The latest notes column from Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports kicks off with an extremely early look at the potential market for Bryce Harper in two years, with Heyman listing the Yankees, Nationals and Phillies as teams that many within the industry think will vie for the 2015 NL MVP in free agency. The in-depth look at Harper focuses on the 24-year-old’s improved clubhouse demeanor and maturity in recent years and also adds more fuel to the rumors that Harper played part of the 2016 season through a shoulder injury that he’s reluctant to discuss. Heyman also touches base on Derek Norris later in the column, noting that there may be a better chance that Norris is simply released than traded. Washington agreed to a $4.25MM salary with Norris to avoid arbitration, but because arb contracts aren’t fully guaranteed, they could cut Norris before March 15 and only pay him 30 days termination pay — about $688K, by my math.
Some highlights from a lengthy look at all 30 teams around the league…
- Pedro Alvarez still has fans in the Orioles’ front office, per Heyman, but there’s been “no evidence” of renewed contact between the two sides. The Twins talked to Alvarez’s camp at one point but haven’t been in touch recently, and while Rangers manager Jeff Banister is fond of Alvarez dating back to the pair’s days in Pittsburgh, there’s nothing to suggest the two sides could strike a deal.
- The Cubs met with Scott Boras recently and discussed Jake Arrieta, but there was “no traction” in talks between the two sides. Heyman paints a similar picture to the one that has surrounded extension rumors with Arrieta for the past several months; the Cubs would be amenable to a three- or four-year deal, but Arrieta and Boras are targeting something more along the lines of Max Scherzer’s seven-year, $210MM contract. Heyman also notes that the Cubs made a play for right-hander Brad Ziegler this winter before he inked a two-year deal with the Marlins.
- Extension talks between the Rockies and Carlos Gonzalez are “on hold” for the time being. The team tried to explore talks with Gonzalez (another Boras client) recently, but with free agency just a few months away, hammering out a new deal has long seemed unlikely (and, I’d argue, unnecessary from the Rockies’ vantage point, given the plethora of outfield options in Denver).
- After spending a combined $99MM on Matt Holliday and Aroldis Chapman at the Winter Meetings in early December, Yankees GM Brian Cashman was told he only had $4MM to work with over the remainder of the winter, Heyman reports. That level of cash prevented the Yanks from luring targets like Travis Wood and Jerry Blevins to the Bronx but did prove to be enough to buy Chris Carter (and perhaps Jon Niese, who inked a minor league deal). Cashman also tells Heyman that he did receive trade offers for Brett Gardner, but the offers simply weren’t enticing.
- Rays closer Alex Colome was oft-rumored to have drawn trade interest last summer and earlier this offseason, though Heyman writes that the Nationals wouldn’t part with top outfield prospect Victor Robles in order to acquire him. Colome was outstanding in his first season in the ninth inning last year, logging 56 2/3 innings with a 1.91 ERA, 11.3 K/9, 2.4 BB/9 and a 47.1 percent ground-ball rate. The 28-year-old hasn’t even reached arbitration yet and is controllable through the 2020 season, so if he does eventually emerge as a potential trade chip, the asking price from the Tampa Bay front office would likely be deemed exorbitant by many clubs.
Not a chance the Cubs sign Jake beyond 4 years. They have to start paying most of the young talent following 2021, and that’s not coming cheap. Heck, barring a major regression, the arbitration salarys are going to be huge.
Stay under the 2017 cap limit. Add a second-round compensation choice.
Good point on the Cubs having to pay for their young talent
I don’t think they keep Arrieta, my guess is that they will trade the farm again for another starter, they got eddie butler for insurance
again? when did they trade the farm for a starter?
He must be talking about Chapman. Not a starter, but he has a point. The Cubs will have to move on a frontline starter in 2018 or ’19 to stay in contention.
“The farm” was just a SS prospect and we already have Addison. Hardly a system breaking deal, oh and the Cubs won the Series thanks in part to Chapman (besides the last game), so already won that trade.
It wasn’t only the last game that chapman was subpar, especially for what they gave up to get him. I am happy the cubs won, obviously, but I do not subscribe to the idea that they won because of chapman.
I will agree though, that trading for him, as much as that package sucked (from a cubs’ fans’ prospective), was not trading the farm.
they have no room for happ and jiminez , so my guess the both of them plus another lower level guy for a pitcher they could get
if Jimenez is as good as advertised, you stick him in rf, move heyward to cf, and stick almora as of4/platoon with schwarber
More importantly, he’s 20 and hasn’t played above A ball, there is no way you can say, at this moment, that they don’t have room for him.
