Yes you can buy the shiny free agent in the window, even when on a modest budget

I’m going to use this post to show AN how the A’s can afford to sign any player they want from the upcoming Free Agent class. Please don’t waste your time arguing that the A’s have never handed out a mutli-year, eleven figure annual salary to a free agent. I know this but I’m not interested in what Oakland will most likely do this offseason; rather I’d like to discuss what they can and should do to make the team better this winter. I believe that Carl Crawford will land the richest free agent contract this offseason; therefore I’m going to use him as the example to show how the A’s can sign any free agent who happens to tickle their (or your) fancy. This is not a Sign-Carl-Crawford post per se… admittedly he is the mercenary I’d choose this winter… the point is when I show you how the A’s can shoehorn his salary into their existing budget then it makes it that much easier for you to argue that the A’s can bring in the free agent that you desire. So whenever you see me say Crawford go ahead and mentally edit it to read Dunn or Werth or whomever.

I start with some rather restrictive parameters:

1) The A’s will have an annual budget of $60 million in 2011 through 2013. The A’s have averaged $60.3 million in payroll over the past two years; $62 million over the past four. If anyone can provide information showing that the A’s are going to shrink/increase that figure in the allotted time frame then please include the link in your comment. Otherwise, no bitching about the $60 million budget I’ve allowed myself.

2) Anyone who currently has a guaranteed contract will be around through the length of said contract. Option years are of course open for discretion.

3) Anyone who’s looking at arbitration will be (for the purposes of the math) non-tendered to make the dollars work. While it is far more likely that a trade would take place, especially for the more talented players looking at expensive arbitration raises, I am not going to attempt detailed trade options that wouldn’t take place for another two seasons.

4) The A’s winning bid is 5 years/$95 million guaranteed with a 6th year option at $18 million or a $5 million buy out. That’s $18 million annual from 2011 through 2015. That is a higher annual salary than Matt Holliday got last year and from what little I’ve heard about the market for Crawford’s free agent services most teams consider him a step below Holliday in terms of production due to his lesser power numbers. So my figure already includes the “gotta pay ‘em extra to play in Oakland” penalty.

Here’s how to make the money work.

2011

Guaranteed Money:

Options:

Arbitration (Estimated):

League Minimum Roster Spots - Secured (11)

Cliff Pennington

Andrew Bailey

Vince Mazzaro

Trevor Cahill

Gio Gonzalez

Daric Barton

Adam Rosales

Landon Powell

Jerry Blevins

Brad Ziegler

Henry Rodriguez (Out of options in 2011)

I’ve decided to set all league minimum jobs including TBD bench and bullpen roles at $425K per slot. That way if someone gets extra money (like Bailey did, earning $435K after his first year in the Show) it should all average out in the end as accidently setting aside a little too much money is an easier scenario to recover from than the alternative. I’ve also tried to estimate on the high side for all the arbitration eligible players… at the same time it’s difficult to know what an established starter with the injury history of a Dallas Braden or a Ryan Sweeney will get their first time through the arbitration process. I simply don’t know how their missed playing time will affect their first big payday.

Here’s how I see things playing out, based on the information we have today.

The A’s will bring back Crisp and Davis to man CF in 2011. You can’t trust either one to do the job full-time and I think the A’s want a better Plan B than Matt Carson. $8 million isn’t an exuberate amount to pay for quality CF play and I believe between the two you can expect to at least break even on the investment. Kouzmanoff, Breslow and Braden are locks as well. Cust needs to keep his OPS in the 850 range and/or show more power down the stretch to stick around. I’m not bashing the guy; I just don’t think we can count on him hitting 60 points above his career BABIP again in 2011. For now I’ve got him in Oakland next year.

So the sure things (including Crawford) are going to fill 21 spots at approximately $54.5 million. That pretty much puts the Unicorn out to pasture with a $500K buy-out. The A’s should be able to find a 2B between Rosales, Sogard and Tolleson, with Rosales getting the early nod due to his experience. $55 million buys the A’s a 5 man rotation, a 6 man bullpen, 8 starters in the line-up and 2 bench players (Davis and Powell). We’d still need to find a starting RF and probably one bullpen arm plus assorted bench pieces but there’s enough financial flexibility to dip into the talent already in the organization (Sweeney, Buck, Devine) to fill those holes without having to rely on a prospect to step up in 2011.

