Leap Day.
It’s sort of a bizarre deal for the team and for the player, one that surfaced out of pretty much nowhere. I’m nervous about it, but at the same time the coursing adrenaline triggered by the news of Ian Desmond at one year and $8 million reminds me that, on the one hand, this is only sports, and on the other, man, this is one of the reasons caring about sports is so great.
This is a gamble.
Desmond, who has passed his Rangers physical and is expected to sign his contract today, is agreeing to play a brand new position (he played three minor league innings in center field in 2009, with zero chances, and 7.1 big league innings in right field in 2009-10, with three chances; he has no innings in left field as a 12-year pro) on a deal that will thrust him right back onto the free agent market less than a year from now.
Texas is forfeiting a first-round draft pick (and the associated signing bonus allotment) and committing to a player whose production with the bat has declined three straight years and whose glove model is being traded out.
It’s a strange move, but you can have an Astros team that keeps Carlos Correa in the minor leagues for two months to save money. I’ll take the team whose owners decide to step out on a player that the front office believes is poised for a bounceback — at a new position — and who makes aggressive decisions based on winning baseball games, whether that means this summer or otherwise, not on conserving cash.
That said, if Texas isn’t right about Ian Desmond, left fielder and right-handed-hitting run producer, this is a bad move.
But I have 100 percent trust in the front office that, yes, once wired $10 million into Lance Berkman’s bank account.
100 percent trust.
While I’ve established in 18 years of doing this that I’m obsessed with player development, I’m still first and foremost a “go for it” guy, as long as the taken risks are calculated well. The Rangers have built a farm system that allows us to watch them take those risks without covering our eyes.
The Angels could have never made the deal Texas made for Cole Hamels because their minor league system is threadbare — and even after the Rangers sent all those impact prospects to Philadelphia, their system is still a thousand times more healthy and dangerous as what Los Angeles has on the farm.
The Rangers will now go into June without the 19th overall draft slot that they’d occupied, and that’s one less opportunity for the addition of a premium prospect. But the club can replace that player internationally, if it chooses (by repurposing the $2.5 million or so that the pick would have slotted for). Or it can reallocate that money toward big league moves in July. Or it can consider it part of the cost of signing Desmond — who could bring the Rangers an extra supplemental first-round pick a year from now, though that could depend on whether the CBA is modified in the meantime.
On its face, losing that number 19 pick isn’t a plus. Kip Fagg probably isn’t thrilled to be off the clock now until pick number 30 (compensation for the loss of Yovani Gallardo). But if this move produces a few more 2016 games won, and if that effectively makes Texas a playoff club, or a more well-positioned one, which is clearly the idea given the Beltre-Darvish window, then one less Chi Chi Gonzalez or Luis Ortiz or Lewis Brinson — or Jake Skole or Kevin Matthews — in the system will just be considered an acceptable part of the cost.
Regardless of which category you put Travis Demeritte in, for example, how would you feel if Washington had re-signed Desmond two months ago for one year and $8 million, and today traded Desmond to Texas for Demeritte?
The trophy is 162+, not the Baseball America ranking.
And again, the Rangers system is really strong right now. It’s without Williams and Thompson and Alfaro and Eickhoff and Asher, and it’s still really strong. The Angels and Mariners punting a first-round pick to potentially add two or three wins? More nerve-racking, for sure, as those prospect-light franchises sweat their own (Pujols/King Felix) windows.
Texas, as long as its scouting and player development operations aren’t significantly compromised, will always find more Chi Chi’s and Brinson’s and Alfaro’s and Eickhoff’s.
You can’t always add a player like Desmond for one year and $8 million.
Get the winning piece.
But let’s be fair. Aside from the given — the loss of the draft pick — there are certainly issues with the unknowns. (Of course, the pick is an unknown itself, as the odds of spending that $2.5 million on a player who never contributes are exponentially greater than getting nothing out of a player like Desmond.)
Will the Desmond left field experiment work?
Baseball people strongly believe so.
(And this is a club that, in a playoff season in which its rotation was battered, ran Mike Napoli and Joey Gallo and Ryan Rua [43 outfield appearances in 382 minor league games coming into 2015, when he started in left field for Texas on Opening Day], a hobbled Kyle Blanks, and a physically compromised Josh Hamilton out to left field at the start of 82 games last year. I feel at least as good defensively about Desmond, sight unseen, as any of them.)
Will the OPS, which has fallen from a career-best .845 in 2012 to .784 in 2013, .743 in 2014, and .674 in 2015, bounce back?
It better, and the Rangers think it will.
Desmond’s makeup is considered elite, and if that means a player who has gambled twice and lost big — turning down a seven-year, $107 million deal two winters ago (shortly before fellow shortstop Elvis Andrus got eight years and $120 million from Texas) and then declining Washington’s one-year, $15.8 qualifying offer this off-season — is a good bet respond to this latest challenge and opportunity with determination, not bitterness, then maybe both the player and the club are in for a big payoff.
What if Desmond is Berkman, or Brad Wilkerson?
If so, OK. Maybe it means Rua or Hamilton or Justin Ruggiano or Patrick Kivlehan are relied on to a greater degree after all, and maybe even Nomar Mazara or Lewis Brinson (in center, shifting Delino DeShields to left) or Gallo midway through the season.
But it’s an $8 million investment (really, just a $5.5 million hit when you factor in what signing the forfeited draft pick would have been slotted to cost), which is less than the club gave Berkman to stave off retirement or the Nationals (namely, Alfonso Soriano) to get Wilkerson.
And given what everyone says Desmond offers in the room, well, Ian Desmond is not going to be one of those two guys.
What if the cash outlay put toward this move handcuffs the front office in July?
