The Royals and Yankees have switched identities, with Kansas City spending wildly and New York clutching its wallet.
The pitching-hungry Yankees have traded away five-time Cy Young Award winner Randy Johnson.
The Cubs have bought players as if they were using Monopoly money.
The White Sox, who have believed their rotation is among the best in baseball for the last two years, have dumped two of their starters for young, mostly unproven pitchers.
And the Padres watched their successful, longtime manager, Bruce Bochy, wander to the enemy.
We talked to the decision-makers behind the offseason moves that caused some baseball folks to ask, "What were you thinking?"
1. Cubs commit nearly $300M to players this offseason and are still shopping
The Cubs felt that after going 66-96 last year they had to do something drastic to make them relevant in the National League Central again.
So what did they do? They committed close to $300 million on players and brought in a new manager (Lou Piniella).
Chicago signed slugger Alfonso Soriano to an eight-year, $136 million deal. (But general manager Jim Hendry said he doesn't know for sure what outfield position Soriano will play.)
The Cubs re-signed third baseman Aramis Ramirez to a five-year, $75 million deal.
They brought in second baseman Mark DeRosa at $13 million over three years.
And they re-signed pitchers Kerry Wood and Wade Miller and catcher Henry Blanco to smaller deals.
Yet their only expenditures on outside pitching help were the signings of Ted Lilly (four years, $40 million) and Jason Marquis (three years, $21 million) and a trade for reliever Neal Cotts.
Lilly has won 59 games in his career. He has won more than 12 games in a season once and never pitched in more than 197⅓ innings. Marquis has won 42 games and pitched 602⅔ innings over the last three seasons, but he also has surrendered 642 hits. He had a 6.02 ERA last season.
Cotts joins a bullpen that had a 4.04 ERA, which was sixth best in the NL last season.
But Lilly and Marquis join a rotation that had a 5.19 ERA, the second-worst mark in the NL.
"We needed help in all areas, not just pitching," Hendry says.
"What we set out to do was get the best player available, and we did that with Soriano. We were thrilled to keep Ramirez. And we think Marquis will come back strong. And Ted Lilly is a 15-game winner (in 2006).
"But by no means are we finished. There are a lot more things we want to do in January and February. We're still interested in adding somebody; maybe tinker in the outfield and get help against left-handed pitching."
Hendry realizes the baseball world will be watching. You don't throw $300 million at players and hope to be merely competitive.
"We had to do this to get back," Hendry says. "We've had some bad luck with injuries, and I could have done a better job the last couple of years spending money in the offseason. But obviously the bosses down at the Tribune tower (the Cubs are owned by the Tribune Co.) were committed to fixing a lot of the problems.
"We drew 3 million people last year with a bad ballclub, but we wanted to show everyone that we're committed to becoming a winner. This is the first time, I think, we've ever gotten the best free agent available. Soriano was the marquee free agent, and we got him."
Why not spend that kind of money for the offseason's marquee pitching free agent, Barry Zito? "We didn't want to go seven or eight years for Barry," Hendry said. "It was that simple. That's why it was imperative we got Ted."
Can the Cubs win with what they have?
Hendry likes his team's chances, not just because of his offseason acquisitions but because of two returning players: first baseman Derrek Lee and shortstop Cesar Izturis. Lee, who hit .335 with 46 home runs and 107 RBI in 2005, missed most of last season tending to a wrist injury and his daughter's illness. The Cubs acquired slick-fielding Izturis from the Dodgers last July 31 in the Greg Maddux deal, but he only played 22 games the rest of the season because of a hamstring injury.
"I feel good about our team, I really do," Hendry says. "We have depth in the rotation now. We're very pleased with our bullpen. We get Derrek Lee back healthy. With Izturis at shortstop all year and throw in Soriano in the middle of the lineup, we can do some things."
2. Royals sign free agent pitcher Gil Meche to five year, $55 million deal
The Royals made their most expensive free agent signing since the 1985 World Series this offseason … on Gil Meche.
Meche, 28, has a great arm, but he has won 55 games in six major league seasons and he has never pitched more than 186⅔ innings in a season.
"We're all second-guessed in this game. It's part of the arena we're in," Royals general manager Dayton Moore says. "You just have to do what you think is best for your organization. People can say what they want, but the one thing that was always consistent is what a good competitor and class guy he is.