I’ve included estimates for all the arbitration eligible players simply to give everyone the opportunity to mix-and-match roster combinations as I don’t want this post to get side tracked too badly over who gets non-tendered and who doesn’t. I’m also hesitant to name any prospect as the solution to roster openings in the future. I’ll discuss the farm system and the role it’ll be expected to play later in the post but for now any position that doesn’t have a player with at least some big league experience vying for the job will remain open. (Just to avoid any confusion on this issue, Chris Carter’s half week in the Show doesn’t count while Travis Buck’s two plus years of service time does.)

2012

Guaranteed Money:

Options:

Arbitration (Estimated):

League Minimum Roster Spots – Secured (4)

Cliff Pennington

Landon Powell

Vince Mazzaro

Henry Rodriguez

We now have a new CBA and an entire unplayed season to account for. I think it’s safe to assume that Gio, Cahill, Barton and Bailey will have performed well enough in 2011 to earn large pay bumps for 2012. As for the rest… will Braden stay healthy for an entire year? Will Kouzmanoff show more with the bat? Is Cust’s 2010 rebound for real and last through 2011? Does Rosales win the starting 2B gig in 2011? (I’ve obviously assumed the answer is yes.) Is Sweeney even around in 2011 and is his knee better; if he is he might be in the running to start in CF in 2012. Does Davis run out of magic pixie dust or could he possibly be the full time CF? And I’m taking an injury mulligan on Outman because I have no idea if he’ll be starting or relieving when he returns and his role will affect the cost of keeping him around.

Right now I think Braden, Barton, Cahill, Gio, Bailey, Breslow, Rosales, Anderson, Suzuki, Crawford, Pennington, Powell, Mazzaro, Rodriguez and Blevins are the best bets to hold down 15 of the roster spots in Oakland come 2012 at a cost of approximately $51 million (which includes Wuertz’s buy out). There are obvious question marks at CF with Crisp (and most likely Davis) gone and at 3B where any drop off in defense is likely to mean Kouzmanoff isn’t worth his third year arbitration salary. I wrote off Travis Buck in 2011 but maybe Sweeney is still around to play RF? I was willing to take a chance on Cust in 2011; I’m not willing to do so again in 2012. So DH is an issue but for now I’ve got a full pitching rotation, 4 bullpen arms and starters at C, 1B, 2B, SS and LF. $9 million isn’t a lot to play with but it should suffice to fill the bench and secondary bullpen roles if I can find home grown (and thus league minimum wage earning) solutions to some of the questions in CF, RF, 3B and DH.

More on that later.

2013

We are now 2 years removed from actual performance data helping us determine arbitration costs. I have no choice but to assume that the original baseline values that I based my initial estimates are unchanged; meaning that Trevor Cahill didn’t go out and become hands down the best SP in baseball and his arbitration raises jumped accordingly.

Guaranteed Money:

Options:

None

Arbitration (Estimated):

League Minimum Roster Spots – Secure (1)

Henry Rodriguez

At first glance it appears that we’ve hit a snag. Adding the combined salaries of Crawford, Suzuki and Anderson to our arbitration eligible core plus Henry Rodriguez and 8 roster slots at the league minimum puts us at approximately $83 million. (I’ve never been a big believer in Ryan Sweeney. I hate the bat and I think the knee injury is going to kill his defense. I see him getting non-tendered by 2013 so I didn’t include his estimated salary in the above figure.) We can’t name our starting 3B, CF, RF, DH, two of our bullpen arms or any bench player other than the back-up Catcher.

Take Carl Crawford out of the equation and the payroll sits at approximately $65 million and we can’t name our starting 3B, LF, CF, RF, DH, two of our bullpen arms or any bench player other than the back-up Catcher. The A’s are still over-budget and have 5 holes in the starting line-up. I think it’s time to start talking about the farm system.

