Hot Stove 2023-2024

For the 26 clubs not playing baseball this week, the stove is heating up ...

Kim Ng declined her option and won't return as Marlins GM. I guess she has something better already lined up?

They tried to install someone above her and wouldn't let her hire people.

Sounds bad. Can’t imagine she’ll end up in Boston where the first stipulation of the job is that you’re not allowed to fire Alex Cora.

really bad look on Miami here. they tried to effectively demote one of the few women working in baseball after the teams makes it to the playoffs twice (I believe) under her - with hardly any payroll?!

there was an article about kim ng in the athletic just earlier this month that sounded like a victory lap, i took it as a sign that she was going to be in miami for the long-term...

for obvious reasons this a PR nightmare for the marlins but honestly the team this year was beyond lucky to even be sniffing the playoffs & i was never really impressed by a lot of her personnel decisions. she made some good bets on middling big league players like soler, josh bell, jake burger but every marlins GM is operating w/ one hand tied behind their back and bcuz of that the organization needs a robust farm system and her front office's track record of drafting & developing was looking really poor. i'm sure her side of the story contains 500 different examples of why GMing the marlins is nearly impossible -- bomani jones talks often about how they throw black coaches the worst NFL jobs, have to feel like a similar dynamic was at play here -- and hiring a man over is her is just like... what the fuck is wrong with this franchise? and the owner frankly seems like a complete tyrant, he's now had two GMs (jeter first) walk away from the job. i mean, it's really hard to have two GMs just walk off the job when there are only 30 of them. jeter you could easily come up w/ logical reasons why it might not have been worth his time, but the first woman GM in history?? she was just like, "actually i'm good"??? anyway i'm making a lot of excuses for her while also saying that i didn't think she was all that great at being the marlins GM specifically and the future of the franchise could be a lot brighter if they hired someone who really knows how to draft and build a farm system. but the one thing that's the hardest to fix in any sport is bad ownership

i guess i should say that she did succeed in building a team that appeared in the playoffs (nevermind losing 11-2 combined in the two game sweep) because it did seem like the front office strategy was to act as if making the playoffs was the same as winning the world series. she spent money & traded prospects to get guys like soler, avisail garcia, bryan de la cruz, bell, burger etc who are a very unsexy type of player who is a rung or two above replacement level. she basically put together a .500 team that ended up having the best luck of any team in baseball & was able to ride that to the playoffs, and that counts as an accomplishment for this franchise, obviously. but she was pursuing a very low ceiling type of team & i expect that regardless of who is in charge next year they are going to get a big taste of reality in terms of the actual quality of the roster. maybe that's an ownership directive -- make the playoffs asap but also you can't spend real money -- or a survivalist strategy for a GM and not kim ng's worldview on team building. but the track they were/are on is extreme mediocrity & maybe there is someone out there better equipped to try and find this franchise a sustainable window of actual world series contention, and not "let's just make the wild card and say we got this franchise to the playoffs"

I was under the impression that she was doing a good job despite the many limitations involved with being the GM of the Marlins. In over 30 years, has the franchise ever had a decent long term plan to stay in contention? Ownership has always gotten in the way of that.

i think decent job is very relatively speaking. they were 24 games under .500 last year w/ the cy young winner & if you read anything about which teams had the greatest luck in close games this year, the marlins were a deeply mediocre team that were very fortunate to be anywhere near the playoffs.

I normally agree with J0rdan so I'm pretty taken aback by his steamy turd of a take.

Marlins payroll in 2022 started at $67.5 million (26th/30) and ended up around $80M.

2023 was $110M (24th/30) and they made the playoffs.

she spent money & traded prospects to get guys like soler, avisail garcia, bryan de la cruz, bell, burger etc who are a very unsexy type of player who is a rung or two above replacement level.

Would you believe that 20 years ago there was a NYT bestseller based entirely on this concept!?!

Jake Burger‘s slash line since the trade deadline was .303/.355/.505, OPS of .860. How many trade deadline acquisitions were that impactful? Luis Arraez was also a good trade.

i think one reason she traded for Jake was he was afaict extremely unlucky with his BABIP and the underlying stats were very positive for him. his exit velo was pretty superior too. she might have been banking on a course correction and it seems like the right move in retrospect.

