With the offseason now firmly underway, let’s survey the baseball landscape with a few brief Saturday notes…
- For Red Sox fans eager to gain an inkling as to how their team’s front office might behave under new chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom, it might be worth reading Jen McCaffrey’s latest work for The Athletic, in which she uses Tampa Bay’s moves in 2019 as a blueprint for how Bloom might operate in Boston. The Rays, of course, overcame one of baseball’s smallest payrolls and took the Astros to five games in the ALDS, while the Red Sox missed out on the postseason entirely despite a comparatively astronomical payroll. Boston can expect Bloom to deploy many of the same strategies that brought success to Tampa, though he’ll of course have a greater bank of resources at his disposal. One might liken Bloom to the Dodgers’ Andrew Friedman, another former Rays exec who inherited a big-market budget when he was hired to spearhead the Dodgers’ baseball operations.
- A flurry of teams sent scouts to watch Kwang-hyun Kim of the KBO’s SK Wyverns, according to Dan Kurtz of MyKBO. Scouts from more than ten teams—including the Padres, Twins, and Dodgers, among others—were recently spotted at one of Kim’s games. Though he hasn’t yet been posted, Kim has expressed his desire to play in the Majors in 2020, according to The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal, who also reports that his club is “weighing its options” regarding Kim’s posting. A 31-year-old lefty, Kim logged a 2.51 ERA in 190 1/3 innings of work in the 2019 KBO season, striking out 180 batters while walking just 38. He’s had previous opportunities to play stateside, most notably in 2014 when he and the Padres failed to agree on a contract. He could slot in as a mid-tier free agent option for clubs unwilling to pony up the money necessary to pursue the top options on the market.
- The Reds have hired a new assistant pitching coordinator, with Eric Jagers announcing on Twitter that he’ll join the Reds staff after a year in the Phillies organization. With the Phillies, Jagers worked in the minor league player development department, filling a new position in the organization as a pitch strategist. He broke into the MLB coaching scene after cutting his teeth as Driveline Baseball’s pitching coordinator. Notably, with the Reds he’ll work alongside another Driveline alum, Kyle Boddy, who founded the company and parlayed its success into a position as the Reds’ pitching coordinator. The addition of Jagers continues the organizational overhaul of its pitching infrastructure, which began with the team’s hiring of Derek Johnson, who coached the club to the National League’s fourth-lowest ERA in 2019.
I have a feeling he’ll do well in Boston, n hopefully not afraid of pulling off a big trade at the deadline that puts you over the top.
You seem confused. That was Dombrowski’s approach, and the Red Sox are abandoning that approach in favor of rebuilding the minor league system and gearing back up. You can expect a conservative approach that lacks urgency and expresses a willingness to forego short term accomplishment in favor of long term gains. I’ve got the Red Sox on the sidelines for a good while while Bloom rebuilds at every level.
DD was told no big trades, but I didn’t see Tampa make any huge moves at the deadline, no I’m not the one confused.
By “big trade” he could be referring to Boston unloading some salary. If David Price, Chris Sale or Mookie Betts got moved that would be considered a big trade.
Actually he said “big trade that puts you over the top,” which means buy not sell
If DD was told no big trades it was because the Red Sox were already way over budget and DD had already mortgaged the Red Sox future by cleaning out the minor leagues. The situation hasn’t changed. The only thing that has changed is that the Red Sox have hired a guy to rebuild, not to ramp up.
I get what you’re saying. I don’t personally know exactly what he meant and he very well may know nothing about the economics of baseball. I’m just trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and maybe slightly playing the devil’s advocate if you will. There have been plenty of teams that have made trades that ended up both saving the team money in addition to helping the team actually get better. The Rangers did it with Josh Hamilton. They gave up a more expensive and more proven player and Hamilton won MVP. It’s not totally out if the realm of possibility that the Sox trade Price and/or Sale while eating half their contracts and end up getting a surprisingly great prospect in return. Even Albert Pujols was a 14th round pick. Even if the Sox ate half those contracts they would still save about $100 mill and could theoretically get a great player that pushes them over the top. It wouldn’t be the first time. I’m not saying that’s what he meant. My guess is you are right. I’m just pointing out he didn’t say spend more cash specifically. That is obviously not going to happen. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he just meant make a trade that ends up being big because the talent the Sox receive in the deal ends up pushing them over the top even if the talent isn’t proven yet. There have been plenty of teams that made big trades which pushed them over the top while saving money overall in the trade. He could have just meant a very frugal and forsightful trade. That would be bus and could push them over the top. You don’t always have to spend cash to get better. You know what I mean?
i think what he was trying to say is when bloom was with the rays they “failed” to make moves at the deadlime to try to push them over the top and therefor he hopes he doesnt do the same in boston
@StandUpGuy
Again, interesting but too long. And it kind of loops back around on itself a couple of times.
Funny you should bring that up. That’s the exact same thing your mom said last night.
