Neal Huntington: Arbitration Decisions Will Be Surprising

I think the only four who would really qualify as “surprising” tenders at this point would be Ludwick, Ohlendorf, Pearce, and Wood.

And This is just about the weirdest begining to an offseason ever. Also Dtodd whats the deal with Pirate fest being in december? Whats the reasoning behind that? Just curious, if you knew anything about it.

There is no chance Huntington will non-tender Hanrahan. None. I haven’t agreed with a lot of his moves recently, but that one would be absolutely senseless.

Going to non-tender Hanrahan. Let’s just end that conversation now.

…most of the non-tender surprises (if in fact there are any) will come from the bullpen: you’d expect Meek, Resop, Veras and Grilli to all be tendered. And they should be. If they aren’t, NH has a lot of ’splaining to do.

….at the 5th starter spot for less money than bring Ross back. A glance at Fangraphs shows his ‘09 & ’10 seasons weren’t as great as a lot of people like to make them out to be.

Stash him at AAA for insurance. If Chrarlie Morton isnt going to be healthy they almost have to bring him back on a major league deal, or we wont have anyone to pitch the first molnth or so.

….trust me.

What he meant was that they were all-in on a major poker game, and so they had to strip the team of all resources.

And promptly rejected it

even if it were the case, it would still be a bad idea. They’ve given up so many wins, at so many positions, that even Pujols would barely get them to 72 wins in ‘12. And that’s setting aside the foolishness of putting all your eggs in a basket like that.

I might add that even the idea of banking $$ to buy an FA in a couple years isn’t sustainable. Let’s say they could afford a $60M payroll in ‘12, but spend only $30M. In 2013 revenue will be down and payroll will be up, so they would only bank (say) $20M. Then they go and make a huge splash by signing the best/youngest FA on the market in 2014. They have $50M “extra”, but that kind of FA is going to get at least $30M per year – and Cutch starts getting mighty pricey in ’14. Point being, that $50M fund only pays for a year or two of a game-changing FA, or maybe defrays $10M/year of a 5 year contract (and studs don’t sign for less than 5 years). They’re not really ahead of the game, and it only succeeds at a huge risk (having $50M in the bank doesn’t make a Werth-like contract somehow palatable).

Seeing as how the FO has said they’re not going to be signing any marquee FAs, I’d have to say no.

What it might be is a prelude to going after a couple second tier FAs. So, after those guys turn them down, there’ll be plenty of money to bring in twice as many Overbays and Correias as last year.

Speaking of Matt Capps, there are muchos reports on Twitter that Wilson Ramos has been kidnapped from his house in Venezuela. Hope he’s OK.

It does feel kind of strange to talk about non-tendering Jones in a market where Juan Rivera can get a two-year deal.

Nobody ever does front-loaded contracts. Teams hate them because they cost more (due to the miracle of compound interest) and agents hate them because they look smaller than their true value.

I thought at that point you could only let him go or offer him arbitration …