"Look, we could have continued to do what we've always done. We could have gone after a fourth or fifth starter and continued to be where we are. But we've got to be aggressive. We're going to do everything we can to be aggressive. We want our players to have a certain style. This was good for us."
If the Royals were a big-market club, they say, nobody would have said a word about their Meche signing. They were actually pleased they could add a fifth year to the deal. This is a team that has lost 100 or more games for three consecutive seasons, as well as four of the last five.
"What's important to us is accountability," says Moore, once the Braves' highly regarded player-development and scouting director whom the Royals hired last spring to replace Allard Baird. "We have 25 guys in that clubhouse, and all we heard was, 'Go get Gil Meche.' We have our players excited. Our fans are excited. And that's who you're accountable for.
"To me, this is the perfect signing for Kansas City."
The Royals aren't saying that Meche will be a 20-game winner this year, but they do believe he had the finest pure arm on the open market. Just give him time, and the right environment, the Royals say, and folks will see why he could become a legitimate No. 1 starter.
"Everybody in baseball realizes that Gil Meche has an outstanding quality to his pitches," Moore says. "You can talk to people and they'll tell that this guy should win 15-plus games a year. I see this guys entering the prime years of his career. Guys just don't break into the major leagues as a No. 1 or No. 2 starter. Look at Johan Santana, Chris Carpenter, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz. It takes time.
"And to get pitchers like that, we'd have to give up (top prospects) Alex Gordon and Billy Butler. We can't afford to give them up. We looked at the free agent market in '07 and '08. We realized that if we're going to do something, we've got to do it now."
Meche should provide a lift to a rotation that yielded a major league-worst 5.65 ERA last season. And he joins a core of players Moore loves. They include designated hitter Mike Sweeney, starting pitcher Zack Greinke and shortstop Angel Berroa.
Sweeney, a .302 hitter with 799 RBI in 1,208 career games, was limited to 60 games by injuries and hasn't played as many as 147 in a season since 2001. Greinke, a 23-year-old starting pitcher with another live arm, missed much of last season dealing with personal issues. Berroa has been steady offensively but struggled defensively over his four full seasons in the major leagues.
"If Mike Sweeney is healthy, Zach Greinke comes back and makes 30 starts and Angel Berroa comes back strong defensively and hits .260 or so," Moore says, "we're going to play for something. I don't know what we'll play for, but I do know we won't be out of this thing in May like the past. We're going to have some fun."
3. Padres let longtime manager Bruce Bochy leave for division rival Giants
For the last 12 seasons, Bruce Bochy and Kevin Towers have been synonymous with Padres baseball.
They were the second-longest active manager-general manager tandem in baseball, behind John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox of the Braves.
But this offseason, Towers let Bochy, who managed the Padres from 1995-2006 and led them to back-to-back National League West titles the last two seasons, leave to manage the NL West-rival Giants.
Towers and the Padres informed Bochy, who was in the final year of a three-year contract that paid him $1.9 million last season, he wouldn't be given a contract extension. He asked for permission to talk to other clubs. Permission was granted.
"I think the misnomer was that everybody kept thinking he got fired," Towers says. "He didn't. We would have brought him back. It's just that we weren't going to extend him right away. But certainly he would have been welcomed back.
"We just gave him the opportunity to get more security for him and his family."
Bochy got a three-year deal for about $6.3 million from the Giants.
"I think it's hard to tell a guy he can talk to the Cubs or you can talk to the Nationals but not to the Giants," Towers says. "It's been my philosophy and (team President Sandy Alderson's) philosophy that we're not opposed to trading within the division. I think it would have been wrong to say, 'You can talk to these clubs and not them.'"
Besides, Towers says, the team permitted him to interview with the Diamondbacks, another division rival, after the 2005 season for Arizona's general manager vacancy. Josh Byrnes got that job.
"We treated Bruce the same way I was treated when they were going to allow me to go to Arizona," Towers says. "Look, what I'm happy about is that he's happy. Of all places, San Francisco was most desirable to him. It worked well for him. He has the opportunity to stay close to home and is going to an organization with a great tradition."
But couldn't this be a competitive disadvantage?
