The Undiscovered Starter

It looks as if, at least in one area, the Sox and the Yankees are going to be shopping for the same thing this offseason. The category starting pitching, and the secret is to not get stuck in huge albatrosses of contracts. Right now, the Yankees have to decide whether or not to pick up Mike Mussina's $17 million option (or pay $1.5 million in buyout- this is actually not as easy a decision as you might think). They also will be paying Randy Johnson $16 million for 2007, Carl Pavano about $10 million for each of 2007 and 2008, Jaret Wright $7 million for 2007, Kyle Farnsworth about $6 million in each of 2007 and 2008, and Mike Myers about a million next year. None of these guys (with the possible exception of Mussina or a miracle bounceback from Pavano) can justify that money.

The Sox have Schilling up for another year at $13 million, about $9.5 million sunk into Matt Clement, Keith Foulke likely to pick up his $3.75 million player option, $10 million each year for the next three years of Josh Beckett, $4 million for Wakefield if the Sox choose to pick that up, and a little over $3 million for Julian Tavarez.

Clearly, both teams have some opportunity to suffer through lost money, but it does appear that the Sox are better positioned on this. There are a couple of decent pitchers on the free-agent market. Chief among them are Barry Zito (despite his less-than-stellar outing last night against Detroit), Jason Schmidt (beware the NL import!), and Mark Mulder. Mulder is having rotator cuff surgery, but he could be a potential Jon Lieber-type pickup where you buy his rehab time cheap and get a big upside. The big prize this off-season will be Daisuke Matsuzaka, coming over from the Seibu Lions in Japan. The problem with this signing (aside from him being an unknown quantity to MLB hitters) is that the cost just to negotiate with him will be probably north of $10 million. That will go to the Lions. Then, you need to sign the guy- and that will probably be a minimum of 3 years, $30 million. And if the Yankees are hungry for him, it's probably $15 million to negotiate, and 4/40.

So where do you find solid, affordable starters? Well, maybe in your bullpen. Think back a couple of years, Sox fans. We had a pitcher in our bullpen who had struggled as a starter. He got sent to the bullpen, had one very good year there where he saved over 40 games. The next year, he struggled significantly in the same role. Toward the end of that year (2001, I believe), he made a couple of starts and seemed to get his stuff together. The next year, he won 20 games and had a sub-3 ERA. Also, he was an extreme ground-ball pitcher. His name is Derek Lowe. David Gassko of The Hardball Times argues that we may have another one of these guys in our current bullpen. His name is Julian Tavarez. Tavarez is also an extreme ground-ball pitcher who has seemed to put it together as a late-season starter after a rough bullpen year.

Though pitchers are really really hard to project, and the Lowe/Tavarez comparisons fade in strong sunlight, it's an intriguing idea. It is certainly one worth exploring during spring training and into April...