What's Wrong With HGH?

The recent kerfuffle over Peyton Manning reportedly -- but not convincingly so, at least not yet -- using human growth hormone (HGH) to recover from the serious neck injury that sidelined him for all of 2011 is a trenchant reminder that most folks don't understand why athletes in professional sports are prohibited from using steroids and other drugs.

Contrary to popular opinion, the problem with steroids, HGH and their cousins is not that they are "performance enhancing." There's nothing wrong, or new, with athletes consuming substances to improve their performance. Orange juice, lean meat, ibuprofen and caffeine are all "performance enhancing," and yet no one is suggesting that they be banned, or that athletes who consumed these substances be blackballed.

There's nothing inherently wrong with an injured athlete taking HGH to recover faster. Who could blame him? It's not "cheating" others or gaining an unfair advantage to recover faster from an injury.

The problem with steroids, HGH and their ilk is that they can do serious damage to the human body (and mind) -- up to and including death -- with long-term use. Fearful that young athletes would choose the short-term benefits over the long-term ravages, government banned their use, and many governing bodies in sports followed.

The unfair advantage comes into play when athletes decide nonetheless to take potentially harmful substances that others are dutifully avoiding. It also creates a strong incentive in others to use those "performance enhancers" to keep up. 

This is exactly the story attached to Barry Bonds' descent into steroid use: the best baseball player in the world, he resented the adulation that steroid-enhanced Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa received with their prodigious home run counts in 1998. To reclaim his crown, he launched his own steroid adventure.

The new question, of course, is whether a regimen of steroid use carefully monitored by a physician is indeed harmful to long-term health. We appear now to have a large number of professional athletes who have dabbled in the dark arts without any new Lyle Alzado or Ken Caminiti stories. There may come a time -- we might already be there -- when steroid use should be allowed under a doctor's care.

That would raise new issues involving role models and under-age athletes, issues beyond the point of this discussion. The point is that the use of "performance enhancing drugs," in and of themselves, is neither unusual nor unfair.

Top Sports Hypocricies of 2015

Major college and professional sports are presented to us by the leagues, the schools and their broadcast partners as noble competitions that distinguish the emotionally tough from the emotionally indomitable. While that is often an element of the games, what characterizes every single major sports contest is the pursuit of money, and ever more of it.

Money underlies the raging hypocrisies that gird our most popular sports today. Let's look at the big one:

1. The NCAA -- A fraud wrapped in a lie engulfed in a sham. The so-called "student athletes" competing in major college football and basketball are often functionally illiterate young men forced to support their sponsors' lies about high school "graduations" and  class "attendance" at major American research universities-- until the moment they are released to seek recompense for their labors. Everyone involved in the games -- except the NCAA, of course -- refers to their trade in work terms, such as coaches demanding that players "do their jobs." For this, athletes from low-income families not only get nothing of value (a university education is worthless to someone at a fifth-grade reading level) but are prohibited from earning income by working side jobs. Heck, they can't even get a free ride home from a coach or a fan.

2. The NFL and domestic violence -- Beat your girlfriend mercilessly behind closed doors; serve a short suspension and then sign a lucrative contract. Punch your now-wife once on video and earn the endless enmity of humankind, not to mention an effective lifetime ban from the game. And how about the NFL puking all over itself on the issue, initially all-but dismissing the incident, then over-reacting and violating the policy it had literally just written.

3. Hoopla about the NBA (and NHL, among those who care) regular seasons -- which are as meaningful as clown candidate policy pronouncements. Here are the conference playoff seedings of the last seven Stanley Cup Champions -- 4-6-1-8-3-2-4. Media coverage of these games would have you believe that teams are straining to win every contest down the stretch for the highest seed possible, when in fact they are trying to avoid strains so that their players are healthy for the two-month marathon that actually determines the champion.

4. The brainless patriotism attending the Olympics, World Cup, Rider Cup and Davis Cup -- Nothing swells our USA pride like millionaire professionals from the States defeating amateur Angolan hoopsters. Take that, ISIS!

5. Our varied responses to cheating in different sports -- In NASCAR, if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'. That was the credo of the most beloved driver ever. In football, we could hardly care less who's juicing. In basketball there's an overt understanding that the rules are more lenient for big stars. But in baseball, the Wrath of God is unleashed upon those who take substances that make them better players.

