Hot Stove 2023-2024

The Padres needed starting major-league ready pitching. Why would they flip Cease for a bat when

1) they can’t afford to pay Snell and Cease actually pitching more innings than Snell relieves some of the pressure on their now Haderless-pen?

2) they had Soto in the lineup last year and still struggled over .500, they had Rich Hill pitching for them!

The bats they have rn:

- Bogaerts
- Tatis
- Machado
- Kim

They’ve basically raised their lineups floor by getting rid of Austin Nola and Matt Carpenter.

Campusano looked pretty good as well and should produce offensively. The catching position should immediately be more productive now that they dropped Austin Nola, and also they’re not giving ABs to Matt Carpenter so they can DH Campusano on days Higashioka catches.

I’m not saying the lineup couldn’t use an extra bat, but they’d be creating a worse problem by trading actual starting pitching away.

hard agree with gyac:

friars lost snell, wacha & lugo which accounted for 360 IP, that's a massive hole that they're only now trying to fill in (Cease & MKing).

I'm not talking about flipping him now. I think they'll trade him at the deadline when they're out of contention.

And when I say young hitter, I'm talking like A/AA level, not a guy to slot into the 2024 roster.

xp and King is a risk cos although he finished last season starting for the Yankees - and was really good starting - he hasn’t pitched a full season as a starter yet.

xp but out of contention or not, they still need innings now

good trade for the Pads, the risk is Cease is just okay but the ceiling is he wins the Cy Young at a fraction of the cost of whatever Snell is gonna get.

Center fielder Michael A. Taylor and the Pittsburgh Pirates are in agreement on a one-year, $4 million contract, sources tell ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 15, 2024

Don't matter so long as daddy Boras gets that fat check 🤑 🤑 🤑 🤑 🤑

Surely the cheque is less fat the nearer we get to the start of the season?

I guess the gamble was to wait for a team to get desperate, and so far no one - not even the Yankees - is?

This convo was hashed out up thread, but I feel like Snell and Monty have to be getting pretty irritated at this point.

I'd imagine there's no joy in missing spring training as a professional baseball player

Both having to sit outside the party because papa Boras said they're too good to hang out with the proles within it. Sucks

Fucking disgusting, but if you’ve already got Aroldis Chapman on the roster…

Domingo German is going to the Pirates pic.twitter.com/vCNKEL3mJj

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) March 16, 2024

wrt snell & montgomery i have to think that w/ pitchers specifically there’s some element where staying healthy — not pitching — buoys your value. i don’t think the clock is ticking in quite the same way it was on chapman or bellinger

JD Davis lost about 2.5 million but I'd argue that the Giants lost the war with the PR aspect of all of this.

The Giants need Snell more than any other team but

Blake Snell has told the Astros he’s seeking at least a two-year, $66M deal with an opt-out after 2024, per @BNightengale

The Astros are intrigued, but are “the latest team to balk at his asking price” pic.twitter.com/Lh2hKGOyyn

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) March 17, 2024

Ooof

Hell for that price? Open the deferred cheque book again dodgers

i don’t think that’s an unreasonable asking price if you look at recent two year contracts for cy young winning pitchers

Absolutely

Don't matter so long as daddy Boras gets that fat check

y’all are really taking management’s line on boras

snell/montgomery/etc. aren’t beholden to boras’s whims — he works for them. jason varitek was a boras client who wanted to stay in boston, so he did. boras is just an advisor with an extremely strong track record; where and for what money those guys sign is ultimately up to them

and of course if they never sign or overplay their hands and get sub-par contracts, daddy boras gets a much smaller check

It would be an easier sell if he had a bit more consistency. Outside of his two cy young years he’s never made more than 30 starts in a season, and his overall results in non cy years have been good-not-great.

^ re: snell

y’all are really taking management’s line on boras

On the subject of Snell - Seattle, Snell is constantly liking and commenting on Mariners photos and has said he’d like to play there to people who asked him iirc. Park makes sense for him but ownership is cheap as fuck and they have a rotation and depth in the minors. I couldn’t see it happening unless he gave a substantial hometown discount and they traded Miller or Woo for riches.

