2019-2020 MLB Hot Stove Thread

[ghost of miles]

1 hour ago, Tom 1960 said:

Mixed emotions about Price but I'll take Mookie even if it's only a rental. Hell yeah!

If some online reports are true, Red Sox will be picking up half of Price's $30-million-plus annual salary for the next three years.  They're getting Verdugo in return, as well as a pitching prospect via the Twins.  Verdugo has definite potential to be a very good player and is under control for five years.  But boy, my first reaction to this trade is that Boston got the short end of it, especially staying on the hook for that much of Price's contract.  Maybe they try to resign Mookie in free agency after 2020?  

[Dave James]

Betts reportedly turned down a 10-year $300 million extension prior to this season.  When he countered with an offer of $426 million over 12 years, the Red Sox put him on hold.  Now he's gone West for what you'd have to think will be close to his asking price.  Makes you wonder how deep the Yankees will have to dig to resign Aaron Judge. 

[soulpope]

2 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

... and Mookie Betts and David Price are apparently headed to the Dodgers.

So a main piece/centerpiece of the Red Sox legacy is gone .... 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

8 hours ago, ghost of miles said:

If some online reports are true, Red Sox will be picking up half of Price's $30-million-plus annual salary for the next three years.  They're getting Verdugo in return, as well as a pitching prospect via the Twins.  Verdugo has definite potential to be a very good player and is under control for five years.  But boy, my first reaction to this trade is that Boston got the short end of it, especially staying on the hook for that much of Price's contract.  Maybe they try to resign Mookie in free agency after 2020?  

Price's departure is addition by subtraction. He's an a-hole. I am so glad he's gone.

Mookie just wanted too much money and this is all happening too close to the ongoing Pedroia fiasco. The Red Sox did the right thing with Jacoby Ellsbury and got so much flak that they did the wrong thing with Pedroia. They don't want another one of these albatross contracts hanging over them. Sure, they are probably letting Betts go a year too early, but this way, they are at least getting something for him. And I say this as a big Mookie fan. He was a nice guy on top of being a great player. I just don't want to see him getting $30 Million or some such nonsense when he's 37 and sitting in an ice bath and not on the field.

[Brad]

The new GM is one who believes that you have to tear it down to a certain extent. One of the reasons he wasn’t hired by the Mets in 2018 is that he wanted to tear it down and build from scratch. That would have been the correct move but the Wilpons had no stomach for that, which is why the Mets are a second class organization and the Red Sox a top organization. 

[Dan Gould]

5 hours ago, bresna said:

Price's departure is addition by subtraction. He's an a-hole. I am so glad he's gone.

Mookie just wanted too much money and this is all happening too close to the ongoing Pedroia fiasco. The Red Sox did the right thing with Jacoby Ellsbury and got so much flak that they did the wrong thing with Pedroia. They don't want another one of these albatross contracts hanging over them. Sure, they are probably letting Betts go a year too early, but this way, they are at least getting something for him. And I say this as a big Mookie fan. He was a nice guy on top of being a great player. I just don't want to see him getting $30 Million or some such nonsense when he's 37 and sitting in an ice bath and not on the field.

Even if they won 2-3 more titles between now and then?

Simple fact for me is it's a lost season already and I won't give a seconds thought about extra innings or paying any real attention.

John Henry can pay the price for a big payroll but now refuses. F him.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

1 hour ago, Dan Gould said:

Even if they won 2-3 more titles between now and then?

Simple fact for me is it's a lost season already and I won't give a seconds thought about extra innings or paying any real attention.

John Henry can pay the price for a big payroll but now refuses. F him.

So you believe that the Red Sox should have signed Mookie to a 12 year/$426 Million contract? $35.5 Million per year until he is 39? When history has shown that players of his stature don't usually play well past 32? We'll have to agree to disagree on that.

BTW - what did Mookie do for the Red Sox last year? His stats were there, so why did the Red Sox finish 12 games out of a playoff spot? One player does not take a team to the playoffs.

Edited February 5, 2020 by bresna

[Kevin Bresnahan]

As baseball writer Mike Petraglia wrote, "One more irony of this Mookie situation is that the problem with the 2020 #RedSox isn't their offense. They are still pretty loaded, even without Betts. Their rotation and bullpen look incredibly thin. Nothing has been done to address that this offseason - at all."

