The latest from Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com..
- Yankees GM Brian Cashman doesn't expect Hiroki Kuroda or Nick Swisher to accept their qualifying offers, Heyman tweets. We learned last night that Rafael Soriano will reject his as well, but the sides are still talking (Twitter link).
- Even though the Giants have been getting calls on Brandon Belt, they won't be trading him, according to Heyman (via Twitter). The club's current goals are to goals are to re-sign Angel Pagan and Marco Scutaro while fortifying their bullpen. That includes retaining Jeremy Affeldt, if they can.
- The Red Sox don't see Zack Greinke as a fit for Boston but they are still thinking a bit about Josh Hamilton, Heyman tweets. It remains unlikely that the Red Sox will go for the free agent slugger, however. Earlier today, Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports wrote that the Phillies could be one surprise suitor for Hamilton.
- The Mariners have reached out to catchers Russell Martin and Mike Napoli, tweets Heyman. Heyman adds that General Manager Jack Zduriencik is also looking at corner outfield bats. Nick Swisher is one corner bat that the Mariners are considering, Heyman tweets.
- The Giants have been getting lots of calls on Brandon Belt, according to Heyman (via Twitter). Belt comes with solid upside and quality defense and is not yet arbitration-eligible.
Josh Hamilton? To the Red Sox? Please, no.
Yeah that would cause me to reconsider my red sox nation membership. Would be worst move ever. I know his stats and all just believe it would be worse signing ever. Eclipse carl and lackeys. Only way it would be even ok would be a 3-4 yr max at15-18 per yr. Whichhe wouldnt do.
You would stop being a fan of a team because they signed one player? Heck, I’m still a Dodgers fan despite the dark years of McCourt and the time where Jim Tracy batted Jason Phillips in the cleanup spot. 🙂
Im thinking it was sarcasm.
It was sarcasm. More hyperbole just to state how opposed to the deal i would be.
Could you imagine him in Boston though? He would find trouble faster than he would in Texas honestly. lol
My offer to him would be 2yrs/$30MM total. Anything more than that (years or $$) I’ll cut off negotiations.
I just can’t see it
Red Sox will be tied to nearly every high-end FA because they are either doing their due diligence on the player or the FA’s agent is using the team for leverage purposes.
Nothing to see here, move along
Why is there nothing to see? They have a top 10 protected pick in the draft and if they can sweet talk Hamilton into a 4 year deal with team options, why wouldn’t they go after him? This won’t hamstring them whatsoever, they will have insurance if Ellsbury leaves, and a big time middle of the order bat. Sure, he comes with his issues, but Hamilton is a star. It’s safe to say for the next few years he will be one of the games best players if his off the field issues stay away. This time isn’t rebuilding, it’s going to be adding short term commitments that can help keep them competitive now until their young guys come up.
the simple fact that Hamilton is recovering drug addict and a recovering alcoholic (slipped last year) going anywhere like boston or new york and being put on the big stage like that is a disaster waiting to happen. he is better off staying in texas or going somewhere where he will not break. Oakland, Washington, Chicago (cubs), Baltimore but i still say he should just stay in Texas where he is a fan favorite.
Fan favorite = getting booed the last month of the season.
Red Sox are not getting Greinke or Hamilton I see them maybe going after Swisher Napoli or Tori Hunter
I agree, they may very well end up with all 3 if the price and contracts work out.
Napoli can catch Lackey again, play 1st other days , Swisher could play 1st when Napoli is catching and play right , Hunter at left. but if swisher wants a crazy price and length, I see them giving Ross a better offer to get him back . I think they’ll get Hunter , He’s very good friends with Ortiz and Ortiz is already lobbying for him. They could really use good chemisrty back in that club house. I have a feeling Hunter will take a lower amount 1 year with good incentives and possibly a 2nd year option to play in Boston .
Can’t see a single reason to go after Swisher. Vastly overpriced and overrated. Would cost their 2nd rd draft pick. Re-sign Ross for 1/2 the price, get the same production and keep the draft pick…
Further proof defensive metrics need to be taken improved: dWAR shows Brandon Belt at -0.2
Fangraphs has JT Snow at -19.8 dWAR for his career!
Still a long way to go with defensive metrics. Especially for catchers and 1B, I think.
yea catcher and 1B are where almost all defensive metrics are most flawed.
Wouldn’t the Giants have another big hole to fill if they were to deal Brandon Belt? I would imagine it’d have to be a pretty irresistible offer to take on having to find someone else to play 1B, especially since his perks that other teams are finding appealing benefit the Giants just as much.
just because others are asking doesn’t mean the FO is considering it 🙂
Yeah, I would see Belt as one of the least likely to be traded on the Giants right now.
