Prior to trading infielder Eduardo Escobar to the Diamondbacks, the Twins approached Escobar’s camp about a potential extension, reports La Velle E. Neal III of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. However, talks between the two sides didn’t gain much in the way of momentum, which ultimately led Minnesota to move him for a package of three prospects. Neal adds that the Twins are open to trading impending free agents Brian Dozier, Zach Duke and Lance Lynn, though he offers a similar sentiment to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal in reporting that Minnesota isn’t inclined to trade Kyle Gibson, who is controlled through 2019. Rather, Neal suggests that Minnesota may offer Gibson an extension this winter on the heels of what is increasingly shaping up to be a breakout season. Any such conversation with Gibson’s camp has yet to take place, though, as 1500 ESPN’s Darren Wolfson recently tweeted.
Here’s more from the division…
- Following the acquisitions of outfielder Brett Phillips and right-hander Jorge Lopez in the Mike Moustakas trade, Royals general manager Dayton Moore suggested to reporters that his club may not be eyeing an especially lengthy rebuilding process (link via Maria Torres of the Kansas City Star). Moore indicated that the proximity of both Phillips and Lopez to the Majors held significant appeal to the Kansas City front office. “We didn’t want to do a prospect-type deal in this case, because of the nature of where we are at the major-league level and what we’re trying to accomplish,” said Moore. “We don’t like losing games and we don’t like where we are right now with the major-league team, so we wanted to try to seek talent that was going to help us sooner than later.” That meshes nicely with the Royals’ targeting of college arms in the top several rounds this year’s draft.
- Though White Sox fans are ravenously anticipating the promotion of prospects Eloy Jimenez and Michael Kopech (particularly the former), general manager Rick Hahn preached patience when asked about the pair’s timeline to the Majors (link via Tom Musick of the Chicago Sun-Times). “While you can look at a stat line or you can look at a box score and say, ‘This guy looks like he’s doing well, looks like he’s ready,’ our checklist that we want these guys to answer is a little more lengthy than that,” Hahn said, though he declined to delve into specific elements that need improvement with each player. Hahn added that even a trade of a player on the roster (an outfielder or starter) wouldn’t necessarily prompt a promotion for either. “It’s not going to be a function of any level of eagerness that fans or coaches or myself or the front office has,” said Hahn. The GM also discussed the trade of Joakim Soria and potential for other moves.
checkbox #10…. delay call up to gain extra year of control
Yea but they would have to keep him down into next April for that which I do not see happening. I think Hahn will bring him up sometime in August so his time is coming soon.
I’d argue that they’re pretty clearly going to do that. He might get the call in September, but every game he makes his way into will be a day he’s not on the roster early next year.
I don’t like or dislike the Royals, but I feel the way the Royals are going about their rebuild seems misguided. They have a bottom 5 farm system and mlb team, but yet they say they don’t want a long rebuild. Dayton actually said “we don’t like losing games” Really? To just try to expedite the rebuild, because you don’t like losing seems like a shortcut that’s gonna cost them in the long run.
As a Royals fan, I actually like this trade AND hate the way they are going about the rebuild. I like it because I think post hype prospects are a market inefficiency and both of these guys have been on top 100 boards before. That being said we need a desperate infusion of minor league talent. They had a good draft, but Dayton is jacking up these trades. Especially not trading Whit. Salvy and Duffy, ok I get it, but Whit? Salvy has made 6 straight All Star games and is a World Series MVP. Whit is older than him and not gonna be around for the next contention window.
++ to that. Where the Royals have also fallen down is in player development — they utterly whiffed on Merrifield, and only used him because they had to and kept him up because he was performing. Junis is another example of this tendency. They latch onto guys as “theirs”, don’t do a good job of preparing them (or bringing them up and expecting them to learn on the job), and don’t seem to be doing much with their non-prime picks. The whole organization is in disarray.