Yeah his savant page backs you up.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/jake-burger-669394?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

luis arraez 2023 fWAR - 3.4
pablo lopez 2023 fWAR - 4.5

i'm not gonna dump on that trade cuz arraez is a fun player. but the marlins also ended up starting braxton garrett in game 2 of the playoffs this year.

you guys have any thoughts on the 4/53 contract given out to avisail garcia after he was randomly good one year?

do you guys know the names khalil watson, joe mack, or jacob berry? those are the marlins first round picks under ng. go check top 100 prospect lists and tell me where those names appear. by every measure this is a bottom third farm system in baseball, and the crown jewel (eury perez) that was keeping that ranking even relatively afloat was from the previous regime. when the farm system rankings refresh next year the marlins will be in the consensus bottom 5

like i said earlier, she did some legit good stuff finding decent major league players on the margins and that is a key part of being the GM of the marlins. she may be really good at that relative to her peers. but for the marlins to succeed the farm system needs to be constantly siphoning in and producing talent that outperforms salary, and she never showed any promise on that side. in reality, it was the opposite.

the jeter front office also had a track record of drafting poorly and was legendarily bad at developing hitting prospects, so maybe the marlins entire minor league infrastructure is rotten & ng was a victim of that. entirely possible! but i also know that prospect and draft writers consistently had issues w/ the marlins draft strategy & selections

If the Marlins wanted to keep Kim Ng as they claimed, I think it would have made more sense to hire a new scouting lead under her. Instead they wanted to add an exec above her. That's a weird way to fix the scouting department.

Baggs says the Giants are hiring Bob Melvin.

Side note: I love how often his source is Buster Posey, the guy who grants one interview a year and who texts him all the time.

After a swift interview process, they are poised to announce the hiring of Bob Melvin, sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic on condition of anonymity.

The Giants moved quickly once the Padres granted permission to speak to Melvin, who had one year remaining on his contract to manage in San Diego but was known to clash with Padres GM A.J. Preller. Melvin met on Monday with several top Giants officials on the baseball operations and ownership level, including executive board member Buster Posey. Evidently, nothing emerged from those conversations to dissuade San Francisco officials that Melvin, a Bay Area native who turns 62 on Saturday, was the right choice for the current moment.

Sean Casey announced on his podcast "The Mayors Office" that he will not be returning as Yankees hitting coach for family reasons.

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) October 25, 2023

https://deadspin.com/mookie-betts-trevor-bauer-los-angeles-dodgers-rape-1850980801

Mookie should probably not be reflecting on what a great guy Trevor Bauer is.

This story seems so so so bad.

Sources: The San Diego Padres took out a loan for about $50 million in September to address short-term cash flow issues and meet their obligations, including player payroll. With @dennistlin and @Ken_Rosenthal: https://t.co/uUr3NRHXN7

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) November 1, 2023

The Padres started the season with a payroll of about $250 million, third-most in baseball, and an outlier among teams that play in a similar bottom-third media market. The investment generated excitement and income: the club set a franchise record with 3.3 million tickets sold, and per a team spokesperson, finished in the top six in the sport for regular-season ticket revenue.

But in September, the Padres had a third-party lender willing to loan the club $100 million. The team asked MLB for permission to receive close to the full $100 million, according to people briefed on the team’s finances. MLB gave the team permission to draw roughly $50 million, which the league deemed a sufficient amount for the team to cover its expenses.

“If the question is, despite all that revenue growth, why would we need to be borrowing more money? I mean, you can connect those dots,” said a Padres official who was not authorized to speak publicly. “The levels of payroll that we’ve been at have probably reasonably been in excess of what we could have supported, but it was part of the larger plan.”

Soto's in arbitration so I don't think the Padres necessarily have a huge commitment to him if they are indeed in a bleak financial hole. He'll likely sign with a wealthier team when he's a free agent in 2025. He could bounce around a bit this season.

i'm glad it finally got explained how the padres were spending so much money. i never understood it. interesting choice to jack your payroll up so high you have to take out a loan while putting that payroll in the hands of AJ preller. wouldn't have been me!

xp sorry I could have been clearer- I didn’t mean his payroll costs. If they’re not going to spend to keep him then they should trade him and they could get a haul even for a rental, which would help if they’re trying to keep payroll costs down and can demand a couple of good young players with years of team control

Clayton Kershaw just announced on Instagram he underwent surgery to repair the gleno-humeral ligaments and capsule on his left shoulder. He says he is hopeful to return at some point next summer.

— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) November 3, 2023

Gonsolin is out for 2024 iirc

options on tim anderson and whit merrifield declined

ilb fave mark canha dealt to detroit

bellinger and stroman opted out. not too sure about the latter doing so -- he was so terrible in the second half of the season that i'm skeptical someone will offer him the $21m he would have made with the cubs? guess he wants more years tho, and i suppose everyone needs pitching

Prob more years & lower aav in case he gets injured again

David Ross out in Chicago, Craig Counsell in

Ohhh that mother fucker

That is not going to make him any friends

Craig Counsell's $8 million-a-year deal with the Chicago Cubs is an industry-shaking deal. In recent years, multiple coaches have pointed out that it's more lucrative financially to take a job with a college program than an MLB team. Counsell's deal could help change that in MLB.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 6, 2023

Three new managers hired on the same day today! (Cubs, Guardians, Mets)

stephen vogt is a good dude; hope he does well

I believe in him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azTGrocYlu4

David Ross's Cubs exceeded my expectations this year. Is he a weirdo behind the scenes or something?

Heyman said it wasn’t anything he did so much as the Cubs jumping on the chance to have Counsell

WAIVERS: #Rockies have claimed LHP Jalen Beeks off waivers from the #Rays.

— MLB Transaction Tracker (@MLBMovesTracker) November 7, 2023

jal-jal beeks

OFFICIAL: the Angels have hired Ron Washington as the Club’s manager. pic.twitter.com/NGWV6X10PW

— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) November 8, 2023

Happy for Wash, sad for Barves infielders.

happy for wash, but that is not a situation in which anyone can succeed

there are managers teams will fite for/fire people simply to get (joe madden once, craig counsell now)

(bob melvin may think he's in this category, but he's not)

there are managers (of color) who have done well but, you know, maybe they're not quite up to the task, if you know what i mean (cora, roberts)

there are managers (of color) who are obviously simply caretakers until the team might have a chance to compete (wash, rick renteria, pedro grifol, bo porter, luis rojas). jim riggleman is white but remains the purest expression of this variety of manager

there are managers (of color) who've spent decades in the minors and sometimes they randomly get a shot (charlie montoyo, charlie mendoza, oliver marmol, dave martinez)

there are *scrappy* white managers who've spent decades in the minors and sometimes they randomly get a shot (snitker, schumaker, rob thomson, shildt, torey lovullo)

there are pitching coaches who are in way over their heads (bud black, ray miller)

there are (white) former catchers who get hired with no experience whatsoever (matheny, ross, vogt, cash, schneider, gonna throw hinch in here although he had *some* experience, gonna throw boone in here although he wasn't a catcher)

there are the (white) young geniuses (cash, kapler, maybe rocco?)

there are (white) managers who have somehow survived being terrible for quite a long time (shelton, servais)

have i missed anything (beyond legends like dusty and bochy)

Bud Black, it's hard to know where to fit him in.

pitching coaches who are in way over their heads
and/or
managers who have somehow survived being terrible for quite a long time

imo

(not that i blame bud black -- the rockies are a garbage organization)

That was meant as a joke having to do with his name.

ah

Welcome to Detroit, Jason Benetti.

Something I had completely forgotten till I saw the headline on Posnanski's post today (and then immediately remembered): Ron Washington delivers one of my two of three favourite lines in Moneyball, "It's incredibly hard."

(aside: That actor (Brent Jennings) who portrays Wash had one of the leading roles in AMC/Hulu's Lodge 49 and was amazing.)

don't think the flight time matters -- it's not like he's not going to be an all-star, he's stuck here all summer

what *might* matter is how time zones and television play out in japan?

steve shasta: bring the knowledge

it's not so much him, it's his lifeline (family, friends, colleagues, seniors/juniors, medical staff, cultural staff, etc.)

east coast daygames are dreadful (usually starting ~midnight) but all night games line up with the workday with west coast night games ending around 4pm.

