White Sox GM Rick Hahn expects his team to mentioned in a flood of trade rumors this offseason, though he doesn’t mind since this winter, some of them will be true. “We aren’t going to be precluded from any single player because of running up against the limits of our payroll. And in terms of the rumors, we’ve always operated under the standpoint that we’re going to be involved in any premium player that’s available, whether it’s via free agency or via trade,” Hahn told reporters, including CSN Chicago’s Dan Hayes. “In years past some of those free-agent fits may have been a little less realistic because of what their market was going to bear out to be versus what we were able to pay. This year I understand why we’re associated with some of the more higher-profile free agent types.”
Here’s some more news from around the game as the GM Meetings roll on…
- The Angels haven’t “yet” had any extension talks with closer Huston Street, Halos GM Jerry Dipoto tells Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register (Twitter link). Street’s current contract is up at the end of the 2015 season.
- An unidentified MLB team has posted the highest bid for Korean left-hander Kwang-hyun Kim, Jee-ho Yoo of the Yonhap News Agency reports. A follow-up report from Naver Sports (Korean language link, hat tip to Sung-Min Kim for the partial translation), suggests that SK Wyverns, the southpaw’s club, is delaying the official announcement since they aren’t happy that the winning bid was so low. As MLB Daily Dish’s Chris Cotillo speculates, this could mean that SK Wyverns will reject the bid and Kim won’t be made available.
- Reliever Craig Breslow is “getting plenty of interest,” ESPN Boston’s Gordon Edes tweets. The lefty struggled to a 5.96 ERA over 54 1/3 IP in 2014, though Edes notes that teams are seeing last season “as an outlier” given how well Breslow has otherwise pitched in his career.
- The Mets “feel a sense of urgency” to compete, a team official tells Andy Martino of the New York Daily News, which is partially why the Mets moved quickly to sign Cuddyer. Martino feels the team will need to add more than just Cuddyer, though a smaller addition is much likelier than a blockbuster for the likes of Giancarlo Stanton or Troy Tulowitzki.
- Also from Martino, he wonders if Yasmany Tomas would accept a three-year contract that would allow him to hit free agency prior to his age-27 season.
- An anonymous GM, an anonymous agent and CBS Sports’ Jon Heyman predict the contracts for 50 of the offseason’s top free agents. They’re only picking contract values, not the actual teams, so Heyman’s game is like an inverted version of the annual MLBTR Free Agent Prediction Contest.
I wonder if there would be any issues with the bid process changing to an idea that the winning bid team can choose to offer MORE but not less money than their winning bid in order to convince the player’s team to allow him to leave. For instance. Say Kim’s people wanted $30M and the winning bid was $25M. Allow the team that won the bid to offer another $5M to get Kim’s team to allow him to leave. The counter argument to this would I guess be the idea that if a team was willing to offer him $30M the 2nd time, they should have been willing to do it the 1st time. My thoughts are that maybe a team was thinking they could win the the bid by only spending $25M, but didn’t realize that the extra $5M would ensure his departure from his team.
I hope that makes sense.
I’d say the problem with that is that it encourages teams to bid low. They don’t really want their bid to be accepted, because that means they probably paid more than they had to. They just want to be the highest bid, so that they can play around with their offers and get as close to that sweet spot as they can.
Not that it couldn’t be avoided, but once the team is known it also opens the door to negotiation (under the table or otherwise), which is clearly not the intent of the system — it’s set up as a blind auction to make teams offer what the player is worth to them, not more or less.
But a team bidding low to avoid overpaying is running the risk of being outbid. I mean, that’s kind of how it works now. You never want to bid more than just above the 2nd highest bidder anyway, you want to be as close to the next bid as possible.
Maybe another solution might be for a team to have to disclose a MINIMUM bid. Say “We will accept no offers under $xxx”, and then teams who are interested will bid above that dollar amount so they can be assured they are 1) within the right ballpark, 2) Their bid will be accepted.
Agent, GM, Heyman predictions are very interesting. Some are way off from what MLB TR thinks. I think MLB TR will be more accurate.
