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The Red Sox finished last place in the ALE in ’22. Sorry to say, but if they attempt to illustrate to their fans that they’re trying to improve their team by trading for Paul DeJong, Boston fans may go so far as to display the type of insurrection that was evident prior to and during the American Revolution…Haha!
Great story on those informal workouts after the ‘81 strike 1TD! Porter was good for our club in the ‘82 post season, and Whitey always liked his defense. But I hated seeing Simmons traded. He was my favorite Cardinal in the ‘70s. But those ‘70s teams were bad – Bing Devine filled a lot of other team’s all star representatives with guys he traded.
Think how good we would have been with a rotation of Carlton, Torrez and Reuss through the ‘70s. Then add John Denny later in the decade. I always feel that there would have been two “Big Red Machines”, with an annual post season battle between our pitching and the Reds hitting.
At the time I thought Herzog was suffering from a mental breakdown when he traded our best player along with another future HOF’er in Fingers and a pretty darn good SP’er named Vuckovich to Milwaukee for four guys I’d never heard of and who eventually only had marginal careers. But I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Whitey took a lot of criticism at the time for that trade. But as you know, all that criticism evaporated with Sutter’s K of Gorman. At any rate, I’ve often wondered whether or not the Cardinals would have had more success during the 80’s had that trade never occured.
Bing Devine filled a lot of other team’s all star representatives with guys he traded.
This is my favorite Bing Devine story which I heard from some old baseball guys at Johnson City back in the 70s. When Devine was GM of the Johnson City affiliate in the early 40s he needed an infielder so he activated himself. He got in 100 PAs (hitting about .100) before Cards GM Branch Rickey found out about it and forced Devine to release himself. Some say that Rickey never could get over that, and when Gussie Busch fired Devine during the 1964 season it was instigated by Busch’s ‘special assistant’, none other than Branch Rickey, who then got his buddy Bob Howsam hired to replace Devine. (It was Howsam’s first GM job and he went on to GM the Reds during their glory days.)
The Red Sox finished last place in the ALE in ’22. Sorry to say, but if they attempt to illustrate to their fans that they’re trying to improve their team by trading for Paul DeJong, Boston fans may go so far as to display the type of insurrection that was evident prior to and during the American Revolution…Haha!
I don’t think PDJ would be Plan A for anyone but Boston is now in a bit of a jam. Their Plan A signed with the Padres for $280M and their Plan B is now about to have surgery and could be out for months. I don’t know who their Plan C is but it is starting to get late in the offseason and the top guys are no longer available. I guess they could sign someone like Elvis Andrus but I doubt he would excite the folks in Beantown either.
Yeah, I’d expect to see Bobby Valentine back in a Red Sox uniform before I’d place Paul DeJong in Fenway. In any event, in regards to the Padres, did Tatis Jr. serve out his suspension or will he be held out of more games to begin the ’23 regular season?
Well apparently Simmons was asked to move to first which is weird because Hernandez was still there. Simmons didn’t want to move so he was traded. Fingers was willing to agree to an extension so with Sutter he became expendable. Some of those guys we got in the trade actually did some good things for us in the world series. Overall it worked out for everyone even though yea, I really liked ted, it was hard losing him.
Okay Rats, thanks. I knew he was found out during the scond half of last season, but wasn’t sure of how many games he’d sat out. SD ought to be pretty good in ’23 considering they dispatched the Dodgers without the assistance of their $340 MM investment. All they have to do is keep him away from any motorcycles or fuel that contains a prohibited octane level…
Cardinals Among Teams To Inquire On Marlins' Starters https://t.co/cbvpfI5sTt pic.twitter.com/U9uVmbhbX0
— MLB Trade Rumors (@mlbtraderumors) January 17, 2023
If the Marlins are looking for offense, the Cardinals do seem to match up well with them. Most think that Nootbaar. along with Walker, Winn, Graceffo, and Hence are all off the table, and I agree. But two, or maybe three, of O’Neill, Carlson, Burleson, Gorman, Gomez, Yepez, Herrera would be tolerable, though not painless, and would give the Marlins a lot of the offense that they’re looking for. That said, I’m part of the crowd that absolutely does not want to get fleeced by the Marlins again. If O’Neill goes there and hits 30 HR and Lopez comes to the Lou and does a Seven Matz impression, then MO should get an RV and go hide in the woods somewhere for at least a couple of months.
