[Purple Cowboy]

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

It’s been a rather relaxed couple of weeks. We wanted to give ourselves as an organization some time to absorb everything we discovered while pouring over the club’s players before making any hasty moves. Within the organization 32-year old catcher Colby Sunday cleared waivers and accepted an assignment to Triple-A Sacramento. His 2020 platoon-mate Tanyon Meagher was also sent down while Cornelius McInally and Thomas Goodloe were brought up from the River Cats to the big club.

With just two days to go before the salary arbitration hearings we were able to announce a 2-year extension for 29-year old first baseman Jose Arce at $3,500,000 per season which amounts to about an $800,000-per-year raise from his previous contract but I think is sound business all-around because even if Arce doesn’t work out in Oakland he has enough talent that his contract won’t be a stumbling block in any trade negotations. We also locked up 26-year old second baseman Ken O’Bryant for the next three years at $3,000,000-per year, a considerable raise for O’Bryant but I think he’s on the cusp of putting together some really good years for the club. Current closer Jonathan Leverett hasn’t yet responded to the 3-year, $3 million-per-year offer he’s had on the table for a few days and he’s the only other arbitration-eligible player we were interested in bringing back for multiple seasons at this time.

While we were trying to relax over the last couple of weeks and forget about the players actually on our squad the league announced its award winners for 2020 so this might be a good point to pause on all the misery and take a look back at last season.

To be perfectly honest I wasn’t paying that much attention to baseball in 2020, hence the need for the rigorous examination of the entire squad as soon as I became General Manager. I knew that the Mets, posting a Major League best 107-55 record, had defeated the White Sox for the World Series title four games to two and that was about it. I was basically on the driving range developing my ugly golf swing all summer since I had hardly ever played a round of serious golf in my life, excluding the $100 per-person in high school we used to pony up for 9 holes of drunken pitch-and-putt. But when the award winners were announced there were a few players, of course, that caught my ears and eyes either from being mentioned on ESPN a billion times or just from me being a baseball nerd and remembering some obscure names because I thought they sounded cool (or funny).

In any event, Angels’ third baseman Danilo “Silencer” Tabarez, so nicknamed for his showboating index-finger across the lips whenever he hits a homer, won the American League Rookie of the Year Award for his 47 homers and 151 runs batted in while playing everyday for the division champions. Tabarez also picked up the Gold Glove Award for third base in the AL in 2020 making him the recipient of the media’s “best overall young player in the game today” label.

11-time All-Star Zach Duke won his 11th Cy Young Award while with the Boston Red Sox, posting a 22-5 record and a microscopic 2.03 ERA last season. The 36-year old future Hall of Famer has a 328-97 career record with a remarkable 2.13 career ERA and three World Series championship rings (2006 w/Pirates & 2017-18 w/Red Sox). He’s been the single most dominant pitcher in all of baseball for the last 10 years.

29-year old left fielder Teodor Revelez won his third consecutive (and overall) American League MVP Award for the American League Champion Chicago White Sox after belting 51 homers and knocking in 147 runs with a .329 batting average. Revelez, who has only made two All-Star teams despite his 3 MVP Awards, was originally a 7th round pick of the Cincinnati Reds in 2010 and was traded to Chicago in one of the great steals of all-time for Ivo Kapler, a 30-year old middle reliever that has pitched 300 career innings in the majors. White Sox catcher Roberto Darna, the best hitting catcher in all of baseball over the last several years, won his second straight Gold Glove as did light-hitting Cleveland first baseman Harold Alfred. Angels’ shortstop and four-time All-Star Reginald Lawry won his 5th Gold Glove Award in the hole last year.

The big news in baseball last year, though, was in the National League where Colorado Rockies center fielder and three-time All-Star John O’Hennessy won his first Most Valuable Player Award. Former 2016 Rookie of the Year Award winner O’Hennessy, now aged 29, captured the MLB triple crown last year leading all of baseball with a .368 batting average, a record-breaking 76 homeruns, and 179 runs batted in while playing on a third place club that finished 14 games behind the division champions. O’Hennessy has 304 career homeruns in five full Major League seasons and could be among the all-time career leaders before his playing days are through.

Also in the National League, 36-year old veteran and 5-time All-Star Roland Shealy won his 6th Gold Glove at catcher for the Houston Astros and 35-year old Padres second baseman Andres Blanco won his 4th overall Gold Glove and his third at second base, having previously won a glove as a shortstop in 2018. 22-year old Pirates catcher Bobby Silcock won the National League Rookie of the Year Award with a 35 homerun season and 20-4 New York Mets starting pitcher Brandon Radley, a seven-time All-Star, won his 4th Cy Young Award with the eventual World Series Champions while posting a miniscule 2.21 ERA.

It was now time to see who was going to stay and who was going to go. I called Herb, Gaspar, and Jeff to meet with me in Oakland as soon as the free agency filings were made. Certainly we weren’t going to start making any changes until arbitration had been settled and those we had decided to let go out of contract were no longer with the club.