Well if we are talking about the present, its not that hard to replace a 1B who hit .275 7hr. If the
No, but it would be hard to find another 1B with a .360 OBP and Belt’s defensive skills and upside. By wRC+, there were only 13 first basemen better than Belt this year (min. 400 PAs). Belt ranked about even with Mark Teixera, Adrian Gonzalez and Freddie Freeman.
But it would be extremely difficult to replace a 1B with a .360 OBP and a .421 SLG% while playing his home games at ATT. You’ve gotta look at all the stats, batting average tells you almost nothing.
Belt has plenty of upside. I would not trade him
Depends. The theory here is that Buster would move to 1B and the Giants have a bounty of catchers. The rumor mill hasn’t panned out though, G’s say they aren’t open to a trade in spite of calls.
That bounty of catchers is being depleted since they traded Joseph and the Yankees claimed Whiteside.
What would Belt command in compensation? As a Ray’s fan, would one of our #7 or 8 options at pitcher get him?
Very unlikely. The Giants’ rotation is set and while there’s not much depth behind them I can’t really imagine them trading the guy who was their 3rd best hitter overall in 2012 who is 24 and will make the league minimum next year and is under team control for 4 or 5 more years and whom they have no obvious replacement for in return for rotation depth.
Yea, I was thinking maybe an Alex Cobb type. He’d definitely be a starter in SF, id think. He’s also young with, i believe, 4+ years of team control…
much more than that.. and he’s not available
Belt would be interesting for the Rays
Why on earth would the Giants trade Belt?
Because he hasn’t shown that he can hit as a 1B for 1Division team, he also has a huge hole in his swing and very bad mechanics which the giants coaching staff tried all year long to fix but couldn’t. I think the question should be, why would anyone be interested in him at this point?? He does have upside but right now there are a lot of question marks surrounding him.
In my opinion, no deal will happen, teams wont want to give up much for him and the giants wont want to give him away for anything less than a top prospect or a proven major leaguer.
As the Rays goes, he has to be an improvement over Carlos Pena.
Thats pure nonsense. Belt finished the year with a 116 wRC+. That pretty much exactly average for a starting 1B, it’s exactly the same as Mark Teixeira and better than guys like Adrian Gonzalez, Mark Reynolds and Justin Morneau. And Belt is 24 years old. And he’s already an elite defensive player at his position. Forget upside he’s already an above average starting 1B and he’s still making the minimum salary. He had a much better year than Hunter Pence and in fact his 2012 was pretty much equivalent to Pence’s career averages. If they traded Belt there’s no way they could replace his offensive contributions cheaply. Pill and Hector Sanchez not only make the defense worse (slightly in Pill’s case, extremely in Sanchez’s) but they’re both well below average hitters, not just for 1B, but for the league. Signing a free agent like LaRoche whose career averages are worse than Belt’s 2012 would cost more than 10 mil per year over at least 3 years. That’s 30 million they then wouldn’t be able to spend on CF, LF, 2B, the bullpen and the bench.
As for the hole in his swing, you know who else has a hole in their swing? About 90% of the league. You know who else had a hole in their swing at age 24? About 95% of the league. Also this hole was supposed to be in at his hands, but you’ll notice that over the last month of the season and throughout the playoffs he was not only hitting pitches in on his hands, but also hitting them with power.
His mechanics are certainly better than Hunter Pence’s. To me his biggest flaw as a hitter is that he’s patient to a fault. He often works himself into pitcher’s counts or strikes out looking. But you aren’t going to find many perfect hitters and that kind patience and ability to work a pitcher actually complement a Giants lineup that already features guys like Sandoval and Pence who are so extreme the other way.
With the ability to play a corner OF spot adequately in addition to 1B I can’t imagine why any team wouldn’t have interest in a young player like Belt. Unless they get back multiple players with cheapish salaries I think its incredibly unlikely he’s dealt.
After the all star break belt hit .338 or something like that. He’s actually starting to get things down as an everyday player and he has a glove. He has potential for power but he still has some stuff to work on.
he hit .293 after the all star break.
Belt’s HUGE HOLE:
fangraphs.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/BEL…
Oh wait… what? There’s no hole? That can’t be right…
I believe what the scouts and Bruce Bochy and Hensley Meulens have said.
Yeah those coaches just couldn’t fix his mechanics, which is why he ended up with a 116 wRC+ as a 24 year old. Todd Frazier is 2 years older than Belt and had a 120 wRC+, and is a ROY contender. Belt has more than just upside, he’s shown that he can hang at the ML level.
