Stroman to Mets for Kay, Woods Richardson

[And1Skip]

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[polo007]

No blockbuster deal, but Twins happy to bolster bullpen with Sam Dyson - The Athletic

But the Twins had hoped to add even more to their group. They spent the better part of the last month trying to find a way to make a big splash before Wednesday’s deadline. Those efforts intensified over the past week as the Twins pursued several front-of-the-rotation starting pitchers, including Trevor Bauer, Noah Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman, and they made inquiries about Zack Greinke.

Stroman was the first target and sources indicated the Twins were disappointed when Toronto didn’t give them a chance to match an offer they believed they could have outdone. The Blue Jays were rebuffed when they originally asked the Twins for either of their top prospects, Royce Lewis or Alex Kirilloff, and never called back before accepting a deal for two New York Mets pitching prospects.

After Stroman landed in New York, the Twins moved on to Noah Syndergaard, only to learn the Mets wanted major-league help or both Lewis and Kirilloff. The Twins had no interest in parting with center fielder Byron Buxton to acquire Syndergaard and would have parted with one of their top prospects in the right package, but talks never advanced. Syndergaard was effectively pulled off the market Tuesday night.

That left the Twins in pursuit of Greinke and Bauer, who were traded but had difficult conditions attached.

Traded to the Cincinnati Reds by Cleveland on Tuesday, Bauer would only have joined the Twins via an expensive three-team deal. Greinke, who landed in Houston in a stunning last-minute trade, would have only joined the Twins after waiving a no-trade clause, which may have been a sticking point. Nobody had a chance to find out how much difficulty the clause would have caused because the Astros, who weren’t on the list, were so aggressive the Diamondbacks determined it was Houston or nobody else.

That the Reds and Mets, two teams who aren’t contending in 2019 but plan to make a push in 2020, acquired two of the top starting pitchers available threw a wrench into everyone’s plans and kept prices absurdly high.

[I_Like_Dirt]

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Sounds like the Twins were being cheap, which really isn't surprising given their history and market, and now are trying to play it like they weren't. The impression I get here is that a lot of teams were being cheap. A few weren't and made some headscratching trades, including the Mets, but for the most part, teams hoarded their good prospects and weren't actually interested in making big plays. Other teams weren't so concerned about the Jays changing the market or anything. They were concerned that they were going to take heat for being cheap and not actually trying to make a push to win when prices weren't exorbitant. And we're seeing that now.

The Twins have one of the best teams in baseball right now and have barely drawn more fans than the Jays have this season. Now, they're telling those fans through their actions that they aren't actually going to make any pushes even when there was ample opportunity so they're trying to convince those fans with words rather than actions that not making a trade was the right thing to do and is the fault of other teams being mean to them.

[ratul]

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In line with the racial overtones. Slave owner mentality.

[Schad]

Are you **** kidding me? "Team control" is the standard nomenclature for the six years before a player qualifies for free agency, not a **** "slave owner mentality".

[JaysRule15]

They really should make kids study business in school so they'd be familiar with that type of talk.

[Brinbe]

They really should make kids study business in school so they'd be familiar with that type of talk.

imagine caping for this crappy front office lmfao. ignoring the racial aspects, because it's not necessary to conflate all of it and that's not the argument that stroman was making, what is there to understand and be familiar with?

rogers are a public-traded company that obviously wants to slash costs after probably losing money the past few years. and like many other billionaire owners in baseball, they're in it to make money. so as long as young, effective players are stuck making jacksht while arguably at their youngest/most effective, getting more of those players is the ultimate goal. 25 roster players/40 man making the absolute minimum and then dump them before they reach the last years of arb/fa. and then begin the churn all over again.

lmfao at acting like that's a hard concept to understand.

but just because shatkins are attempting it doesn't mean they're ACTUALLY GOOD AT IT. they're not the athletics, they're not the rays.

they're the baseball colangelos and bums like grichuk are their bargnanis.

[Schad]

so as long as young, effective players are stuck making jacksht while arguably at their youngest/most effective, getting more of those players is the ultimate goal.

Yeah, I mean, this is the goal of every team in baseball these days. Baseball has a major problem right now: performance is far more front-loaded than it once was, which means that most players are at their best during their years of rookie control, and free agency is far more hazardous than it once was in an era where players start falling off in their early 30s with regularity. It's something that the MLBPA needs to fight to fix, because right now there is neither a financial nor a competitive advantage in spending huge piles of money...when the Dodgers are refusing to trade prospects (and have seen their payroll fall by $50m) for actual competitive reasons, you have a major issue.

