2022-23 Hot Stove thread

reports are starting to come out saying Judge is signing with the giants.

I'll be bowling tonight with a huge Giants fan (how huge? he thought Lincecum was going to go into the HOF) who doesn't like Aaron Judge. Something tells me he may come around.

$360M for 10 years, which would take him into his age-40 season. It's like Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera never happened (and, great as he was last year, Judge doesn't really start at their level).

Not sure this is actually confirmed yet, the report is being walked back by Heyman

xp lmao I’m sorry but you were hyping Judge like crazy all year!

Bellinger to Cubs, supposedly

Breaking: Cody Bellinger and the Chicago Cubs are in agreement on a one-year, $17.5 million contract, sources tell @JeffPassan. pic.twitter.com/oRoKx76xq8

— ESPN (@espn) December 6, 2022

they needed the new jason heyward

That’s a lot of money for some dude who hit, what, like .206? The Ricketts aren’t serious people. They’ve got their cash cows/fan appeasement working just like they want.

xp lmao I’m sorry but you were hyping Judge like crazy all year!

Everything's relative, right? He's not first-decade Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera.

Actually, he's got a better career OPS+ right now than either Cabrera's first 10 seasons, or his first 13 (Cabrera's last great year). Surprised...staying in the lineup's another issue. (Pujols' OPS+ is better by about 10 points through a decade.)

AJ’s defense and baserunning edge is no small factor. Cabrera is a first ballot hall guy but he’s never had a season as good as Judge’s rookie year or last year, which is the catch; Cabrera was durable and Judge…well the jury is out on his health for the next few years.

_xp lmao I’m sorry but you were hyping Judge like crazy all year!_

Everything's relative, right? He's not first-decade Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera.

On pin and needles

Here comes Haniger ✍️

The #SFGiants have agreed to terms with OF Mitch Haniger pic.twitter.com/3T6PIBKVzh

— SFGiants (@SFGiants) December 7, 2022

Good, they do need two outfielders. I want Correa.

If only generational greats matter then why follow the game at all?

What on earth are you talking about? You seem to be conflating two things that have nothing to do with each other. Yes, I was really excited about Judge last season; that did not imply that I thought some team should go out and sign him for some obscene amount of money that would carry him through to his age-40 season. And to underscore that, I brought up Pujols and Cabrera.

David Price retired won't pitch in 2023.

AJ’s defense and baserunning edge is no small factor. Cabrera is a first ballot hall guy but he’s never had a season as good as Judge’s rookie year or last year

Cabrera didn't really get going till his third season, and that also gives Judge an edge. There are a couple of Cabrera seasons I'd take over Judge's rookie year, including his TC season, but yeah, Judge last year beats every Cabrera season (even every Pujols season by OPS+). But you'd think teams would look to those two guys on the back end of their contracts before opening up the vault for Judge.

taijuan walker to the phillies, 4 years, $72m

Source confirms: Aaron Judge in agreement with Yankees, nine years, $360M. First: @JonMorosi.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 7, 2022

love the deal, might not be a great one in 2029 but that’s a problem for 2029 me

Looking forward to him being great again

Great. Over-extended, of course, but a) he's where he should be, b) they clearly had no choice if they wanted to re-sign him, and c) money's meaningless to the Yankees anyway, so he won't become an albatross to some other team that really can't afford him.

Aaron Judge flew into San Diego at the last minute to decide among three teams: the New York Yankees, the San Francisco Giants and the San Diego Padres. The Yankees bumped their offer to nine years and $360 million, and in the end, Judge decided he wanted to remain a Yankee.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 7, 2022

Didn't know San Diego was in the mix--can't say that Judge/Machado/Tatis wouldn't have been something to see.

Ah well, at least we don’t have to listen to 2.5 years of speculation about whether he can break the NL record

Went back and checked, and the extension he turned down before the season started was ~210M/7 years; I know there's more math involved, but in the simplest version, this contract nets him an extra 150M/2 years.

Good for him, I says.

did jeter (or mattingly) actually wear a C like a hockey captain? because it has been suggested that judge will

https://i.imgur.com/EYOpdGY.jpg

Cheugy ass franchise

I had to decompress plus the excellent Police poll. Not landing Judge could actually be a blessing in disguise, I'm fine with a low level approach, with or without Correa. Farhan Zaidi knows what he is doing but the farm system needs to start producing.