Was just thinking the same thing. He’s young , cheap and not yet arbitraion eligible. Sign him up!
I don’t think the Giants should trade him, just saying that he fits what the Rays are looking for. Tons of potential, cheap, 1B, can hit for some power
Read a tweet yesterday that Greinke was looking for 6 yrs and $150 mill.
If that’s true, then I hope the Dodgers sign him. Yes, that’s an overpay, BUT he’s by far the best FA SP on the market.
Dodgers could do that deal and then just trade either Capuano or Harang and the rotation looks a lot better:
Kershaw, Greinke, Billz, Beckett, Capuano/Harang/Lilly (whoever is not traded).
That would give the Dodgers 6 SPs, which is fine considering the age of the guys on the back end.
Grienke always will be a potential head case and signing ANY pitcher to more than 4 yrs is always risky. As Dodger owner Mark Walters said, ‘pitchers break.’ Go after Kuroda for 1 or 2 yrs, and await the arrival of our young studs.
The problem with signing Kuroda is the Dodgers forfeit their 1sr rd pick next year because the Yanks gave him a qualifying offer.
Would rather overpay a bit on Grienke and keep the 1st rd pick for next year.
I thought billingsley was going to have TJ?
No, he had a couple throwing sessions and they were encouraging. As of now, it looks like Billz will avoid TJ surgery.
That’s crazy. Greinke’s no ace and he wants 25 million a year? His ERA is close to 4.00 since winning the CY.
I’m stoked my Mariners are trying to make some moves with there pitching and prospects coming up we could surprise a lot of teams
With Zunino vying for playing time out of spring training, I wonder why the Mariners would target catchers. Jaso/Montero/Zunino are there, seems odd to focus on catchers in the FA market.
Zunino is not there yet, Montero is barely a catcher.
I know Zunino is a college player, but he has played only 15 games at AA and 44 total in the minors. A catcher is not going to move that fast.
No on Belt trade. He is YOUNG and CHEAP. Exactly what you want.
Zito, Timmy, Cain all making 20+ mill this coming season. Need some minimum wage guys to balance it out.
Any power hitter is nuts to sign in Seattle unless they shrink that monstrosity of a ballpark.
they’re moving the fences in a little for 2013. Or at least thats what Ive been hearing. If so, that might attract a few FA.
They are bringing in the fence for 13
Welp. There ya have at.
Smoak must be stoked.
Would that be smoaked?
Honest Question: Can the Phillies be a surprise team in on any free agent anymore?
Greinke & Hamilton are two headcases that couldn’t handle the Boston media. For the love of god, Ben, do NOT sign either.
I dont know why they would trade Belt, he still has a lot of potential they just have to stop messing around with him.
who said they were trading him?
No one….
Heyman just followed up and said they won’t.
exactly.. it’s fine that others are interested in him, but he’s not going anywhere, so this was a non-issue. but ppl will get worked up about it regardless 🙂
Not sure why we would want a catcher with Montero, Jaso and Zunino soon coming up. Unless we grab Napoli for a 1B spot to share time with on Smoak?
Napoli’s versatility is the perfect fit. Montero figures to get most of his starts at DH, maybe catch 1/4 of the games. Jaso catches part-time and slots in at DH part-time and Napoli can catch part-time and slot in at 1B. Zunino is good but hasn’t even set foot in a AAA game yet. I can’t imagine he’ll get to the bigs any earlier than a September cup of coffee.
If he continued to play as good as he did last season in AA, and repeats it in AAA, what’s stopping him?
My biggest point is that if we’re going after Napoli, he’s going to want a long deal, right? So we have Montero, Napoli and Zunino. Granted, things could work with those 3 (Montero at DH, Napoli at 1B and Zunino at C, but we need to get over Smoak if that’s the case.
I wouldn’t want Napoli on a long contract precisely because of Zunino coming up soon. 2 years tops. But I’ve all but written off Smoak at this point, despite his strong September. I mean, if we end up with too many strong 1B/C/DH candidates in ST then that’s a good problem to have.
Mariners have the top C prospect (sorry D’Arnaud) on the way, why would they try to pay for a catcher when they can use that money to upgrade… pretty much every other offensive position?
Cause Napoli is an upgrade? Zunino is no guarantee (Jeff Clement, anyone?) and who knows what his time table is? Highly unlikely he gets a call up this year and no way he starts the season on the big league roster. On a short term deal (1 or 2 years) Napoli can fill in behind the plate when Jaso can’t. He essentially replaces Miguel Olivo’s role on the club and since Napoli is about 5 times better than Miguel Olivo…I support it. There’s no way they go into ST with only Jaso and Montero slated in as C options. Plus, what if Jaso goes down with an injury? Montero can’t catch full time. Plus somebody like Napoli can play 1B when Smoak inevitably fizzles out and/or when Zunino comes up.
