hot stove 2018-19

they also picked up Brett Lawrie on a minor-league deal, which is surprising because I had no idea he was still playing - seems like a longshot given his mysterious quad injury and the fact that the dude can't hit breaking balls, but taking fliers on dudes like this is what Milwaukee does now. sad to think he was Milwaukee's blue-chip prospect once upon a time.

what's surprising to me is that Lawrie was better than i remembered, he put up a 15.1 bWAR in what amounted to a little more than 3 1/2 full seasons (588 games played over 6 years).

MACHADO to PADRES

LET'S GOOOOO

hope he's better than kemp was

10 years, $300m, no word on opt-outs

huh!

was still holding out a shred of hope he'd sign with the white sox but this is still more interesting than him going to philly

this is stupid

opt-out after the fifth season

i expect harper will sign relatively soon too, then, now that machado has a value

Congrats to the soon to be 71-91 Padres.

Franny Machado, 3B
Franchy Cordero, CF
Franmil Reyes, LF

great time to be a fran

i for one applaud the padres for this giant contract, let's get these players paid

idk if they'll be any good (they prob still won't lol) and it's never fun to watch a decent hitter go to petco but i appreciate their paying the guy what he deserves unlike these other vampires

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/603331836/twitterProfilePhoto.jpg

Machado's a great player, possibly historically great--with some obvious baggage re his temperament--but have the Padres ever been a really successful, financially sound organization? I know they made a couple of WS (in years when there were better NL teams). They've basically tied their hands for the foreseeable future, and they're not particularly close at the moment. And if they don't win soon, Machado will start complaining.

typical Padres

we see you Cameron

padres are in an interesting situation as the only (i believe) MLB team without direct NFL/NBA/NHL competition. they currently have the best/deepest set of prospects in the game. machado's contract takes their payroll from something like $70m to something like $100m, which won't crack the top 20 and is less than half of the top spenders.

i wouldn't call signing one of the top 10 players in the game 'tying their hands' but rather making an aggressive move at the right time. one that teams like the pirates and white sox never seem to have the stomach for.

Cubs weren't successful until they were. Obviously, the Padres believe that right now the core of young players is good enough to patch holes with free agents and thinking about seriously competing in 2020. World series appearances in decades past are no indication of anything at all.

xxxpost to Clem

if machado cared about winning soon, he would've signed with a team further along in their development, so i don't think he's going to complain about that

i could be wrong – but he doesn't seem like the type to let silly facts like that stop him from being a douche.

To be fair most teams who are further along in their development seem to be quite content with their shortstop situation.

lotsa douches have helped win pennants

Machado's deal is only $9M less than the $309M that the Padres spent on free agents in the past 25 offseasons combined.

don't almost all teams have billion dollar tv contracts now? now the padres have only $700M of their tv money left to spend over the next 10 years (or whatever, I'm making these numbers up but you get the idea)

There's that, and almost every team is at least tens of millions of dollars below the luxury tax threshold, so literally 20+ teams can't complain about having no chance with top tier free agents.

san diego is the eighth-largest city and 17th-largest metro area in the usa, it should hardly be considered a 'small market' anyway

they currently have the best/deepest set of prospects in the game

I don't keep up well with farm systems. If that's true, then the move makes a lot more sense.

their system is insane.

their rotation, as currently constructed, is pretty bad. i mean i love joey lucchesi but not as a no. 1 starter. but they could still afford keuchel or gio and they have the prospects to trade for kluber or whomever

(it would be total bullshit for the indians to trade kluber, but that doesn't mean they won't)

Yeah, if their infield is like Mejia-Hosmer-Urias-Tatis-Machado by 2020, and those three youngsters play as good as hoped, they could have an incredibly potent lineup (and afaik they're all considered at least defensively capable if not above average?). Urias was doing something like .300/.400/.500 at AAA? and mejia iirc broke the record for most games hitting streak in the minors, hit safely in something absurd like 60 games. and of course tatis is tatis, maybe the most hyped prospect not named Vlad or Eloy in 2019.

50 games, not 60, but still wild

Mejia-Hosmer-Urias-Tatis-Machado by 2020

glaring weakspot with hosmer, though. they really shit the bed with that one

he's only 29 and he already plays like late-period pujols every other year

still above-average defensively, which is something, plus virtually all 1Bs are bad right now somehow

wait no i think i am fucking him up with someone else... he is... bad defensively?

you'd be forgiven for thinking he was good defensively, because he somehow got gold gloves in 2013-15 and again in 2017.

hosmer's doing a latter-day brett saberhagen thing where he's only good in odd years, so they should be solid for '19 and '21

according to fangraphs, he was 10th worst defensive 1B in the American League in 2017, out of 12 qualifying players.

and if you expand it American League 1B from 2013-2017, the years during which he won 4 gold gloves, he was the very worst fielding first basemen out of 10 qualifying players.

the gold gloves are as predictive of merit as winning a grammy

one plus thing on the machado deal that i didn't think of - he'll most likely be at 3B once tatis jr comes up, which will increase his value

wouldn't moving his bat from ss decrease his value?

He’s better at 3B iirc?

I don't keep up well with farm systems. If that's true, then the move makes a lot more sense.

padres have the best system

https://cdn-blogs.fangraphs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/prospects-fv-50-plus.png

Plenty of good 1b I shall not stand there and have the names of Votto and Goldschmidt insulted.

May work out well, but the thing with the Padres and 90% of all teams is that a move like that can't not work out. There's not much margin of error. The Yankees and Red Sox and Dodgers can make big, expensive mistakes and it's no big deal--they just throw more money around. Other teams can't.

that's true (although i think many of those teams *can* actually afford to make mistakes and are pretending otherwise)

but i think machado is probably about as sure a thing as is possible. he's really good, and at the end of his contract he'll be younger than robinson cano is right now

It's nuts. When he has the option to opt out in 5 years he will be Cano's age when he signed his mega-contract.

i think the padres could have afforded to make a mistake with machado, but not so much after making mistakes on hosmer and wil myers (although those were smaller mistakes). but if something goes wrong with machado, they're going to have a roster of really cheap star young players weighed down by three big long contracts. on the other hand, if machado performs as expected, hosmer is odd-year hosmer, and wil myers bounces back at all over the next few years, their lineup is going to be pretty scary

I assume that Harper will now sign somewhere for $310M, giving him and Boras the satisfaction of having won the off-season. But I'd prefer having Machado over Harper at that price, and it's not even close.

I would prefer Machado if I were a manager or perhaps even a GM. But as an owner or the marketing department it would be Harper all the way; and I think it counts.

Plenty of good 1b I shall not stand there and have the names of Votto and Goldschmidt insulted.

― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, February 19, 2019 7:55 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i said virtually! there used to be like 15 of em but now it's like... votto, goldschmidt, freddie... rizzo is ok but not as good as he was... olson? bellinger for like half the season?

far cry from when you had miggy, pujols, teixeira, cdavis, edwin, agonz, and a bunch of those above guys all crushing it (although who knows maybe i'm just conflating every year from the past 10 years)