He did shut them down in 9th inning of game 7. I agree Torres was blocked by Russell bryant and Baez anyway . Cueto Tanaka and darvish will be available for $$$. Otani coming from Japan in a couple years
I’m a huge Chapman fan and loved all of his time on the Cubs. But, he did NOT shut them down in the 9th inning of game 7. He threw BP balls that the Indians batters absolutely failed to hit. Fangraphs has a great article about how awful Chapman was in that inning and yet went 1-2-3.
I think a bigger problem is how short term their rotation is right now.
I love Jake but the best deal is no longer than 4 years that’s including this year2020 please Boris don’t bust a good thing up but Cubs can’t go more and expect the team to grow
The team grows if they develop their own pitching.
Not entirely, but to a realistic extent.
Yah, let’s already start blaming Boras for Arrieta wanting more money. You do realize that Boras works for Arrieta, correct? Arrieta makes the final decision and signs the contract. It’s really that simple…
lol, apparently you don’t know Scott Boras
Oh no, I do. I’m just not one of the delusional fanboys that think he’s the cause of everything bad in baseball. If Arrieta and the Cubs wanted to stay together, they’d agree on a contract that benefits both sides. But guess what? Based on everyone’s assumptions, Arrieta cares more about the money than playing with the Cubs – just like 99.9% of baseball players.
Bottom line is that Arrieta hired Boras for a reason. God forbid he does his job VERY well.
I usually don’t agree with Priggs89 on much, but in this case he gets my upvote. I want to see Arrieta stay with the Cubs as much as the next guy, but this is simply how things work.
The Cubs don’t really need Arrietta locked up for 7 years. I think that they should lock him up for 3 years and let him walk after that. I think once he is 34 he won’t be as good and won’t be worth all the money they would be paying him. Plus by then the Cubs would much rather pay Bryant KendricksSchwarber Russell Beaz and Almora Jr. And they will have other pitchers that have come up and need a spot to pitch so I say sign him for 4-5 years and then deal him to someone that is in win now mode and get good young prospects in return for him.
No more Edward Jackson crap again in Chicago are kids are great stick to that plan. We did once just 3 years ago.Yea Rickett’s
What?
Drugs
Boras hangs up on that.
SB and Jake want seven years. At David Price money.
Agreed. Unless they want to pay Arrieta 40 mil per year, he’s going to need a longer term deal
David price may be injured and need tj. 30 age and 7 year contracts don’t usually pan out.
Harper is headed to NY, it’s just about got to happen, or Cashman finds some way to get Trout from Anaheim and that costs tons of prospects along with his contract.
I don’t see Boston in that mix. They ought to be offering up some long term mega deal to betts instead, who is Harper WITH speed.
His swing is made for the place. Thought both he and trout grew up Yankees fans… I don’t see him going to the Bronx. They got plenty of young offensive talent and Harper will cost too much
Trout grew up as a Phillies fan. He still maintains his Eagles Season Tickets and is seen at games frequently.
And his favorite player growing up was Derek jeter wore number 2 and played ss
You lose
He was a phillies fan, he’s said it multiple times. The only people that lose are the ones who unfortunately read your stupidity.
From an ESPN Chat:
Matthew (Columbia, NJ)
Mike: Were you a Phillies fan growing up and if so how many games a year did you attend?
Mike Trout (2:07 PM)
I was definitely a Phillies fan. I managed to get to a couple a year — I was about fifty minutes from Philly.
Sorry chief, I didn’t lose anything.
Or from HardballTalk:
Mike Trout grew up in Phillies country and, according to his dad in this CSNPhilly.com interview, Trout still roots for them:
Trout’s father recalled a story from a few years back when in the middle of the night, Jeff heard Mike scream from his room.
“Dad, we got Roy Halladay!” Mike yelled. To which his Dad responded: “the Angels got Halladay?”
“No, the Phillies did!” Mike replied. “Son, you’re a member of the Angels. What’s with this we?!”
He is absolutely a Phillies fan. Like you said, he said it multiple times and he’s a huge philly fan in general. He tailgates at a lot of eagles games
I don’t think Harper’s future is all that sure at this point. I imagine that his future will depend a lot on what he does the next 2 years.