6. Gambling laws -- After 30+ years of asking, I have yet to hear a coherent, much less convincing, argument supporting the prohibition. It's particularly indefensible that the laws are so gauzy that gambling is actually quite encouraged by law, except when it's not.

7.The anti-geek crowd -- Employing mostly red herring arguments, they dismiss the advances made to baseball analysis that have been adopted by every Major League organization and rely instead on old stats they're comfortable with but were discredited nearly 40 years ago.

8. The geek crowd -- Make no mistake, there's plenty of culpability on that side of the ledger too.The stat guys are starting to learn the algorithm for humility and it's about time. Their differential equations offer a 5% edge in a game where swings come in 20% packages.

All I Want for Christmas

Ah Christmas, that joyous time of year when we celebrate freezing precipitation and a fat toymaker in a red suit and a caribou with a glowing proboscis and the loss of our grandmother in a speeding sled accident.

And a seasonal egg-based beverage, and hanging twigs and berries, and parties celebrating Christmas but specifically not called Christmas parties, and the minor league football playoffs, and a Wonderful Jimmy Stewart movie, and the singing of festive old chestnuts.

And the unconscious consumer orgy that fuels our great American economy and has now risen to the level of buying our loved ones luxury automobiles with ribbons on them. 

Also, I understand there's a religious holiday somewhere in there that celebrates the birth of someone who evidence suggests was born in July.

I don't ask for much for Christmas. The Onion calendar. some new sweat socks and a Padres-Mariners World Series.

But if the gods can't make that happen, how about some of these baseball-related requests:

1. Some joy in Mudville -- a World Series pitting teams that haven't won anything in a while. Keep the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants and Cardinals out of it. Give the fan bases that have never enjoyed a baseball championship in Tampa, Seattle, Dallas, Houston and Denver a chance for a parade. 

Include long-suffering fans in Chicago's North Side, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, Oakland, L.A., Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Toronto, Atlanta and Queens -- all of whom have waited at least 20 years for a title. I'd even settle for victory in cities that have a recent championship, but nothing else. That would add Anaheim, Chicago's South Side, Philadelphia and Phoenix.

What I'm really saying is, the smaller the financial gap between franchises, the more competitive balance, the better.

2. A laxative -- some common sense rules to move things along. Like limiting pitching changes, throws to first, and stepping out of the box. And where the rules already exist, enforce them. Baseball is entertainment.

3. Hal behind the plate -- a computer calling balls and strikes. The technology now exists to get every ball/strike call correct. Why muck around with the Odyssey of umpires who are fooled a dozen times-a-game by moving pitches and catcher framing? 

4. The Andrea True Connection -- More! More! More baseball on computers. Ditch the non-competes and allow us to watch all the playoff games on MLB.TV.

5. Trout fishing -- More great young talent like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper. It's awesome to see players who stack up with the greatest of all time.

6. A curfew -- arrange things so we finish the World Series by mid-October, before the snow flies on the most important games of the season. They have these new things called double-headers.

7. Global warming -- while we're at it, arrange the early schedule so games are played in good weather cities and domes. Early April is too cold for baseball north of the Mason-Dixon line.

8. A bust -- for Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Ivan Rodriguez and every other all-time great who is or might be tainted by steroid use. Put them in the Hall of Fame, warts and all, not for their sake, but for the Hall of Fame's sake. 

9. A license to ill -- Require anyone requesting press credentials to have completed a course and passed a test on baseball's new analysis. Now that we're approaching 37 years since Bill James debunked the traditional accounting -- BA, HR, RBI, RS, W-L -- everyone covering the sport should understand why Alex Gordon (.271-13-48) is as valuable as David Ortiz (.273-37-108).  

10. Peace on Earth. So I'll settle for Padres-Mariners.

The Pete Rose Conundrum Is Really Kind of Simple

I'm not the least bit sympathetic to Pete Rose for his continuing ban from baseball, are you? The guy is an inveterate liar and a bit of a dope. He's frittered away numerous kotowing opportunities to the lords of the game that could have polished his reformation credentials.

Besides that, what do I care if he's allowed to serve as a hitting instructor or a first base coach? That's really a Pete Rose problem.