I can see the Napoli 1B for insurance for Smoak/Montero approach. But no way Napoli accepts a deal for a year or two. Yes, Zunino probably won’t be up next year, but he should be up sometime in 2014. My point is… if you want to build an offense that isn’t near the bottom of the league, pay for positions that you DON’T have viable options for in the minors.
Right, Zunino is not a definite. No prospect is. But if you trust in him, roll with it and upgrade another position through free agency. Ms are not competing in 2013 anyway, it would be foolish to spend $ on a C when there are many other areas in need of upgrading.
Fair enough but who would you suggest for back-up C options then? I’d be real hesitant to split the time 50/50 between Montero and Jaso.
Dear Red Sox
Please do not sign Josh Hamilton. It’ll only get you back in the same situation you were before with Gonzalez, Crawford, et al.
Love
Red Sox Nation
If the Mariners acquire some productive offensive pieces within the next few years they are going to be a formidable ball-club for a very long time.
Belt is part of the Giants young core and he is a potential superstar. Belt is not going anywhere.
From the Mariners perspective, they NEED offence. The pitching is good. The Mariners lack the big bats and impact bats. Last in MLB in batting average with .234. Last in MLB in OBP with .296.
The Mariners need to make a serious run at Hamilton and look for small deals for impact bats.
Hamilton? Isn’t the goal to improve the offense?
43 HR, 128 RBI, .285 AVG. Yeah not improving offense at all.
If you think Hamilton isn’t on the start of a massive decline then I sincerely hope your team lands him.
This sounds more insulting than I mean it to. I just mean that if you see the potential in Hamilton and don’t think of him as being the gigantic risk that I see him as then I hope you get the satisfaction and excitement of signing with the M’s. I just don’t see him sustaining the pre-June levels of success, not beyond another 3/4 years anyway. If the M’s landed him on a shorter deal, 3 years with an option then ok, take a chance, I guess. But after seeing his massive drop in numbers (both offensive and defensive) and approach as the season continued, in a ballpark intensely more hitter friendly than Safeco (even with the fences moving in) I have almost no confidence in Hamilton.
I think it’s safe to say that no one sees Hamilton sustaining his pre-June level of success, which would amount to a .368/.420/.764 line with 65 home runs and 175 rbi over a full season.
But considering the fact that he’s been one of the most consistently awesome hitters in baseball over the course of his career (check out his monthly splits), I would guess that that his second half numbers in 2012 were probably a fluke and he’ll be fine for the next few years.
I’m decidedly more pessimistic, I guess. I see his second half numbers being less of a fluke and more of a sign of things to come.
To each his own, but it seems like he just hit a rough patch at the wrong time, and then it went to his head as the A’s crept up on the Rangers.
I guess we’ll see over the next few years or so. I’m hoping you’re wrong, because no matter what team he plays for, he’s fun to watch.
If it was just the numbers dipping then I’d be more inclined to see the bright side but his approach was just terrible, that’s what really worries me. Maybe the end of the season/A’s catching up with Texas mess got to his head and a change of scenery will restore him to his former self but I just have terrible visions of the M’s going all out on him, putting all their FA eggs in one basket and it fizzling out. I’d just rather see a team that can afford the gamble go after him. Somebody like Swisher makes way more sense to me, slightly less WAR per season but still hovering around 4 consistently, more versatile defensively (i.e. can play 1B). If Hamilton was just one of many off-season moves for the M’s then I’d be way less gloom and doom about it, I just would hate for that to be their only real splash. Lot of pressure on Hamilton to produce.
What if the Red Sox could get Hamilton at 4/$80 and then trade Ellsbury for Dickey, instead of keeping Ellsbury and signing a FA pitcher.
For 2013:
Hamilton (20) + Dickey (5) = $25
Or
Ellsbury (8.1) + Sanchez (15) = $23.1
Estimates 2014 if players re-signed:
Hamilton (20) + Dickey (10) = $30
Or
Ellsbury (17) + Sanchez (15) = $32
Hamilton would have 3/60 left going into 2014, Ellsbury will get something like 6/90-100
Dickey could be extended for 3/30, Sanchez would have 5/75 left on his deal. What is more risky? Which players would make the team better?
Hamilton would be fine in Boston. He wouldn’t live here in the offseason and he would be with the team 99% of the regular season.