If he puts up 2 more years as a 3-4 win player, he’s a lot less likely to see that 250-300m contract. That opens up a lot more teams to land him
I agree…he needs to stay consistent, regardless of that lingering injury last year, if he wants the $ he’s looking for eventually. I haven’t seen it yet & also, the Yankees have some serious talent in the OF waiting in the wings. Blake Rutherford could be that kid. I know it’s a ways off, but this kids ceiling is YUGE…
There’s no way the Yankees get Trout. He’s the best player in the game and he hasn’t reached his prime yet. No one team in the league has enough assets to pry Trout from LA. They’ll probably get Harper, but for $300MM , you can have him.
Draw the line owners tickets are to high now ( Boris )
MLB has by far the lowest ticket prices of the four major sports and what you’re asking for is collusion. Owners tried that once and, well, it didn’t go well for them
And ticket prices have very little to do with player salaries. They are a function of basic economic supply-and-demand
Harper doesn’t have speed? Huh. All the baserunning numbers would argue differently.
Not lack of any speed would have been better way of putting it.. was ending my post above.
betts is super fast and harper has above average speed is it. betts could have stolen far more bases than he has the last 2 seasons, but SB’s weren’t exactly a priority in Boston. This year? Think we’ll see that more if stories written are an indicator from both Betts and Bogaerts, who also has speed and hasn’t really utilized it previously.
Lol, nats are learning no one wants Norris. Padres were probably going to release him, and he was traded. A miracle. Now, they’re preparing to do the same thing.
If Norris bat comes back around… down year last year… he is a better offensive threat then that scrub they got now.
I’d take him on the cheap. Like you said if his bat comes back even a little bit he’s a solid battery option.
Great, but tell us again how Trout wasn’t a Phillies fan.
Harper likes his beards and wonder if the Yankee shaving policy will be a major issue.
400 million dollars dude… I think he’ll get over shaving
I’d shave every two hours for 30 million a year.
Harper doesn’t want to discuss his shoulder injury because there wasn’t one. That’s the player he is, 2015 was the outlier, not the norm.
What’s interesting is that we have statistics now for throwing velocity from the outfield. It’s mostly proprietary Statcast information, but some of it makes it out, of course, and what it showed is that in 2016 Harper’s throwing velocity from the outfield was significantly worse than any other year in his career. So something was going on.
If price is headed for Tommy John , will gm’s finally learn 7 year contracts for 30 yr old pitchers don’t work out well
Because he got hurt? Still had a very successful year last year, top 10 starter in all of baseball. This wasn’t regression it was an injury, something that has no age limits.
Nobody with a 3.99 ERA is in the “Top 10 starter in all of baseball” conversation.
Price was a 3.0 bWAR pitcher last year. That’s quite good, but it’s not close to top ten.
4.5 fwar #12. So it’s arguably close depending on your metric.
Unrelated to that, I just looked at his stats, 230 ip is a lot to replace.
You want to sign darvish or Tanaka to 7 years? How is Strasburg 7 year contract looking so far? Matt Harvey for 7 or maybe sydergard . Dodgers Yankees have the cash to lose on a deal but most markets would crush them. Look at Cubs they can afford to let Heyward struggle but could you imagine a pirates or Tampa rays team ?
Darvish, Tanaka, Strasburg, & Harvey all have question marks next to their names as far as injuries go. Harvey & Strasburg (Who got his 7 years but the overall money he got reflects his past problems) have big ones while Darvish isn’t even one full season removed from TJS and most people are waiting for Tanaka’s elbow to finally go. Giving them a record breaking 7 year deal would be foolish, but a 7 year deal that reflects their past issues, sure.. Syndergard, I would lock him up for seven years right this second if I could.
Who cares if every club can afford that deal, there are two very distinct class structures in baseball right now and they do business 2 different ways. Until the teams that can dump huge money on a player start winning every single year, it doesn’t matter. 2/3 of the teams in the league have handed out large contracts in recent years or are capable (rebuilding teams like the Braves & the Phillies), the notion that there is five or six teams capable of dolling out huge amounts of cash followed by the rest of the teams is just wrong. This isn’t the mid-late 90’s where the Yankees are spending three times as much as everyone in the league.
No, they won’t. It’s the dumbest thing to do, too. Never give a pitcher over five years, especially if they are over thirty. I think the Tigers are already regretting that Velander deal and they owe him $28 million for the next five years (this is while they will be rebuilding).
Because elite pitching is very hard to come by. Drafting and developing is a throw of the dice. Trading will cost a ton of talent as this offseason has shown. Option 3 is free agency and that’s the price of elite pitching in free agency
$200 million contracts to 30 year olds is one of the reasons I’m glad the Pirates have no money. Being poor and cheap protects them from overpaying for old players.
Must enjoy losing too.