Here's what I do care about: I care about a baseball Hall of Fame that doesn't include the all-time hits leader. That's a bit of a travesty.

Here are some more bits: the Hall of Fame apparently will close its doors to the all-time home run king and the best pitcher of his generation. We appear to be destined to a Hall absent one of MLB's greatest infielders, who has not yet retired. For years the Hall has turned a blind eye to one of the best players of the early 20th century. 

Instead we have Phil Rizzuto and Lloyd Waner.

Having lived down the road from the Hall for 18 years; having made a tradition of annual Hejiras to Cooperstown every Opening Day, where we would hop the fence at Doubleday Field and throw a ball around (it snowed on us once); I want the museum to mean something. I want enshrinement of the game's best, not its nicest or most moral. 

MLB can screw Pete Rose, but I wish it would quit screwing you and me, and this year, new commissioner Rob Manfred made it clear that he is not interested in that responsibility. He announced -- I read it as a suggestion -- that the Hall of Fame could make its own decisions about Rose independent of his decision to maintain the ban.

So here's your chance, proprietors of the realm: disconnect Hall votes from MLB policy and let the voters decide whether Rose and his clay feet belong next to a string of vicious racists (Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker and Kennesaw Mountain Landis, to name three), proven cheaters (Gaylord Perry) and serial adulterers (most notably Wade Boggs).

And voters, don't forget that it's not just about Pete Rose (or Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens, or Alex Rodriguez someday.) Electing them to the Hall of Fame isn't just an honor for them. It's about honoring the baseball fans who remember how Rose stole our hearts with his unprecedented hustle, how Clemens mowed down professional hitters, how ARod played the greatest shortstop we'd ever seen and how Bonds dominated the game like no one who ever played.

Are We In A New Era of Baseball?

Remember the 2000s, which began with Barry Bonds decapitating the record books and the Yankees winning their third straight World Series, and ended with Barry Bonds decapitating the record books and the Yankees winning the World Series? 

Ah, those were the days. Chicks dug the long ball and there was plenty to dig. Thirty-four players smashed 30+ home runs in 2006, including renowned sluggers Joe Crede, Bill Hall and Nick Swisher; just 20 hitters tallied 30 this past season. League average OPS for that year was 47 points higher; teams averaged 100 more runs.

Since 2010, the worm has begun to turn. The Giants, Royals, Cardinals, Red Sox, Mets, Tigers and Rangers have played in the World Series since 2010. The Yankees missed the playoffs the last three years.

In 2010, runs, hits, doubles per game all dropped to their lowest levels in years, and all have stayed low. The walk rate dropped below 1968's level in 2011 and hasn't bounced back. The new strikeout record was first set in 2008 at 6.8 per nine innings and has steadily risen to 7.8 in 2015. Baseball's ERA fell below 4.00 in 2011 and has remained below all but one of the last five years. 

It appears we are in a new era of baseball. The Steroid Era, The Longball Era, The Era of Offense -- whatever you want to call it, it's officially over. Many cynics believe that testing for steroids has made the difference, but there seem to be other factors as well. Consider these events since 2012:

1. The transition in the Commissioner's office from Bud Selig to Rob Manfred
2. The new CBA kicking in, with its changes to the amateur draft and to free agency
3. The emergence of the Pirates, Royals, Astros, Mets and Cubs as competitive franchises, and the decline of the Red Sox, Tigers, Phillies, and (to a lesser extent) Yankees
4. The A-Rod and Ryan Braun suspensions
5. The wave of front office changes, which have dimished the importance of the traditional "GM" role - as teams like the Dodgers, Cubs, Blue Jays, etc. bring in big names with titles like Director of Baseball Operations while still keeping a GM
6. The arrival of the next generation of superstars: Trout, Harper, Bryant, Machado, Correa, Sano
7. Increasing use of defensive shifts

I'm not sure the significance -- if any. Eras come and go. Whatever era you grew up during is the best to you, though it seems pretty clear to me that the 50s was an awful time to be a baseball fan, particularly if you didn't live in New York. A New York team won eight of the 10 World Series during that decade (and one of the other two was the Dodgers, who had just moved to L.A.) and made 14 of the 20 appearances. Unless you lived in Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland or Philadelphia, your team failed to appear in the playoffs even once, and no American League team other than the pinstripes won a championship. (The Yankees played in the World Series every year from 1960-'64, for added insult.)

