2022-23 Hot Stove thread

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

Contreras not yet 25 years old and seems to have a shot at being the better Contreras offensively as Karl noted, it seems at best an even trade (with Murphy being 3 1/2 years older too.) Braves gave up six players to get him, am I reading that right?

https://i.imgur.com/u8kJr8j.png

yes. i thought for sure they got someone else in return, in addition to murphy. but no.

also, what's weird is that imo catching was already a position of strength for the braves? they had william c but also they still have travis d'Arnoud, who was a top 10 catcher, maybe even top 5, last year? i don't know, maybe there's some platoon shit i'm not thinking of from the braves perspective

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/three-teams-nine-players-one-surprising-winner-examining-the-sean-murphy-blockbuster/

it is weird but it sounds like murphy is a better all-around catcher than contreras or d'arnad

i feel like the brewers were just standing there grabbing a free william contreras for some reason!

i'm glad the contreras brothers will be playing in the same division, though, i suppose the schedule for 2023 makes that less notable than it once was

no idea how they came up with these numbers but it doesn’t *feel* unreasonable

As reported, today's three-team deal:

ATL: Sean Murphy, $51.3M median trade value

MIL: William Contreras, $37.3M; Payamps, $0.0M; Yeager, not yet in system

OAK: Muller, $7.1M; Ruiz, $4.9M; Salinas, $2.5M; Tarnok, $2.2M; Piña, -$2.6M ($14.3M total)

Deal rejected by the model.

— Baseball Trade Values (@BaseballValues) December 12, 2022

also ross stripling to the braves, two years but with an opt-out after one

(who was the first player to get a deal with an opt-out?)

sorry i meant stripling to the GIANTS

was it a-rod?

​Boras also negotiated the first such opt-out clause, inserting it into Alex Rodriguez’s landmark $252 million deal with the Rangers in December 2000.

https://www.si.com/mlb/2016/03/07/opt-out-clause-contract-david-price-jason-heyward

ah, of course it was a boras thing

My god. Correa signed. This off-season…

350 million/13 years

Correa's going to the Giants; $350M/13 years.

https://www.tsn.ca/mlb/carlos-correa-13-year-deal-san-francisco-giants-1.1892986

Monster deal, not massive as reported earlier.

The length of some of these deals is just wild

40's the new 27.

All three big FA short stops signed deals until they’re 40! Correa is the most valuable of the three, but I think earning slightly less avg than Turner, but two more years.

The Giants have been getting absolutely hammered in the press here so I'm not surprised they overreacted. Correa is very good of course.

yeah I wonder if the Giants missing out on Judge helped get Correa more money in the end.

It’s also Brandon Crawford’s last contract year and he’ll be 36 next year, they needed a long term replacement. I guess they’ll move him somewhere else (2nd or 3rd?)

hasn't been too much buzz around swanson

not surprised; figured he'd be the plan-b for all the teams that didn't land one of the big 3 SS.

No results found for “Swanson’s swan song for the Braves has already been played”

braves would def take him back, the price tag will likely be too steep tho

Nostalgic for the Nov 2022 me who thought the Orioles were serious when they said they were going to sign a front-line starting pitcher

Me, the Ghost of Orioles Future: "They mean Kyle Gibson"

The length of some of these deals is just wild

― omar little, Wednesday, December 14, 2022 12:14 AM (eleven hours ago)

def appears to be a concerted effort by these teams to lengthen out the deals to lessen the AAV... i think primarily for luxury tax purposes? if you had told ppl a few years ago that these guys would be signing for less than $30m per year you'd have been called crazy but clearly there is some new strategy w/ these kinda deals. no idea if it's smart or not

making albatross contracts a problem for the next GM. maybe seeing more of this now that front office staff move around more often*?

*not sure even if this is true

Also in 13 years, $30 million might not even be a remarkable AAV in the baseball world

i was thinking about matt adams this morning, for some reason, and saw that he wasn't in MLB in 2022just now i saw he signed a minor contract deal with the Nats. he spent 2022 with the Kansas City Monarchs of the American Association (independent ball). guess who else starred on the 2022 Monarchs?

PETE KOZMA

currently batting .300 for the perth heat in pursuit of the CLAXTON SHIELD

STAYING HOT 🔥

Pete Kozma punches a single down to center field, going two for three at the plate!

Josh Reddick comes home to score the Heat's second run of the game#PerthHeat#ABL23 pic.twitter.com/sYFbceLzHB

— Australian Baseball League (@ABL) December 9, 2022

Pete Kozma punches a single down to center field, going two for three at the plate!

Josh Reddick comes home to score the Heat's second run of the game

this seems like a game update straight from Out of the Park Baseball, i love it

Australia you have no idea how much heat Pete Kozma is going to bring. you will rue the day that you ever heard his name!!

I'm just sitting here saying "Perth Heat" in my imitation of an Australian accent again and again, can't stop