to the Royals twice. That’s not terribly easy for a bench guy to do. But German had a rough 2008 and, if you buy into WAR as a valuable way to quickly assess a guy, actually hurt the Royals: He cost them 0.4 wins in 2008.
German only hit .245/.303/.338 in 2008, down from .264/.351/.376 in 2007 (and an even better line the year before that).
What unfortunate timing for a down season. If it had happened any other year, German might still be on the team, and someone else would have been DFA’d. But this winter, Dayton Moore and Trey Hillman fell in love with a man named Wee Willie Ballgame, and determined that a Spork is better than a Bat Flip.
And then there’s Tony Pena Jr. Still on the team. The Major League Team. The 25-man, opening day roster. As an infielder. I can’t even touch that right now, but I hope to try and wrap my mind around it later. If I can accomplish that, I’ll be sure to let you know.
ETA: After a refreshing nap, I realized I forgot to address the issue of the Royals losing their 2nd round draft pick by signing Cruz since he was a type A free agent. Perhaps the team is confident that Mark Grudzielanek will sign on somewhere, thus granting KC a sandwich pick, so the team would essentially break even. That’s a wait-and-see issue, I suppose.
Related posts:
4 comments
Skip to comment form ↓
Evan
February 28, 2009 at 9:30 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
German’s $1 million saved likely was the motivating factor here.
Of course, it would have been nice to not sign Willie in the first place.
Jeff P.
March 1, 2009 at 8:46 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
German seemed like one of the odd men out (along with TPJ) should Callaspo win the 2nd base job (which he freaking should).
enquirm
July 18, 2009 at 10:55 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
someone?
Hobosic
September 7, 2009 at 12:11 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
Thank you! I would now go on this blog every day!
Hobosic