The 2021-2022 Non-Fungible Hot Stove Thread (Presented by Monkeyjizz)

rumor has it that they’re close on correa as well

they were awful in april, essentially .500 the rest of the way. seems reasonable that some good free agents could get them toward upper-80s wins

gonna have to cut miggy loose at some point tho

he's due!

i just notice the hot stove is sponsored by "monkeyjizz"

This thing doesn't pay for itself!

Thor to LAA 1/21

I don't really get it...he's not gonna give you a ton of innings this year. Can't see him going deep into October if they get there. They got free of the Pujols contract and decided to replace it with this? Not sure they're gonna actually compete unless they blow past the luxury tax now

esp with a pick attached to him... MLBTR had predicted he would take the QO since, i assume, his value is somewhere below the 18MM. dude has huge upside, but not worth that much when you consider the uncertainty and draft pick

no idea how to check this but there can’t be too many Qualified free agents to be offered a one-year deal — who gives up a top draft pick for so little?

Tbf they only lose their second pick

yankees designate clint frazier, rougned odor and tyler wade

rip

Clint has CTE and its pretty obvious

such flow, tho

Had to google what happened to Frazier. Sounds p scary. Had no idea.

so that Franco contract is something else!

whoooooooooooooa what a deal for the rays!!!!??

Seventy games into his Major League career, Rays shortstop Wander Franco has agreed to a precedent-setting 11-year, $182MM contract extension, according to multiple reports. The contract comes with a $25MM club option for an additional season and a series of $3MM escalators based on MVP voting that bring its maximum value up to $223MM over 12 years. He’s represented by agent Manny Paula.

i guess Acuna got 8 years, $100M (which also seems like a complete skill) before he hit 1 year of service time, so this is an improvement on that. but Franco is about as can't miss as it gets

fantastic deal for the rays because he will be very good trade bait if they need to refresh their farm anytime in the next several years

matz to cardinals

Deal is pending physical. First: @JeffPassan. https://t.co/iAlXczzT4D

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 24, 2021

seems like the impending lockout is speeding up the market this year compared to the slogs of last couple years

Nothing to do with anything, and I totally understand, but the lengths a site like mlb.com has to go to with regards to content in the off-season always makes me laugh. Every day, there's a variation on this kind of piece:

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-teams-reasons-to-be-thankful-2021

Piece I'd actually like to read: "The One Guy on Each Team All His Teammates Secretly Hate."

starling marte, mark canha and eduardo escobar all to the mets

Matz really hurt him, didn’t he?!

would seem to suggest that conforto is gone, and i could see them non-tendering dom smith (not that it would cost much to keep him)

Dom Smith seemed to have figured it all out in 2020 only to forget it all in 2021. Still rooting for the guy though.

corey kluber to tampa

didn't expect that.
next few days will likely be nutty as everyone tries to sign before the cba expires.

long-term deal from the Twins for Byron Buxton

Marcus Semien is close to a deal with the Texas Rangers

I assume they're offering mountains more than anyone else, because that seems like a terrible choice otherwise.

Yeah, if you look at the rest of the roster it is really hard to understand what the idea is there. They're years away.

175 mil for semien, 100 for buxton

avisail garcia to the marlins

I'll be interested to hear what the Jays offered (if they did). He just opted out of a potential 100-win team for a team coming off 100 losses, and he didn't end up back home, either.

jays are probably better off saving that money to spend on vlad/bo/pitching, i would think

Ya. I see the jays offering a fair deal (like 4 years) and saying they understand if he goes for a larger deal elsewhere since they need to focus on pitching etc. I guess he wanted to play SS again too - so I was surprised to see the rangers weee still talking to story.

And also they just spent that money on pitching! Gausman for 5 years, 110m.
Bummed this likely means the end of Ray here tho.
I wonder if they jays liked Gausman overall better for the next 5 years or if they just like that contract better then what Ray will likely land. I know the jays had been high on Gausman for a while now.

ray has had a lot of ups and downs -- he was great this year and was great in 2017 -- but i'm not so sure he's a great long-term bet

anyway look at the jays having a plan and executing it imo

also the fact that they managed to snag semien and ray at their most economical moments speaks well to the jays' front office

Semien was a goddamned gift in every way last year.

I like Ray a lot better than Gausman but Ray is probably looking for a $200M deal and Gausman cost half that, so I get the logic. Berrios/Ryu/Gausman/Manoah is a more than solid rotation.

Max Scherzer and the Mets are finalizing $130M, 3-year deal. Minor details to go only.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) November 29, 2021

well all right then

angry/upset Steve Cohen sure is something

Mets and Rangers spending a lot of money to miss the playoffs in 2022.

How many grand slams to relief pitchers will Scherzer give up this year, though.

damn! did not expect Scherzer to get $43M/year at 37 years old. then again, i guess he hasn't had a subpar season since like...2011?

and even that was only subpar by his standards - i'll take a 3.70 FIP for most seasons

I guess if Cohen wants to recreate the 1993 Mets, he's going to need his Bret Saberhagen to go with his Vince Coleman.

the pirates have countered by signing jerad eickhoff, who has a 6.48 ERA over the past four seasons

Soto, Tatis, Machado, Bell...awesome.

hosmer has a no-trade clause in his contract and washington is on the list. i'm sure it'll just lead to him getting paid more but it would be hilarious if he ruined the whole deal by refusing.

oh i see michael mentioned that

Saw that too...Trying to think of Hosmer showing up for work the next day if he killed the deal.

Kind of feels akin to when the Mets traded Tom Seaver in the late ‘70s. That one still hurts.

Does seem like Hosmer is resisting and so the Padres will probably have to give up someone else.

looks like hosmer vetoed the trade hahaha

they will prob wind up adding a third team to take him, i presume?

