Beware the Rejuvenated Rays' Castoffs

The Orioles are said to be considering signing Casey Kotchman.

What they’re going to do with him is a mystery since they just signed Wilson Betemit, have Mark Reynolds and Chris Davis for first and third base. None are defensively adept at any of the positions although Reynolds occasionally makes a spectacular play to make it appear as if he’s better than he is. It’s similar to a weekend in which he’ll hit 6 home runs---many of the “ooh” and “ahh” variety in distance and hangtime to make it appear as if he’s better than he is. Then he reverts to hitting .200 and striking out every 2.6 at bats.

Kotchman is a very good defensive first baseman and had his career year at the plate for the Rays in 2011 with a slash line of .306/.378/.422 and .800 OPS.

That’s what should concern any team making a serious investment in Kotchman.

Considering the lateness of the date and that spring training is approaching along with the availability of better hitters on the market like Derrek Lee, it’s doubtful the Orioles or anyone else is going to overpay for Kotchman, but a team considering a former player for the Rays who had his best season with the Rays needs to examine history and look at the decline of Jason Bartlett, Scott Kazmir, Rafael Soriano, Akinori Iwamura and just about every scrounged screapheap salvaged detritus from their patched together bullpen who’s been used for a brief time and dispatched only to revert to the performance that led them to winding up on the scrapheap to begin with. Sometimes, as with Lance Cormier and Carlos Pena, they wind up back with the Rays.

Is Kotchman as good as he was in 2011?

History proves he’s not. Even when he was at his best with the Angels and Braves in 2007-2008, he wasn’t a force at the plate. He was useful if surrounded by a few power bats and has always been a good fielder, but teams tend to want better power production from first base than what Kotchman provided. If they can make up for it in other areas, then fine; but setting a limit on the amount of money they’re willing to pay Kotchman is a wise move.

Was the issue with his eyes that Kotchman referenced in this NY Times piece and its repair the genesis of his struggles in 2009-2010?

Clearly.

But that doesn’t make a Rays' castoff any more of a guarantee to continue the work he did with the Rays as he reestablished his value. They seem to know which way the wind is about to blow and how to judge a player and determine whether he's "figured it out" or is enjoying his career years in Tampa. That’s a reason for interested teams to look at these players with a jaundiced eye and wonder if they’re getting the pre-Rays or post-Rays player and if they’ll be overpaying to do it.

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Ken Phelps is a Punch Line of Circumstance

In today’s NY Times, Tyler Kepner discusses the maneuvers the Yankees made on Friday night in acquiring Michael Pineda from the Mariners via trade and signing Hiroki Kuroda to a 1-year, $10 million contract.

Because the Yankees traded one of their top prospects, catcher Jesus Montero, there is concern that Montero will eventually become a historic mistake. Kepner writes:

Years from now, the trade could be a punch line on some latter version of “Seinfeld,” if Montero slugs like Jay Buhner and Pineda fizzles like Ken Phelps.

Phelps is considered the epitome of Steinbrennerean stupidity because the Yankees traded a young prospect who became a feared power hitter and Phelps was a recognizable and unneeded name the Yankees added as they were in the midst of a mid-season shakeup that resulted in Billy Martin being fired (again) and replaced by Lou Piniella.

When the trade was made on July 21st, the Yankees were only 2 games out of first place. Phelps would’ve been a help if they’d needed him at all.

But that’s the problem.

The Yankees didn’t need Phelps---they had Jack Clark as their DH and Don Mattingly as their first baseman---and Phelps only had 145 plate appearances from his acquisition through the end of the season. Unsurprisingly, Phelps hit 10 homers in those 145 plate appearances. The team wound up in 5th place in the AL East and Piniella was fired at the end of the season as well.

What was ironic about the Phelps acquisition isn’t that Buhner became a star with the Mariners or that the Yankees didn’t use Phelps correctly, but that Piniella was Buhner’s manager with the Mariners from 1993 on and benefited from that trade as Buhner was a producer on the field and a fiery leader off it.

The Yankees continued their charade with a parade of managers, GMs and “strategies” that didn’t work. Only when Steinbrenner was suspended and Gene Michael was able to build the team correctly did the team regenerate itself to what they are today.

But what of Phelps?

Is he a punchline?

In looking at his numbers, Phelps’s biggest obstacle was the era in which he played. As simplistic as the George Steinbrenner method of finding players was, in this case he was right---Phelps hit a lot of home runs in relatively few at bats---but Phelps was caught in the Yankees turmoil and that there were 12 hitters who deserved a place in a lineup with only 9 spots.

The value of a player who had power and walked a lot was yet to be widely understood, therefore he was pigeonholed as a poor defender who couldn’t hit lefties and didn't deserve a chance to play more than he did.

Phelps was a prototypically perfect DH, but never played in more than 125 games for one season in his career.

Not surprisingly in those 125 games, he hit 24 homers, had a .406 on base percentage and .526 slugging.

Had anyone recognized what Phelps was and given him an opportunity to play regularly, there’s no reason he couldn’t have been a David Ortiz-type who got better hitting against lefties the more he faced them. In addition to that for a power hitter, Phelps rarely struck out.

If he were playing today, Phelps would be a slugging bat in the middle of the lineup for a contending American League team like the Red Sox or Yankees and have a lucrative, long-term contract. Instead, he’s used as an example of a mistake the Yankees made in 1988. But the mistake wasn’t in trading for him. The mistake was in not telling him he was going to be in the lineup every single day when he got to the park. If that had been done, he’d have been more than a joke for something out of his control, a joke because of the player he was traded for.

He exemplifies a Yankees mistake, but for the wrong reasons.

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