But until it is fixed, prioritizing younger, cheaper, and most importantly better talent over giving long-term deals with diminishing returns is the rational course of action. And we have a lot of young, cheap and good talent, so long as we don't impede our chances of competing by throwing a bunch of money at guys who'll be aging out of their primes when the young players are capable of leading us to competitiveness.

They signed Grichuk to an extension because he was willing to sign for what amounted to a below-market deal for his production to that point. Stroman isn't signing to a below-market deal. Given that, there is no logical reason to pay him a princely sum in the hopes that he is still good when we are ready to be good again.

[Wo1verine]

so as long as young, effective players are stuck making jacksht while arguably at their youngest/most effective, getting more of those players is the ultimate goal.

Yeah, I mean, this is the goal of every team in baseball these days. Baseball has a major problem right now: performance is far more front-loaded than it once was, which means that most players are at their best during their years of rookie control, and free agency is far more hazardous than it once was in an era where players start falling off in their early 30s with regularity. It's something that the MLBPA needs to fight to fix, because right now there is neither a financial nor a competitive advantage in spending huge piles of money...when the Dodgers are refusing to trade prospects (and have seen their payroll fall by $50m) for actual competitive reasons, you have a major issue.

But until it is fixed, prioritizing younger, cheaper, and most importantly better talent over giving long-term deals with diminishing returns is the rational course of action. And we have a lot of young, cheap and good talent, so long as we don't impede our chances of competing by throwing a bunch of money at guys who'll be aging out of their primes when the young players are capable of leading us to competitiveness.

I don't like the idea of going the Hudson / Sogard FA route where we dump these players for basically nothing while losing the majority of our games.

We are going to have both JR's, Biggio, Bo, Jansen, Pearson, Kay etc getting lots of playing time next year while making the league minimum

Go out and take advantage of that and sign some good FA's that won't block anyone so we can speed this tear down up.

[Schad]

I'm guessing that we'll spend quite a bit on free agents, but more value purchases. One of the oddities with this board is that, every year, people demand that we throw massive contracts at marquee free agents, without going back and looking in retrospect at how those contracts turned out. Most of them went very sideways, because massive contracts for free agents go sideways at a rather high rate these days.

Sogard really doesn't have a role here going forward; not only is he 33 and a pending FA, but he's 33, a pending FA, has never been good prior to this season, and plays a position occupied by one of our better-regarded prospects. Hudson's not actually all that good; his ERA is outperforming his peripherals, as often happens with relievers in small samples, but he's basically the same pitcher now that he was a year ago, when we were able to pick him up off the scrap heap for a teensy contract.

[JaysRule15]

They really should make kids study business in school so they'd be familiar with that type of talk.

imagine caping for this crappy front office lmfao. ignoring the racial aspects, because it's not necessary to conflate all of it and that's not the argument that stroman was making, what is there to understand and be familiar with?

rogers are a public-traded company that obviously wants to slash costs after probably losing money the past few years. and like many other billionaire owners in baseball, they're in it to make money. so as long as young, effective players are stuck making jacksht while arguably at their youngest/most effective, getting more of those players is the ultimate goal. 25 roster players/40 man making the absolute minimum and then dump them before they reach the last years of arb/fa. and then begin the churn all over again.

lmfao at acting like that's a hard concept to understand.

but just because shatkins are attempting it doesn't mean they're ACTUALLY GOOD AT IT. they're not the athletics, they're not the rays.

they're the baseball colangelos and bums like grichuk are their bargnanis.

I'm not caping for anything lmao. I'm just saying that the term "years of control" is common in the business world when it comes to contracts. To call that a "slave owner mentality" is downright ignorant and uneducated regardless of where you stand on Shapiro and the front office's moves.

[polo007]

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“I’ve made the all-star game. I had a Gold Glove. I threw back-to-back (seasons) of 200 innings and I never heard a word from any of those guys (in the front office),” Stroman said. “At the end of the day, I’m extremely excited to be (with the Mets.)”

The only time during our interview that Stroman gets close to animated is when the subject of an extension with the Jays is broached.

“There was nothing offered ever from their perspective,” Stroman says of Jays GM Ross Atkins’ comments that there were some talks. “If they do say that, it’s a complete lie. It is what it is. That’s the truth. I’m not going to beat around that."

“It’s pretty apparent. I’ve been waiting to take some type of deal since I’ve been there. I’ve been offered nothing.”

Stroman’s point: It should have been automatic that the Jays would have been interested in showing him the money.

On Friday, however, he acknowledged that some of his angst was directed at Jays management.

“The emotions, when it happened, that was just (reacting) to how some of the process was handled with some of the front office,” Stroman said. “It wasn’t how I should have been treated. And they handled some of the things very poorly, so it was more me just voicing my opinion."

