2022-23 Hot Stove thread

willson contreras to the cards, one of my favorite players to one of my least favorite teams, ugh.

i missed that the cubs signed jameson taillon

mets and phils in all out war to see who can get the most jan 6 indictments on their 40 man rosters https://t.co/u8baAjRa68

— express written consent haver (@KenRosenthot) December 7, 2022

Machado, Bogarts, and Tatis: not as rock-star euphonious as Betts, Bogarts, and Ortiz, but they should be quite formidable.

Don’t forget Soto

i gotta say that's going to be one good-looking team and i don't mean their batting averages

You don’t mean Cubs do you

(xxpost) I did, embarrassingly enough, twice in this thread. (Doesn't quite work in the context of the joke, but no one under 60's going to get that anyway.) Which would have made Judge-Machado-Soto-Tatis just about the most fearsome quartet since who knows what.

no the Padres!

xpost

thank you for bringing this to my attention.

(I was hoping you meant the Cubs though, you know, considering.)

https://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/embed/public/2018/08/16/gettyimages-1017376680_0.jpg

https://mlb.nbcsports.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2019/07/gettyimages-1155005755-e1563138045132.jpg

https://www.yardbarker.com/media/2/4/2420fb8830c99fe6c83d68405075773d2429e2ff/thumb_16x9/13110857.jpg?v=1

https://i1.wp.com/defpen.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/chin091014soxorioles_spt22.jpg?w=960

they're going to be the fuckin Beatles of baseball man. crazy lineup.

the beatles also used performance-enhancing drugs

god bless those boys

jeff passan story about the bogaerts signing had an anon quote from a red sox front office guy saying that they aren't going to give out 10 year deals because those contracts don't work out for teams. which i think everyone agrees with! but it also feels weird to see the red sox be run this way.

also based on the turner & bogaerts contracts it looks like teams are maybe looking at a hockey-ish model of super long years to lessen the AAV of these deals. the rangers seem to be the one team still handing out these early 2010s style contracts to FAs

machado has and seems likely to use an opt-out after next season, which no doubt had a bearing on the padres going after bogaerts

saw it claimed somewhere that the sox offer to him was under $200m (!)

The suspense is killing me slightly discomfiting me re: Dansby. I can't help but feel (without evidence) he's peaked and the Barves would be better served with a good-enough SS and a big push on LF improvement. (If they've already done something about LF plz ignore.)

can't imagine what Correa is going to get, being two years younger and better than Bogaerts. Swanson is sort of the poor man's Bogaerts, he's not bad if you need a SS but he worries me yeah. I think the Cubs will land one of those guys, I'd prefer it to be Correa for sure.

Honestly don’t see the Twins reaching deep enough to bring back Correa. It’s probably Swanson or someone more replacement level (the consensus is the braves aren’t bringing him back, no?)

dansby's coming off a big season and he's a good player, but also his career wRC+ is 94. i don't see him getting a deal anywhere near bogaerts/correa/turner level

was surprised to see Correa's career bWAR as high as it is, considering how much time he's missed, but per 162 games he's averaging 7.2 -- which is way above the likes of Machado and Harper and some others.

Just to cheer up tracer hand:

Chaim Bloom inherited 27 year old Mookie, 27 YO Bogaerts, 25 YO Benintendi, and 23 YO Devers and so far has turned them into:

Alex Verdugo
Jeter Downs
Connor Wong
Franchy Cordero
Josh Winckowski
Grant Gambrell
Luis De La Rosa
Freddy Valdez

Devers still here, but not extended

— Michael Dyer (@Mike_Dyer13) December 8, 2022

devers will hit free agency next winter having just turned 27

bloom is the leonardo dicaprio of GMs, all his serious relationships have to be terminated by age 27

saw it claimed somewhere that the sox offer to him was under $200m (!)

― mookieproof, Thursday, December 8, 2022 12:52 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, is this really so insulting? we will see how good a 30 year old SS with an average glove and average power looks in 5 years…then in 11 years

dunno about insulting -- i just think it's notable that their offer wasn't even in the same ballpark, so to speak, as san diego's

saw a quote today (from farhan zaidi i think) to the effect that if you act rationally about free agents, you'll always finish third in getting them. there are no prizes for financial efficiency

Bogaerts has had a couple of superstar level seasons but mostly I want to say he’s felt maybe just a little disappointing, at least over the last couple years. he made leaps in 2018 and 2019 but seems to have taken a step back.

