Alfonso Soriano told reporters today that his knee still isn't 100% and that he hasn't run full-out since his September arthroscopic surgery (!) despite the fact that his doctors "told [him] it was nothing." (!!).

Ok. It's important to understand a few things here. (1) Arthroscopic surgeries don't generally require six months for a recovery. The money quote from that article: "Full recovery to the level of prior physical activity can take up to three months."

(2) Soriano's contract is one of the three worst in baseball. Vernon Wells or Barry Zito probably have worse, but Soriano is owed $90MM over the next five seasons (Wells: 5/$98.5, Zito: 5/$83). Soriano hasn't yet dipped to their level of poor performance, to be fair, but he's well on his way, after a 2009 season that saw him hit .241/.303/.423. His legs - a big part of the reason he got that megadeal in the first place - are gone; his 9 steals last season are his least since 2000. You know, the year when he had 53 PA in 22 games.

(3) He's old. The career low in steals could be explained away by the injury factor, but when a guy who's going to be 34 this season has a run of calf/hamstring injuries over two seasons, those wheels are going off the track quickly. And when it takes you six months after a knee scope to be able to run a straight line, your body simply is not responding at the level it should* be.

*'Should' here relative to what we would expect from a professional athlete who had a reputation as a speedster and who is one of the highest paid players in his profession. I'm sure I'd still be like rocking back and forth in my bed cuddling my surgically operated knee were I to have been scoped six months ago.

(4) If he's admitting that he's less than 100% at a time when everybody in baseball - except Kelvim Escobar, who hardly counts at this point - is supposed to be In The Best Shape Of Their Lives, then you've gotta suspect that there's something seriously wrong. This is especially true when you consider Soriano's recent injury-riddled past. In fact, he appears to have lost his ability to completely play through the injuries. In 2007 and 2008, his first two seasons with the Cubs, he OPS'd nearly .900, even though he stole only 19 bases both years. In 2009, not only was he not stealing bases like he used to (even relative to the pace he established in his first two years in the royal blue pinstripes), he also wasn't hitting.

(5) Consider the ramifications of Soriano's admission. He won't be much of a factor in Spring Training if he's still got a balky knee, because why risk it in Spring Training? Which sounds all well and good, except that then the season starts, and he'll have to face live Major League pitching. Which I don't know how well you, dear reader, keep up with the sport - but Major League pitching is some pretty good pitching. He's traditionally been a fast starter, with April being his second best month of the season (.298/.340/.505 and .284/.364/.591 last year; he hits .286/.334/.539 in July if you were curious). But assume that he has to come into the season cold...it seems fairly reasonable to expect some regression there. And if he'd been anything less than excellent last April, who knows how bad his season line could have looked?

Which brings us to the conclusion: Alfonso Soriano needs to play as well as he possibly can if he has any hope of justifying that bloated contract. Unfortunately for him (and for Cubs fans, and for the Ricketts family), because of his advancing age, apparently degrading body, and the possibility that he won't be in game shape come the start of the 2010 season, it looks like his odds of doing so are extraordinarily slim. Wherefore art thou, Jake Fox?

Word on the street is that the Tigers have signed Johnny Damon to a 1 year, $8MM contract. Damon, a left fielder by trade and toddler by arm, will presumably play left, meaning that Carlos Guillen and his ponderous Phiten collection will be moving to DH. Ryan Raburn, then, would be the man left out of the mix. And that's reason (1) why I don't like this deal for the Tigers.

Look, Raburn's not a bad bat. The soon-to-be 30-year old has had only 660-odd plate appearances spread across four seasons with the Tigers, but he's got a career line of .270/.329/.461, with a .341 wOBA. Damon - who is nearly 10 years Raburn's senior, mind you - has a career .288/.355/.439 line, and a .351 wOBA. But what about Damon's speed?, you might ask. Well, Damon does have a speed advantage, as he'd stolen 25, 27, and 29 bases in the three seasons preceding '09...at which point he proceeded to steal just 12. Which is to say: if the age-related decline continues, then Damon isn't exactly going to be a burner on the basepaths anymore. And his bat for the duration of his career is only marginally better than Raburn's - but considering that Damon's going to be 37 this year, it's easy to imagine some of that cap being closed - certainly enough to where $8MM is an overpay.