“We, as athletes, we have opinions, too, and I’ve been there for so long. I love the city. I love Canada. I love all the fans. Obviously, I was frustrated with how it was handled.”

As a point of balance, there were some in the Jays clubhouse that had grown tired of Stroman’s act. Though unwilling to go on the record, we heard stories in the days following the trade of a player who was, at times, difficult.

“I loved everything about him between the lines,” one Jays official said. “But some of what he did was getting to be a bit much. It wasn’t always the best situation for the young players. He wasn’t the most positive influence. He knew he was going to be traded and that was part of it.”

[Fairview4Life]

Looks like the Twins went to the Danny Ainge school of post deadline press relations.

[I_Like_Dirt]

Looks like the Twins went to the Danny Ainge school of post deadline press relations.

If the Minnesota leaks are to be believed, the Jays made an offer and the Twins said no. The Twins then made no counter offers and became upset when the Jays made a trade with another team and didn't tell them what their other offers were to allow them to try and beat those deals by $0.01. The only reason it's getting any play as such, and likely the only reason they really leaked so much, is because the Jays are a major media market and are getting hammered at home for it so they knew that there would be significant media that would run with it regardless of how ridiculous they were. And for what it's worth, I don't think it was necessarily a bad move by the Twins to stay out of trades. To try and play it as though they absolutely were prepared to beat other offers but never actually make offers is pretty ridiculous, so naturally a lot of people are going to run with it.

[Schad]

The Twins also came in for a little criticism at home, because they're in an awkward position...most of their rotation hits free agency after this season, so while they're a young team overall there's a bit of pressure to compete this season, because they'll need quite an overhaul to stay atop the AL Central.

There's logic in them standing pat and aiming for more sustainable success, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a PR boost to be had by signaling that you were totally in the market to buy, but events conspired against you.

[I_Like_Dirt]

Oh absolutely, Schad, hence my previous post a bit earlier on the page. They're aiming to be continuously good rather than actually take a shot and risk being bad. And I get the logic because they can't take a hit like the Jays have in their market. Even being really good now and they barely outdraw the Jays. Still, from a purely baseball perspective, unless they win the world series it's going to be seen as a waste on their part. Their attendance has spiked this season relative to what it was and those fans are going to pick up on it, and the players are also going to pick up on it, too. A lot of teams seem to have almost given up entirely on shorter-term boosts.

[Schad]

It's a tough one. The Twins are a near-lock to make the playoffs, and extremely likely win their division. This is their best chance to go deep in quite some time, yet they only have an 8.8% chance to win the Series at the moment, 16.8% to reach it. Which aren't terrible odds, but a single player doesn't move the needle all that much. What's the appropriate long-term price to boost 16.8% to 20% or something? Right now, the league-wide consensus seems to be "not a whole hell of a lot".

[I_Like_Dirt]

It's a tough one. The Twins are a near-lock to make the playoffs, and extremely likely win their division. This is their best chance to go deep in quite some time, yet they only have an 8.8% chance to win the Series at the moment, 16.8% to reach it. Which aren't terrible odds, but a single player doesn't move the needle all that much. What's the appropriate long-term price to boost 16.8% to 20% or something? Right now, the league-wide consensus seems to be "not a whole hell of a lot".

Seems that way, absolutely, and the Twins were one of the first teams to identify the advantage of cycling younger players. They aren't going to change what they're doing at this point but they don't want to look bad while they do it. The league clearly does need a massive restructuring of when contracts are paid. It almost doesn't matter how much teams pay for prospects or how little they pay free agents - with how little prospects are paid and how long they're under cost controls, there really isn't much teams or players can do to make veterans better value than prospects. For all the hype about the Bauer trade, I actually like what the Jays got from the Mets more in terms of prospects and the only reason I can see for arguing that Cleveland made out better is that they got guys who will help them immediately in their playoff push so didn't sacrifice this season in a way that was irrelevant to the Jays.

[Schad]

The contract situation absolutely has to change. Otherwise, the players' share of revenues is going to keep diminishing; they'll start to wish that they had a salary cap, because at least that has a guaranteed revenue threshold.

[Schad]

Kinda interesting:

Hank: If you were GM of the Blue Jays, would you rather have the return for Stroman they got, or a Balazovic/Duran package from the Twins?

12:29
Kiley McDaniel: I think we would have SWR and Kay as the 1st and 4th best prospects among those four, so it’s kinda a coin flip leaning toward NYM package since they have the best guy

Jhoan Duran's rated as a FV 50/top 100 prospect by Fangraphs. They have Balazovic a bit lower, but MLBPipeline has him in the top 100 as well. Suggests that SWR's stock is quite a bit higher than his current rankings.