Offseason 2022-23 MLB Thread

jon abbey

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I saw this a bunch on twitter over the weekend, mostly being presented the way you've done here, ie, in a positive light. I think it's absolute horseshit and I don't get, at all, why everyone thinks this is so cool. It's a cowardly sucker punch that could have ended the guy's career if he'd connected better. Cabrera should be thrown out of the league.
I didn't really mean to paint it positively or negatively, I am sure there is plenty we don't know about the history there and what was being shouted back and forth right beforehand. FWIW, Gleyber Torres (who is Venezuelan but I think just watching from afar like the rest of us) condemned Cabrera strongly for this after it happened, I think in his Instagram stories:

View: https://twitter.com/GeorgenyPerez/status/1594380499669205001
 

Marciano490

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Nice to see someone call out the foolish adherence to old unwritten rules and the stupid and violent ways they’re enforced. I don’t follow baseball super closely, but I feel like not enough young players call shenanigans on that sort of thing.
 

jon abbey

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Jomboy will probably do an in depth version soon and we'll all have more informed opinions. It didn't help that it was a pretty embarrassing punch.

@Marciano490, since you said you don't follow baseball super closely, my baseball/boxing historian friend confirmed at the time that this was probably the best punch ever thrown in MLB, posting it on the off chance you haven't seen it before, Odor looks like Aaron Pryor to Asdrubal's Richard Pryor...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLSaQaofOcM
 

Marciano490

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That’s pretty good. I thought Coco Crisp had a nice slip into a lead right hand once, too.
 

LogansDad

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I saw this a bunch on twitter over the weekend, mostly being presented the way you've done here, ie, in a positive light. I think it's absolute horseshit and I don't get, at all, why everyone thinks this is so cool. It's a cowardly sucker punch that could have ended the guy's career if he'd connected better. Cabrera should be thrown out of the league.
I agree 100% with this.
 

Yaz4Ever

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I would love the idea of Judge to SF. My guess in the FA thread was Judge to SF for 10/41 - I see them overpaying to get him away from NY.
 

simplicio

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That seems like a long time for a guy like Dombrowski in today's game. I think the Sox got it right with him.
 

cheesypoofs

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Him going to SF, never to be heard from again, wouldn't be awful.
Agreed. First thought upon seeing 'Aaron Judge going to SF to meet with Giants' was *please keep him.* Pretty please, even.
I'm a Yankees fan and needed a safe space in which to get that off my chest.
Thank you
 

jon abbey

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Agreed. First thought upon seeing 'Aaron Judge going to SF to meet with Giants' was *please keep him.* Pretty please, even.
I'm a Yankees fan and needed a safe space in which to get that off my chest.
Thank you
He is almost certainly coming back to NY, but curious to hear you elaborate on this perspective. It's of course true that the majority of big FA deals end up hurting the team, but also it's hard to see NY competing this year without him in their lineup and so you'd be wasting a year of Cole, Rizzo, Stanton, Severino...
 

Yaz4Ever

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He is almost certainly coming back to NY, but curious to hear you elaborate on this perspective. It's of course true that the majority of big FA deals end up hurting the team, but also it's hard to see NY competing this year without him in their lineup and so you'd be wasting a year of Cole, Rizzo, Stanton, Severino...
As a Red Sox fan, I want to see him in SF. Not sure how NYY fans would agree with me unless they think he'll cripple the team financially. He seems like a good person, so I'll continue to root for him so long as he wears different laundry.
 

Murderer's Crow

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He is almost certainly coming back to NY, but curious to hear you elaborate on this perspective. It's of course true that the majority of big FA deals end up hurting the team, but also it's hard to see NY competing this year without him in their lineup and so you'd be wasting a year of Cole, Rizzo, Stanton, Severino...
Well, one of the areas the Yankees suffered offensively was having an injured lineup focused solely around Judge. I don't think the scenarios where you spread that money around leave the team out of competing.
 

jon abbey

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Well, one of the areas the Yankees suffered offensively was having an injured lineup focused solely around Judge. I don't think the scenarios where you spread that money around leave the team out of competing.
I definitely do. What’s the best realistic possible OF without Judge?
 

E5 Yaz

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I definitely do. What’s the best realistic possible OF without Judge?
What's interesting to me is that available outfielders that would enhance any lineup seem to be at an extreme shortage. Maybe you can grab one of the Arizona guys and it pans out. What Seattle has for trade bait isn't that enticing. Pittsburgh could deal Reynolds. Who else has an outfielder on the block? Nimmo would seem to be the best of the free agents. It's not a plus-market at the moment.
 

EvilEmpire

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Sign Judge and find a LF upgrade and I'm pretty comfortable with that OF. Pass on round two with Beni though. Wish I could be confident that Bellinger was that guy, but I'm afraid those injuries degraded him enough that he'll never get close to his previous level. But maybe the docs will like what they see. Who knows.

Put me down as a hard no on paying a bunch for Turner. Organizational depth is at SS. Pay for positions of greater need.
 

jon abbey

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What's interesting to me is that available outfielders that would enhance any lineup seem to be at an extreme shortage. Maybe you can grab one of the Arizona guys and it pans out. What Seattle has for trade bait isn't that enticing. Pittsburgh could deal Reynolds. Who else has an outfielder on the block? Nimmo would seem to be the best of the free agents. It's not a plus-market at the moment.
Yes, exactly. NY needs Judge a lot more than he needs them.
 

jon abbey

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Sign Judge and find a LF upgrade and I'm pretty comfortable with that OF. Pass on round two with Beni though. Wish I could be confident that Bellinger was that guy, but I'm afraid those injuries degraded him enough that he'll never get close to his previous level. But maybe the doc will like what they see. Who knows.