lol verdugo to the yankees

i want him to refuse to shave

I feel like the autonomy really matters for Ohtani; you see it on this tour now. Literally the only reason I thought he might not sign with the Dodgers is because they’d want him to do things off the field. Buster Olney posted that there was a chance he could go back to the Angels, which would undoubtedly pay a ton of money for him to make them money, and to never do media for months if he doesn’t feel like it. But ultimately I still think he’s a Dodger for a million reasons, I think that would be the only sticking point.

so this mariners deal

marco gonzales is bad, and they got out of spending $12m on him
kelenic (still possibly not-terrible) and white (terrible) are pre-arb

jackson kowar is 27 and has never been good
cole phillips is a high school pitcher who, at 20, has yet to pitch professionally

i don't think saving $12m suddenly means they can splash out on ohtani? phillips is a stab in the dark. and for whatever one thinks of kelenic, he put up 2 bwar as a 24yo this past season, which is infinitely more than everyone else in this trade combined

i rate this trade: ffs

classic bucco

i want him to refuse to shave

Welcome to the Bronx, Alex Verdugo 💪#YANKSonYES pic.twitter.com/crFSLHmfvs

— YES Network (@YESNetwork) December 6, 2023

I really wish someone would call their bluff

Lots of chatter suggesting Juan "Childish Bambino" Soto is heading to The Bronx... pending physicals of course.

Soto with that RF porch 😵‍💫

They’re not a Soto away tbh

Craig Kimbrel is a deal now with O’s. $13M. @Joelsherman1 and @Ken_Rosenthal on it

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 6, 2023

damn and i was rooting for the O's to go further this season

lol

Kimbrel-pitching-stance-with-a-pitch-of-Orioles-perched-on-his-wonky-arm.jpg

Finalized:

NYY: JuanSoto + Trent Grisham

SDP: Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez + Kyle Higashioka

so not exactly a bustling trade market for his services huh...

For a 1 year rental, I'd rate it 60% NYY/40% SDP

Finalized:

NYY: JuanSoto + Trent Grisham

SDP: Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez + Kyle Higashioka

The proposed Soto/Yankees trade has not yet advanced to the point where the teams have told each other they have a deal , and no players have yet been informed that they are on the move.

— Andy Martino (@martinonyc) December 6, 2023

padres trying to gauge public reaction to getting back next to nothing for a guy they unloaded their farm system for?

soto home vs away in 2023:

home: .240/.398/.429 (12 HR)
away: .307/.422/.604 (23 HR)

xp they’ve got no money cos their tv deal collapsed, they decided to pay Xander Bogaerts a ton of money to play first base next year and their owner just died, I doubt they give a fuck about the opinions of the fans. The bigger fuckup was signing Bogaerts and not prioritising Soto.

The proposed return btw:

King, a SP the Yankees decided to use from being a reliever, good performance in a small sample size
Brito: potentially a SP, will be better than Rich Hill was for the Padres
Thorpe: iirc their best pitching prospect not too far off the major leagues
Vasquez: nfi
Higgy: lol at least he’s not Austin Nola????

The Yankees rotation before this was:

- Cole, Cortes, Rodón, King, Schmidt. I think? So they have probably at least two SP to fill given that Cortes and Rodón are both crocked. And I don’t think any other team was going to give them two putative SP for a rental.

Cashman is rumored to be in Japan courting Yoshinobu Yamamoto 👀👀👀

Seidler was a maniac, clearly. RIP to the Padres' spendiest owner ever, and good luck to Greupner and Kutsenda if they try to move Bogaerts or Tatis next.

xp you mean Steve Cohen

Yankees GM Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone just left the winter meetings hotel and are headed to the Nashville airport with no Soto deal finalized yet

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 6, 2023

Juan Soto trade agreement is being finalized now, source confirms.

The deal, as @JackCurryYES and @Joelsherman1 reported, sends Soto and Trent Grisham to New York for Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez, and Kyle Higashioka.

Thorpe and Vasquez are the Yankees 5th- and 13th-best prospects according to MLB.

Cashman en route to Japan! 👀👀👀

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=yamamo004yos

I'm glad Soto is out of the NL West

very strange to see a player as statistically good as Soto being traded twice before he hits free agency. wonder if there is anything to that.