I mean it's all conjecture how the boras (or any agent)/client relationship works right? In some cases, boras could have seriously swayed a player towards more money, in some cases lest, in some cases he was just a face for the clients whims. What he is in Snell's case? Who knows

*less.

Shasta not wrong in suggesting boras has a vested interest in getting the most money and so has a hand to play as well. I'd say the hand has been played poorly by boras in this instance based on Snell's rejection of the 150/5 rejection.

Hindsight 20/20 obvs

Seattle needs a hitter way more than they need a SP, I think. Miller and especially Woo seem like keepers to me.

it's all conjecture how the boras (or any agent)/client relationship works right?

i suppose, but it’s the player’s life and it’s the player’s signature that goes on the contacts

what’s *really* open to conjecture is that while we can quantify every tiny aspect of blake snell’s performance, and we know what signing him would do to certain teams’ luxury taxes, we have no idea exactly how profitable MLB teams are (besides ‘probably much more so than they’d like us to think’). would signing snell make the yankees (or astros, or mariners) take a net loss this season? i very much doubt it. obviously teams have to make choices and prioritize when building rosters, but i’ll bet an owner’s definition of ‘minimum acceptable profit’ is very different from that of a fan

i think we know enough about the finances of mid market teams to say that tacking on a $20m+ salary absolutely could swing a profit into a loss. when whether the owners should care about that is a diff question, but i think it’s safe to say that a lot of MLB teams are making less than $20m in profit in most individual seasons

Breaking: Snell to the Giants. $62M, 2 years. Opt out.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) March 19, 2024

I knew he was coming but started to get worried.

I went to his splits page to see what his line was at PacBell only to learn he's only pitched there 4x, small sample size but on one hand he was pretty dominant yet on the other hand it was the Giants lol.

4 starts (2-0)
22.2 IP
1.59 ERA
1.02 WHIP
12.3 K/9
2.8 K/BB (31:11)
.476 OPSA

Webb - Snell, hell of a one-two.

Snell, Robbie Ray, Jung Hoo Lee, Jordan Hicks, Soler, Matt Chapman. Giants have been cooking

Oh, and Pablo Sandoval ofc

Two time Cy Young Award winners from Seattle and the Giants. Oracle probably suits him a lot more than Minute Maid or Yankee Stadium. Now the Giants have 3.5 SP which was more than they had last year. Interesting combo of Webb and Snell; the guy who posts and the guy who doesn’t. I can’t actually remember who’s in the pen this year but they’d better be good.

They surprisingly have elite 7-9 inning guys: TRogers twins + Doval

I mean it's all conjecture how the boras (or any agent)/client relationship works right? In some cases, boras could have seriously swayed a player towards more money, in some cases lest, in some cases he was just a face for the clients whims.

I think most players are inclined to take the highest offer, and don't particularly care where they play. I don't think Boras has to sway them to take the money.

At the other extreme, if a player makes it known that he really wants to play for his hometown team, then that kills his market and limits what Boras can do for him.

Yeah they’ve improved the lineup a lot but they really need a big bat to go with Julio.

They surprisingly have elite 7-9 inning guys: TRogers twins + Doval

Ah sorry cached message & new zing. It’s funny because Snell was posting on his Instagram page about the little league team in Seattle he sponsors and was apparently with them on Sunday. I feel even if he has a great season and opts out at the end of the year, are his FA chances going to be much better coming off a Cy Young season with a relatively poor free agent class?

Or maybe two great seasons back to back will help his case…though he’ll be another year older and extremely unlikely to get that seven year deal he wanted.

I think most players are inclined to take the highest offer, and don't particularly care where they play. I don't think Boras has to sway them to take the money.

At the other extreme, if a player makes it known that he really wants to play for his hometown team, then that kills his market and limits what Boras can do for him.

Well that one all worked out in the end tho didn't it?

Didn’t freeman rage fire his agent and isn’t the agent now suing fox and/or a reporter?!

Breaking: JD Martinez to Mets. $12M

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) March 22, 2024

that’s unexpected

Whither JMont?

Garn SF, put it all on the house

FINALLY

BREAKING: Left-handed starter Jordan Montgomery and the Arizona Diamondbacks are in agreement on a free agent deal, pending physical, a source tells ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) March 27, 2024