And that's reason (2) why I don't like this deal. I harped on this before: when you trade a guy like Curtis Granderson, who's been a face of the franchise for several years and who's a marketable young talent because you're trying to cut costs, you don't then go out and spend $22MM on guys like Jose Valverde and Johnny Damon. You can go out and spend money despite your cost-cutting efforts, but throw down that money where it could be productive, not where it represents small upgrades. Ryan Raburn could've handled left field for the Tigers. Progressive thinking - i.e. abandoning the idea of The Closer and instead using your best available pitcher given the situation - could've handled the bullpen issues. $22MM could certainly also help those problems - but not when it brings in players like Jose Valverde and Johnny Damon. This is, plain and simple, a misappropriation of resources for a team that has tried to paint itself as a financially responsible, cost-conscious group.

Word has come down from on high that the San Francisco Giants and Tim Lincecum have agreed to a 2-year, $23MM contract. In related news, the fine folks at MLBPA have already started drinking heavily - and they don't even celebrate Mardi Gras up there!

Southern jokes aside, I hate this deal. Lincecum gets $8MM the first year and $13MM the second, with a $2MM signing bonus (which apparently amounts to a $23MM deal...I don't know if ESPN is just bad at math or doesn't know to not include signing bonuses in the overall deal). There are various performance incentives which you can read at the article, but my initial assessment is that he's not likely to see more than about $2MM from those. So at the most, we're talking about $25MM for two years of one of, if not the, best pitchers in the game. That's an average annual value of $12.5MM - or $500K less than what Lincecum asked for in arbitration.

Hence why MLBPA is likely upset. Lincecum's $13MM filing was a record number, and he was at least reasonably likely to win the case. If he did, he could help reinforce the precedent that we've been seeing in recent years where young players have been getting more and more money in arby cases - see e.g. Ryan Howard and Jonathan Papelbon. The PA, as a matter of principle, would never be against greater sums of money going to its players. Yet one of their premier players has voluntarily taken a below-market contract that buys out two arbitration seasons - each of which could have set new record highs in arbitration awards. It's nice that the two sides are avoiding the nasty process of arbitration, but that comes at an enormous cost to Lincecum and MLBPA. But, hey, at least I get the chance to write this sentence once in my life:

Brian Sabean did a bang-up job.

This post, oddly enough, started out as one covering the Nationals signing Chien-Ming Wang. Which considering my recent history in announcing 'reported' deals, it's probably best that I came across this instead.

Now, I'm hardly an expert - or even particularly interested - in baseball outside of America. But I am interested in baseball in general, and I like to think I know a thing or two (but no more) about it. So when I read about a baseball manager, among 23 others being indicted on charges of fixing baseball games, I know to perk up. Turns out that Shin Nakagomi, the manager of Brother Elephants (which, aside from being a flat out awesome name for any venture you might choose to undergo, is a team in Taiwan's premier baseball league) have been accused of doing just that. Nakagomi, a former pitcher for the Hanshin Tigers, is the name I chose to mention because as the manger, he would seem to have more sway on this sort of thing. But he's hardly the most recognizable name in this whole deal - that would probably be Chin-hui Tsao, whom some of you may remember as a former Rockie and Dodger, or as one of the top 100 prospects in MVP Baseball 2005 (admittedly, this is probably a small 'some of you').

Prosecutors are reportedly seeking an 18-month sentence for Nakagomi, and 2 years for a pitcher for the La New Bears named Cheng Chi-chia, relative information about whom Google yields very little, save a Facebook page for a person I am fairly sure is not the gentleman in question. Aside from those two, 22 others were charged as well, including not only players, but also members of an organized crime syndicate. Tsao's name hasn't turned up in the recent investigations, as far as I can tell, but he was named in late October '09.