Lopez for O’Neill is equal value. Both with two seasons of control. Both with very similar arb2 and arb3 salaries. Both often injured IL riders.
If MIA wanted equal value for Lopez it wouldn’t take months, more like just a week, as Montgomery for Bader likely happened, another equal value trade of a SP for a starting OF.
MIA wants anyone to offer 5 seasons of Noot and 6plus of Herrera, and pick up the 12mil still owed on Lopez remaining two seasons. So, they are still shopping their pitching.
Among Marlins the play is Jesus Luzardo, for me. He has four years of team control remaining, as opposed to just two for Lopez. And Luzardo was distinctly more effective in 2022 — albeit in a smaller sample of innings.
Luzardo, 18 starts & 100 IP, 3.32 ERA overall, and 2.64 in 10 road starts. Sub-1.000 WHIP in Aug./Sept.
Lopez, 32 starts & 180 innings, 3.75 ERA and 3.00 in 16 road outings. Awful 2nd half, with a 4.97 ERA.Luzardo allowed a paltry OPS of .601 last year. Lopez nearly 100 points higher, at precisely .700. I admit, track record matters for sure, and Lopez was certainly the better pitcher pre-2022. But there is no doubt that Luzardo (still just 25 years old) was the better one last year. And vastly superior down the stretch.
Moreover, Luzardo might be gettable without a lot of pain, as the Baseball Trade Values website puts his market value at a relatively modest 28 million — due primarily to durability concerns, no doubt. The Cards have Nolan Gorman (26 million) presumably available, and could toss in a pretty persuader like Burleson, Baez, Yepez, or McGreevey for instance. Depends what the Marlins like.
My one big misgiving about all this, is the Marlins know pitchers. They have for a long time. Nobody else could have developed Sandy Alcantara as well as they did. Nobody else would have promoted the late Jose Fernandez as aggressively as they did (I thought they were nuts, but it worked out spectacularly well). So I’d be pretty leery in general about acquiring any Miami arm….
But if they’re taking the plunge, I’d say take it with Jesus.
I agree about being careful with Miami. The last good thing that came of trading with them was Mujica.
Thanks Bob! I agree that Jesus Luzardo is intriguing and would agree with the concern of trading with Miami. Would you have any concern that the team would be adding another LH starting pitcher?
The MLB Network had Arenado as their 5th best 3rdbaseman heading into 2023. Machado was ranked #1. Not sure that makes alot of sense to me.
Thoughts posters?
Lists are a dime a dozen. The most important question to understand is what was their player evaluation criteria. Are there any numbers or logic behind it, or it is just someone’s opinion?
Lists are compiled in the same manner as both HOF voting and player awards. As best as I can tell, there are no required criteria which determine the outcome. Like it or not, the net bottom line is that it’s entirely based on a voter’s opinion. However, mathematical facts determine W’s and L’s, standings, championships, batting and ERA titles. The raw numbers leave no room for error.
Sounds like Lopez is moving to Minnesota. They are getting Luis Arraez in return. Marlins are getting a good hitter in the deal.
“The MLB Network had Arenado as their 5th best 3rdbaseman heading into 2023. Machado was ranked #1. Not sure that makes a lot of sense to me.
Thoughts posters?”
It’s moronic, of course. Almost as bad as 12 months ago when they ranked Arenado 8th among third basemen. Yes, 8th.
But there’s nobody to point a finger at, no human being, as their ranking is always based on something called “the shredder” and of course they do not reveal much if anything about “the shredder” methodology. But given the ongoing dismissiveness toward Arenado — even coming off of his best year with the bat — it’s more or less axiomatic that “the shredder” massively over-regresses defensive performances, and over-adjusts for the ageing curve, much like some mainstream projection models have done forever. (Though to be fair, the ZiPS model has improved lately.)
I’d prefer to see Arenado get the recognition he quite clearly deserves, but Nolan will likely retire universally acknowledged as the best all-around third-sacker of his generation, and a first-ballot HOFer. That’ll do.
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