I wasn’t a fan of the Herrera trade but I actually thought the Royals did well for a few months of Moose. The farm is bad but the division looks to be wide open. Twins didn’t preform as expected, White Sox are two/three years away unless they pull a “Braves”, Indians are tight pocketed and are likely loosing Brantley, Miller, and Allen, and Detroit doesn’t look like a threat. If they can get quick turnover from their draft and traded prospects they could at least compete for the division. Might not be ready for a deep playoff run but they could be competitive.
Whit is on their 25 man and a current starter … that hardly qualifies as a “whiff.” Junis is fine … a no. 4-5 starter who needs experience. He’s getting it. What you don’t seem to suggest is this: it’s a player’s responsibility to improve. If a player doesn’t develop, it’s not all on the team … it’s a two-way street. I do think KC has “whiffed” on occasion … Bubba Starling for example. If it weren’t for his signing bonus, he’d be gone by now. But, on balance, KC’s doing fine … rebuilding through the draft and trades … I like what they’re doing.
As a cardinal fan, would a package of Luke weaver, Carson Kelly and kolten wong, and say tyler lyons get us a sniff at Duffy and whit? Maybe another low minors piece thrown in on the cardinals side?
Im going to say no. Wong is the only one of note, the rest look like AAAA players. I dont know anyone trading a 4 win player with 4 yrs control and a power lefty for essentially 2 yrs on kolten wong.
KC had a hole at 2B for several years and if Whit is a 2Bman, well … he fills that hole. He’s more than that, though … he plays all over the field, hits for avg. and steals bases. I have no problem with KC keeping him. Ditto for Duffy and Salvy. I disagree that they are desperate for talent … they’re short on MLB ready talent right now, but they’re closing the gap on that. If pitching is the currency of baseball, they’re adding quality arms to push the rebuild. In short, KC is fine with what they’re doing.
they jumped up in farm ranking after the draft. They jumped about 10 spots in one of the post draft rankings
Bingo. Even after a great draft, they still have a pretty weak farm system and their major league roster is pretty terrible too. Half-assing a rebuild and not tearing it down is a great way to win 75 games a year and be stuck in the “not completely terrible but not good enough to compete” category.
I’m personally of the mindset that you either do whatever you can to win, or you completely tear it down and tank. You can’t go too far in the middle or else you’ll get nowhere.
Those minor league rankings are beauty contests. It isn’t how many that counts, it’s whether they’re impact players. What KC is lacking isn’t talent … it’s MLB ready talent. How many of those kind of prospects does each farm system have at any given time? Few … the rest are only in the system to give their impact players an opportunity to play somewhere.
Todda1…… The Royals don’t have a “Bottom 5 farm system”. They did before the season started, but you should look at their ranking since this years draft. Their ranking rose 9 spots.
Farm system rankings are such a crapshoot though, even more than individual prospect rankings are. So many systems are so close that putting too much emphasis into how many spots one source thinks their system went up is probably a waste of your time.
I agree with your assessment that their farm system got better, and their draft was great. But this is still a pretty bad farm system we’re talking about. At the top, it’s basically the pitchers they just drafted along with someone who’s limited to playing first base and two toolsy outfielders who are complete wild cards.
I agree 100%. In fact I was about to make a very similar comment. They got 2 former nice prospects for likely the best player that they will trade. I don’t think acquiring two unproven triple-A players gives you the right to say that it will be a quick rebuild. They are basically starting from the ground up since this draft.
Hahn should stay the course without pressure from the impatient fans.
Except “the course” seems to be just holding down a major league player to save money. Even hinting at anything else is a complete joke.
There are 0 baseball reasons that Eloy is not on a major league roster. He has absolutely dominated every level since joining the Sox, and he’s currently rocking an OPS over 1.100 in 102 AAA plate appearances while striking out under 10% of the time.
On the plus side, I recall 100 plate appearances at every level being one of these artificial check boxes, so there may be hope yet.
I would disagree. I think the rebuild needs all the help it can get. If they bring up Eloy now, the team will probably win more games and get a lower draft slot. Why not keep him down, get a higher draft slot and extend the control over him another year?