Not that he is anything other than a good shortstop but it really is going to be interesting to see how this contract looks in a few years.

tbf all the contracts are going to look bad in a few years. someone pointed out that judge's deal is basically the same as prince albert's deal with the angels, adjusted for inflation/increased revenue

but hey, it's not my money

One difference w judge I think is he’s coming off his best season (and one of the best hitting seasons in recent memory) while pujols signed the deal after the first season of his decline phase. I mean looking back on that final year with the Cardinals, red flags were all there.

Admittedly judge maybe just be signing before the first season of his decline phase but he’s in better shape than Albert was. I want to believe. 🛸

Nimmo, 8 years 162 million.

Good lord

happy for him but yeah

Nimmo's deal reminds me of Jayson Werth's with the Nationals about ten years ago, at a time when people thought 4-5 WAR outfielders were the new market inefficiency.

Nimmo is a good player but he’s also turning thirty soon, how much better do they think he’ll get? The deal makes sense if he was in his mid-twenties and they were trying to lock him down.

definitely seems like the trend this offseason is players getting (over)paid. pretty much every deal has been high. otoh life is more expensive in general now

The money seems kind of meaningless if you start to think about it. It’s a boring rant but I still can’t normalize stuff where people hold out for an extra $125 Million and it comes across as being justified.

I mean a lot of right thinking teams have their core kids locked up for eternity that FA money is going to go somewhere

minor league deal with the dodgers for jason heyward. is kyle hendricks the last cub standing from the 2016 world series team?

Senga to the Mets.

Pretty crazy the amount of spending they are doing but they did basically have their entire starting rotation / bullpen on an expiring deal. I also assume some of this was supposed to be Degrom money.

I can’t recite the exact numbers - but what they’re going to be paying in luxury tax is larger than some teams payrolls!

i wasn't thrilled with the willson contreras signing at the time. 5 years for a catcher in his 30s who is likely to play more at DH in the last few years of the contract

but i can see how it was the best of several options. i think most fans were hoping for a trade for sean murphy, or a blue jays catcher. the trade proposal for murphy reportedly was lars nootbaar, brendan donovan, and gordon graceffo (#3 SP prospect ETA 2023/24). 2 starting position players that could be sleeper all-star candidates + one of the best pitching prospect in the system for a team that will lose 4/5th of the rotation after 2023. that seems steep, but given the free agent market and player valuation trends this offseason, maybe that's just how it is? i don't know.

and on the free agent side, you see these 11-year deals and nimmo making bank and suddenly 5-years for an older catcher starts to look like a deal!

With what’s happened in the FA market, Contreras was a pretty solid deal.

You know how poker players have "tells"? MLB.com has one too: when they start posting pieces about Old Hoss Radbourn, that's a tell that awards are over and off-season player movement is about to slow down.

https://www.mlb.com/news/old-hoss-radbourn-unbreakable-baseball-records

Lotta moves this winter. Wasn't it just last year that people were like, who's going to blink first? The players or the owners, who aren't signing anyone? Well they are now. I'm going to need a cheat sheet to remember who everybody plays for. Feels like a kind of post-COVID reset for a lot of teams.

i forget the exact timeline but there was the lockout last offseason, too, basically from early December 2021 to early March. i don't remember the exact rules for trades and FA stuff, but i think most of it wasn't allowed during that time period.

Many of the big name free agents signed before the lockout (Scherzer, Semien, Seager). Once the lockout ended there was a rush to sign everyone who was left.

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mlb-free-agency-refresher-pre-lockout-signings-hirings-and-moves-you-may-have-forgotten-as-baseball-returns/

The freeze in signings was more from the 2019-2020 offseasons, when the owners were essentially gearing up to screw over the players as much as possible before the inevitable work stoppage.

There's still Correa:

https://www.mlb.com/news/carlos-correa-rumors

I've lost all context as to the meaning of "massive" at this point.

Bassitt to jays; murphy to barves

that murphy trade was pretty complicated. three teams and nine players (OAK, MIL, and ATL), and somehow the brewers received the second-best Will* Contreras (William, who may outhit Willson this year) along with pitching depth in exchange for Esteury Ruiz

it's really puzzling how the brewers ended up w/ contreras i really don't get it... i wonder if the teams have diff statistical models than what is publicly available that devalue him or something bcuz otherwise i can't really get my head around it