Here’s the latest from around the NL Central…
- The Reds’ rebuild has unsurprisingly been a big subject among fans during the team’s winter caravan tour, MLB.com’s Mark Sheldon writes. In response to one fan question during a Q & A session, president of baseball operations Walt Jocketty said the decisions to trade Aroldis Chapman and Todd Frazier were made since neither player was likely to re-sign a long-term deal to remain in Cincinnati. “We felt they were at the peak of their value for what we’d get in return. These were not easy decisions,” Jocketty said. In another response, Jocketty said that the team was able to accomplish “most of” its offseason goals, as the team’s lack of success in finding trade partners for Brandon Phillips or Jay Bruce is “not necessarily” an impediment to their rebuilding plans.
- Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage is entering the last year of his contract and wants to remain with the club, he tells Ron Cook of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Searage is universally regarded as one of baseball’s best pitching coaches, as his track record with veteran reclamation projects has been a major part of the Pirates’ recent success and also played a part in their offseason strategy. As Cook notes, the “Ray will make him better” mantra undoubtedly informed the Bucs’ acquisitions of Jon Niese, Ryan Vogelsong, Juan Nicasio, Neftali Feliz and Kyle Lobstein.
- Josh Bell is the Pirates’ long-term answer at first base and he could begin to help at the position as soon as the 2016 season, Travis Sawchik of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes. Bell still has some questions to answer (namely about his defense, ability to hit left-handed pitching and whether he can consistently generate power) but he carries a lot of potential to solidify what has been a revolving door position for the Pirates. As Sawchik notes, 44 different players have played at least one game at first for Pittsburgh since 2004.
- Stephen Piscotty has big shoes to fill in taking over from Jason Heyward as the Cardinals’ everyday right fielder, but as MLB.com’s Jenifer Langosch writes, the Cards are confident Piscotty can continue his development from highly-touted prospect to star rookie to Major League regular.
- In other NL Central news from the last 24 hours, the Brewers swung a big five-player trade with the Diamondbacks that sent Jean Segura to Arizona and brought Aaron Hill and Chase Anderson to Milwaukee…there haven’t been any new Brandon Phillips trade talks, so it looks like Phillips will begin the season with the Reds…we collected some Brewers notes containing comments from Mark Attanasio, Matt Garza and Ryan Braun.
“We felt they were at the peak of their value for what we’d get in return.”
This statement does not inspire confidence, considering both Frazier and Chapman had seen their value tank due to, respectively, a poor second half and the domestic violence allegations.
True. I’ve seen plenty of comments about the relatively lackluster (compared to perception of Astros, Braves, and Phillies) rebuilding efforts of the Reds, on this site and others but my initial reaction is always that its not the front office’s fault that Frazier slumped to close out the year, Chapman had a domestic violence incident, Brandon Phillips won’t accept a trade and that flat out nobody wants Jay Bruce.
They should have been dealt at last season’s deadline. Bruce was apparently preferred over Cespedes by the Mets at the time, so Jockety missed that opportunity.
After Chapman’s situation came to light, how much further would his value drop? He could have been dealt later than he was.
With Phillips, taking on a bad contract could possibly persuade another team to make concessions to Phillips.
But Phillips isn’t a bad contract, merely an expensive veteran, so it makes more sense to just keep him than do that.
Phillips was HARDLY the problem for the Reds last year. He had a pretty decent season. No reason to pay another team to take on that contract.
Besides their awful timing, the real problem with this rebuild is that the Reds are not getting back impact players. Again and again, they have acquired quantity over quality, insisting on players already in AA or AA in their delusional belief that these modest additions will help them compete in 2017. It’s tragic to see Joey Votto wasted on a team destined to be mired in mediocrity for the rest of the decade.
I’m going to guess the link is to the wrong Josh Bell unless the Pirates have acquired the Oriole castoff from a few years ago and are expecting a miracle comeback.
If the Bucs don’t resign searage our pitching staff is going to be dead in the water. Hopefully nutting’s money doesn’t suddenly just disappear when his contract expires. He is the reason our pitching staff has been the among the best in the league the past three years.
I’ll be curious to see how they measure Searage with Jim Benedict no longer around.
The situation with Benedict, the Pirates, and Marlins was a little strange–I never did understand just what happened there (though I assume it was about $$$).
Benedict left for a better position that would pay for more money. The pirates still had him under contract and he was most likely leaving anyways so they got one of the marlins better prospects for him.
My guess is Piscotty will be offensively better than, but not close defensively. Piscotty has a chance to be a solid fielder, but I highly doubt he’ll ever garner any Gold Glove votes the way Heyward does every year.
On the other hand, I feel like Piscotty we’ll be more consistent at the plate. Heyward was great the 2nd half of the season, but I don’t know how much more he has in him. It’ll be interesting to see if he continues to bat near .300 or takes a step back like his production in Atlanta.
Either way, I’m sure both teams are happy with their future OF.
I’ve never seen a player as overrated as Heyward to this point is his career. Defense is a great thing to have, but….the game has morphed to where a true offensive bat is the hotter commodity. I too believe Piscotty is a superior offensive threat to Heyward. Heyward can’t hit lefties to save his life, and to me, that’s not a guy you throw anything more than $10m a year at, if that.
BJ Upton
how about putting the brakes on Heyward’s “great” second half. Yes, he hit .318 after a pretty miserable first half. But in the second half, he only had 4HR and 29RBI. Yes, his defense is very good It’s wonderful to have a great defensive player in the OF. But keep in mind, they don’t handle the ball all that much. I’m with statcrowder on this! But….it’s the Cubs money—not mine. I’d rather have Piscotty at just above the minimum as opposed to Heyward at over $20m.
I agree he wasn’t MVP level the second half, my point was that a ton of people will point to that and say he’s improving. I still don’t don’t buy he can be an perennial .300 hitter. Also, I don’t think his power is ever coming back. Could be wrong, but I just don’t see how that’ll happen.
The Braves could trade Freddie Freeman, Jason Grilli and Arodys Vizcaino to the Pirates for Tyler Glasnow, Austin Meadows and Josh Bell. That would improve Pittsburgh on hitting, defense and bullpen pitching. Could be enough to put the Pirates on top of the division without losing any major league talent and still retaining a deep prospect pool. Braves would get better for the future.
What have you been smoking? Why would we trade our 3 best prospects for that?
Also, there’s no way the Frugal Pirates pick up Freeman’s contract.
Plus, we traded Grilli away once. Why would we want him back?