Just reel yourself in. Just because you think of yourself as a comedian doesn’t mean you are. And being long-winded on a comment board is just being self-absorbed. Look around. You see anyone else dropping down 20, 30 lines or more half the times they comment? No. There’s a reason for that. Consider it.
Didn’t read your essay. No, I don’t think he meant anything other than what he clearly said when he referenced a trade deadline deal that would put his team over the top. Also if he knew that much about baseball, he would also know that WAR would be coming off the books along with salary, and that the upgrade in WAR that any one player could provide over whatever comes off the books would not be enough to put the Red Sox over the top.
Yeah. I know man. I was just kidding. I didn’t mean any offense. I get repetitive sometimes but it is a result of a big problem I incur with this app. Between the ads and the keyboard I can only read one line that I am typing at a time. The No New Comments button falls smack dab in the middle of those two ads and prevents me from seeing anything. I downloaded the smallest keyboard I could find and still an only see one line of text that I type at a time. I am only able to close one of the 2 ads. The top ad won’t disappear. The end result is that I can’t always remember word for word what I types because I don’t get to see my whole body of work like most everyone else does. I can’t even see the rest of the sentence that I am typing now. I have complained about this to no end but it never gets fixed. I get that the ads pay the bills but Tue header is too big. I could probably work around that too but the fact that the comments button is literally placed right in the middle of everything I type makes it almost impossible to do an efficient job of typing. I mean come on. Why not just make it a tiny little button in the check box are like other things are. This Noe new comments button is literally in the middle of the text field I am supposed to type in and that text field is already very small. The comments button takes up 80% of the little remaining text space I had left. Literally one line at a time. That is all I can seen before I send my post out. And that line is 25 characters long. I can never see anything more than the last 25 characters I have typed. That includes spaces, punctuation and everything.
Sorry bud but when you make mom jokes, and then have these long comments, do you actually think anyone’s going to care enough about your thoughts enough to read them?
Mookie Betts to the Cardinals for Nolan Gorman, Carlos Martinez, and Tyler O’Neill.
That guy is interesting next Ryu?
Red Sox fans around here seem to think that there won’t be much change in terms of payroll. They took the walk-back of $208MM being a “goal not a mandate” to mean, “meh, scratch that. We won’t cut payroll much at all.” That seems unrealistic to me. The point of getting to $208MM is to reset the luxury tax rate. They still have to do that if not this year then next. Certainly not never. And they can’t get to $208MM without cutting about $30MM.
The good news is that getting payroll down to the first level above the CBT line carries very little penalty. So if the payroll is $208MM to $228MM, the lux tax is 50% of the overage above $208MM. Thus, a payroll of $220MM would carry a tax of 50% of $12MM, or a mere $6MM. And there would be no additional penalty as far as the draft or international funds. This would set the team up very well for resetting under the CBT line before the 2021 season.
“…a mere $6MM”
You’re right. In these terms ($200MM+) it does not sound like a lot. But you get owners scrambling to save it anyway, even if it throws the postseason into question. For clubs like the Sox, Yanks or Dodgers, it seems pretty disingenuous. They’re making hundreds of millions, they’ve got an asset worth billions, and yet they’re fretting over a few tens of millions? Especially when spending that money could make the asset worth that much more…?
Using Sporttrac, Sox have Sale, Betts, Price, JDM, Bogey, Eovaldi, Pedroia, JBJ, ERod, Benintendi, Vazquez, Workman, Barnes. For about $191M. Thats a lot but fill the other 13 spots assuming Pedroia is injured all year and do that with 13 near MLB minimums for about $10M. Those spots are filled by 5 of Travis, Chavis, Devers, Lin, Dalbec, Chatham, and a backup catcher, and 8 of Brasier, Houck, D Hernandez, Walden, Brewer, Velazquez, Johnson, Shawaryn, Poyner, Lakins, and Walden. Add in bonuses and minors going up and down and add say $20M. Thats $221M.Doesnt take huge moves to get to $208M, offense is still top 5 at worst and the season hangs on SPs getting back to norm. If they dont, easy to trade a few parts and easily get under lux tax.
Kim has improved his command and control to where he should be able to be a four starter in the MLB.
Should be interesting to see if something gets done with Kim and San Diego this time around, unlike 2014.
Those strike out/walk numbers are legit from last season. I could see SD adding 2 SP’s this offseason. One of Strasburg/Wheeler/Odorizzi, and one of Hamels/Kim/McHugh.
Irobot
Bloom’s biggest challenge before he makes any trades is to replicate the professional scouting team that he had at his disposal at TB. That should take time. so I am not seeing any blockbusters in 2019 unless he believes that there is no hope of resigning Betts and he doesn’t have a WS contender at the deadline.
Kim doesn’t look like anything special (career WHIP is awful)and don’t see much interest in him at his age unless he can be had at a bargain price. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he could help a team as a 4th or 5th SP just don’t expect too much out of him and don’t get ripped off paying him big bucks.