Again, I hardly presume to understand the workings of Asian baseball leagues - indeed, I can barely wrap my head around our own. But consider the Brother Elephants: from what Wikipedia tells me, they were formed in 1989, and have won six (6) league championships since. Plus, their uniforms are totally reminiscent of the We Are Family-era Pirates, which always wins big points in my book. But of more concern is the fact that the Elephants, a perennial power, were disappointing due to their poor pitching in the 2009 season - the season which culminated in their being investigated for fixing games. To extend this even further, the team has been in financial trouble for the last year and a half. So if it's true that the manager has been fixing games in exchange for cash from gangsters...well, isn't it possible that we could be seeing a case where organized crime is running one of the premier teams in Taiwan's top baseball league? I don't want to speculate too much, since this is far from my realm of expertise, but to imagine such a thing happening, even overseas, is sort of chilling given America's past 'issues' on the diamond. Too many American children saw their heroes become pariahs because of gambling, and it's a shame that Taiwanese and Japanese children may have to experience the same thing.

As Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune stated, in Xavier Nady the Cubs have a fourth outfielder and insurance policy. Nady joins a Cubs outfield group that has not had a 90-RBI producer since Moises Alou in 2004. In 2008, a year before Tommy John surgery, Nady drove in 97 runs while splitting the season with Pittsburgh and the New York Yankees. The Cubs find themselves in a good position. The team has five outfielders who can play everyday. As Rogers states, "Nady views himself as an everyday player, and it's clear that regulars Alfonso Soriano, Marlon Byrd and Kosuke Fukudome should view him as a threat to their playing time." As much as I like Sam Fuld, the Cubs don't see him as their fourth outfielder. For the time being, Fuld will remain the other backup outfielder for the Cubs. Nady can fill-in for any of the Cubs regulars and the lineup shouldn't miss a beat.

Nady's presence in the Cubs dugout shouldn't completely be seen as a threat to the three starting outfielders. Instead, it should be seen as motivation. If one of the starters doesn't play up to Lou Piniella's expectations, Nady can step in. Soriano and Fukudome have disappointed since joining the Cubs. Soriano put up his best numbers as a Cub in 2007 when he hit .299/.337/.560 with 33 home runs, 70 RBI, 42 doubles, and scored 97 runs. He's been moved around in the lineup and may finally be settled as the lead-off hitter. Fukudome hasn't fared as well as the Cubs hoped in his two years on the North Side. Combined, they make $184 million. Yet, they keep playing despite, for example, Sam Fuld's more-than-capable play. The addition of Marlon Byrd in center field could help take pressure off them. Byrd, who signed a 3-year, $15 million contract this off-season, is coming off a career season. He comes to the Cubs along with Rudy Jaramillo, his hitting coach with the Rangers.

Evans Clinchy, NESN:

Nomar was in position to claim his place among the all-time legends of the game. His teammates loved him. His fans revered him. His peers had all the respect in the world for him: Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter were the first two American League shortstop phenoms to come along in the late 1990s, but even they thought Nomar was better.

They don't anymore.

But it's hard to tell who we're supposed to believe in this Nomar "retirement" saga. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Susan Slusser, who reported last week that Nomar is "widely expected" to call it quits? Or WEEI's Lou Merloni, who says he's "intent on playing in the majors" in 2010?

My guess is Nomar weighs his offers and calls it quits in the end. It seems like the time may be right for Mr. Hamm to settle down.

I will remember Nomar for his Red Sox days more than anything else, with a blip afterward. Nomar was very good (11+ WAR in 2002-03), and I hope that is what everyone will remember.

Ken Gurnick, MLB.com:

The Dodgers signed 39-year-old outfielder Brian Giles to a Minor League contract with an invitation to Major League camp, the club confirmed.

Dick Kaegel, MLB.com:

Royals manager Trey Hillman wasn't going to let the Super Bowl make all the news on Sunday. He had a bulletin of his own: Zack Greinke will start on Opening Day against the Detroit Tigers.

To be fair, GMDM released a statement saying he disagreed with the decision, and would prefer Kyle Farnsworth as the Opening Day starter. No joke*.

*Note: Joke.

Yes, they are finally here. FanGraphs has added a splits section to their stats.

Needless to say, this is pretty freakin' awesome. And, to make myself seem important and better than you, I will tell you that I was told about the splits in an email before the public got the news. Don't you wish you were me?

Playing around with the splits is fun, and should last you all day.