Comings and Goings

It looks like the Phillies are on the verge of signing Pedro Martinez.  They have had him pitch for them a couple of times, and he’s now in Philadelphia to take physical.  No word yet on what kind of contract he will get, but a good bet is $4M pro-rated for the rest of the season.

It will be good to have Pedro back in the majors giving it one more go around.  As great a pitcher as Pedro is, my feeling is that he’s a good gamble for half a season for a pennant contending team that can afford to add the salary.

In my mind, future hall-of-famers like Pedro and Roger Clemens have earned the right by the end of their careers to skip the first two months of the season when the weather’s cold and they’re more likely to get hurt or be ineffective.  Every team undergoes significant roster changes over the course of the season anyway, so I don’t see how bringing in an aging star for two to four months of work later in the season does anything to undercut the “team” mentality.  Most players are probably thrilled the team is getting an0ther pitcher who can potentially help them win some key games during the final push.

Speaking of grizzled veterans, the Indians released Matt Herges today.  He was pitching well for them, with a 3.55 ERA and 24 hits allowed, six walks and 18 K’s in 25.1 IP.  It was obviously a move by a last-place team to open up roster space for a younger player with his career ahead of him.

Another major league team will likely sign Herges before the ink dries on his release papers.  Every team near contention with a weak bullpen could use a crafty veteran who still appears to gas left in the tank for this year at least.

The Nationals fired Manny Acta.  I don’t follow the Nats closely enough to opine on his skills as a manager.  One thing’s for sure, though: he had very little pitching to work with.

The Nats occasionally score runs in bunches, but their pitching is just brutal.  Except for Jordan Zimmerman, who as a rookie is still learning to pitch at this level, it doesn’t look to me like they have even one pitcher who could crack the Giants’ current major league roster of pitchers.

The Padres will apparently get Sean Gallagher as the player to be named later in the deal that sent Scott Hairston to the A’s, once Gallagher’s knee injury heals and he comes off the DL.

A lot of people seemed to think that the A’s got the better end of this deal, but I don’t agree if Gallagher is the PTBNL.  Gallagher is only 23 this year, and he looked awfully good before the knee injury.

Gallagher apparently missed 19 games with a shoulder injury late last year, but he pitched extremely well in five starts at AAA Sacramento this year before he hurt his knee.

Finally, the current rumor floating around is that the Giants may try to swing a deal with the Pirates for both 2Bman Freddie Sanchez and pitcher Zach Duke.

Trading for Duke is absolutely a win-now move that would cost the Giants too much in prospects.  Duke is having a solid season at age 26 (he was selected to replace Matt Cain on the NL All-Star Roster, although his record is only 8-8), but his strikeout numbers suggest that he’s a pitcher who needs great defense behind him to be successful at the major league level.

Duke has an almost 2:1  career K’s:BB’s ratio (368:195), but his career strikeouts-per-nine-innings rate is only 4.6.  Pitchers with rates that low tend to be inconsistent (Duke has been inconsistent in his major league career), and they tend to have injury problems particularly after a strong year in which they pitch a lot of innings.

By way of comparison, Jonathan Sanchez, who would almost certainly be included in any such trade to the Pirates, has a career rate of 9.1.

In short, Duke is having a strong year and could help the Giants a lot in 2009.  However, I doubt he’ll be worth in the future whatever the Giants have to give up to get him, which would be Sanchez and a lot more.

For the future, I’d rather have Sanchez or the Pirate’s Ian Snell, who after being sent down by the Bucs, has an 0.45 ERA with 27 K’s in 20 IP in his first three starts at AAA Indianapolis.