Today, Jason Giambi announced his retirement to the New York Daily News. Giambi's career spanned 20 years which he played for Oakland, New York Yankees, Colorado, and Cleveland. The former first baseman/designated hitter's career line is .277/.399/.516 in which he recorded 2010 hits, 440 home runs, and drove in 1441 runs. He would win MVP with Oakland in 2000 with a ridiculous 1.123 OPS only to top it in 2001 where he would finish runner up Ichiro Suzuki. Towards the end of his final season in Cleveland in 2014, he gave up his number 25 to Jim Thome when it was retired. His name has been thrown around as a manager candidate a few times before and one would think he might find himself in a coaching position of some sort in the future.
In other Yankees news, the club announced that they will be retiring three numbers in 2015, getting ever so close to being forced into roman numerals or letters. Bad jokes aside, Andy Pettitte's 46 will join the crowded list of Yankees immortals on August 23. Bernie Williams' 51 will be retired on May 24 and Jorge Posada's 20 will be retired on August 22. All three are deserving legends in the game, let alone the Yankees so it's a much deserved honor for the trio.
Last week Jonah Keri took his annual look at the worst contracts in baseball. While Ryan Howard is still hanging in there at number 7 on the top 10, there's plenty of misery to go around on the list with Alex Rodriguez taking the top spot being owed $61 million over the next three seasons. Drama excluded, that's a terrible situation for the Yankees and makes any awkwardness that the Phillies might have this spring look like high school hall chatter.
Kiley McDaniel of Fangraphs wrote at length today of the analytics driven website's top 200 prospects list which will be unveiled tomorrow and the steps taken to arrive there. Interesting reading for those who want a better look at how players are ranked.
Lastly, Steve Adams of MLBTR compiled some updates on the top Cuban free agents. Obviously the big name out there is still is Yoan Moncada who has done plenty of work outs but has yet to receive a formal offer.
