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

Correa's getting a billion then

By my calculations that means Seager will be the starting 3B for the Yanks in 2025.

Am I reading this right--Seattle got Ray for 5y/115m? Five more million that the Jays are paying Gausman? That can't be right.

By some measures, they were pretty similar last year:

https://www.fangraphs.com/warleaders.aspx?season=2021&team=all&type=2

I think the jays like Gaus better tbh. They also get the bonus of saving $5M, getting a comp pick for Ray and not having to give KG a NTC and opt-out.

To my eyes Ray is better and I’m surprised the M’s got him for that price.

Also can’t believe what the Rangers are up to. Spending half a billion on two short stops?! And they still have no pitching plus John Grey. I don’t see them playing much better than .500 and as far as I’m aware they don’t have a huge prospect crop about to break through. The timing feels all sorts of off.

Seager and Semien would be the best offensive option at pretty much any position they've got. Semien played great 2B this year.

I’m wondering where they play who, because Semien said he’d wanted to play SS wherever he wound up.

Seager's never played an inning of 2B in the majors or minors. I think there's more of a chance he plays 3B than 2B, but I guess we'll see. Sounds like they want Kiner-Falefa to play 3B which suggests to me that Seager stays at SS.

Well I hope someone told Semien the plan before he signed!

Their top hitting prospect Josh Jung is also a 3B/SS fwiw

So many of these moves seem weird, not just from the perspective of the teams but also the players, that it's probably the oldest story there is: pay me an extra dollar, and that's where I'm going.

I get that up to a point, but in the everyday world, don't most of us place great weight on where we'll be happiest--and if the money's comparable, that becomes the determinative factor? You would think that when you're dealing with sums of money exponentially (x exponentially) larger, that would be even more true--taking the lesser offer won't entail even minor adjustments to the way you live. But it's not.

who knows wtf TX is up to. this may work out moderately in the short-term but unless they have infinite money they seem to still be doomed

weird and refreshing to see a bad team try to get better

fwiw eno sarris had an athletic story comparing ray/gausman/stroman that puts them all pretty close

The Tigers (who just signed Baez) were headed in the right direction last year, right?

i feel like their hot streak last season was a bit of a fluke – but they are definitely heading in the right direction. Some of the young guys they have up, or coming up soon off the top of my head: Skubal, Mize, Baddoo and Torkelson. a decent enough young core to build around imho.

Major League Baseball announced a retroactive 20-game suspension without pay for Braves outfielder Marcell Ozuna, as per the terms of the MLB – MLBPA Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse Policy. Ozuna’s suspension was retroactively served during his time on Administrative Leave at the end of this past season; he’ll be eligible to return to the field starting in 2022. He will forfeit twenty games’ salary, as his previous Administrative Leave placement had been paid pending the results of the league’s investigation.

Ozuna was arrested on May 29 after police responded to a domestic disturbance at his residence. Court filings at the time indicated that the responding officers saw Ozuna place his hands around his wife’s neck, throw her against a wall and strike her with a cast that was on his left hand. (He had fractured two fingers in a game the week before and was on the injured list at the time).

Felony charges originally brought against Ozuna were dropped in early August, but prosecutors moved forward with a pair of misdemeanor charges. In early September, Ozuna agreed to enter into a three-to-six month domestic violence intervention program that could see those charges dropped if he completes all the required measures. The domestic violence policy allows the league to impose discipline even in the absence of criminal charges.

Ozuna signed a four-year, $65MM contract with the Braves last offseason. He remains under contract through 2024.

oh, i forgot Riley Greene!

i can't believe that either side of the tigers/baez deal was able to sign the contract w/ a straight face. will he have an OBP over .300 in any season there? will they ever finish above .500?

you could have an hours long debate about which of the contracts signed so far will look the worst in 4 years. could legit offer up 5+ options and there's still several big contracts left to be signed

i don’t think it’s *that* bad. only goes through his age 34 season, he can still hit dingers, he’s good defensively. i don’t think $23m/year is too out of line for that, if you’re unwilling to pay a lot more for correa

otoh steamer has him at just 2 WAR in year one, so yeah maybe

The deal is too long and could blow up, but if they get 2018-19 Baez or Mets Baez then it looks pretty good. Their existing SS situation was pretty bad.

these deals always more or less make sense when you do the WAR calculations and what not, the front offices and agents are all working off the same data. but obv we know most of these contracts go south way before the gradual WAR regression tables want us to believe, and these teams are only handing out whoppers this offseason. baez could be good for the tigers for a few years, he could also be horrible and useless with a contract further underwater than a shipwreck 12 months from now and nobody would be surprised. best of luck to both parties!