More to do with extending him. He wouldn’t extend with the Nationals even though they offered him $440m for 15 years so they traded him and went into rebuild rather than walk for free. The Padres don’t have the money to extend him so they traded him to get some money off the books as they wanted to bring payroll down to $200m and he hits free agency next year - all their other expensive contracts (Tatis Jr, Machado, Darvish, Bogaerts) are locked up for years.

Looking forward to the Yanks moving him at the trade deadline for a top Dodgers prospect

Ha, Soto may get traded again this year if the Yanks swoon before the trade deadline! It's all circumstantial.

he's my favorite player that i dread my favorite team facing. i don't usually watch baseball through my fingers, but i often do when soto is up!

I think there's this perception, maybe partially true as far as certain counting stats but vv unfair, that Soto has fallen shy of what people think he's capable of. Still frighteningly good, and he looks like a Hall of famer to me, *and* he's only 25.

yadier molina is back to the cardinals, this time as a special assistant to Mozeliak. but i would think it highly likely that if the cards disappoint again in 2024, oli marmol gets canned and yadi's in as manager

yankees taking a risk in trading for a boras client in the last year of his deal, but gotta think a lefty slugger like soto will be a great fit. idk if there's anything to trent grisham as a reclamation project, but he is better than a lot of the jamokes they were running out in the outfield last year.

as gyac said, they need pitching help fast (tho gyac, you forgot about frankie montas! to be fair, everybody does). they're gonna go all out for yamamoto, maybe trade another prospect for an available starter. and if they sense yamamoto isn't working out, they might re-sign their old friend jordan montgomery.

as for what they gave up, king has probably been the yankees best reliever over the past few years and showed a lot of promise as a starter. i am not mad at cashman for selling him when his value is highest though. thorpe is the other potential guy in that trade who the yankees might regret parting with (tho if soto re-signs, i doubt they'll regret it much). brito was overmatched as a big league starter last year, but could turn into a back of rotation arm. vasquez's under-the-hood stats belie some pretty good results from last year. neither vasquez nor brito get many strikeouts and in a stadium like that, you can't keep that kind of starter around for long.

i'm not sure there's much risk to this trade given that the best prospects they gave up are all pitchers. i guess there's some opportunity cost in terms of what else they have left to trade, but i doubt a better player than soto comes on the trade market this year

i'm pretty shocked that they got grisham as a throw in, too. even as is he's prob net equal w/ king from a WAR perspective & if his hitting ever returns he could be an all star

Real chance that the Padres will be much better this upcoming year than last, even subtracting soto. If Machado follows his pattern, he's going to be in the MVP conversation again. And Tatis will be back for a full year, assuming he doesn't do anything stupid.

the risk is that he doesn't re-sign, but yeah, chances are even one year of soto will be better for the team than keeping all those prospects (and king)

grisham will be good. judge doesn't have to play centerfield anymore and even if grisham is basically aaron hicks 2.0, at least he's a younger, healthier version of hicks

i don't think there's any way soto doesn't hit free agency. but maybe the yankees are hoping that a year of mystique, aura and a short RF porch will give them a leg up

otoh given what they're paying judge/cole/rodon/stanton, i'm not sure they can afford him (given hal's appetite)

"But I do think that there’s something about Soto’s particular greatness that makes it somewhat easier to deal him. He’s probably a below-average outfielder and probably a below-average baserunner, and a great deal of his value comes from his patience at the plate — he has led the league in walks three times. He doesn’t seem to me a conventionally EXCITING player like those young and untradeable players mentioned above. I’m sure Nationals fans loved him, and I’m sure Padres fans loved him, but how deep was that love? Was it Ken Griffey Jr. level love? No, certainly not. Was it Johnny Bench love? Was it Mickey Mantle love? Was it Al Kaline love?

You would think that the Yankees will go all the way with Soto now, that they will, in due course, spend the big money and sign him long-term and make Aaron Judge-Juan Soto the best righty-lefty hitting combination in baseball today, and one of the best in baseball history. We’ll see."

Posnanski, yes. Omar's post about counting stats makes more or less the same point.

I know Votto is loved in Cincinnati now, but didn't he go through a version of that for the first half of his career? With the Cincinnati media, anyway--not sure about the fans, and at least management didn't trade him away.

i can imagine him getting to miggy-level love if his teams stop trading him every 18 months

no one is getting to mantle-level, because baseball is no longer the dominant sport that it was in his time

That Verdugo Photoshop is a violation