With the free-falling White Sox open to selling off veterans, power-hitting third baseman Todd Frazier could end up switching uniforms by the Aug. 1 non-waiver trade deadline, writes Nick Cafardo of the Boston Globe. Frazier is on a reasonable $7.5MM salary this year and will make one more trip through arbitration in the offseason. His .212/.300/.476 batting line is far from great, but the right-handed Frazier is second in the majors in home runs (28). Meanwhile, the team’s second-best starting pitcher, lefty Jose Quintana, is available for an “overwhelming” package, a major league source told Cafardo. The highly effective Quintana, 27, is controllable and affordable through 2020, and has logged a 3.13 ERA, 8.15 K/9 and 2.26 BB/9 in 123 2/3 innings this season.
More from Cafardo as the deadline draws closer:
- Regarding the possibility of the Diamondbacks trading star right-hander Zack Greinke in the first season of a six-year, $206.5MM contract, a source told Cafardo, “It would take a great return of players and the team would have to assume the entire contract. The Diamondbacks wouldn’t pay a dime.” It seems as if Greinke will stay put, then. Before landing on the disabled list with an oblique injury earlier this month, the soon-to-be 33-year-old recorded a 3.62 ERA, 7.49 K/9, 1.73 BB/9 and 47.6 percent ground-ball rate across his first 109 1/3 innings as a Diamondback.
- The Royals have interest in Red Sox righty Clay Buchholz, who’s currently in their bullpen, but Boston would have to pick up large portion of his remaining $13MM salary for 2016 in a trade. Buchholz’s contract also includes a $13.5MM club option for next season. In 20 appearances (13 starts) and 82 2/3 innings this season, the 31-year-old has compiled a sky-high 6.10 ERA to pair with ugly strikeout and walk rates (5.99 and 4.03, respectively, per nine).
- The Marlins scouted Red Sox southpaw Eduardo Rodriguez and a couple of Twins – right-hander Ricky Nolasco and left-hander Tommy Milone – in Boston earlier this week. It looks as though the 23-year-old Rodriguez is unavailable, per Cafardo. Nolasco, a former Marlin, is on a $12MM salary through next season and has continued a trend of having difficulty preventing runs this year (5.40 ERA) through 116 2/3 innings. Milone has also posted a lofty ERA (4.71 in 49 2/3 frames), though he carries a more modest salary of $4.5MM.
- Phillies righty Jeremy Hellickson is another candidate to join the Marlins, and southpaw reliever Mike Dunn could be part of a deal. As a 31-year-old pending free agent, Dunn would seemingly be an odd pickup for the rebuilding Phillies, however.
KC on the cheap… Amazing what a following of fans that team has and a regional sports TV contract like most teams and seem to be always playing the cheapskate role… Amazing
Amazing! Their TV contract is one of the worst if not the worst in baseball. Facts. Amazing.
KC has a TV contract that pays them $20M through 2019.
ATL has a contract that pays them between $10-20M per year through 2027 (publications have reported closer to $12M per year). We won’t be crying you a river.
Yeah Atlanta takes the prize on that one.
You must be thinking of the Royals of over 10 years ago. They have a established habbit of signing players to extensions. Like Greinke, Butler, Gordon, Perez, Escobar, Ventura. They certainly have not played cheap on trades of prospects. And have hit free agents as they needed & could. Those things combined had them in back to back world series.
As a die-hard D-backs fan, I wish they would just be realistic and say that we overvalued this team in the offseason, and weren’t ready to add someone like a Zack Greinke. Realistically, if we could just trade him to a team for a low-tier prospect and they take most of the contract, we should pull the trigger. I like Greinke, don’t get me wrong, but this team needs major overhaul.
” Realistically, if we could just trade him to a team for a low-tier prospect and they take most of the contract, we should pull the trigger.”
Who would take that contract? Grienke pitched arguably his best season last year and ANY team could have signed him. The D-Backs got him because they were willing to pay more than anyone else. He hasn’t pitched as well this year, and likely will never get back to the level he pitched to in LA. He’s still good, but not $200M+ good. No one is taking that contract. To move him the D-Backs would have to eat significant salary…
I thought the dbacks were going to be good this year with the additions of greinke and miller. But losing pollock also hurt them big. they gave up kings ransom for miller, Didn’t they offer Cueto 6 years in the 120 range?
Zack Greinke wouldn’t command more than a bucket of chicken, and that’s if the Diamondbacks pay 20+% of his salary.
Nice pitcher. Unbelievably bad contract.
Could the Sox be considering a package for the Marlins’ Hernandez with Rodriguez being the centerpiece for Miami? Seems like addition by subtraction for the Sox, at least in the long term as Rodriguez projects as a young ace on the rise.