First, we’ve seen nothing from this ownership group to suggest it won’t step out and bust the budget when there’s a win-now opportunity to capitalize.
Second, I have 100 percent faith in this front office to Sam-Dyson the roster in July. It doesn’t always take millions of dollars to improve the club in a pennant race.
But this move took millions. It’s not a sure thing, and it’s not a perfect fit, at least on the surface. Why did Texas do it?
Because Hamilton is a major health risk, even once he’s off crutches and finished rehabbing his knee.
Because Rua is unproven, because Ruggiano is best suited to be deployed part-time, because Kivlehan is an unknown quantity.
Because there’s too much riding on Mazara’s and Brinson’s development to rush either one of them, which is no different from Gallo, who unlike the other two has big league service time but also clearly has major adjustments to make.
Because, with one move, Texas is now better protected against injury to Andrus or Adrian Beltre or Rougned Odor. The roster flexibility is significant. Ian Desmond isn’t Ben Zobrist (who is?), but an everyday player with a productive bat and the defensive ability to move around, both of which the Rangers are counting on, has huge value.
Because Texas is positioned to win now. The American League can be won, and the Rangers have as much right to believe they’re pennant contenders as anyone. Darvish is guaranteed to be here two more years, Beltre (for now) just one.
The Rangers are better positioned today than they were a day and a half ago.
Desmond, if he’s what Texas believes he will once again be, lengthens the lineup. As a right-handed bat, he helps to balance the order. His athleticism and arm and instincts and speed would have made him an outstanding outfield prospect if he didn’t show so much promise at shortstop. While he won’t be expected to assume a leadership role in this solid clubhouse, he’s universally considered an extremely high-character teammate who plays hard, and you can never have too many of those. (Bryce Harper on Sunday: “Whether it’s on the field or off the field, the Rangers are getting a great baseball player and a great person.”)
Desmond not only allows the Rangers to resist the temptation to rush Mazara or Brinson or Gallo — he doesn’t block any of them, either, as the club commitment is for only the one season. Adding Desmond boosts the one-year window without handicapping the five-year window, as the focus on the development of those three prospects without rushing them outweighs the opportunity to add a player to the system with the 19th pick. Desmond helps there.
And at the end of that year, assuming the CBA doesn’t do away with the qualifying offer system (or modifies it in a way that still promises draft pick compensation without handicapping second-level free agents so much), Texas could end up getting an extra pick at the end of the first round in June 2017. That pick — theoretically — wouldn’t be as valuable as the number 19 Texas forfeits this year, but the Rangers would be getting a year of Ian Desmond in the exchange.
Yu is here and Adrian is here. Cole is here longer, and Rougned longer than that, but while Yu and Adrian are here you’ve got to go for it.
I want to win.
The dropoff in the bat scares me, but that’s where the pro scouts come in. I trust the Rangers’ pro scouts.
Nationally, baseball writers are enthused.
Bob Nightengale (USA Today): “Nobody got a better bargain this winter than the Rangers’ one-year, $8 million deal with Ian Desmond.”
Ken Rosenthal (Fox Sports): “How good is [the] one-year, $8 million deal with Desmond for [the] Rangers? Consider: Mike Pelfrey got two years, $16 million from [the] Tigers. . . . Obviously the qualifying offer was a huge factor. The difference in money, though, is still stunning.”
Jim Bowden (ESPN/XM) loves the move, but certainly not from Desmond’s perspective: “What a great job by Jon Daniels to hang around long enough to get Desmond for one year at eight [million]. . . . I’m shocked and stunned at the number. . . . I have never seen a worse contract, ever — ever — for a player. He couldn’t get [Howie] Kendrick’s [two-year, $20 million] deal? Wow. That’s a stunner.”
Desmond, for his part, isn’t feeling quite so bad about his pillow deal.
It’s a measured gamble on his part, and obviously in a place he wants to be.
Nelson Cruz, dealing with a deflated market after he’d declined the Rangers’ qualifying offer two years ago, signed his own pillow deal with Baltimore late in February after camps had opened, for the same $8 million Texas is guaranteeing Desmond. He promptly produced a league-leading 40 homers, a career-high 108 RBI, and a seventh-place MVP finish, setting himself up for the four-year, $57 million deal he’s presently playing under in Seattle.
Four years before Cruz took his one-year contract with the Orioles, Beltre — coming off a career-low .683 OPS with Seattle in 2009 — took a pillow deal with Boston (one year at a guaranteed $10 million) and gave the Red Sox a .321/.365/.553 season and ninth-place MVP finish, leading to the five-year, $80 million contract with Texas that included a $16 million club option for 2016 that the Rangers happily exercised.
Ivan Rodriguez took one year and $10 from the Marlins in 2003, was named NLCS MVP and helped Florida win a World Series, and turned that, at age 32, into four years and $40 million from Detroit.
Desmond doesn’t need to earn MVP votes for this move to work, for him and for Texas.
The Rangers get a 30-year-old everyday player with an All-Star game selection and three Silver Slugger Awards to his name for just $8 million — half of what he turned down three months ago. His production has been sliding, but as Jim Duquette (MLB Network Radio) points out, his second-half OPS in 2015 (.777) would have trailed only Brandon Crawford (.782) among NL shortstops if he’d sustained it all year.
Bottom line, aside from the money and the draft pick and the shift to the outfield: Ian Desmond has to hit, or this deal doesn’t pay off. The bat simply has to bounce back.
You have to bet on the player to believe this will work.
And you have to bet on the Rangers’ baseball operations crew.
I will bet you plenty that the Astros aren’t happy about this news.
Ian Desmond, Texas Rangers, left field. Not really a perfect fit. Instead, it’s a gamble that requires a little bit of a leap of faith from the team, and from the player.
And from you and — as uneasy as I was at first — from me.
I’m in.