The Rangers hands down makes the least sense to me.

yes i would agree w/ that

i can’t get too worked up about deals that don’t extend into the players’ late 30s

like, baez will be overpaid, and probably sooner than one might hope. but i don’t expect that playing him will actively make the team worse, as has happened with miggy and prince albert for years on end

baez def the kind of player who could be cooked at like age 31 (two years from now), which is what happens w/ a lot of these deals that have presumed downside baked into the players mid to late 30s except then it turns out the player is a pumpkin almost instantaneously after the ink dries. jordan zimmerman was a 5 win player at age 28, a 3 win player at age 29, and then tigers signed him for his "prime years" and he never put up more than 1.5 WAR and was a money pit the entire time.

i understand the argument for why baez could be good for the next several years, he's an athletic up the middle player etc. but you're also banking almost entirely on that athleticism holding up for at least half the deal so that he's still a plus defender and baserunner, and/or his hitting not regressing to way below what is acceptable from a full time player let alone one being paid $23m per year. maybe it all goes right and he's giving them a good 3 or 4 WAR per year until he's 32-33... but given the history of how these big free agent deals go i would bet against that.

um

Major League Baseball secretly used 2 different types of baseballs last season

(i was able to get around the paywall by adding to pocket)

somehow when you sign a big free agent contract you immediately become half as good as you were for your previous team, somebody should look into this and see what the deal is

btw roberto perez just became the pirates’ highest-paid player (1 yr/$5m)

he is a career .206 hitter heading into his age-33 season

^^^which is another reason i can't complain about these signings. because i'm bitter

javy baez is a fun, exciting player. he will, when he's not actively berating his own fans, make detroit a more interesting team to watch. will he lead them to a championship? probably not; they only give out one a year.

the pirates aren't just cheap and stupid, they don't even care about being vaguely competitive. the biggest contract they've ever given out was six years/$60m to jason kendall 21 years ago. there are no reasons to watch a pirates game.

the blue jays didn't make the playoffs this year but i don't think any of their fans would call the season a disappointment? the rangers just became much more interesting, even if they never win a pennant. i think there's a lot of value in that for fans

i just watched the Kevin Gausman press conference. reading between the lines it seems like the Giants would not give him more than four years and i'm ok with that even though the Giants are losing an ace. Gausman only has two pitches and it did catch up to him in the second half of last year. all these NL West teams did was lay off of his spiller and then he had to adjust. he was not the same guy as they started to figure him out but still would have liked to have him back. he found a better deal and as a fan i can live with that.

jackie bradley jr is back patrolling the quirky fastnesses of fenway!! my dad is so happy

javy baez is a fun, exciting player. he will, when he's not actively berating his own fans

tbf he only ever did this to mets fans, which is excusable

btw puig signed in korea

Justin Verlander’s two-year, $50 million agreement for '22-'23 with Houston has been given formal approval by Major League Baseball, even at a time when the owners have locked out the players in the on-going labor battle.
MLB and the union have worked through the final details.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) December 13, 2021

hmm

It might just be because there is no mlb news, but it feels
Like there are more players than usual signing with the foreign leagues.

You see, you're wrong there. There's lots of MLB news--did you not hear that Old Hoss Radbourn pitched 73 complete games in one year!

what is the union membership status of erstwhile major leaguers who go to japan?

Pretty sure ppl not under contract are allowed to seek employment overseas. Its how u get dudes playing winter ball

buck to the mets

good manager, let’s hope he’s learned something about using his closer

buck !

"Well, all of a sudden there's a problem with Alonso's swing..."

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Z-9ls-ugums/hqdefault.jpg

he was one of the best baseball guys on seinfeld, as an actor. he knew how to not say or do anything and was effective for that

65 isn’t young, but it nevertheless feels like he should be older

I like it.

prince fielder is 37 years old. isn't that weird?

Yes--and Andruw Jones is only 44.

is this hot stove material? never know where to put ye olde general baseball news during the offseason

Camden Yards is being reconfigured to make it less of a launching pad, particularly for right-handed hitters. The Orioles are moving the left field fence back by nearly 30 feet feet (losing approximately 1,000 seats in the process) and also raising its height. According to MLB.com’s Zachary Silver, the distance to “true left field” will henceforth be 384 feet — in the words of GM Mike Elias, “very similar to PNC Park, in Pittsburgh.” According to Elias and assistant GM Sig Mejdal, the objective is increased neutrality. It’s no secret that pitchers haven’t been particularly enamored with taking the mound in Baltimore.