The top 6 position players the A’s have above Low-A ball are (in no particular order) Chris Carter, Michael Taylor, Adrian Cardenas, Corey Brown, Jemile Weeks and Grant Green. (Some will argue that C Josh Donaldson belongs on my list but he’s currently on the DL so until he leaves the ranks of the walking dead…. Besides, if he does crack the Oakland line-up it’ll be at C, either as Suzuki’s back-up or replacement depending on the size of your crush on the A’s various backstops.) I’m drawing the line at High-A because it’ll take a break-out performance for anyone currently on a lower level roster to make the jump all the way to Oakland within the next two seasons. It would be great if it happened but planning on it would be foolish. Believe me it would be a lot easier if I could pencil in 2010 1st round pick Michael Choice as the A’s opening Day CF in 2013 but it would be irresponsible of me to do so now.

Carter, Taylor, Cardenas, Brown, Weeks and Green. All of them are talented but they also have issues which could cause them to bust. The funny thing is if only half of these guys can develop into legit big league starting caliber players by 2013 it’ll be viewed as a success by the baseball community. It would be a solid showing by Oakland’s player development and scouting apparatuses especially if the traditional strength of the farm system (pitching) continues to produce major league quality arms for trade or use. It would obviously be better if 5 of the above could develop into big league starters but it’s unrealistic to expect such good fortune. Oakland isn’t going to be able to fill the holes in their line-up by 2013 with the talent currently in the organization. I know it, you know it… and I’m pretty sure the A’s know it as well. They are going to have to look outside of the system to fill the line-up card and regardless of whether that means going the free agent route or trading talent the result if the same… the only way to acquire the position talent they need in the big league line-up and stay within the $60 million budget we’ve assumed is to trade some of their expensive pitching.

And there is the twist that makes Carl Crawford (or any other FA) a legitimate possibility for the Oakland A’s.

If things work out as I’ve described (in terms of who’s getting playing time and performing well) then by 2013 Dallas Braden is the 5th best SP in the rotation but he’ll be making the most money at $7.5 million. Andrew Bailey isn’t much of a bargain at $6 million if Henry Rodriguez is for real. Craig Breslow at $3.3 million? Brad Zeigler and Joey Devine combining to make another $3.1 million? Right there we have a SP, a Closer and at least 1 quality bullpen arm to use as trade chips whose combined salaries (approximately $20 million in 2013) are actually higher than the big ticket free agent I’ve used in my example. Swap Powell out with Josh Donaldson (‘cause it’s unlikely Beane is going to pay his back-up C $1 million) to save another $500K and that $83 million figure we were looking at for 2013 drops down to $62.5 million with Carl Crawford in the fold. Sure, I’m still over-budget but I based a lot of salaries on the high side of estimates that had no performance numbers to back them up. If players like Barton, Pennington, Cahill and Gonzalez get contracts that buy out their arbitration years it’s likely that the A’s will be paying less for those players in 2013 then I’ve supposed. I’m certainly close enough to my $60 million target figure that we can continue this discussion.

So what happens if the A’s do sign Crawford to the deal I’ve proposed and none of Carter, Taylor, Green, Brown, Cardenas or Weeks make it in the Show? Well… the A’s are screwed. Which is exactly how’d they be if all those guys tanked and they didn’t have Crawford on the roster! The beauty of the current situation is that even without Crawford in the fold the A’s are currently designed to move their high priced pitching arms within the next two seasons to land more position talent. The real question is whether you’d prefer to see Braden and Bailey get dealt for those prospects and have a $40 million payroll or would you rather those deals happen and you get to watch Crawford play in Green and Gold?

I’m not going to talk about the 2014 season or beyond because now we’ve stretched to the point where players from the 2010 and possibly even the 2011 draft are going to be factoring into Oakland’s roster. I’ve got to draw the line somewhere and when I have to start figuring which amateur baseball players could be pushing for a big league job in 2014… well I probably ought to make a u-turn and take another look for the line. I realize some people aren’t going to like taking the risk on any long term free agent deal. I can respect that even if I disagree with the play-it-safe mentality. This excessively long post isn’t meant to change the mind of anyone dead set against signing a big ticket free agent. It is merely designed to show everyone that the A’s have the means to do so if they want to go down that path. Will they? I think it’s an opportunity worth pursuing….

Assuming they pick the right guy.