It kind of goes without saying that Giancarlo Stanton is pissed off at now that he’s playing for a AAAA team. He’s up for salary arbitration next year and isn’t eligible for free agency until 2016.
Well, you can only do so much when the rest of the team blows.
Here is a list of all the Marlins hitters who had more than one WAR:
Giancarlo Stanton, 5.4
Jose Reyes, 2.8
Justin Ruggiano, 2.4
Omar Infante, 1.8 (traded to Detroit)
That’s it. And here are all their pitchers over 1:
Mark Buerhle, 3.2
Josh Johnson, 3.1
Ricky Nolasco, 1.5
Anibal Sanchez, 1.4 (traded to Detroit)
Wade Leblanc, 1.1
Even bad teams have some good players, and the Blue Jays just took most of what the Marlins had left. They didn’t lose 93 games 'cause of Reyes, Buerhle, and Johnson. They lost 93 games because of the mediocrity of everyone else.
That said, I do feel awful for the people of Miami, who just spend **half a billion dollars **building a stadium for the biggest scumbag in professional sports.
Link here…
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/selig-reviewing-pending-marlins-blue-183248012–mlb.html
WTF?:dubious:
Merged Mixolydian’s post into the hot stove discussion thread.
Two words: Fire Sale. Reminds me of when the Giants sold their soul in 1989 for a pennant - and 25 minutes before the first World Series game to be played in SF since 1962 was to start, the devil started collecting his due.
I think the main problem is, Marlins ownership pretty much promised the season ticket holders that this sort of shenanigans wouldn’t happen.
Much is being made of the fact Selig is reviewing the trade, but that is a standard thing. It would be shocking for MLB to stop what appears to be a legitimate deal.
I don’t know that a precedent exists to prevent a trade that’s fair to both teams involved in the trade but which seems to screw the fans (in the short term; in the long term, in baseball terms, Miami is better off doing this.) I can’t think of an equivalent deal in baseball history, really, with the stadium deal and all that mixed up here.
A Toronto sportswriter really nailed it on the head; as he (name forgotten) explained it, this isn’t a heist. This is an insurance scam, with Miami running the scam and Toronto as their obliging thieves-for-hire. They got Toronto to rob the place of its baubles, but they get to keep the shiny stadium that the taxpayers (the insurance company in the metaphor) are still on the hook for.
You can’t veto the trade for baseball reasons because in baseball terms it’s a perfectly fair trade. Toronto obviously got a shitload of quality major league winning, but in return they’re picking up a huge chunk of salary and giving Miami a brace of legitimate prospects. It is also very likely the case that Toronto’s curious lack of resistance to Mike Redmond leaving the organization to become Miami’s manager was a precursor to this deal; several of the prospects given up were Redmond’s students this past year, and I’ve no doubt sending Redmond over was a move made to help the deal along.
I agree. I think there’s about zero chance Selig pulls a David Stern here. To start with, Stern was acting as the owner of the Hornets along with being the commissioner. And he had owners coming to him and complaining that the trade was unfair. That came right after a lockout that was supposed to be about “competitive balance” (it wasn’t, but in MLB it doesn’t seem to be a major concern anyway). And Selig has cover because his two unnamed advisers said it’s a fair trade. The issue isn’t so much the amount of talent changing hands, although it looks like Toronto is getting Esobar and one or two good prospects and some others who are nothing special. The problem is the unmitigated gall of the salary dump Miami is pulling off. They signed a bunch of big-name free agents and didn’t win, so apparently it makes baseball sense to trade every single one of them and then some and cut their payroll to half of what it was two years ago. Their payroll went from something like $57 million to $118 million last year and there are reports they are going to trade Logan Morrison and Ricky Nolasco, too. I think they have $20 million in payroll committed for next year right now.
I read $32 million, which is still less than the figure they apparently negitation with the MLBPA to not go under.
What’s happened here is Loria has utterly fucked the people of Miami. To be honest he fucked them before this trade happened. After all, aisde from the guys they’ve traded away and Giancarlo Stanton, the team sucked anyway. The trade merely pulls back the curtain to reveal the true extent of the screwing. I know of no solution to it. This is what happens when you build a fancy stadium for a blood-sucking rich bastard, and it’s why I would never, ever, ever support a taxpayer-funded stadium.
Anyone in Miami who opposed the stadium deal should be screaming I TOLD YOU SO now.
And now the Jays have signed Melky Cabrera to play left field.
Melky will love playing in Canada. Much better pharmaceutical prices.
Awesome.
Two years for $16 million! Holy crap, that’s astounding!
You mean an astoundingly good deal for the Jays, right? At least that’s what it seems like to me at first glance.
It’s certainly a good deal for Cabrera; he made $6 million last year with the Giants.
Whether or not it’s a good deal for the Blue Jays remains to be seen. If he hits like he did the past couple years, then it’s a great deal. But something tells me he might not put up quite the same numbers…
It’s a good deal for Toronto even if he regresses to where he was before. He was always a talented player, and he would have to have his legs fall off to be worse than the parade of clowns that played left field in Toronto last year.
The move here is obvious; Toronto got a deal because Cabrera’s dirty goods, and Cabrera got a deal where maybe a lot of teams would have told him to go to hell. The Giants didn’t even bother to have him around during the playoffs even though he was eligible to play. Toronto’s investing in what they think mnight be an underpriced asset.
We’ll see, but I’d rather see a roidless Melky out there than Rajai Davis.
I’ve come to believe that just about any deal for a true free agent that is for two years or less is, generally, a good deal if there is any upside at all. Melky was a 4 win player for the Royals and a 4.7 win player in less than a full season with the Giants. Obviously you have to discount that for the PEDs.
Best case he puts up 4 wins for $8 mill a year - for a true free agent that’s a good price. Worst case he sucks and you aren’t out that much or he gets busted again and you fire his ass.
The incumbent was a 0.5 win player last year (after actually taking wins off the table the year before). It makes all the sense in the world for a team in “win now” mode like the Jays to take this risk. You could even factor in the hockey strike as a chance to increase mind share.
The Jays-Rays deal has finally been approved. The players’ union isn’t happy with the Marlins and some of the players who have been traded to Toronto say Miami lied to them, but since they didn’t insist on no-trade clauses and knew about the team’s history I don’t think they will be the object of a whole lot of sympathy.
I’m sure this is all a prelude to the Marlins trading for Alex Rodriguez. That trade makes as much sense now as it did in October.
Looks like Jeremy Guthrie’s little audition with the Royals last year has paid off to the tune of $25MM for the next three years.
If someone makes you a promise but refuses to put it in the contract you’re signing, they intend to break that promise. Any adult shoud know that.
The Jays’ press conference today brought this up and they went to some trouble to say they’d been in touch with Reyes, Johnson and Buerhle to ensure they were okay with going to Toronto, so I don’t think we’ll see any retrades.
I really like it. He’s a really solid pitcher in a pretty down-market, and the Royals need all the stability they can get in the rotation as they audition their 57 prospects for the rest of the slots.