We might look back on this as the Trout-Harper era, or maybe the return to normalcy.

In Defense of the Player Opt-Out

If, after year three of his nine-year, $205 million contract with the New York Yankees, CC Sabathia had cashed in his opt-out clause at the age of 30, having accumulated Top 5 Cy Young finishes in each of the previous six seasons, would the deal have worked out poorly for the Yankees? 

They would have paid him $63 million for 18.3 WAR, well below market rate, and enjoyed the fruits of the top-of-the-rotation workhorse they wanted when they inked the deal. Sabathia, riding a wave of great performance and still young enough to command wagon-loads of legal tender, would have been wise to latch on elsewhere for more than the $142 million owed to him.

And he would have saved New York a big sunk cost. In the four seasons since the imagined opt out, his ERA has ballooned to 4.01, 5.20, 6.07 and 4.95, earning just 3.6 wins over four years and showing the decrepitude that comes with turning 34 while your waistline turns 50. The pinstripes still owe him $50 million for his age-35 and 36 seasons, neither of which figures to be pretty.

Player Options In the News
The question of player opt-outs has come to the fore after several recent signings in which players have won early opt-outs as signing sweeteners. The Giants threw in an opt-out after just two seasons of Johnny Cueto's six-year, $130 million deal. That would seem to put the 29-year-old hurler in the primo position of seeking further riches after impressing while he's still young.

But what's good for one side isn't necessarily bad for the other. Unless the contract is heavily front-loaded, the team can prosper when the player finds another suitor. Should Cueto continue his NL mastery in 2016 and 2017, the Giants would have enjoyed those two seasons at market prices and let some greater fool pay for Cueto's age 37 season.

Don't Clubs Assume All the Risk With Player Options?
It's been pointed out that players accept the guaranteed money only when poor performance (or injuries) inhibit their ability to command more on the open market, leaving the original signing team holding the bloated contract. But that's the contract the team would have signed anyway, opt-out or not. Most of these deals figure to diminish in value each marginal year, meaning an opt-out might be a gift from heaven. (I'd like the Cueto opt-out significantly better for the Giants if it came a year later. He figures to still be plenty effective at 31.)

There's an opportunity cost when the player leaves -- i.e., the team has to replace the ace with someone else, and if he's similar quality to the guy leaving, he'll cost a bundle too. But players opting out of free agent contracts are almost by definition entering their dotage (Cueto will be unusually young when his option kicks in), while the replacement, even another free agent recruit, can be several key years younger.

The Contrary Case of Zack Greinke
The Dodgers can't be thrilled that Zack Greinke exercised his option to bolt after three awesome seasons of 51-15, 2.48 for the stacks of Benjamins offered by the division rival Diamondbacks. Greinke increased his annual haul by millions and L.A. is back down to one mound ace. But we'll see how it works out for Arizona at $34 million/year as Greinke ages. Past results do not guarantee future performance, especially in the fickle sport of 162 game seasons.

If player options mean that teams are in effect signing free agents to just a few good years and then watching them depart, well, that might not break many GM hearts. It's not the optimal scenario certainly, because the disaster signings will hang around to fester. But if it gets your team the big star in the first place, it might be a small price to pay, smaller even than paying mega-millions for former superstars in their sub-replacement age 37 seasons.

The Royals Have Sparked A Trend, But Not the One You Think

In mid-October, the 86-win Houston Astros held a four-run lead with six outs until the victory that would catapult them into the AL League Champion Series by a three games-to-one margin and send home the over-achieving Kansas City Royals. 

But KC roared back with five runs in the eighth to knot their series before winning the deciding fifth game, and then sweeping Toronto en route to the whole shebang. That small pivot is now beginning to change the whole face of baseball.

Your Nose Runs and Your Feet Smell? You're Build Upside Down
As we've recounted here before, the Royals are built upside down. Their offensive formula is predicated on low-strikeout batters who put the ball in play, pressure the opposition with speed, and then hold the lead with spectacular outfield defense. They win with lockdown relievers Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis and Greg Holland (since released following surgery that will sideline him all 2016) in the final three frames after hoping to cobble together six innings from their mediocre stable of starters. 

