MLB Offseason

gil renard

gil renard

Bench
MLB hot stove discussion here. I'm a Giants fan but you can discuss any team, free agents, potential trades.

These contracts get crazier every year. Jason Heyward getting $180 million. Zach Greinke getting $32 million per year. All guaranteed money. If I was an NFL player I'd be insanely jealous and wonder why my players union is so weak.

As a Giants fan I'm used to ending up with scraps and dumpster dives in the offseason. This ownership seems unwilling to go all in on top tier FA ever since the Zito disaster. Three titles since 2010 so I can't complain too much. However I can't help but think they're squandering a chance to build a real historic dynasty with this young, relatively cheap infield already in place. Last offseason the ownership basically sat on their postseason profits and did nothing. The lack of depth on the pitching staff ended up killing them, as anyone could have forseen.

I would have loved to have gotten Greinke or Price, but not for those contracts. Not a big fan of the Samardzijia signing really. They're banking on his upside, which is he has good stuff and not much mileage on his arm and he had a lousy defense behind him in Chicago. Could be the next Jason Schmidt for them. But on paper he's a #3 pitcher and the contract is an overpay.

I don't care to see Leake come back unless it's a team-friendly deal. He was kind of disappointing, reminded me of the Beltran deal a few years ago TBH. With the remaining cap space I'd like to see the Giants add another solid starter and an OF better than Blanco/Pagan. I propose Scott Kazmir, a reliable lefty who won't break the bank, and Dexter Fowler, who's like a young Angel Pagan that's not injured all the time. OF such as Alex Gordon, Cespedes, Upton would all be nice, but would prevent us from signing another pitcher. I don't want to see both Cain and Heston in the rotation next year. That's too much of a question mark again.

I'm not averse to including Joe Panik in a trade to net a young controllable pitcher. His back problems worry me. I would have liked Shelby Miller, Carlos Carrasco, or Danny Salazar, I realize the asking prices were sky high and would include prospects also. Also Jose Fernandez, but we would probably have to include Christian Arroyo and all our top prospects as well.

Some other random thoughts:

Greinke is going to be in for a rude awakening pitching in that ballpark. It's almost as bad as Coors Field. He's really good but I'll eat both my shoes if he posts a sub-2 ERA ever again.

Based on these contracts handed out, Bryce Harper will be the first $400 million athlete when he eventually reaches FA.

Cubs look crazy stacked and have a great manager and GM. They have to be the odds on favorite right now, although that guarantees nothing. Ask the Nationals about that.

D-Backs making a lot of noise this offseason, trying to play with the big boys. Are they for real or are they Padres 2.0?

Johnny Cueto will be the biggest high profile bust from this FA crop. He's damaged goods, but someone will overpay (Dodgers hehe.)

Yankees seem to be really quiet on the FA front, especially considering they've missed the playoffs three years running (play-in game don't really count.) They used to scoop up all the FA's, now they're showing financial restraint.

P.S. I was a longtime poster on the Giants MLB board, but left due to some of the bullies and lackadaisical moderation over there. Seen a couple familiar screen names over here so far. Hit me up if you want to discuss baseball.
 
http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/1...johnny-cueto-reach-agreement-pending-physical

Welp, I didn't see this one coming. On one hand I applaud the Giants for not sitting on their war chest of money and I kinda see what they're doing here, but this has the potential to really go bad. Cueto's health concerns are real and are the main reason he didn't get ace money.

What the Giants did was use that Price/Greinke money to buy relatively low on two pitchers (Cueto and Samardzija) who have a lot of upside but also a high risk for not panning out. We've seen Shark pitch like a #2 in 2014 and Cueto was a legit ace on the level of a Bum or Greinke from 2010 through the first half of last season.

This leaves the Giants with around $9 million to stay under the cap. That rules out a top tier OF like Upton or Cespedes. I would be ecstatic if we could still add Dexter Fowler on top of these two pitchers we signed. On paper we would be one of the favorites to win the WS with that team. The other good name I've heard is Carlos Gonzales of the Rockies via trade. They would require some elite prospects, but with our rotation and infield pretty set for the next couple years we could afford to give up a guy like Arroyo or Blackburn/Beede.

The Dodgers for sure have taken a step back so far. They lost Greinke and missed out on all the other top FA pitchers. Iwakuma is okay, but a #3 at best and he has his own age and injury problems. I wonder if they feel pressured by the Giants and Dbacks to sell the farm now to acquire Jose Fernandez from the Marlins.
 
gil renard said:
P.S. I was a longtime poster on the Giants MLB board, but left due to some of the bullies and lackadaisical moderation over there. Seen a couple familiar screen names over here so far. Hit me up if you want to discuss baseball.
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We moderators here have been called a lot of things, but I don't recall lackadaisical ever being one of them. :p

Welcome to KF. I think you'll find an active MLB discussion to be had during the season.
 
VF21 said:
We moderators here have been called a lot of things, but I don't recall lackadaisical ever being one of them. :p

Welcome to KF. I think you'll find an active MLB discussion to be had during the season.
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Thanks.

What teams do you follow?
 
