Earlier this fall Dan Haren announced he didn’t want to play baseball for a team outside of southern California. Even so, the Dodgers traded him to Miami along with the $10,000,000 to cover his salary. Miami can keep the money even if Haren retires, as he said he would do rather than play for a team so far away from his family.
Presumably the idea was that Miami would either have Haren or would have the money to get an equally valuable replacement for Haren.
Today the news comes that Haren has reiterated his commitment to not play for a team “away from the west coast” which doesn’t train in Arizona. I am not sure how far the West Coast extends in Haren’s mind. Does it extend to Seattle? Or Phoenix? Maybe Colorado?
I care about this on four levels. First is my utter sympathy with Haren’s desire not to be away from his family so much. Haren has earned millions. If I were him I’d probably have retired already — there aren’t enough millions in the entire world to buy back the time he’s missing with his kids. I am hoping Haren blazes a path that makes it possible for family considerations to have more influence over players’ careers.
Another intrigue here, although the least of the four, is the possible effect on the Mariners. What if Haren could be convinced that Seattle was on the West Coast? Should the M’s trade for him? Would Happ for Haren straight up make any sense? It only adds a half-game of WAR but that could be crucial to the M’s. The M’s would have to get a large part of the $10,000,000 for the deal to make any sense — Happ only costs $5.4 million and has an option for next year; Haren’s deal is up this year.)
But the most timely intrigues relate to how the EFL pennant race for 2015 is shaping up. The latest projections have the final standings looking like this at the top:
Team OffWAR PitWAR W L .pct GB Old Detroit 32.1 14.1 98 64 0.603 0.0 Cottage 30.8 14.4 97 65 0.597 1.0 Pittsburgh 26.6 14.6 93 69 0.572 5.0
Note the good news! We may be free of Allegheny tyranny as soon as next October.
My third concern is for my fellow EFL owners. Cottage is behind by only a game. It has $38,500,000 to spend compared to Old Detroit’s $30,500,000. This makes the Cheese the real favorites in the upcoming pennant race.
Cottage owns Dan Haren. If he retires, the Cheese will save $6,000,000 this year and next but will also lose 1.6 games in the standings, according to these Fangraphs projections. Mayby they’d like Haren to retire. Maybe they’d like to keep Haren. But it’s all out of their hands!
Then what if Haren is traded? What if he’s traded for Happ? The Cheese would have a pitcher about 2/3 as good and a savings of $600,000 this year. What if he’s traded for a couple of prospects? Would the Cheese take the 1.6-game hit for a brighter future?
Here is my fourth concern: Old Detroit owns Miami pitcher Tom Koehler. Koehler was worth 1.8 WAR to the Marlins last year, and comes with a relatively modest $3,250,000 price tag for this year and next. Fangraphs rates Koehler as worth only 0.3 WAR in 2015 — but that’s after Haren takes about 2/3 of Koehler’s work away by bumping him out of the rotation. If the Marlins trade Haren, or he retires, Koehler’s value could jump to 1.0 WAR even if his performance declines the way Fangraphs expects it to.
So — those Haren kids hold in the palms of their little hands the fate of the 2015 EFL pennant race!