Also, if Betts doesn't sign with the Dodgers, he can still come back to the Sox in 2021.

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, bresna said:

So you believe that the Red Sox should have signed Mookie to a 12 year/$426 Million contract? $35.5 Million per year until he is 39? When history has shown that players of his stature don't usually play well past 32? We'll have to agree to disagree on that.

BTW - what did Mookie do for the Red Sox last year? His stats were there, so why did the Red Sox finish 12 games out of a playoff spot? One player does not take a team to the playoffs.

He is not a big bulky slow guy

 I have a hard time imagining him not being elite to 35 or so.

And again John Henry could make any payroll and eat that payroll if he is worthless at the very end.

Ticket prices aren't going down after this KB.

[ghost of miles]

Here we go again:

Yankee starting pitcher James Paxton out 3-4 months after back surgery

 

 

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, ghost of miles said:

Here we go again:

Yankee starting pitcher James Paxton out 3-4 months after back surgery

 

 

Tiny light at end of very dark day. Thanks GoM! 

 

[ghost of miles]

17 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Tiny light at end of very dark day. Thanks GoM! 

 

Hoping this PSA poster’s take is credible: 

>>Paxton might not be out as long as mentioned. The good news is that there wasn’t a structural issue. I suspect he will start rehabbing as soon as the stitches are removed. (2 weeks?) Probably start Baseball activities after a month (March). I could see him coming back by the end of April, definitely by early May.>>

 

In the meantime that means Happ will most likely be the fourth starter behind Cole/Severino/Tanaka, with a bevy of prospects and others (Montgomery, Garcia, Loisiaga etc) tussling it out for #5. 

[soulpope]

https://sports.yahoo.com/mookie-betts-trade-dodgers-red-sox-twins-brusdar-graterol-054437152.html

[Brad]

Mets deal with Cohen is off but they’ve put themselves up for auction by retaining a well known sales consultant, Allen & Company. 

[soulpope]

https://sports.yahoo.com/explosive-new-details-emerge-about-the-astros-cheating-scandal-000636683.html

QUOTE

Members of the Astros front office called it “Codebreaker,” according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal, and often referred to their tactics as the “dark arts.” The system and the front-office employees that manned it were part of the process of figuring out opposing teams’ signs and ultimately getting the information to Astros players to use on the field.

This adds a new layer to one of baseball’s biggest scandals, which until this point was characterized as “player-led” by MLB. Instead, this new information suggests a top-down scheme that obtained information and filtered it to players.

The Wall Street Journal’s Jared Diamond obtained a letter sent to Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred that outlined results of the league’s three-month investigation

UNQUOTE

Revoking the World Series title next logical step ....

 

[JSngry]

Not only did Astros players and coaches use a camera, TV screen and garbage can to electronically steal signs and relay them to hitters, but

the entire operation was fueled by an Excel spreadsheet developed by a then-intern that used an algorithm to decode opposing team’s signs.

Wake up sports fans, wake up everybody, data and algorithms are driving everything these days. Everything.

And there are no rules against it. It's just "good business". It's cheating in MLB because there's a rule against it. But it's not against the rules in everyday life, where your "signs" are constantly being stolen to drive you into routes of commerce, socialization, and ideology. What the Astros did was essentially a gamer version of what is happening in real life.

You as an individual are no more protected against being pwned by all this than were the Astros' opponents. If anything, you are exponentially less protected.

It's easy to get indignant about a mere sports team doing this, but it's even more easy to let it stop there rather than confront just how unprotected from this stuff we ourselves are damn near every waking moment.

Data, analytics, and algorithms. They're here to stay, and they got you - us - by the (base)balls.

[ghost of miles]

Tommy Pham sure didn’t hold back in his reaction to the A.J. Hinch interview.  (An interview btw in which Hinch gave a non-answer when asked if the Astros employed a buzzer system last season.) 

[soulpope]

12 minutes ago, ghost of miles said:

Tommy Pham sure didn’t hold back in his reaction to the A.J. Hinch interview.  (An interview btw in which Hinch gave a non-answer when asked if the Astros employed a buzzer system last season.) 

Yep ....

[JSngry]

Oh, Tommy Pham took to social media to decry illicit data collection and the application of same.

One of those Gene Wilder/Willie Wonka memes about that.