Apparently Hosmer has now been traded to Boston, so while he escaped Washington he isn’t able to stay in SD.

Boston way better place to land than Wash, even if it is humiliating how you got there.

Looks like Luke Voit is going to Washington instead of Hosmer now. Rough twist of fate for him.

a) Everybody wants Eric Hosmer.
b) Nobody wants Eric Hosmer.

i don’t understand these red sox moves

No one can say the padres aren’t all the way in, especially with the dodgers in their way.

sox need a 1b who can hit

the other stuff is bewildering

syndergaard to philly for lol mickey moniak

harrison bader goes to the yankees for jordan montgomery

toronto has acquired the unvaccinated whit merrifield

and it appears that the rockies made zero trades between the ASG and deadline

angels are approaching rockies territory at this point in that i have no idea what they're doing and it's getting sad in a different kind of way than it has been

when a 38yo middle reliever like jesse chavez is available, you have to find a way

i just learned that chavez is the most traded player, ever. 9 trades in 15 seasons!

pretty annoyed the white sox basically didn’t do anything, they really need a 2b who can hit (ie not josh harrison or leury garcia)

Manny Machado on Hosmer: "We got a great player (Soto) but we lost the best teammate I ever had."

it looks like one of the return players for Hader is being DFA'd? Seems likely he won't clear waivers:

Although Lamet technically has options remaining, Hogg points out that he recently surpassed five years of MLB service time. Players beyond that threshold cannot be optioned without their consent, meaning Lamet had to be DFA’d to be removed from the roster. That also means that, should Lamet clear waivers, he would have the right to refuse an outright assignment and elect free agency without forfeiting his salary, as all players beyond five years of MLB service can.

Frankly, it would be very surprising if Lamet cleared waivers, given his track record and modest salary. He was one of the best pitchers in baseball during the shortened 2020 season, logging a 2.09 ERA over 12 starts with a 34.8% strikeout rate and 7.5% walk rate. He has dealt with injury woes in subsequent seasons, being relegated to bullpen duty and occasionally getting optioned to the minors. Still, he’s making a modest $4.775MM salary this year and can be retained for another season via arbitration. Due to his injuries, underperformance and time spent in the minors, he likely wouldn’t earn a huge raise for 2023.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/08/brewers-designate-dinelson-lamet-pedro-severino-for-assignment.html

xp obviously machado was never in a clubhouse with drake laroche

JBJ DFA

what else do i have to say

Man that's sad. I'm not sure i've ever seen anybody with his arm.

Have i related this story before? With my parents and my kids at Fenway, watching an interleague game against Arizona. Top of the first. David Price on the mound. Leadoff hitter, can't remember who, absolutely rockets the first pitch he sees to deep center. JBJ goes back for it, kind of stumbles, and can't catch up to it. Over his head. The crowd groans. Standup triple. Jackie's kicking the grass back there. Second hitter comes to the plate and laces the first pitch HE sees to shallow center field, a laser this time, dipping down, the leadoff hitter trotting slowly home along the third base line. And somehow, impossibly, Jackie makes the catch off his shoelaces. He comes up firing. The leadoff hitter is like YIKES - he scrambles back but he's too late. The throw from Jackie is a strike, no hops, tagged out. Double play. Bases clear, two outs.

Actually I must be remembering that wrong - no need to tag him out because he'd left the base too early. In any case he did not beat the throw, which appeared to come from a whirling assembly of body parts in shallow center named "Jackie Bradley Jr". The combined motion of catching the ball and throwing that strike left Jackie sprawled on the ground but when he saw the out called he bounced right up, and headed back to his spot.

The other thing I remember about him in the field, which you never got to see on the telecasts, is how if he caught the third out of the inning, he and Mookie would play a kind of game of football when they were running back into the dugout. Mookie, playing right, would run a route towards the dugout, JBJ would launch the baseball to him and Mookie would glove it on the run like a wide receiver tucking away an outlet pass. Just pure joy in that outfield.

the cubs announced they're releasing jason heyward at the end of the season. he's injured right now but they're keeping him around for "veteran presence" for the rest of the season. kind of a bummer he never really panned out as a star, he seems like a cool guy.

There were these shaky cell phone videos of him w the cubs after he rebuilt his swing for the hundredth time where he’s taking BP and crushing balls down by his ankles and i remember feeling so happy for him that he had finally figured it out.

Fun player when he was on

he might have earned his cubs salary by pumping the team back up during the rain delay of world series game 7

i was convinced dude was going to be a hall of famer!

u mad

he put up 6.4 bWAR as a 20yo!

always interesting to me to look at the JAWS of ~good~ players -- heyward obviously isn't a hall-of-famer, but he's just under 40 bWAR through his age-32 season (today's his 33rd birthday)

JAWS has him as the 55th-best right-fielder of all-time. and that's really really good!

he was never a slam dunk case, but when he signed with the cubs he was only 26 and he had already racked up 25 fWAR. i was disappointed at the time that he didn't sign with the cardinals. i thought that he was young enough that a long, 8 year contract would still be worth it for his defense alone. i thought his floor was as a 3 WAR kind of player, with superb defense more than making up for what would probably be mediocre to slightly above average offense production. but that turned out to be more like his ceiling, and it got worse from there.

https://i.imgur.com/8pFoEbP.png

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/checking-in-on-the-aging-curve/

xp and yes, jason heyward is an exceptional baseball player, especially in comparison to normal people, but also in comparison to almost all of his peers

braves sign 21-year-old michael harris II, who has played one season of double-A ball and 71 MLB games, to an 8-year, $72 million extension

Makes me wonder if Swanson is a goner after this year.