Had Houston held that lead, no one would be thinking twice about Kansas City's odd formula. But to the victor belong the spoils, and also the trend-setting. Now everyone wants to blot out innings seven through nine.

The Hot Stove Scramble for Closers
Consider that the Dodgers just made -- and may have nixed -- a deal for flamethrower Aroldis Chapman, to pair with closer Kenley Jansen. They've already lost Zack Grienke at the top of their rotation and lost out on David Price. So they're evidently attempting to build from the back forward, though that may now be on hold because of accusations that Chapman clamps down on more than just opposing hitters.

Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances, leaders of the Million Strikeout March, have made Yankee Stadium safe for late-game leads. The Red Sox swapped for all-world closer Craig Kimbrel to slot in above Koji Uehara, who has produced a 1.86 ERA, 72 saves and nine times as many strikeouts as walks the last three years. Dave Dombrowski couldn't buy a closer when he was running the Tigers and now he's got two of them to shut down the eighth and ninth innings for the Red Sox.

Out of nowhere, the Astros made the playoffs in 2015 with solid reliever Luke Gregerson and his 2.79 lifetime ERA shutting the door. Last week they swapped their top pick in the 2013 draft and a pile of young players for Phillies closer Ken Giles.

It's All About October (and now November)
And so on. Last year, the thought was that emulating the Royals required the immense good fortune of having three lights-out relievers. Now teams are actively in search of them, and promising them all predetermined roles.

What became clear to many GMs this year wasn't the success of the combo during the season. Teams are realizing that winning in the playoffs requires more than just bullpen arms; it requires bullpen quality. Herrera, Davis and Ryan Madson, their replacement seventh inning hurler, combined for 12 innings of scoreless World Series work with 19 strikeouts as KC came from behind late in three of their four wins. 

Now every team with serious postseason expectations is scrambling to cobble together their own endgame scenario. Good luck with that!

The Cubs Are the Best Team in Baseball. So What?

Only one day later, there seems to be unanimity that the Cubs are the best team in baseball, because:

• They won 97 games last year.
• They swapped Dexter Fowler for Jason Heyward, a net gain.
• They swapped Starlin Castro for Ben Zobist, a big net gain.
• They added John Lackey, who is now their third starter.
• The Cardinals are now seriously weaker.
• They'll have Kyle Schwarber and Jorge Soler for a full year.
• Nearly the entire roster is moving closer to its prime.
• They have the youngest everyday lineup in baseball.
• They still have a stacked Minor League system.

It's all true, but last year's best team in baseball lost 79 times and failed to sniff the playoffs.

Plus, there's still plenty to worry about in Chicago:

• John Lackey is 37.
• Jake Arrieta's Superman costume was a half-year rental.
• Someone or three is/are not going to live up to their potential.
• Injuries.
• Ineffectiveness. 
• The alignment of the stars.
• The playoffs are a lottery.

In other words, because baseball.

Let's play the season and see what happens. Can we start now?

Is Jason Heyward Realy Worth a Spadillion Bucks?

Named the nation's #1 travel destination the past three years, my hometown of Charleston SC is what you would call a destination. People accept jobs paying a lot less money to live here in the 29401.

The 60613 is becoming a destination too. That's the zip code for the iconic structure at 1060 W Addison St. on Chicago's Northside. Both Ben Zobrist and now Jason Heyward have agreed to bring their lunch pails to the shrine on that site for the next several years, despite more lucrative offers to ply their trade elsewhere.

The newest Wrigley Field denizens join John Lackey as 2016 additions to a squad that roared to 97 wins and a spot in the League Championship Series in 2015. Both said at their signings that they wanted to be part of the crew that brought a World Series title to Cub fans after 108 years.

Heyward: Just .268, 16 HR 59 RBI
The predictable blowback on Heyward's haul began the minute word of his eight-year, $184 million deal hit Twitter. Heyward is the prototype of the baseball player undervalued even in 2015 by casual fans and those not yet sophisticated in the ways of baseball analysis, such as many of the media's self-described baseball analysts. But here's why Theo Epstein is a millionaire and a future Hall of Fame front office guy while your average baseball writer is still struggling to understand OPS.