Put me down as a hard no on paying a bunch for Turner. Organizational depth is at SS. Pay for positions of greater need.
I agree with all of this (Turner is not a long-term answer at SS defensively, he is adequate currently) but the 'LF upgrade' part is not so easy.

Anyway, I think it's all a moot point, NY is going to sign Judge for 8 or 9 years at mammoth money (fitting for a mammoth player) and we'll see how his deal plays out. The Stanton trajectory does not look promising, though.
 

E5 Yaz

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Yes, exactly. NY needs Judge a lot more than he needs them.
Much smaller scale, obviously, but I laugh when I see Red Sox fans suggesting that they move on from Verdugo. I mean, he's no great shakes at this point ... but move on from him to who, exactly? The upgrades just aren't out there this offseason.
 

jon abbey

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Honestly if SF offers Judge something crazy like 10/410 and he signs there, I would sign Rodon and basically just play all the prospect position players ASAP, get Dominguez and Pereira into the OF by 2024.
 

Murderer's Crow

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Sign Judge and find a LF upgrade and I'm pretty comfortable with that OF. Pass on round two with Beni though. Wish I could be confident that Bellinger was that guy, but I'm afraid those injuries degraded him enough that he'll never get close to his previous level. But maybe the docs will like what they see. Who knows.

Put me down as a hard no on paying a bunch for Turner. Organizational depth is at SS. Pay for positions of greater need.
I think we all "prefer" Judge. The question is can the team be competitive without him. I think so.
 

E5 Yaz

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Honestly if SF offers Judge something crazy like 10/410 and he signs there, I would sign Rodon and basically just play all the prospect position players ASAP, get Dominguez and Pereira into the OF by 2024.
Part of the luxury of being a big market team is knowing when not to go crazy with available funds. Besides, players who are unavailable now become available in July
 

EvilEmpire

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I agree with all of this (Turner is not a long-term answer at SS defensively, he is adequate currently) but the 'LF upgrade' part is not so easy.
No, it doesn't seem like it will be easy. But I think the bar is "better than Hicks". Maybe if Cabrera spends winter ball playing LF he could be the guy.

I'm just done with Hicks, outside of a utility OF gig.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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If the MFY's take on Bellinger, he'll of course have a great season like his MVP years... let's stop pretending otherwise, okay?

But seriously.... the Yankees were Judge and Carpenter destroying everything in sight. Absolutely cannot expect that out of Carpenter again (for whoever signs him) and Judge will regress. At least some. But you can assume Stanton will continue to regress further. Without Judge, that team is in trouble. They could leverage a lot of their farm depth and probably get Murphy from Oakland and another great OF with 3 years of control remaining to spread the offense out.
Cashman has put together enough of a system that they'll be fine... but no way to just assume a playoff caliber team.
 

Lose Remerswaal

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Much smaller scale, obviously, but I laugh when I see Red Sox fans suggesting that they move on from Verdugo. I mean, he's no great shakes at this point ... but move on from him to who, exactly? The upgrades just aren't out there this offseason.
Hey! We aren’t general managers. The team has full time employees whose job it is to find these upgrades.
 

E5 Yaz

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Feels like the Red Sox have always been much better than the Yankees on this front.
It's hard to quantify, since the Red Sox have gone through multiple GMs (with different philosophies) while Cashman has been running the show. I suspect it's more a matter of ownership willingness. And it can certainly be argued that losing Mookie is Example 1A of "not going crazy" was a mistake
 

Wingack

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It's hard to quantify, since the Red Sox have gone through multiple GMs (with different philosophies) while Cashman has been running the show. I suspect it's more a matter of ownership willingness. And it can certainly be argued that losing Mookie is Example 1A of "not going crazy" was a mistake
Right, but it feels like there are plenty of instances where the Sox let someone like Pedro Martinez ago, even though it hurt at the time for the ballclub, but was proven to be the smart decision.
 

Sandy Leon Trotsky

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jon abbey

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Whoa. I think this needs a little more discussion. I don't know anything about the pitchers Milwaukee got in return... but is this a general surrender flag? Does this indicate that they might be open to offers on either of their SP's? They're not replacing Renfroe unless they sign Nimmo or Judge (ha!) so they'd be looking at further trades.
Definitely not a general surrender flag, they operate like TB, constantly rebuilding. They are open to offers on those SPs but the price will be high and good luck outbidding the Dodgers, who seem to have an endless renewable supply of stud prospects.

The pitchers they got are nothing special, two of them are the guys NY sent LAA for a two month rental of Heaney in 2021, in part because there was no way NY could fit them onto their 40 man.
 

Scoops Bolling

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Whoa. I think this needs a little more discussion. I don't know anything about the pitchers Milwaukee got in return... but is this a general surrender flag? Does this indicate that they might be open to offers on either of their SP's? They're not replacing Renfroe unless they sign Nimmo or Judge (ha!) so they'd be looking at further trades.
Brewers are fine in the OF, this trade just increases the odds that Sal Frelick and/or Joey Wiemer join Garrett Mitchell in breaking camp with the MLB squad. Add in Jackson Chourio starting the year in AA, and the Brewers have more than enough OF for the present and the future.
 

Comfortably Lomb

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I saw this a bunch on twitter over the weekend, mostly being presented the way you've done here, ie, in a positive light. I think it's absolute horseshit and I don't get, at all, why everyone thinks this is so cool. It's a cowardly sucker punch that could have ended the guy's career if he'd connected better. Cabrera should be thrown out of the league.
Glad to see this reaction here. Cabrera committed a violent crime on the field and people are cheering. It’s gross.