"You can look at it two ways," Towers says. "Yes, he's familiar with us. But we're familiar with him, too. He knows our ballclub fairly well, obviously, but we know his tendencies, too. I don't think it's a great advantage just because he's managing them and knows our ballclub."
The Padres hired local resident Bud Black, formerly the Angels pitching coach, to replace Bochy. Black, who pitched for 14 years in the big leagues and also has worked in the Indians front office, has no managerial experience.
"I think this will work out well for everybody," Towers says. "Boch will be a difficult guy to replace, but now we've got a guy who went to San Diego State, lives here and is in a similar situation when Boch first got his opportunity."
The Padres and Giants are scheduled to meet in the season opener for both teams. That will be the first time Towers and Bochy have competed against each other. In 1988 they were teammates at Triple-A Las Vegas, where Towers pitched and Bochy was his catcher. A year later Towers was Bochy's pitching coach at Spokane in the short-season Northwest League.
"Even in fantasy football, we were teammates," Towers says. "The competitive juices will be flowing, and we'll always have mutual respect for one another and be great friends, but when we go out together this spring, the information flow will be a whole lot different."
4. White Sox trade two-fifths of their rotation for prospects
Everyone is looking for pitching, right? Pitching wins games. Pitching wins divisions. Pitching wins World Series championships.
So what are the White Sox doing trading not only Freddy Garcia, their best starting pitcher down the stretch last season and a key member of their 2005 World Series championship team, but pitching prodigy Brandon McCarthy, 23, who was scheduled to be in the starting rotation this year? They received nothing more than prospects in return from the Phillies (for Garcia) and Rangers (for McCarthy and minor league outfielder David Paisano).
Listen to Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, who wrote this reaction: "Somebody will have to explain why (general manager Ken) Williams is butchering his pitching rotation and his team's 2007 World Series hopes. … Your general manager is so busy outthinking himself, his logic is twisted like a bow atop a package. He is running this team with a crystal ball instead of common sense, all the more reason to think '05 was a one-and-done proposition."
Now listen to Williams' reaction: "I'm getting ripped to shreds in Chicago, which is not unfamiliar territory. We will continue to do what we think is best and using the philosophies we believe in. We are still a bit old-fashioned in terms of scouting the player first and the numbers second. So some things we do don't add up in what now is considered the conventional sense.
"But I can't explain what we're doing without giving away trade secrets. I can very well go out and articulate to our fans and to our media how we make our decisions, but if I do that, we're losing our competitive edge."
Williams thinks the two players the White Sox received from Philadelphia (fifth starter Gavin Floyd and top pitching prospect Gio Gonzalez) and the three from Texas (John Danks, Nick Masset and Jacob Rasner, all of whom have the potential to be effective major league pitchers) make them a strong team in the future while sustaining success today.
"It's tough in baseball when you're making a deal, sending a known commodity away and replacing it with people the fan base and the media have never heard of," Williams says. "I understand that. But if we're going to have a chance to have a successful organization and sustain success, these moves were necessary.
"Every move we made we wanted to better ourselves or at least give ourselves an equal chance in '07. People in Chicago think we have taken a step backwards from the '06 season. This wasn't about money or penny-pinching. The fact of the matter is we think we're better. We have a young, lights-out bullpen. What gets lost is that without Mr. Masset, the deal never gets done without his inclusion."
Masset, a hard-throwing right-hander, had a 4.15 ERA in eight games for the Rangers last year, and the White Sox are counting on him as part of their bullpen.
"Sorry if people don't like what we've done," Williams says. "But I'll be damned if I'm staying pat and in another year or two I have to go out on the market and sign overinflated free agents and reward mediocrity. I don't ever want to be in that position.
"You do that and let these free agents walk out the door and have nothing to show for them and you lose 90-100 games, that criticism is going to last four or five years. This criticism will last one month, right up to the time spring training starts, when people see how good these kids are.
"I can live with that."
5. Pitching-hungry Yankees trade Randy Johnson back to the Diamondbacks
You can point to a lack of enough quality pitching as the primary reason why the Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2000.
So what did they do during this offseason?
They traded Randy Johnson, who won 34 games and pitched more than 430 innings the last two seasons, for one reliever and three prospects.