In his six-year career, Jason Heyward has averaged a mere .268, 16 HR and 59 RBI. If that's how you see the world, Heyward is a fringe starter in the outfield. And if that's how you see the world, give my regards to the woolly mammoth.

We've learned over the last 38 years that those three numbers are weak diagnostic instruments. Heyward's walking proclivities and double & triple power show up in his laudable .353/.431 OBP/SLG numbers. His 86 steals in just 113 attempts, combined with superb baserunning prowess, add to his value. Defense that dazzles the eye as well as the stat sheet adds more fuel to the fire, so that by the time you're done, you have a five-win player who's just entering his age-26 prime.

In other words, Heyward is all the things that traditional measures, like cubits and pieces of silver, don't measure. He gets on base without the gaudy batting average. He slugs doubles and triples, not homers. He's circumspect about his base-stealing, but highly efficient. He fields all three outfield positions and scores on doubles -- things that don't show up in the boxscore.

For the Cubs, there's even more value. Heyward can staff the central pasture and offset some of the defensive pain inflicted by two all-bat corner catastrophes -- Kyle Schwarber and Jorge Soler.  And his addition in Chicago is subtraction from St. Louis, the Cubs' chief rival and tormentor.

Murderers Row, 2016
As for easily-dismissed broad skills, Ben Zobrist is much the same, and with full infield defensive flexibility. He and Heyward join Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Schwarber, Soler, Miguel Montero and Addison Russell as the Cubs' starting lineup if the season began today. (Sadly, it doesn't.) The guy squatting behind the dish flashes a lifetime .343 OBP while averaging 15 home runs-a-year -- and bats seventh in this lineup. Sheesh.

With Jake Arrieta, Jon Lester and John Lackey flummoxing opposition bats, Hector Rondon turning out the lights and Joe Maddon pulling the levers, it's no wonder free agents are turning down marginal bags of money to hop on the Wrigley Express. They will be young and loaded in 2016 -- and Theo might not even be done.

The Price Was Right For This Fine Starter

Denis Leary and his New England compadres are happy this week. New Red Sox GM Dave Dombrowski landed seven years of David "High" Price for $217 million of John Henry's monies.* They have reason to cheer: Boston lagged the AL in pitching last year, accounting for its cellar-dwelling in the East. Adding Price to lockdown closer Craig Kimbrel, the Beaneaters appear much improved for next season.

*There's an opt-out clause for the hurler after three years but he's less likely to exercise it than previous players with mid-contract options because his deal is backloaded.

This is a good signing for the best mound option on the market, with all due respect to Zack Greinke. Price's track record is not just superb, it's consistent and it's mostly been accomplished in the Red Sox's division.

But if you want to dance the jig for a great pitcher signing, go to Detroit. Jordan Zimmermann can now buy all the vowels he needs with a shiny new five-year, $110 million contract.

Consider that: The Red Sox get David Price for two more years -- presumably his worst two -- at an additional cost of $107 million.

Let's consider the tale of the tape over the last five years:
Pitcher              Age ERA  ERA+  INN  WAR
Zimmermann   29   3.14  123   971    19.5
Price                  29   3.02  127   1090  23.0

David Price is a better pitcher than Jordan Zimmermann. He's bigger, stronger and more durable. He's left-handed. He's spent his entire career in the tougher-hitting league. And he's lauded for his clubhouse demeanor.

A win against replacement is worth roughly $8 million these days, give or take my net assets. If the past five years are an indication of their future performance, Price is worth about $28 million more over five years than Zimmermann. But the Red Sox will pay him $107 million more for those five and his age 36 and 37 seasons. Let's call him an average starter those two years and say a win is worth $10 million in 2021. That's still only about half the difference.

It's not surprising that this deal tilts towards the team (but hardly away from the player. He is after all, guaranteed a million dollars 110  times over.)  Early free agent signings tend to set the stage for more lucrative contracts after them. Even accounting for that, the Tigers got themselves a great get.

Everything went sideways at Comerica last season to land the team in the Central basement, and they still have some home improvements before they can pronounce themselves cured for 2016. Signing Zimmermann gives them a frontline starter they badly needed and plenty of leftover liquidity to purchase a bullpen, a catcher and another starter.