From what I’ve read in scouting reports, Miguel Andujar might be closer to MLB ready than people think. If a combination of Andujar, Torres and Wade can handle second and third, the Yankees won’t need any position players for years. Extending Gregorius and maybe Hicks in a few years will be the most pressing issues. Now, if only Ellsbury would accept a trade. He supposedly wants to compete for the centerfield job next year. I hope he likes being a pinch runner.
In other news, Yu Darvish was tipping his pitches in the World Series. Astros hitters knew if it was a fastball or breaking ball depending on whether or not Darvish re-gripped the ball after getting the sign from his catcher.
ETA: Machado for one year? Not sure what that would be worth.
Headley has been the #2 person they’ve wanted to move after Ellsbury. This is not a big shock. I agree the contract is pretty risky. The length and price can have the rest of the league very happy in about 5 years.
I really don’t think so. The Yanks are unlikely to want to grab him. However I am curious if either the Mets or Redsox bite.
That contract is a big risk, he was going to move Stanton somewhere and the market was not that eager for the limited number of teams Stanton waved his no-trade for. The fact they moved Stanton giving very little money getting back a good player and a pitching prospect with a very good high end is actually pretty impressive. I was sure we would only close the deal if they took Ellsbury. Now the Yanks still need to unload that dead weight.
Not the Red Sox for Machado. They seem pretty well convinced that Rafael Devers is their 3B for years to come. Their holes are at 1B and, alas, at 2B, with nobody ready at Pawtucket unless you’re convinced Sam Travis is a major leaguer.
Besides, Machado is the biggest single reason they *need *a 2B. Screw him.
That pretty much says it all. Ohtani received the same “platelet-rich plasma shot” that Masahiro Tanaka got a few years ago. Even if it is ineffective and he needs Tommy John surgery, it’s still a coup for the Angels. They will still have several low-cost years under their control.
I think it’s hilarious. I think Captain Diving Stop on Routine Grounders should just go ahead and become an “owner” for each MLB team in sequence, sell its best player to the Yankees for increasingly comically low return, and then move on to the next one. Eventually he’d start having to wear disguises like a Scooby Doo villain, but it would be worth it.
He certainly is a useful “face of the franchise” and fall guy, but I don’t know why anyone thinks 4% owner/CEO Jeter is making the final decisions. Or even leading the negotiations.
Is there anything redeemable about the Florida (Miami) Marlins. Yes, they’ve won two world series, but they’ve been a boil on the ass of Major League Baseball for far too long. They’re a franchise of a few fair weather fans that is mainly kept alive by transplants in South Florida. Contract or relocate this shitty excuse for a MLB team.
The fans hardly had a chance to enjoy the World Series wins before the teams were disassembled, with the 1997 fire sale being especially disgusting. It’s fair to say the fans in most cities would be rather jaded by such a thing.
Seriously, how can you blame the FANS for this? Why the fuck would anyone buy a ticket? Sure, they won a World Series twenty years ago (and then disassembled the team into the worst team in baseball) and then won another flukey one in 2003 (and disassembled the team over a couple of years again.) There was no wave to ride. The World Champions were… all playing for other teams. What can you expect? Now, on TOP of that, this was a team owned by Jeffrey Loria, who already wrecked one franchise and who robbed the people of Miami and Miami-Dadein the Miami Marlins park scam, which may well have been the greatest stadium scam in American history, so if you ask a Mimian to buy a ticket you’re asking them to give money to people who robbed them blind. Actually, are robbing them blind for generations. It’ll take 40 years to pay off the $2.4 billion the boondoggle somehow cost the county. That is not a great marketing strategy.
The trade of Stanton did not look good, but trading Marcell Ozuna looks absolutely horrible. Way, way worse. Ozuna is a solid player, he’s young, and he’s cheap. At least with Stanton they saved money. Trading Ozuna saves very little. He is the very definition of a player you want to build your team around and they traded him for “some guy.”
