More Looks In the Rearview

Yes, it's true: this blog signed off on a new five-year, $11 million contract for Brewer backstop Jonathan Lucroy in a March 31 post. We're cruising back through 2012 to see where we braindrizzled and where we were just brain dead.

With respect to Lucroy: that commitment was for a second-year player with a .313 on base percentage and middling power. How'd that abomination work out? 

It made the Brewers look like geniuses. Lucroy hit .320/.368/.513 in 96 games before succumbing to a broken wrist. He produced three wins against replacement and excellent defense in less than two-thirds of a season for just $500K. And there's the potential for four more years of goodness on the cheap.

As that post made clear, you'll be seeing more of those kinds of contracts -- in which young players sign away their first few years of arbitration and even a year or two of free agency in return for guaranteed multi-million dollar paydays during their pre-arb years. The reason is that there are diminishing marginal returns to the Lucroy family on the next $8 million he may be leaving on the table, while the first $11 million will set his family for life.


Meanwhile, teams will save money (and keep their young stars for an extra year or two) on average, even if the occasional signing goes belly-up.


April was a good month for the prognostimeter too. It predicted the Cardinals had already replaced Albert Pujols by moving Lance Berkman from rightfield to first base and signing Carlos Beltran to slot in for Berkman. It didn't quite work out that way, even though Beltran pounded 32 home runs en route to a .269/.346/.495 ledger that recouped all three batting wins against replacement lost with Prince Albert. And the Cards went a round deep into the playoffs


Berkman succumbed to his every-other-year injury pattern and played just 32 games, so it was second-year pro Allen Craig who punched up three wins of offense in his place, mostly at first base but also in 60 games of spot duty in the outer pastures. That ensemble fared fine absent Albert, and Beltran cost the Busch clan $26 mil over two years, or roughly $700 skajillion less than Pujols.


Al of which leads nicely into another prediction: that Rangers management desperately wanted an excuse not to sign Josh Hamilton for the $25 mil/year he was preparing to demand into the next decade. Here's an excerpt:

What Daniels no doubt knows is that while Hamilton is a great player and a heart-warming tale of redemption, he's also a 31-year-old with an emergency room loyalty card. Despite his .313/.370/.556 stick and defensive prowess in a key position, this is not a man to whom you give a golden parachute.

The post suggested Hamilton would find some opportunity to injure himself, as he is wont to do. Instead, he avoided Aaron Burr all season and played in 148 games,* adding four-and-a-half wins of stardom. His hall pass out of Dallas was the late season brain fart/heart failure that earned him the enmity of Texas fans as the team stumbled out of first place in the season's final two weeks and then off the playoff map in one embarrassing effort. No more dilemma for Nolan Ryan.

*Rangers fans would argue that he actually played about 144. He was physically present for 148.

How much Anaheim's five-year/$123 million bet on the injury-plagued star will come back to bite them in the butt remains to be seen. But it made the day of Rangers brass, for sure.

Is this just going to be a recapitulation of all the top Braindrizzling hits of 2012? No, and we can thank the Baltimore Orioles for that.  

The Orioles aren't this good, we've seen it all before, they've been lucky, their 15 minutes are up, yadda, yadda, yadda. That was the refrain from this space  -- and nearly every other -- that noted Baltimore's youth, inexperience, lack of stars, run differential, actual performance and track record. But none of that could compensate for the life-sized rabbit's foot carried around by Buck Showalter all season.

We're wishing the Baltimores good luck in 2013 but not betting that way.

A week later, the same prediction about the 24-16 Indians in this imagined conversation.  Cleveland rode a 4.79 ERA and no 20-HR hitters to 94 losses and a new manager in 2013. Sorry Tito, but if the Choo-less Tribe runs out to 24 wins in its first 40 games I'll dust off the same blog post.

Stay tuned next time when we sing that sweet ditty from last June 26, "Trade R.A. Dickey Now!"