They’re currently 5 games better than KC and 7 games worse than Detroit, and they’ve been hovering over that #3 pick all year. Barring anything drastic happening, they look like a lock for a top 4 pick, likely either 3 or 4.
If Eloy comes up and is good enough for them to pickup 7+ games compared to what they’d do without him, moving them into the back end of the top 10, Sox fans should be ecstatic. That’d mean he’s killing it at the major league level, and his development is going extremely well. As a Sox fan that has been extremely patient with the slow callups to this point, I can happily accept that.
Keeping him in AAA now doesn’t save them any $ unless it stretches on to next April 20th or so.
Kopech is 4-7 with an ERA 4.26 in Charlotte. Not a big deal.
4-7 lol. He’s basically had 4 bad-to-brutal starts out of 20 that drag his numbers down significantly, and a large part of that is him working on different things in different counts. The other 16 have been quality starts at worst.
8 ER in 3.1
7 ER in 2.0
5 ER in 3.0
4 ER in 3.0
You’re looking at the wrong things if you’re just looking at his W-L and ERA. There is way more to the picture than that.
That being said, I’m nowhere near as frustrated with him being in AAA as I am with Eloy wasting time there.
Bet Eloy up in August once they trade or have inconsequential OFs like Leury Garcia moved…..so long as not hurt again. Potentially best hitter in franchise since Big Hurt. On base all 4 times again tonight…..crazy good.
Wow on Cease as well for some point next year……thank you Q contract appeal!
Yes the Indians window isn’t yet closed, and probably won’t be until 2020 the earliest. As for the White Sox, that’s probably the first year that they are serious about winning. The twins, who knows, and the tigers won’t be ready until probably 2020 being the earliest. This division is going to be brand new In 2020. Who knows what 4 rebuilding teams (twins, White Sox, tigers, royals) are going to be good and deem the rebuild successful. Dayton Moore acquiring major league ready players is pretty smart. The royals no way in hell can acquire prospects the White Sox have, or the pitching prospects the tigers have. But, the royals can possibly be a sleeper team each and every year starting next season, if the Indians start to decline.
The royals have the second worst record in baseball right now, they aren’t doing anything for a long time.
WRONG
Care to elaborate?
Has Donald ever elaborated?
All the technological progress mankind has over the last thirty years has culminated in… this
RIGHT
The Royals arent going from 30 wins to a sleeper team next season. There’s no talent coming in to that roster to swing them 20+ games. Even if they did have a 20 game increase in wins, they’re still terrible.
I’m not an AL Central fan but all he seems to he saying is outside of the Indians the entire division is mediocre so if Cleveland has a down year in 2019, whomever wins their intradivision games will suddenly appear like they have a shot. Sort of like Milwaukee last year. Not many predicted the Brewers to be in first place at last years ASG.
The Brewers weren’t great but they weren’t on pace for 50 wins the season before either. Big difference
Brewers had one of the best farm systems in baseball, KC currently has on of the worst in baseball. Also, even with the brewers being bad in 2016 they only lost 89 games, KC might lose 100. Anything can happen but you could say that about any team in any division. KC is probably going to be the worst team in the MLB next season.
Orioles or Royals should take the crown for the next 2 seasons pretty easily. Marlins may be down there once they ship out Realmuto but they have a few more young pieces that may develop and contribute. IE. Alcantra, Brinson, Diaz, and Harrison. The Royals have nothing coming up next year through the pipeline. False hope is the only thing that would say they can be a sleeper.
Extra year of control when it actually matters sounds good to me. Stay the course!
I agree. If Kopech and Jimenez were promoted and struggled or got injured, the same fans who wanted them promoted would probably be saying they were rushed too soon. The armchair GM’s need to trust the real businessmen to handle things.
The “course” that is staying is one of not caring about anything else but money. Sox are hoping for MANY more cheap years full of multiple rebuilds. For one, even if a couple players DO give results theyd have to pay them like a real team and they wont do that. Two realities- the GM is a puppet for the worst owner outside of sternberg and jeter. Or, hes dumb enough to think the players hes getting are good. Yeah he mightve gotten lucky with Jimenez but other than that, crash and burn. They have almost no viable pitchers in the system thanks to horrendous deals. Almost every one of them has no idea where the ball is going
The Sox have almost no viable pitchers in their system? That’s news to me. Sounds like you don’t know much of anything about their system.
