Jan 1st 2009 7:20PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)
In an attempt to buy some credibility after a 102-loss season, the Nationals made a very serious run at Mark Teixeira, becoming one of the final three bidders for the slugger before ultimately losing out on him because they couldn’t offer a chance to win right away.

That doesn’t mean they’re through trying to improve though, as MLB.com’s Bill Ladson writes. Not only are the Nationals in serious pursuit of Milton Bradley — who seems destined to sign with the Cubs sooner or later — but they’re in on second baseman Orlando Hudson and first baseman/outfielder Adam Dunn.

It seems unlikely that the Nats will be able to secure all three players, and the interest in Bradley doesn’t seem to make a ton of sense since their outfield is already pretty full, but it doesn’t seem all that crazy that they’d come away with two of the three.

It’s clear that Washington has money to spend, and in a cautious market like this, that makes them awfully powerful. Put Hudson and Dunn on the right side of the Nationals’ infield and suddenly there’s a semblance of respectable offense in the nation’s capital. It wouldn’t be enough to take them seriously as a contender — not with such a lousy pitching staff — but at least they wouldn’t be a laughingstock.

Dec 29th 2008 3:00PM by Matt Watson (author feed)
Phil Rogers of the tossed out an interesting Adam Dunn tidbit in his weekend column:
Dunn, who has hit 40-plus homers in five consecutive seasons, is trying to convince the Cubs to sign him for the right-field vacancy, instead of the equally defensively challenged Bradley. Dunn’s high strikeout totals and career .247 batting average argue against him being the guy to break up the right-handed bats in the middle of the Cubs’ lineup.
There are very few big-league lineups that wouldn’t be improved with the addition of 40 home runs and a .380 on-base percentage, and the Cubs are no exception. And yet, for whatever reason, sportswriters (and team announcers) can’t talk about Dunn without getting stuck on strikeouts and batting average.

It’s short-sighted and not just a little ignorant: if you hit the ball a mile and get on base at an above-average clip, who cares how you make your outs the rest of the time? You’re either driving in runs or creating opportunities for other players to do the same. But I digress — this argument has been made dozens thousands of times.Continue Reading

Dec 23rd 2008 3:45PM by Will Brinson (author feed)
Mark Teixeira and Scott Boras have been controlling the free agent market for some time now, as they decide on where the superstar will end up playing in 2009. It was basically narrowed down to the Nationals, the Angels, the Red Sox and maybe the Yankees, even though they had already spent $40 billion on pitching.

Or so we thought; Jon Heyman is reporting that the Yankees (the f__king Yankees, man!) are close to signing Tex to an eight-year, $180 million deal.
Teixeira, who hit .308 with 33 home runs and 121 RBIs in 2008, will receive an eight-year, $180 million deal from the Yankees with a full no-trade provision.
If this happens — and there are a lot of major news sites reporting it — then it is a HUGE coup for the Yankees. Not only have they picked up CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett to shore up their rotation, but suddenly they’ve added one of the premiere power hitters in baseball to their lineup.

Now, of course, this would all but kill off the Manny Ramirez to the Yankees rumors. At least we can hope — Armageddon doesn’t sound that fun. On the bright side, at least “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” is suddenly relevant again.

Dec 23rd 2008 7:30PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)
It is only a surprise that the Yankees wound up with Mark Teixeira in the end when viewed through the prism of the last few weeks. Unlike with CC Sabathia, New York general manager Brian Cashman lurked quietly in the weeds as the Angels, Nationals, Orioles and Red Sox bid for the first baseman.

Had you taken a straw poll of baseball insiders at the outset of the offseason, the Yankees very well may have been the favorites to land him.

So while the baseball operations people in Anaheim, Baltimore, Boston and Washington might be feeling stunned today, they can’t be all that surprised that Teixeira is being fitted for pinstripes.

Things change quickly in baseball and now the hard-working folks who lost out on Teixeira will have to shift their focus to Plan B, whatever that may be. Before running down what each team will do now, let’s state the obvious. Now is not the time to panic for any of these clubs.

Teixeira was a singular force in this free-agent class. There are certainly plenty of bats available that can roughly replicate his offensive production, but there is no complete package like him on the market — splurging for one of the pretenders out there (Adam Dunn, Pat Burrell, even Manny Ramirez) won’t solve the problem that losing out on Tex created.Continue Reading

Dec 22nd 2008 2:50PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)
Thankfully for bloggers and baseball fans alike, the Mark Teixeira sweepstakes will likely draw to close in the next few days, if not the next few hours.

The Red Sox say they will not be “a factor” in the bidding, but they probably will be. The Angels are out of the running, and seem much more serious about it than Boston. The Yankees are lurking, but appear unwilling to get involved unless Teixeira’s demands drop considerably, and the Orioles are lagging behind everyone else, hoping against hope that Tex will sign at a huge discount just to play in his hometown.

