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

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.