Please read. ALMOST EVERY ONE OF THEM HAS NO IDEA WHERE THE BALL IS GOING. The players given away never had those struggles with the exception of one, and that was long before
giolito and Lopez look to be backend starters or perhaps relievers, Carson Fulmer is a mess too but they have Kopech, Hanson, Cease, and Dunning still down in the minors. It seemed to be an area of surplus but it looks more like they needed all those arms to find enough quality starters, Sox fans just needs to patient.
KC 2019 WS CHAMPS CONFIRMED
I think you put a 1 where you meant a 3
Replace the 9 with a 5 and you’ve finally come to realization what happened 3 years ago.
When there is a strike in two or three years, these type of comments by Hahn will be front and center as a justification.
Players aren’t going to stand for this artificial B.S. on why they have to wait to get paid much longer, especially when age is used as an excuse to not pay them when contracts are finished.
The players make their livings from baseball. The owners do not. A strike will not benefit the players.
The only thing that would happen in such a scenario is we’d have to wait a bit longer for Tony Clark to get rolled.
The owners have other areas of income, for sure. And while they wouldn’t hurt financially from a strike, they would get hurt in other areas – mostly their egos.
And I know that sounds ridiculous, but when you’re worth a billion dollars, you’re really only making more money for ego. They’d much rather be known as a billionaire than a guy worth $800 million. And that’s what would happen. A strike would devalue their franchise and net worth to the point that they’d no longer be able to pump out their chest and say they’re worth a billion dollars.
It;d have to be a very long strike for most of these teams to no longer be worth over a billion dollars. You’re talking about cutting their values in half or more. With that being said, no one likes to have hundreds of millions to a billion dollars sitting in an investment that isn’t generating any cash.
“Brett Phillips and Brian Goodwin mean we are contending” – an idiot
Funny story about Escobar. When he got promoted to Double A, he didn’t have any team gear so he settled for a a groundskeeper shirt. It was a rainy day and the staff was on the field pulling tarp. Escobar, who looked like a teenage kid at 5’8 and what appeared to be no more than 110 pounds was sitting alone in the dugout. I walked over to him and asked him why he wasn’t pulling tarp with the rest of the staff…
Fwiw, he’s one of the nicest guys ever and didn’t give me too much sh*t for that.
I know they are just prospects but the White Sox OF could be scary in a few years, Jimenez with the all around bat, Robert with all the tools and Adolfo with the prototypical RF tools.
For the sake oh Hahn’s job, it better be!
That doesn’t even factor in Rutherford/Basabe/Walker/Gonzalez/Booker. If they can’t find 3 major league players out of those 8, they don’t deserve to win.
Brett Phillips is a great guy and has the strongest arm in baseball. He will neverrr hit consistently. He’ll have a season where he hits .270 but the next season .210. I hope I’m wrong. Lopez also has been pretty terrible. Kc saw a good era when he pitched for us in garbage time(thank god for that cause he hasn’t pitched well in the minors in years) so just know you are getting two players that were not in our top 30 anymore in our gms eyes. I hope they do great but this isn’t the Zach greinke trade part two
Would like the Phils to trade for Lynn who has performed well in the NL. He could slot into the #3 spot in the rotation as younger guys in the rotation are starting to slip.
I would like to hear what the extension offer was to Eduardo Escobar.
I have my doubts it was little more than a “Well… we tried offer,” one that was never intended to realistically get Escobar to sign.
Royals will have one of the top young outfields in baseball in 2020 Phillips and Goodwin are legit. Phillips could easily turn into former Royals right fielder Jermaine Dye with his arm and bat.
I’d really like to see Shields traded tomorrow, if not overnight. He is a painful reminder of a very bad and unnecessary decision that lead to parting with Tatis Jr.