Too HIGH:
VMART: Agent: 4 years, $78M. GM: 4 years, $70M. Heyman: 4 years, $80M.
Way too LOW (except Agent/Headley and Heyman/Miller):
Headley: Agent: 4 years, $52M. GM: 1 year, $10M. Heyman: 3 years, $36M.
Miller: Agent: 3 years, $28.5M. GM: 3 years, $22M. Heyman: 4 years, $40M.
I don’t think Headley is low. The GM thinks he’ll go for 1 big year next season then try to cash in, the Agent is probably closest and Heyman.. well i don’t know.
The GM is way off on Headley and makes me wonder if this GM is still employed, and really challenges the assertion, “they get paid to do it, so they must be smarter than us.”. With the Red Sox and Yankees both interested, and Sandoval likely going back to SF, Headley is the next best 3B on the market (if you consider Ramirez a SS), so there is no way he takes a one year, $10M contract. Even in the unlikely case he’s willing to take a one year pillow contract, the AAV isn’t going to be lower than the other two multi-year contracts. Teams pay a premium to only have to commit to one year.
If he puts up another 2012 season, he’d be looking at Sandoval money, not 4/50M like some suggest. I understand the thought the GM has, but don’t agree with it.
Even if you buy the pillow contract strategy, there is no reason to think he’d only get $10M. Both the Red Sox and Yanks would love to only commit to one year, so much so I have little doubt they would give him $15M+ for one year.
Completely agree. NYY seem to actually prefer him over Panda. I could see my Tigers ending the Castellanos experiment at 3rd and signing him to help Porcello and others on their pitching staff. Castellanos -> Headley at 3rd would be a worst to best upgrade at key defensive position.
His 2012 season was MVP caliber. However, his 2013 and 2014 seasons were still excellent, when considering overall two way value.
Weird how people completely ignore defense. Headley is only 30 and is the BEST defensive player at 3rd base in the game.
I know hes a great defender, but lets face it, people don’t give out the big money for defenders. I bet you the Yankees are looking at his offensive numbers.
Sandoval has been putting up pretty consistent offensive numbers for years and he’s two years younger than Headley, three years younger than Headley will be after this 2012-like season Headley MIGHT have next year. He’s probably not looking at contract equal to Sandoval’s next year regardless. He’ll take the most guaranteed money he can get right now unless someone way overpays for that one year contract. $10M is not going to do it.
He’s still employed because he knows way more than you, I, or even this site does about Chase Headley.
Headley is already in a tug of war between the Yankees and Red Sox. I cannot see how, without the QO, he will go that low.
His 2014 fWAR was 4.4. Panda’s was 3.0. He also beat Panda’s fWAR each of the last 3 years.
I think the Yanks will eventually over pay for Headley 3/40.
As a Yankee fan, I would be perfectly fine with that deal, obviously 3/36 is preferable, but I would pay a little bit more AAV if that’s what it took to keep from going to four years.
Someone will go 4/50 for Headley and I have a hard time seeing him turn that down given his checkered offensive production in the past.
Which is why I don’t consider 3/40 an overpay.
However, with ARod and Prado as options, I don’t think they will “overpay”. I think they have an offer in mind, a line drawn, and they won’t cross it. That line might be 3/40 or higher, I don’t know, but I don’t think they will feel pressured into going past what they are comfortable paying.
Weird that Panda is projected to get more than DOUBLE the contract of Headley, even though Headley has a higher fWAR than him each of the last three years.
Do GMs not care about defense?
The Angels might as well wait until next off season to extend Street. I doubt they will get a discount either way.
Why wait? They already picked up his option so the extension can start in 2016 any way, when some higher priced players hit free agency.
I think the Mets see their young players on cheap contracts and are looking ahead to when they’ll eventually need to get paid. It’s a far off scenario, but improving the club now would increase attendance (and tv ratings) and revenue across the board and give them the money they’ll need to lock up or extend some players.
When the Mets are good, they draw huge crowds. If they don’t improve soon, they’re going to continue not being able to spend like they should.