Saw today the Sox are shopping Hanley. No idea what they think they can get for him. Or who would be interested. Or how much of his salary they’d have to eat. Might as well keep him and let him DH after Papi retires.
This is why I don’t think the Zimmermann deal is that bad. Cueto and Zimmermann are almost exactly the same age (about 3 months apart). Last three year FIPs: Cueto - 3.53, 3.30, 3.81 Zimermann - 3.75, 2.68, 3.36. Career K/9: 7.43 vs. 7.42. Career WHIP basically identical. Cueto projects a bit better for 2016, at least according to Steamer, but it’s close.
So if Cueto is likely to get more than 6/120, shouldn’t getting Zimmermann for 5/110 be seen as a pretty good signing?
Cueto also has a significant arm injury in his past, while Zimmermann has pitched basically 200 innings every year since he came up.
And now I see the Sox get Price for 7/217 with a three-year opt out. Yikes…
The Price deal is ridiculous. Yet, pitching really is in that big of demand.
I agree that it is relativily good but it should have been for not more than 3 years. Boy I wish I had tried harder to be a pitcher. :eek::smack:
Is it really that out of line? 7 years at $30 million per was what I was expecting him to get.
The opt out is the real intriguing part for me. Usually the player opts out…but he will be 33 which is a really interesting age. I’m really interested to see what happens, there.
If you’re the Red Sox, you hope his third year performance is outstanding and he opts out. Then you let him go. Getting three great years without wildly over-paying for four likely decline years would be the perfect scenario.
But the Jays got JA Happ!
Jesus Christ. Jose Bautista being traded will kill me.
Tbf Price could have an arm or shoulder injury which could greatly reduce or destroy his career. If Bos wants to give a 30 year old pitcher a 7 year contract, what was Tor supposed to do?
Also this is the perfect time to trade Bautista and get good value. Unless he is willing to sign a 2 or 3 year deal.
Give him a 7-year contract (and not sign JA Happ, thereby saving 39% of Price’s salary until the player option kicks in.)
Sure, it’s expensive. If you want to win, you sometimes need to pay big bucks, and in this circumstance you’d get to sign an elite pitcher at the height of his powers and not give up a draft pick.
Well, no, it’s the worst possible time. Toronto’s best shot at a championship now is to win it in 2016, while they have as many pieces as they do in their prime. There is no replacement for Bautista; if you trade him you’ll be using a minor leaguer or a castoff in right field and you’re effectively surrendering. Nothing you will get in return will help the team much in 2016 as much as Bautista himself probably will, and Bautista isn’t terribly expensive, either.
If it made sense to load up for 2017-2018, that might be a wise move. But it doesn’t make sense; there’s no rational analysis of the team’s assets by which they look better then than they do in 2016. Bautista, Donaldson, Encarnacion, Martin, Pillar, Smoak, Goins, Tulowitzki and Revere are all as good now as they will ever be again.
One of the weirder things I hear people saying is “Ah, Happ and Chavez are good enough. Look how awesome the offense is!” Yes ,the offense was incredible in 2015. It’s not going to be that good again. It’ll be very good, but they can’t dominate the league in runs scored by that much again; it cannot be done.
Unless you’re saying the team is planning on making big free agency acquisitions in 2017, I don’t see how it makes sense to trade more major league talent for youth. But it’s obviously the team’s plan to do quite the opposite and just go cheap (though they were ripped off in the Happ signing) and anyway I don’t think a lot comes on the market in 2017.
Buster Olney must have read my posts yesterday because he said exactly the same thing this morning about the Price deal.
- The Red Sox paid $30M more than the next best offer.
- Might as well have ponied up for Lester last year at much lower cost. I do not think the difference between Lester and Price is so great. I guess we’ll see what Price looks like in a whole season at Fenway.
In the last five years Price has been worth 23 WAR, Lester 15.8. That’s a fairly significant difference. Lester’s best seasons were in 2008-2009 and he’s a year older.
Whether Price at $31 million is worth as much as Lester at $27-28 million is, IMHO, kind of obvious; would you pay $4 million for a pitcher worth 1-2 WAR? The Blue Jays just paid $12 million a year for one.
A lefty pitching in Fenway…do you think he will be as successful there?
Well, we know Lester could be. And Price racked up his numbers in TB and Detroit, a couple of pitcher friendly parks.
Also, Lester could have been had for about $20M/yr. But the Sox lowballed like no other.
So far, it seems Price likes Fenway just fine. In 11 starts, he has an ERA of 1.95 and his WHIP is under 1. Just 49 hits in 74 innings.
It really doesn’t make as much of a difference as people think it does.
The Marlins are going to make Barry Bonds their hitting coach.
Well, it’s not like Mattingly is a stranger to having controversial coaching staff members.
Seems like a worthwhile hire - Bonds probably knows more about hitting than anyone else on the face of the planet.