They’ll never learn from it. It all started with Kevin Brown. He never even finished his deal with the padres. Pretty sure he was traded to the Yankees 3years in. Mike Hamilton is another failure
Mike Hamilton? I can’t for the life of me remember a pitcher with that name.
My bad it was like Hampton. My ph1 is stupid when it comes to autocorrect.
Oh yeah. Hampton. Huge overpay because the Rockies couldn’t get any pitchers to sign with them. He was a disaster but that could have been expected. His arsenal was never going to work at altitude.
Just Say No to Pedro Alvarez!!!!!
Enough is Enough
Um actually, yes. When you look at pitchers who are signed for 7 years, you’re probably more likely to get at least 1 year that is more or less wiped out due to injury than not. And at 30 years old, you are certainly buying the front end production in that contract, so losing any of those first years to injury is a massive hit to the overall value of the contract.
Heyman is very knowledgable but when it comes to Boras clients/or those impacted he has a marked tendency to act as spokesperson. So Harper wants the moon. Arrieta wants the moon. Pedro Alvarez comes in for a plug. Cargo gets a mention. And the most interesting is on Norris–not a Boras client, but in the way of Wieters. If Heyman is suggesting Norris be released, it’s a reasonable bet that’s what Boras told Lerner when he was negotiating the Wieters–release Norris for cost of less than $700K and you can have my guy., If that’s true, I’d be a little unhappy if I were Norris and his agent.
Arrieta was on his way out of baseball, when the Cubs saved him and fixed his career. If not for the Cubs, Jake would probably be a business marketing middle manager by now.
Certainly what the Cubs have done for him has to be worth something, if he has a conscience.
That’s quite comical. I just don’t get some of the arrogance of certain fans. Your assumption being he couldn’t have done it anywhere else. It appears the whole situation Baltimore was just toxic especially with the pitching coach. When someone does not let you be what got you to the bigs there’s usually a big divide. No one ever questioned the Talent of Arrieta. Arrieta has provided much if not more to the Cubs than could ever be expected. He helped to bring a championship. So to say if he has a conscience is not really relevant in this case. He was wasn’t drafted or signed by the Cubs, they didn’t spend the time and excessive money to develop him since his time in rookie ball, they didn’t truly invest in him as some home grown players, and most likely would have easily cut him if he didn’t perform like he did. To say he would have been a middle manager might be hyperbole, but it’s still just a dumb statement. I don’t really cheer for the guy as a Dodgers fan, but you can’t fault a guy for taking his chance at his only big contract. That being said I’m going to be extremely happy when the Dodgers stay as far away from him as they can in the offseason.
If I were the Yankees I would stay away from Harper.
He is an injury waiting to happen in my opinion, just reminds me a ton of Josh Hamilton (without all the drug use).
Yanks have a very deep OF pool of prospects and out of Judge, Frazier, Mateo, Fowler, Rutherford all looking like they could be MLB ready within the next couple years.
As much as I don;t like it, we are probably gonna have to spend money on pitching cause we don’t have many high-end starters coming up.. Most of our young pitchers are in the 3-5 range and resigning Tanaka should be an interesting discussion.
Neither Trout or Harper will ever go to the Yankees, sorry. They will probably get Machado if the Phillies don’t. In Trout’s case, everyone has already explained it. But Harper has thrown shade towards the Yankees recently, plus he would NEVER shave his hair.
Cargo will be traded this year probably sooner and maybe later. Rox need some help with pitching, catching and possibly 1b. This team is improving and has new manager Bud Black.
Losing Arrieta would suck but keeping guys like Baez Contreras schwarber and russell long term is far more important. Young talent is far more difficult to replace than pitching. They have a core set of 7 players they need to keep long term. I have a good feeling JHey will be back to normal this year. Return to his line drive form. Losing Fowler hurts but Almora is just as good on defense If not better and he can flat out hit if given the chance. I can’t see Jay being more than a bench player before being DFA.
The cubs have at least 6 players that are potential 40+ homer guys. If Baez can learn the strike zone he could easily not only be an MVP candidate but he could hit 50 homeruns. He’s that kind of raw power.
Did everyone forget that Bryant is also a Boras client, so it’s going to be tough to keep him long term as well.
It doesn’t seem like anybody is talking about this but I really feel like the Rockies should just let Gonzalez go and put Desmond in RF/LF and then pick up a 1B in the offseason. people have really blasted the Rockies for the Desmond move but I feel like it gives them a lot of options on where to put him throughout his deal. I doubt he’ll continue to be a 1B in 2018 or beyond.