Alumni stuff

Yesterday, there was a post about JJ Putz ('00) and the possibility of him being traded to the Brewers.

Here is a post with a pointer to Newsday baseball writer Ken Davidoff's blog. There is a post there about a different ex-Rattler, an ex-Appleton Fox, and a possibility of them becoming a Yankees.

The Beverly Hills Sports Council, which represents Brian Fuentes, Trevor Hoffman, David Weathers, Arthur Rhodes and Tom Gordon in this free-agent class, showed up today, and they'll almost certainly meet with the Mets today or tomorrow. Jeff Borris, one of the BHSC's agents, said he has been playing phone tag with Omar Minaya to line up a meeting.

Rick Thurman, who represents Fuentes, said this: "New York is on our radar. ...I think New York would be a great place for him. He would look forward to talking with them."

Thurman added that Fuentes would likely want to visit the cities of interested teams and chat with the respective front offices. So we can expect a "Fuentes in New York" day.

I asked Thurman about Gordon, since I always felt that Gordon got a raw deal from Yankees fans. Thurman said that Gordon, who will turn 41 in November, is rehabilitating from elbow surgery and will have a better idea of his future in three-to-four months.

Fuentes was a Rattler in 1997 and Gordon was an Appleton Fox in 1988.

Bernie's Crew has a few links to stories about Fuentes possibly becoming a Brewer.

Here's a quick hint. Check Bernie's Crew often. Jim was updating all day the last two days on stuff from the Winter Meetings. In a post that started yesterday at 9:31am, his final update was at 11:34pm.

Lookout Landing checked in with this post about JJ.

Let's look at it like this. Let's put JJ's current trade value at X. It doesn't matter what X actually is - it's just a number, or a player, or a group of players, or something.

(A) The Mariners decide X isn't enough, and they hang on to him. JJ pitches well for the first few months, and come July X has increased by 10%. There's less time for him to make an impact, and teams might be less willing to give up a young ML-ready player or two than they were over the winter, but overall his effectiveness elevates his value.

(B) The Mariners decide X isn't enough, and they hang on to him. JJ struggles, or gets hurt, and come July X has decreased by 80%. A team might be willing to take a flier on a guy a year and a half removed from being awesome, but overall JJ has stabbed his value in the nuts.

Faced with those theoretical black-and-white percentages (this is just an example), the breakeven rate for hanging on to JJ is 1 - (.1 / [.1 + .8]) = 89%. In other words, the Mariners would have to be at least 89% certain that JJ would follow path (A) in order to justify keeping him around. Alternatively, they'd have to believe that an effective JJ would be worth more than 1.1*X around deadline time. Whichever the case, were the M's to keep JJ through the winter, they'd be doing so because they believed there was a really good chance that he'd improve his value by pitching well out of the gate.

LL also caught this bit of news that I missed on the transaction wire.

New York Yankees
Signed: RHP Jose Valdez, C Ben Blumenthal, 3B Carlos Mendoza, OF Justin Leone

They would catch it since the original name of the blog was Leone for Third. Leone was a teammate of JJ on that Rattler team in 2000.