Soriano is coming off an excellent season for the Yankees, managing a 2.26 ERA, a 9.2 K/9, a 3.2 BB/9, a 0.8 HR/9, and (fittingly enough) 42 saves in 69 appearances replacing the injured Mariano Rivera as the Yankees’ closer. After a season like that, he was due for a big payday and the Yankees rightfully offered him a 1-year, 13.3 million dollar qualifying offer so they could receive draft pick compensation in exchange for him. But obviously there’s no guarantee whatsoever that Soriano is going to repeat those numbers. Soriano turned 33 in December, not an old age for a reliever, but several concerns immediately come to mind. The first is that Soriano has a checkered injury history, undergoing Tommy John Surgery back in 2004 and missing time with elbow injuries in 2008 and 2011. Especially as Soriano gets up there in age, you never know when the next injury will strike. But isn’t the only thing the Nats have to worry about. Although Soriano’s ERA was a sparkly 2.26 in 2012, his FIP was a run higher at 3.24 and his xFIP was even higher at 3.67 as he was lucky to allow only 6 home runs all season. Soriano has out-pitched his xFIP by a run just about his entire career, managing a 3.69 career xFIP compared to his 2.78 career ERA, with the most notable difference being his 3.62 xFIP in 2010 compared to his 1.73 ERA. However, his ERA and xFIP were nearly identical when he had an off-year in 2011, and if that happens again, Soriano will be a much less valuable pitcher. Even beyond that, Soriano has seen his average fastball velocity go down the last three years, and he’s down from 94.02 MPH as recently as 2009 to just 92.91 MPH in 2012, a touch lower than his 93.03 MPH mark in 2011 even though he was no longer dealing with an injury. All that being said, Soriano has managed a 2.64 ERA, a 9.7 K/9, a 3.0 BB/9, a 0.7 HR/9, and 116 saves the last four seasons. If Soriano keeps up that level of production over the next two years for the Nationals, they will have gotten a great value despite Soriano’s lofty salary. However, if Soriano’s issues with injuries or fastball velocity surface again or if his luck on flyballs staying in the park finally runs out, the Nationals will look back at the deal with nothing but regret.

Since the 2007 offseason, the Rays have signed just three free agents to multi-year deals (not counting contracts with option years): RHP Troy Percival, OF/DH Pat Burrell, and most recently RHP Joel Peralta. Only Burrell’s contract guaranteed him more than 5 million dollars a year, and as we know it completely backfired. Since they began contending in 2008, the Rays rank second in baseball in bullpen ERA at 3.48- and that’s despite the fact that the low-cost deals for Percival and Peralta have been the only multi-year deals they have signed relievers to. The Rays have figured out a proven method to deliver one of the best bullpens in baseball year after thanks to a bevy of low-cost and low-risk free agent contracts given to players like Fernando Rodney, Kyle Farnsworth, and Peralta initially, shrewd trades to acquire players like Soriano, Grant Balfour, and J.P. Howell, and their minor league system yielding players like Jake McGee and Wade Davis. The Rays have certainly seen moves backfire- Chad Qualls and Josh Lueke come to mind- but they have taken so little risk in their pursuit of relievers that they’ve almost never found themselves attached to a reliever with a bad contract, and even the occasional disaster acquisition has been overshadowed by several other moves that worked to perfection. After the level of success the Rays have experienced the past several years finding relievers, the idea of paying any reliever, even one of the best in the game, anything remotely resembling big money (and many teams would call 5 million dollars “pocket change”) is an extremely foreign concept. That doesn’t mean that dishing out multi-year deals to build a bullpen doesn’t work, but as the Rays have shown, it’s far from the most efficient method. The Rays have been able to sign effective reliever after effective reliever for pennies on the dollar, and players like Soriano gotten their big paydays elsewhere only after the Rays finished squeezing out all the value they can possibly get from them. Maybe it evens out in the end- after getting almost criminally underpaid in the Rays’ bullpen for a year or two, several ex-Rays relievers have been to find lucrative multi-year deals elsewhere, and now Soriano has to be the poster child if he wasn’t before after signing his second big free agent contract at an annual value that makes the Rays wince.