All of which brings us to the Nationals, who, despite finishing with the worst record in baseball this year, remain a factor. Considering the massive rebuilding project they’re facing, that’s no small achievement, and it’s enough to make pitcher Collin Balester awfully optimistic about the state of baseball in the nation’s capital.
Every month, Washington pitcher Collin Balester appears on a satellite radio show (MLB Home Plate, Sirius 210 and XM 175). It’s called “Minors & Majors with Grant Paulsen.” When Paulsen asked Balester this week about his feelings if the Nationals sign Mark Teixeira, here’s what Balester said…

“If that happens it’s going to be a dream come true. That guy is a great player and if he comes to the nation’s capital, watch out, we’re going to the World Series and we are winning it all. I’m calling it right now. We’re playing four games in the World Series, sweep, see ya!”Continue Reading

Dec 21st 2008 8:45PM by Mullet (author feed)
Life is like a box of chocolates, or so they say. The Washington Nationals opened the box as they have signed Daniel Cabrera to a one year deal, not quite knowing what they’ll get from game to game. Cabrera had spent his entire career in the Orioles organization, thus his moving costs are kept to a minimum.

Cabrera’s numbers are mind-numbingly mediocre, and that’s being nice. This is a guy who will show you the kind of talent he has every once in a while, as he did have two complete games, an five games of six innings or more with no walks. But even with those, Cabrera had 90 walks alongside 95 strikeouts last season, which is an obscene ratio. When he gives out the free passes, he’s quite generous. Maybe a switch to the N.L. (and out of the brutal A.L. East) will help him … or it will help the N.L if he can’t find the strike zone.

But as far as a low risk, high reward signing, Cabrera is it. Is it the type of signing that will convince, say, Mark Teixeira to sign with the Nationals? Probably not. But that’s what $180 million is for.

Dec 17th 2008 1:45PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)
Free-agent first baseman Mark Teixeira is expected to make a decision on his new team in the very near future, potentially even in the next 24-to-48 hours. In the meantime, we’re all stuck devouring the latest scraps from the rumor mill.

On Tuesday, I wrote that Teixeira should choose the Orioles. Now, according to ESPN’s Buster Olney, Baltimore has essentially dropped out of the bidding, by refusing to upgrade its initial seven-year offer.
“The Orioles are out of it, unless Teixeira really, really wants to play there,” said one source.It’s not all that surprising that the O’s are falling behind in the chase for Teixeira. They can’t offer him the chance to be on a winner, at least right away, they don’t have the financial resources that the Red Sox, Angels or Yankees do and they aren’t a Tom Hicks-esque wild card in the bidding like the Nationals appear to be.

On the flip side of things, the Red Sox appear to have moved to the front of the line for Teixeira’s services. A general manager of one of the five teams involved in the bidding told Nick Cafardo of the as much.Continue Reading

Dec 16th 2008 3:15PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)

Mark Teixeira, merely the best free agent left on the market, is set to choose a team before Christmas. It’s probably fitting then that there are four calling birds (and maybe a fifth looming giant) in pursuit of his services.

Teixeira is the ideal Scott Boras client. First and foremost, he’s a tremendous ballplayer, but he’s also calm and collected with the press, a family man, and, most critically for Boras’ purposes, seemingly completely willing to go to the highest bidder.

Let’s assume for a second that Teixeira isn’t a Boras-bot sent from the future to lighten up some billionaire owner’s wallet. Let’s assume that big Tex will consider a wide variety of factors as he makes the most important decision of his baseball-playing life.

Which team, then, should he sign on the dotted line with?Continue Reading

Dec 10th 2008 3:53PM by Matt Watson (author feed)
No matter how you look at it, the Nationals are a bad team. A really bad team. They have holes in their lineup, holes in their rotation and holes in their bullpen. They are not “one player away” from contending for anything, certainly not in the NL East. where they finished dead last in 2008, more than a dozen games behind fourth place.

And yet, for whatever reason, the Nationals are making a serious push for Mark Teixeira, the most coveted slugger on the free agent market. Jose Mota of Yahoo! reports the Nationals have made a seven-year, $150 million offer, while Mike DiGiovanna of the cites “a source from a team that is involved in negotiations” that the Nationals are willing to match Teixeira’s demand for a 10-year, $200 million deal.

It’s one thing to make an offer just to get the team’s name in the paper so the front office can turn around and tell their fans, “well, we tried,” but it’s another altogether to open the doors to the vault and dare Teixeira to help himself to whatever he wants. I’m not completely convinced DiGiovanna’s source has the story right, but if the Nationals are going to break the bank on anyone, they may as well do it on a guy who grew up within driving distance of D.C.

The bidding war is hardly over — the Angels, for one, have yet to make their offer — but what looked like a two-horse race between the Angels and Red Sox (especially with the Yankees determined to fix their rotation first and lineup second) certainly got a little more interesting.

Dec 9th 2008 4:30PM by Andrew Johnson (author feed)

Angels center fielder Torii Hunter was here at the Bellagio to talk about his latest charity endeavor, the Torii Hunter Project. He was even cracking jokes. “People are going to start thinking I’m a good guy,” he said. “I’m a bad guy on the field … I’ll eat your children.”

Will any “bad men” be joining or (re-joining) Hunter in Anaheim? The Angels appear poised to make a big run at either CC Sabathia or Mark Teixeira in the coming weeks and Hunter talked about both players.Continue Reading