[ghost of miles]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Oh, Tommy Pham took to social media to decry illicit data collection and the application of same.

One of those Gene Wilder/Willie Wonka memes about that.

Yeah, just another guy whose team was screwed and cheated by the Houston Asterisks, or the “Cheating MFs,” as he calls them. (You wanna see some real hate for Houston, just stop by SB Nation’a True Blue LA site sometime.  Well, pretty much *any* non-Houston site these days.) My pre-2019 World Series comment about the rottenness at the core of Houston’s organization has sure been born out, btw. 

 

[JSngry]

Well, good. Enjoy the rightness. Virtue signal received, loud and clear.

In the meantime, privacy has not existed for a decade or two now, we get our data collected and analyzed pretty much every time we wake up (and maybe before that, some of us), satellite micro-surveillance continues to be refined. Nobody collects data just for the hell of it. Nobody. And since data gives the allure of being morally neutral (hey, it's jsut data, it's jusrt aggreate, it's just meta, etcetcetc), a data-driven culture certainly follows suit. It's a trap of course, but damn near all of us are ensnared in it to one degree or another, most of us quite willingly, too.

A baseball team found a way to put this to use to cheat. So since about the most serious conversation anybody can have these days is emoistic teardrops about hi-profile public "bad guys", lets strip the Astros of their title, pelt them with rocks and bottles, and let the rest of the world know that we won't STAND for this type of thing!!!!!

And let's this all on our phones, on Facebook and Twitter and all that stuff. That'll make the world a better place for you and me!!!

 

[T.D.]

https://sports.yahoo.com/report-if-mets-are-sold-wilpons-wont-insist-on-team-control-144715205.html

"...According to Bloomberg,  the Wilpons are now willing to give up control of the team immediately once the team is sold. That’s a total turnaround from the preconditions they placed on the sale with Cohen, which was reportedly the sticking point in the negotiations between the two parties..."

Sure, I believe that. 

[Brad]

1 hour ago, T.D. said:

https://sports.yahoo.com/report-if-mets-are-sold-wilpons-wont-insist-on-team-control-144715205.html

"...According to Bloomberg,  the Wilpons are now willing to give up control of the team immediately once the team is sold. That’s a total turnaround from the preconditions they placed on the sale with Cohen, which was reportedly the sticking point in the negotiations between the two parties..."

Sure, I believe that. 

They are taking bids to that effect. As a result, the consideration is supposed to be higher. I think they realized that attaching conditions as they did with Cohen would result in no buyers or lower purchase price. The motivating factor to sell comes from the Wilpon family, not Fred and certainly not Jeff. The family doesn’t trust Jeff to run the franchise and Saul Katz wants a sale, and Katz, who is Wilpon’s brother in law, owns a significant share of the Mets (perhaps a majority). 

Edited February 10, 2020 by Brad

[ghost of miles]

On 2/9/2020 at 2:06 PM, JSngry said:

 

A baseball team found a way to put this to use to cheat. So since about the most serious conversation anybody can have these days is emoistic teardrops about hi-profile public "bad guys", lets strip the Astros of their title, pelt them with rocks and bottles, and let the rest of the world know that we won't STAND for this type of thing!!!!!

Sounds good to me!  They’re more likely to get pelted with a few high hard ones this season, though, judging from what some pitchers around the league have been saying.  (Three bangs means “chin music.”)

In more general and much more upbeat news... pitchers and catchers start reporting tomorrow! Hallelujah.

Spring training reporting dates 

Edited February 11, 2020 by ghost of miles

[JSngry]

Yeah, let's go after the low hanging fruit of a cheating baseball team and ignore the bigger implications, not of what they did, but how they did it (and please, avoid the extra low hanging fruit for the whole banging on a trash can thing). In the real world, the insatiable huger for data and analytics is bringing us this guy: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/10/tech/clearview-ai-ceo-hoan-ton-that/index.html 

A sports team looking for an edge by any available means (which for the last several post-steroid decades has meant organizational data and analytics)...next thing you know we'll be hearing about a dishonest politician... Catch 'em when you can!

By far the biggest tragedy of all this is that the phrase "bang on a can" has been sullied, and considering that prior to this it stood for excellence in every regard, that is a sad thing indeed.

HERE'S your Bang On A Can, sports fans!

https://bangonacan.org/store/music