Buster Olney talked about the other other day (Insider-only) how teams and agents were looking into a possible sign-and-trade arrangement where a team like the Cleveland Indians, whose first round pick at 5th overall is protected, meaning they can’t surrender it by signing a free agent, and whose second round pick has already been forfeited after they signed Nick Swisher, would sign a player like Bourn, Lohse, or Soriano, losing their third round pick, and then trade the player they signed to another team, receiving compensation for their lost draft pick in return. Olney clarified on Twitter that such a sign-and-trade could not be a situation where the Indians say signed Bourn and then traded him to the team that gave them the best offer- Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors tweeted that such a deal would be regarded by Major League Baseball as collusion and would not be allowed. Instead, Bourn would agree to the terms of a contract with another team and that other team would come to terms with the Indians on a pre-arraigned deal. Reading Olney’s piece and the discussion surrounding it, it’s pretty amazing how many hoops teams are willing to jump through in order to keep their first round picks. But that may not have been the craziest part. A talent evaluator Olney quoted in his article had this to say.

“If the Indians were willing to consent to the type of arrangement suggested above I would imagine they would receive pretty solid prospects in return — at least a B group type guy.”

Wait a second- we’re talking about the Indians losing a third round pick here. How in the world would they receive a good prospect in return for that? According to Baseball-Reference, you have to go back to 2004 for the last time the third round of any MLB Draft had more than three players that were each worth a total of 2.0 WAR for their MLB careers. That’s a pretty modest standard- that’s what an average big league starter should manage per season and we’re talking their entire careers here- but the players have still failed to reach it. Obviously the Indians shouldn’t receive nothing in a sign-and-trade, but wouldn’t you think they would be getting more of a low minors lottery pick or utility type than a real prospect? The issue here is not just the draft pick itself but also its slot value within the draft system under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement that was signed last year. Losing that third round pick would mean that the Indians would not only lose a potential big league contributor but also around $450,000 to work with as they try to sign their picks in the first 10 rounds of the draft, and that could wind up being quite significant.

For all the Indians know, they could be drafting a low-upside college player in the third who might only sign for $300,000 and use the $150,000 in savings to sign their first round pick. Losing their third round pick in addition to the second round pick they already forfeited would mean that the Indians would lose a lot of flexibility to get all their players signed, and if they have a high school player at the top of the board that may be a tough sign, it could force them to draft conservatively the rest of their draft and select players they knew would sign for below-slot. We’re not just talking about a difference of one prospect here. Losing their third round pick could cost the Indians the ability to take chances on players from rounds 4 to 10 as well. In 2012, the Indians drafted high school players with their 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th, and 8th round picks. If they executed a sign-and-trade, they might be able to draft only one or two high school players if they go for one with their first round pick. Back in 1998, the Indians drafted a 6’7″ high school lefty named CC Sabathia with their first round pick. Three years later he was a 17-game winner in the big leagues. Imagine if the Indians had instead drafted a college player who would sign for less money in an attempt to get more values across their entire to draft and missed out on a player who was a critical part of their team for eight years?

What is a Grade B prospect? Every evaluator you asked would likely give you a different answer, but John Sickels of Minor League Ball called the Rays’ Alex Colome a Grade B prospect entering 2012. In Colome, we’re talking about pitcher who certainly has risk involved with him as he missed an opportunity for a big league call-up at the end of 2012 with some shoulder fatigue, but he has electric stuff and the ability to be a solid big league starting pitcher or fireballing late-inning reliever at some point in 2012. That’s not an insignificant player, and a player like Colome could very well be better than whoever the Indians would have drafted in the third round of next year’s draft. The other side of the coin is, as Olney pointed out, that Wil Myers was a third round in 2009 before becoming a super-prospect. Nevertheless, would you really trade a solid prospect like Colome for a complete unknown commodity? The answer has to be no- but that’s not the question we’re asking. The Indians’ third round draft pick that’s potentially on the table in a sign-and-trade is not just a potential prospect but financial flexibility that could determine the course of the Indians’ entire draft.