Bogaerts to the Padres, 11 years 280M? Can't say that the Padres aren't trying this winter.

lol the red sox are all like TAKE OUR MONEY and the only one paying attention is kenle_y

Jeter definitely wore the C, I remember it

I tried googling this and turned up nothing except this a arm patch which says captain
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/61/15/05/12898663/8/1200x0.jpg

It’s no electrical tape C

The Captain? pic.twitter.com/Er67nkoWV9

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) September 10, 2021

Maybe he included the C with his gift baskets

weird. mandela effect??

It seems like the kind of thing he’d do though right?

James and Posnanski both wrote about the Red Sox yesterday (well, Posnanski was actually writing about Judge):

James - "My reasons for wanting Xander back with the Red Sox don't have too much to do with winning. They can win with Xander; if they spend the same money on some other star, they'll be as likely to win. But Xander is the captain of all the class acts. Something there you can't replace."

Posnanski: "And yet this team dickered around with Judge, lowballed him ($213 million for seven years), then bizarrely made their bad offer public. I still don’t know what the Yankees were thinking on that one. They said that they went public for “transparency purposes,” which you know is a whole lot of hooey. My best guess is they did it to mildly embarrass Judge for not accepting so much money … maybe they thought that would bring him back to the negotiating table. My second-best guess is they did it to show their fans that they really did make a good-faith effort … you know, in case Judge left.*

*This, I think, was the Red Sox strategy before they shamefully let Mookie Betts go. I don’t have any inside information here, but I honestly don’t think the Red Sox made a serious offer to keep Betts. I think they made various lowball offers and when Betts turned those down, what do you know, whispers suddenly circulated that Betts wanted out and that he wouldn’t sign with the Red Sox at any price. Then, voila, the Red Sox traded him so they could get under the luxury tax threshold. “It’s just business,” Betts says. “It is what it is.”

...I mentioned at the top that there’s a lesson here. And it’s a delightful one: DO NOT TRY TO SHORTCHANGE YOUR MARQUEE PLAYERS."

Machado, Bogarts, and Tatis: not as rock-star euphonious as Betts, Bogarts, and Ortiz, but they should be quite formidable.

Thanks I hate it

it’s Bogaerts by the way

I think I've been misspelling that for years.

Baggarly writes about the Giants side of the Judge trade:

Not at any point during a two-day summit that could’ve taught a timeshare agent a thing or two about the art of the hard sell. Not when his parents, Wayne and Patty, drove into the city from the Central Valley to dine with top club executives in the ballpark’s Gotham Club. Not when they saw the look on Judge’s face as a curtain parted and Rich Aurilia, his favorite player while growing up, made a surprise entrance.

None of it felt forced or perfunctory. His parents didn’t make a token appearance, excuse themselves, and get halfway across the Bay Bridge before dessert. The two retired schoolteachers stayed deep into the night, charmed Giants officials with their wholesomeness and then politely declined the offer of a hotel room for the night.

This would be a family decision for Judge and his wife, Samantha. You do not ride a stalking horse in a homecoming parade.

But the Giants also knew what they were up against. They understood what it meant for Judge to continue to build his legacy in New York, where he’d just hit more home runs in a season than Babe Ruth or Roger Maris or anyone else who ever wore Yankee pinstripes. The Giants understood where the money would go and that didn’t deter them from presenting themselves as a legitimate destination for Judge to mash baseballs throughout his thirtysomething years.

But they knew this was not a player who could be bought. He was a player who needed to be sold.

At just after 5 a.m. Wednesday, Giants president Farhan Zaidi was awakened from whatever shallow somnolence his jangles of adrenaline had allowed him to enter. He could hear his cell phone buzzing on the nightstand. Before he could adjust his eyes, he understood what his screen would tell him.

“You’re probably not going to get a yes in a 5 a.m. text,” Zaidi said.

willson contreras to the cards, one of my favorite players to one of my least favorite teams, ugh.

i missed that the cubs signed jameson taillon

mets and phils in all out war to see who can get the most jan 6 indictments on their 40 man rosters https://t.co/u8baAjRa68

— express written consent haver (@KenRosenthot) December 7, 2022

Machado, Bogarts, and Tatis: not as rock-star euphonious as Betts, Bogarts, and Ortiz, but they should be quite formidable.

Don’t forget Soto

i gotta say that's going to be one good-looking team and i don't mean their batting averages

You don’t mean Cubs do you

(xxpost) I did, embarrassingly enough, twice in this thread. (Doesn't quite work in the context of the joke, but no one under 60's going to get that anyway.) Which would have made Judge-Machado-Soto-Tatis just about the most fearsome quartet since who knows what.