Congrats to the World Series Champions Houston Astroes.
Now it is time to stoke the fires of the Hot Stove.
OK, so within 3 days, we’ll know if Tanaka is opting out of his contract or not. He has 3 more years for a total of $67 million. A terrible first half and arm worries but a very good second half and post season. Can’t guess what he’ll do.
Still don’t know if Brian Cashman will be extending as GM of the Yanks and for how long but so far he is acting as if he’ll be back and whatever is happening behind the scenes is just a formality. Might be done and they were just waiting for the World Series to end.
November 7 - Gold Gloves
November 9 - Silver Sluggers
November 10 - Defensive Players of the Year
November 13 - Rookies of the Year
November 14 - Managers of the Year
November 15 - Cy Young
November 16 - MVPs
November 17 - Esurance Awards (fan voting on players and moments of the year)
Place your bets!
The only one I’m in a frame of mind to remember is that Cody Bellinger will have run away with the NL ROY (and boy did he look like he needed consoling last night). I imagine there are other obvious choices for some of these that I’m simply unaware of.
AL Rookie of the Year will be Aaron Judge by a landslide.
I agree on **Cody **of course.
I think **Altuve **wins the **MVP **but I think Judge should get that too. He’ll lose some votes though for writers thinking, “he’s already getting the ROY”.
Bellinger and Judge will run away with the rookie awards. Manager probably either Roberts or Lovullo in the NL and one of Girardi, Hinch, or Franconia in the AL - I’d go Roberts and Girardi.
Altuve and Judge are both defensible MVP picks - I do think Judge will get a lot of “close seconds” and the vote will look more lopsided in altuve’s favor than really reflects the sentiment.
Judge will, and should, win ROY. But I don’t think you can win the MVP with *that *bad a 2nd half.
As for hot stove stuff, I’m very curious to see what the Red Sox do. Will they stand pat? I think they need to boost their offense. The Sox were dead last in the MLB in home runs. Maybe they finally trade for Giancarlo Stanton. I’m sure that would cost Benintendi and then some. I think I could live with that.
No votes for Bud Black? I’d say the Rockies were a bigger surprise than the D-Backs in the NL this season. The D-Backs were supposed to have been good LAST season, and it just took them a while to get their act together. The Rockies made one big (highly questioned) off-season acquisition, and everyone seemed to wonder why the hell they were even bothering. And then they make the playoffs.
I’m not suggesting either Lovullo or Black over Roberts. But I think Bud Black is very overlooked and very underrated.
Well the Yanks rose and fell with Judge. When he was hitting, they were winning. But yep, I know Altuve is going to win, so that’s alright.
It would be funny if Girardi won, last time he won; he had been let go by the Marlins. If he wins again and it is the year where the Yanks chose not to renew, well humorous.
Three good pitchers have opt-out clauses that just kicked in - Cueto, Kennedy and Tanaka. The question is: How badly would the Dodgers get reamed to pry one of these guys loose? All are repped by Boras, so “bunches” is the default answer.
So the Red Sox have added Tony LaRussa to their front office stable. His managerial career speaks for itself (as does his mouth), but his maiden stint as “chief baseball officer” in Arizona was a ludicrous mess. Keith Law did a comprehensive takedown of him and Dave Stewart a couple of years ago. What qualifications does he have, beyond being Dombrowski’s longtime buddy, for this executive job? And why do we need Dombrowski, LaRussa, Frank Wren, and Allard Baird all in one room making the decisions? Are we trying to return to the '90s? It’s such a 180 from how things were with the Red Sox a decade ago that it’s kind of hard to comprehend.
Judge had a pretty good second half. His batting average was low but he hit 22 home runs and had a .391 on base percentage. If you had an entire team of players who all played that “bad” it’d be the greatest team in the history of baseball.
The reason he shouldn’t win the MVP Award is that Jose Altuve was more valuable.
Anyway, rumor has it the Jays are very interested in signing Jay Bruce, a move which will solve none of their problems. The Blue Jays have long wanted Bruce, for reasons I really don’t understand.
Big news for Yanks: Tanaka not opting out. Some speculation his X-rays don’t look very good, other speculation is he is comfortable with the Yanks and sees no reason to test the market.
There is some buzz about Ellsbury and a lot of cash heading to Seattle. $68.4M guaranteed left.
Stanton to St. Louis Cards.
If Otani is not posted which is fairly likely on latest reports, I strongly suspect the Yanks will be trying to bring CC back to round out the rotation. That would give a rotation of Tanaka, Luis Severino, Sonny Gray, Jordan Montgomery & CC Sabathia with Chance Adams and either Cessa or Mitchell for depth.
**Matt Wieters **exercising his option to stay with the Nationals. ($10.5m)
No surprised, Blue Jays decline** Jose Bautista**'s $17m extension and he is a free agent.
He will probably land an AL DH contract somewhere for a major pay cut.
In a surprise to no one, the Dodgers declined Andre Ethier’s option, making him a free agent. He’s long been my favorite Dodger, and he’ll be missed, though I don’t blame the team in the least for the decision. Hope he winds up DHing somewhere.
I like Adam but he is an absolutely atrocious fielder, and really does not belong in the NL.
Lind is a fun study in why errors are not a good measure of fielding ability. In his career he’s played 249 games in left field and made one error. His career outfield fielding percentage is .998, which would be the best in the history of baseball if he played enough games.
But man he is one horrible outfielder. He always catches the ball, but his range is, I dunno, twenty feet in any direction. He cannot make throwing errors because he literally cannot throw the ball far enough to throw it anywhere that constitutes an error.
I suppose Lind is really cut out to be a DH, but man, he came up huge for the Nats in pinch-hitting spots this year. Probably the most dependable pinch hitter I can remember. That’s a tough spot to replace on the bench.