The most underrated loss this offseason for the New York
Yankees was that of Hiroki Kuroda in the starting rotation. Kuroda was the ace
of the Yankees staff for his first two seasons while being the rock and the
last man standing during his 2014 campaign. Now he is back at home in Japan
presumably for one more season before riding off into the sunset and the
Yankees are left without that ace, that stopper, those 200 IP and that lock in
the rotation. Could that rock be James Shields?
I am in no way an advocate for James Shields in any way
because I don’t believe he should receive the moniker “Big Game” after just one
playoff start and I don’t think he would be worth the contract. If Shields had
an offer of five years and $110 million it sounds like he is either being
picky, a liar or he is asking for more and is in no way worth that let alone
more. The problem is, and this is of course assuming the Yankees can get him on
“their” terms, New York may need a guy like Shields just to survive the season.
We have all had CC Sabathia’s knee, Michael Pineda’s
shoulder, Ivan Nova’s UCL, Nathan Eovaldi’s straight fastball, Masahiro
Tanaka’s UCL and Chris Capuano being Chris Capuano so there is no need to harp
on that any more than it already has been. Does anybody see 200 IP in that
rotation? I don’t, not even with Eovaldi due to his performance and not so much
any sort of injury, which could make for a lot of use, and overuse, of the
Yankees bullpen. New York has a lot of promising arms down there for now and
the future and the team should not jeopardize that with a player like Shields
still available on the market.
It would hurt to lose the same draft pick for Shields that
the team refused to lose for Max Scherzer but the team may be forced to or will
be regretting it by June or July. Call it intuition or call it a hunch.
I will not bash James Shields, because he is a good pitcher. You can pretty much pencil him in for 200 innings and somewhere around a 3.50 era. If his price comes down to reality then he would be a good sign. Even with the lost draft pick. But let's talk about reality. He is in fact 34 years old with a lot of innings on that right arm. He was in fact broke down by the time he got to the world series. He's asking for about $22 million or more per year. At least that is what him and his agent are claiming. Personally, I think it's a lie, but they get to play by a different set of rules than teams and gm's do. So with that said, you want him to replace Kuroda. Kuroda played year to year at about $15 million. Shields won't go year to year as he is 34 and Kuroda was 37 when he first signed. So reality would be a Matt Garza contract. I believe 4 years and $50 million. Except Garza was and is much younger than Shields. In fact, I believe Garza will be younger than 34 when his contract is up. My point after all this rambling is that all I think Shields is worth is a 1 year contract at about $15-20 million. And I don't think it's worth giving up the highest draft pick we've had since Derek Jeter to sign him. We can bring up 2 Chase Whitley's and milk 200 innings out of them.
ReplyDelete