Few signings have come under more scrutiny over the past few years than Rafael Soriano's 3 year $35 million dollar deal before the 2011 season. Brought on to be the infamous "8th inning guy" (because we know Girardi loves to assign relief pitchers to innings instead of use based on leverage), Soriano has sorely disappointed, and just is not the pitcher the Yankees thought he was.
This signing was perplexing at the time as Cashman recently said, “I used to sign (Paul) Quantrill, (Steve) Karsay, Gabe White, all these veteran relievers,”said Brian Cashman earlier this week. “Now, our bullpen, for the most part, is homegrown or low-risk guys like Cory Wade who we popped off the waiver wire. The bullpen has become a cheap thing for me.”
Clearly Cashman has realized a very important aspect of building a team, relief pitchers are unpredictable and unreliable and therefore unworthy of multi-year 7 figure deals. Of course with pushy upper management such as Levine and Steinbrenner, Cashman isn't the final decision maker. That is why the GM is the GM and the owner is the owner, but its not something that can be/will be changed anytime soon.
Soriano has vastly underperformed as a Yankee, but what did he do to get this huge deal? For one the Rays have had an affinity for producing one year wonder relief pitchers, probably as a result of pitching coach Jim Hickey. Soriano had a great 2010, not even I can deny that, but there were red flags everywhere as his peripheral stats were in for some serious regression. His 45 saves (blah) and 1.73 ERA looked great, so did the 4/1 K/BB ratio, but other than that Yankee ownership should have thought more of what he will provide from here on instead of paying for a career year. Soriano had a .199 BABIP, extraordinarily low and as we know a guarantee to bounce back to the normal .300 range. That has a huge impact on a pitcher's value and surely Cashman saw this and wanted to stay as far away as possible. Also Soriano had just a 35.2% GB rate, something that can fly in Tropicana, but not at Yankee Stadium. To go along with being a fly ball pitcher he posted just a 4.8% FB/HR rate, almost 3% below his career average, and also a number that can easily be inflated in years to come at a smaller ballpark. His FIP (2.81) and xFIP (3.62) were also clear indicators of his true performance rather than the tiny ERA he posted. As we know ERA and saves are terrible measures to use in evaluating and signing a player, Cashman knew of this and smartly avoided this, but Randy Levine just could not restrain himself from making at least one big free agent signing in the off season.
Even after being a very useful pitcher in 2010, 62 IP and a sub 2 ERA lead to just 1.5 WAR. Relief pitchers have marginal value in comparison to starters/position players, and their salaries should be reflective of that value. Even in a year such as Soriano's 2010, he was worth only $7.5-8 million. To pay roughly $12 million for just .3 WAR last year is sickening, and a waste of precious funds. $12 Million even for 1.5 WAR is still asinine. Surely many of us would do anything to take the way-back machine and kidnap Randy Levine to avoid this signing, but we'e stuck.
In my rough estimation Soriano should produce about 1-1.5 wins in the final two years of his contract, which is fine, just not for the astronomical price of $24 Mil. On top of that, we have already found our "8th inning guy" in the studly David Robertson. We also have the useful (and more valuable in 2011) Cory Wade, not to mention Joba and newly acquired David Aardsma coming back mid summer. I'm also going to go out on a limb and say Hughes will lose the battle for 5th starter and join the bullpen. Needless to say we still have the GOAT in Mariano to close out games. So why do we need Soriano?
The lesson to learn here is that it is simply a waste of funds to give a relief pitcher multiple years and ridiculous dollars because they pitch in an "important inning". Aren't all innings equally important? Cashman knows this, Randy Levine doesn't, that's why Cashman should make the personnel decisions and Levine can figure out whether to charge $10.50 or $11 for a Coors Light. So while we can't reverse the past, we can hope to be optimistic for the future. Hopefully Soriano can rebound, but I don't think any pitcher could replicate his funky 2010 numbers, justifying that massive and unnecessary contract. Lets pray that this is a learning experience, even if it is a very frustrating and expensive one.
-Alex Bardani
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