In This Market, Vazquez Deal Makes Sense

Several interesting things were learned this offseason, especially regarding pitchers…

Apparently, allowing opponents to hit .302/.337/.465 against you over the course of your career (and upping this to .324/.354/.538 in 2006) will get your $4.325MM option exercised. That’s right, Twins fans, you’re all lucky enough to have Carlos Silva in your rotation once again. Personally, I would have taken Tomo Ohka for $1.5MM or John Thomson for $500k. Even when you factor in the $100k it would have cost to buyout Silva’s option, the Twins still would have come out well ahead.

In other places, Jason Marquis received $21MM over 3 years (how depressed are Cubs fans going to be in the next few seasons?), Jeff Weaver received a one year, $8.325MM from the Mariners (could he be a Boras client?), and Russ Ortiz has a job (the amount here doesn’t matter, it’s just funny that he has a job. I’m convinced that the Giants are trying to see if he can average over 30 pitches per inning over the course of the season.)

All this to say that the Chicago White Sox committing $34.5MM to Javier Vazquez over three seasons (running from 2008 through 2010) seems like a relative bargain to me. Vazquez has been very reliable over his career, evidenced by the fact that he has pitched less than 200 innings only once since 2000 (198 IP in 2004 with NYY). In addition, he has solid career rates of 7.81 K/9 and 3.25 K/BB (and ranked in the top 20 among all MLB pitchers in both of these categories for the 2006 season). Putting up these numbers in the AL Central division is no small feat. Additionally, these rate stats, as well as his career GB/FB ratio, are surprisingly similar to Jason Schmidt’s, who is four years older and will be getting paid about $4.2MM more per season after signing his 3 year deal this offseason.

Locking him down for only a three year deal was a smart move by Ken Williams, in my opinion. Vazquez will be only 34 in the year that this deal expires, and this gives the White Sox at least one spot in the rotation that they don’t have to worry about in the coming seasons (especially while they try to figure out if Buehrle will end up being the pitcher from 2005 or 2006). The limited no-trade clause (against the 9 teams in NL and AL West) would still allow the Sox some flexibility should they, for some reason, choose to get rid of Vazquez in the next few years.

$11.5MM spread evenly over three years for a (relatively) young pitcher with a proven track record looks like it could be one of best signings (extension, actually) in a pretty out of control offseason.