It’s obvious Bruce Sherman plans to do to the Marlins what he’s done with his other companies; strip it to the skeleton and find a way to make off with money from the bones. If I were a baseball fan in South Florida I’d have no hope whatsoever for the franchise. They’re the Kansas City A’s of modern baseball, but with the modern twist of also ripping off the taxpayer.
Now being reported that Marlins are getting 3 other prospects with Sandy. This may not be as bad as it looked at first. We need to see who the 3 are. A really good player with only 2 years left and due a good size arbitration raise* might be worth moving for a good prospect package as the Marlins are without doubt in a full tear down and rebuild mode again.
*** Estimates are that Marcell Ozuna* will get – $10.9MM*
Angels acquire Kinsler…for next to nothing. Eppler is doing an amazing job: Upton; Ohtani; Kindled and Braves 17 year old sensation Maican for almost nothing of immediate value. And, allegedly, Headley is also heading north.
If the Marlins have to tear this team down the team will never compete. I am unab le to construct a scenario, if this teardown is necessary, where they can put a team on the field that would actually be good.
This isn’t some overpriced team burdened with terrible contracts being paid to old, bad players. They were in the bottom third of the league in salary and had NO onerous contracts; even the giant Stanton deal was, at least, being paid to an excellent player in his prime. No Albert Pujols deals here. The team had a very good offense in 2017 powered entirely by players younger than 30. Their starting rotation was dreadful but if they’d added a couple of moderately priced guys to it they could have won 90 games. This is the absolute perfect example of a team that can be made a winner with a reasonable expenditure.
Under what circumstances can this team ever not be either terrible or rebuilding? If you cannot afford extremely good young players under team control, who can you afford? This isn’t fifteen years ago. Everyone’s read Moneyball; there are no huge information gaps you can exploit to put a contender on the field for the lowest payroll in baseball. You don’t have to spend like the Dodgers, but you have to spend something. The Marlins are effectively saying “the only way we can contend is in the one in a million shot we come up with fifteen or twenty prospects all at the same time and they’re all good before they hit arbitration.” What are the odds of that?
The odds, to answer my own question, are nothing. So they’ve traded Stanton and Ozuna and apparently are likely to trade Yelich, which conservatively chops 15 wins off their 2018 total. They’ll be terrible, but if they start to improve it will not matter because in a few years Realmuto and other guys will be making more money so they’ll have to trade them, and then a few years after that they’ll do the same thing, and on and on.
The Marlins are no longer in the business of trying to win ballgames. They’re clearly in the business of taking money from the taxpayers and MLB and just rent-seeking the shit out of the fact they are technically an MLB franchise.
ETA: As to the Angels acquiring Kinsler, Ian Kinsler is a 36-year old second baseman coming off an alarmingly down year. I am not sure the Angels are learning.
I suspect they will try to clear their debt in 3 years and then start increasing payroll again. I think it is true they will not even be trying to compete for the next 3-4 years. The Marlins have new owners; they bought the disaster Loria created. What I don’t understand is how the deal was allowed to go in where Loria pocketed the full value of the team sale and left the debt for the new owners. MLB should have stopped it. The more we learn the more disgraceful it is that MLB let Loria trash 2 teams. The need some better controls over future owners.
So why not give this new ownership group a chance to start from scratch and see what they can do.
If we were to give them the benefit of the doubt, we might say that the Marlins are trying to follow the model of the Astros and just tank like crazy for a few years while building up the farm system as much as possible.
Maybe.
It’s different owners so maybe. But it’s hard to give them the benefit of the doubt right now.
Yeah, Kinsler had an ’ alarmingly’ bad year…a 2.4 fWAR btw and was again excellent on defense. Moving to a contending team could only help him and he only has one year left on his contract. It was an excellent pickup and makes the Angels much better at a position they were weak. And the Simmons/Kinsler double play combo should be fun to watch.