I'm lukewarm on the Samardzja/Cueto signings. Like you, I would've liked another lefty like Kazmir. I trust Sabes and Righetti though, Righetti is one of the top pitching coaches in the game imo. Those guys should be able to eat up a lot of innings and help keep the bullpen fresh, and they will certainly benefit from pitching at ATT.

I'm hoping for Alex Gordon, he would seem like a great fit for our roster. As beat up as we were last year, we still made a run at the division. With good health, I still like our chances, after all, it is an even year.
 
The player option after the second season of Cueto's contract was a smart move by the Giants IMO. If he pitches well enough to opt out they will have gotten an ace for two years/$43 million (pretty much what they were paying Lincecum the past few years) and they can let him walk and not worry about the downside of his career. It's a good contract if his elbow holds up.

I wouldn't expect the Giants to sign an OF like Alex Gordon, although one can dream. They have about $10 million under the cap remaining, and they paid a luxury tax penalty from last season, so I wouldn't think they would want repeat offender status due to the exponential penalties. I don't like them standing pat either; I'm hoping they can squeeze in a Dexter Fowler or Gerardo Parra type of OF.
 
gil renard said:
The player option after the second season of Cueto's contract was a smart move by the Giants IMO. If he pitches well enough to opt out they will have gotten an ace for two years/$43 million (pretty much what they were paying Lincecum the past few years) and they can let him walk and not worry about the downside of his career. It's a good contract if his elbow holds up.
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The thing is that these sort of opt-outs are getting pretty common for pitchers these days and are actually in the favor of the player. If Cueto blows his arm out, he gets four free years, and if he doesn't, he walks in free agency (or gets more money). The team would vastly prefer just the two-year deal to giving out the six years with the player option after two. If it were a team option, sure, smart move by the team (but that's not a contract any player would sign given the current market). A player option - completely to the advantage of the player, and not the team.
 
Of course it favors the player, but it's better than no option at all IMO. Team options aren't even worth mentioning here since no FA of any consequence would agree to that now unless it was for a seventh year option or something like that.

I think the Giants would be very happy if he pitched well enough to opt out after two years at age 32 so they avoid paying him the rest of the contract. If he blows out his arm in year one then oh well, baseball contracts are guaranteed anyway so they're stuck with him. They minimized the risk of that happening though, assuming he pitches like he has in the past for the next two seasons.

The Dodgers weren't too sad to see Greinke opt out at age 32, even though they certainly had the money to re-sign him. They realized they got his best years and let him walk.
 
gil renard said:
The Dodgers weren't too sad to see Greinke opt out at age 32, even though they certainly had the money to re-sign him. They realized they got his best years and let him walk.
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No, the Dodgers would have been ecstatic for Greinke to opt in. Had he opted in they would have had him for three years at $24M in his early thirties. Instead the market (Arizona) paid him 6 years and $34M a year for his early and mid thirties.

I'm just saying it takes some extremely orange-tinted glasses to see see Cueto's opt out as a smart move by the Giants. It was a clause they had to put in to get him signed because of the recent MLB contract landscape. But all the benefits go to Cueto (who will most likely opt out and get a bigger deal if he doesn't get hurt) and all the risks go to the Giants (who will be stuck with a big contract if he does get hurt).
 
Ryan Vogelsong signs with the Pirates. The Giants originally traded him there in the Jason Schmidt deal many years ago, so his career has come full circle.
 
Mike Leake signs with Cardinals for 5/$80 million. That appears to be the going rate for an average pitcher now, so the Samardzija deal looks less bad than it did. Samardzija has higher upside and the advanced metrics like him better, but Leake is a little younger and has been more consistent.

I didn't really ever expect him back unless as a last resort, as I think he disappointed everyone with his performance here after the mid-season trade. Sort of reminded me of the Carlos Beltran trade back in 2011. He'll be a good fit for St. Louis though.
 
gil renard said:
No, you're flat out wrong. This benefits both sides, mostly the player but it can benefit the team as well. You need to read this:

http://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2015/12/18/10619106/johnny-cueto-sf-giants-contract-opt-out
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That article doesn't make a good case at all. It really makes the case that the player opt-out isn't quite as bad as you one might think, not that it isn't bad. CF is right, the player opt-out benefits the player only, and the team agrees to it in order to get the player to sign.

If the player is not playing up to the value of the contract, he will not opt-out and the team will pay for an overvalued asset. This is true either way. If the player does play better than the value of his contract, he will opt-out given the option. So the difference is between having an undervalued asset and having no asset,

The only way a player opt-out clause can benefit the team is if they expect the player, his agent, and other teams to overvalue his worth after two years. Then the assumption is he will opt-out and sign a bigger contract elsewhere, but not live up to that contract. I think that's sort of what you and the article are trying to argue, and there is certainly evidence that players are overvalued after solid seasons heading into their 30s. But that's an awful lot to hope for in order for the opt out to benefit you- everyone else messes up the player's value and that value appears to be more than the remainder of the contract but actually be less.
 
What about LF for the Giants? Cespedes, Fowler, Upton, Gordon...

I'd like to see Fowler, he's the best defensive LF left.
 
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