OK, so they saved $14 million in the deal (dumping Johnson's 2007 salary of nearly $16 million while still paying $2 million of the 2007 salary for the Diamondbacks). Still, they traded a five-time Cy Young Award winner for reliever Luis Vizcaino, minor league pitchers Ross Ohlendorf and Steven Jackson and minor league shortstop Alberto Gonzalez.
The reason? General manager Brian Cashman has told owner George Steinbrenner the Yankees' days of checkbook-dictated baseball are over. If they want to keep winning and sustain their reputation for winning World Series championships, Cashman says the Yankees need to develop a bountiful farm system to maintain their talent and, in turn, reduce their payroll.
Remember, the Yankees' farm system produced Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada. The system also has brought along second baseman Robinson Cano, outfielder Melky Cabrera and starting pitcher Chien-Ming Wang.
It's time for the Yankees get back to their roots, Cashman says.
"I've been very vocal and stated our goals," he says. "We want to reduce payroll, improve our farm system, get younger and have more flexibility."
Johnson, in the final year of a three-year contract with the Yankees, had a 5.00 ERA last year (his career high for a full season), but he still won 17 games for the second consecutive season.
Yet Johnson was miserable in New York and didn't hide that fact when he spoke with Cashman in December. Cashman telephoned Johnson to offer his condolences when he learned Johnson's older brother had died. During the conversation, Johnson conveyed his unhappiness in New York.
He didn't formally request a trade but told Cashman he would be happier playing in Arizona (where his family lives) or on the West Coast.
"It was a very personal discussion," Cashman says. "Randy opened up and expressed his desire and preference to be closer to home and family.
"I wasn't going to do something that didn't make sense, but I knew that as long as it got him closer to home, I wouldn't have to worry about the no-trade clause."
Cashman moved when Arizona offered Ohlendorf. The right-hander went 10-8 with a 3.29 ERA last season in 28 starts for Double-A Tennessee.
"Arizona separated itself from the pack, and I was very satisfied with what we got," Cashman says. "We reduced our payroll, got younger and built up our farm system.
"At the same time, Randy was happy. I didn't see him smile the whole time here. But he looked like a whole different person in that (Diamondbacks) press conference."
A Yankees rotation of Wang, Mike Mussina, Pettitte, Japanese signee Kei Igawa and Carl Pavano probably wouldn't draw fear from adversaries in the powerful American League East. But there is about a month before spring training, about 2½ months before Opening Day and about seven months until playoff rosters must be submitted.
"I know there are going to be questions in our rotation," Cashman said at the Yankees news conference that introduced Igawa. "What's Carl Pavano going to do for us? How's Andy Pettitte going to transition back to the AL? Mike Mussina is a year older. How is Kei Igawa going to handle his transition to a new league and a new country? They're fair questions, and there's an unknown.
"And that's why we're trying to cultivate as much as we can on the farm."
But it's hardly as if the Yankees are broke. They have reduced their payroll from $208 million two years ago but still have a $167 million payroll. They spent $46 million on Igawa and brought back Pettitte for a one-year, $16 million deal.
They could make a strong play, too, for free agent Roger Clemens, though Clemens says he's undecided about pitching in 2007 and that he's behind last season's preparation schedule. He returned to the Astros last June 22.
Whether or not New York gets Clemens, who would sign with a team for a prorated salary, the Yankees think their days of feeling they have to sign marquee free agents every year are over, according to Cashman.
"The Yankees aren't afraid to write a check," Cashman says, "but we're going to be more care-ful allocating our resources. This free agent market was very expensive. All we're trying to do is a simple format: Give us as many internal choices as possible. We will never not be free agent players, but it'd be nice to have internal choices, too.
"What we won't want is to be desperate in the free agent market. You do that, you get slaughtered.
"To have a short-term and long-term strategy at the same time is a balancing act with a lot of risk involved. We were recognized as the best position team in baseball, but we came out short on the pitching side. Hopefully now in the long term we can have a lot of choices going forward.
"We're very proud of the depth we have from the lowest level to the top and excited about the potential."
But Cashman says his new philosophy is awfully risky, too.
"I recognize that prospects are suspects that have to earn their keep," he says, "but I believe in what I'm doing."