If a sign-and-trade scenario for a player like Michael Bourn is feasible and demand for Bourn is high enough that the only thing standing in the way from a team signing him is the potential loss of a first round pick, the Indians will certainly field offers for a sign-and-trade and will make it happen if they’re offered the right prospect in return. But at the same time, unless desperation to sign Bourn causes a team to offer the Indians a much better prospect than they should, their third round draft pick and the flexibility it gives them may be too valuable to trade.

On December 3, 2007, the Rays traded outfielder Elijah Dukes to the Washington Nationals for right-handed pitching prospect Glenn Gibson. The Rays knew Dukes was talented- but they also knew that his attitude problems made him enigmatic and also reduced the morale of his teammates. They decided to deal him, receiving a good pitching prospect in Gibson in return with a solid sinker, a plus changeup, and a good curveball. Gibson never panned out in the Rays organization and they wound up releasing him, but it showed us that the Rays were willing to take risks to put together a winning ballclub even if meant trading promising players.

On December 10, 2008, the Rays dealt right-hander Edwin Jackson to the Detroit Tigers for outfielder Matt Joyce. Jackson was a 25 year old right-hander with electric stuff coming off a 14-win season, albeit with a 4.42 ERA, and the Rays were willing to trade him for a promising outfielder in Joyce, but one who had just debuted in the big leagues in 2008. Most teams have a bias toward their guys and even when they struggle, they keep with them seeing their promise. But the Rays knew that there was no guarantee that Jackson would improve and that they had plenty of pitching depth with bigger needs elsewhere*, and they were willing to pull the trigger even though casual fans would not believe that they would trade a pitcher who tied for their team lead in wins. The winner of that trade is debatable, but when you consider that the Rays had plenty of pitching and Joyce gave them a huge offensive season in 2011 and strong performance in 2010 and 2012 as well, the Rays definitely are happy with their end of the deal.

*Sure, the Rays have pitching depth and bigger needs elsewhere now as well, but they don’t have a pitcher anywhere near as enigmatic as Jackson was in 2012 and are confident that all their starters can pitch well for them next season if they are retained and don’t feel a need to sell-high.

Those two moves were vintage moves the Rays would make, taking calculated risks to give their team the best long-term reward. The move they made on December 11, 2009 was quite a bit more surprising as they traded Jesse Chavez, who they had just acquired in November for Akinori Iwamura, to the Atlanta Braves for Rafael Soriano and signed him to a one-year, 7.25 million dollar contract. Soriano was coming off a great season for the Braves in 2009, posting a 2.97 ERA, a 102-27 strikeout to walk ratio, and 27 saves, but he had made just 14 appearances in 2008 after dealing with injury problems all year and then undergoing surgery on his right pitching elbow to remove bone spurs. If Soriano had gotten hurt again, the Rays would have been in trouble. Instead, they took a chance knowing that they needed an effective late inning arm to contend after J.P. Howell was lost to the year to shoulder surgery, and the results were remarkable as Soriano posted a 1.73 ERA and 45 saves to help the Rays win the AL East division title.

The Winter Meetings presents the Rays with plenty opportunities for potential deals. Most of the time, they don’t take them for a variety of reasons. But in these trades, the Rays saw opportunities for upside and seized them, something they did once again today when they signed James Loney. The Rays don’t carry out trades during the Winter Meetings if they think that they can find a better value at a later time. But if the right player becomes available or the offer comes along, anything can happen and it will be interesting to see exactly what will.