Who’s Hernandez?
Lol, he’s dreaming of getting Jose Fernandez….I guess he’s also not paying attention to a well the Marlins are playing. Keep dreaming buddy.
You mean Fernandez? No, the Marlins are a playoff team. They’re not trading their best pitcher.
Like the others have already said, Fernandez is going nowhere and I’m not sure if you know what the meaning of addition by subtraction is. Addition by subtraction would be the Phillies getting rid of Ryan Howard.
“It would take a great return of players and the team would have to assume the entire contract. The Diamondbacks wouldn’t pay a dime.”
put another way:
We made two huge mistakes this off season and now we hope some other team is as stupid as we were/are.
The Marlins scouting Erod makes no sense. Boston wouldn’t trade him unless receiving a SP in return.
Just Cafardo making stuff up as usual.
Greinke has a limited no-trade clause that allows him to block trades to 15 teams and if he is traded he receives a $2M trade bonus. Greinke’s k will likely be a disaster at age 36 & 37 but if healthy he will provide k value or even surplus value in the first few lower $ seasons. Greinke at least provides some performance/value, the real disaster was signing Yasmany Tomas for $70M and blowing their bonus pool $ on Yoan Lopez.
If you find someone willing to take Buchholz you don’t waste time discussing details. You just pay him and send him away. He’s taking a roster spot that could be used on any one of two or three better relievers in AAA.
So let me get this straight. Greinke decided he was going to the highest bidder in the offseason, and the Dbacks gave him a MASSIVE overpay of a contract that nobody else wanted to match or beat. Now they expect someone to give them a great return of players AND take on the contract that nobody else would’ve given him when all they had to pony up was $$$. Please tell me this is a joke.
If the dodgers offered him a 6th year, I bet he would of gone back there. But I can see it from Greinke’s view, he said he joined the dbacks because of their offense. And they gave him over 200 million. They got out of the gates slow and they didn’t recover. One of the big losses for them was losing Pollock in an exhibition game.
The D-Backs are 18 games out. If they had Mike Trout, Josh Donaldson, and Jose Altuve for the entire season, the three leaders in WAR this season, they still wouldn’t be in first.
This is a deeply flawed team with problems that go way beyond losing Pollack.
Thankfully, for the Dodgers sake, they were smart enough to not offer the 6th year.
And please tell me you don’t really believe he went there because of their offense…
They don’t want to or need to trade him. We’ve lost a lot of players this season due to injuries, and in Shelby Miller’s case, inconsistencies, but Greinke has been solid this year, albeit, not as great as last year, but still solid. I’m looking forward to the D’Backs contending next year.
I know that they don’t need to trade him. The fact that they have the balls to even ask for a great return of players while having someone else take on the entire contract is almost as ridiculous as the Shelby Miller trade.
So if you don’t want to trade Player A but the media keeps asking you about it, you make a statement like that. Similar to the Braves approach with Julio Teheran. And did the Miller trade look bad at the time? Yes. But those are the risks that GM’s have to take.
You make a comment along the lines of, “Every player is available for the right price.” The situation couldn’t be any further from the Julio Teheran one. If Julio Teheran was a free agent last year and got significantly overpaid, and then the Braves asked other teams to give them great prospects in return AND pickup the entire contract, then the situations would be similar.
And no, good GM’s don’t take those kind of risks like the Dbacks did when trading for Miller. They overvalued an already overrated pitcher and overpaid to get him. Those are the kind of risks that (should) get GM’s fired.
Wasn’t the big thing in Grienke coming out of KC was that he had anxiety issues? I was surprised with that he did as well as he did in LA, wonder if the massive contract made it too much for him to live up to.
The comment on Greinke makes no sense. Even if you assume that his contract is not an overpay, it’s irrational to accept all of it, and “give a great return in players.” Cafardo, at this point in his career, often has motivations other than purely journalistic. I wonder if the Red Sox aren’t quietly looking at Greinke, and this is part of a campaign to lower the price by discouraging other suitors.
I don’t think there will be very many suitors, with or without Cafardo’s campaign.
Wait. If no one was willing to pay Greinke more than the Diamondbacks did this past offseason, why would anyone give up “a great return of players” in order to do it now?
I’m waiting for someone to make the “change of scenery” argument. Eyeroll.
They wouldn’t/won’t.
I wonder what kind of package the giants would have to put together to get frazier. Their offense is pretty much non existent right now and I really don’t believe that Duffy is the answer at 3B
If/when the Phillies deal Hellickson, I seriously doubt a 31-year-old soon-to-be free agent reliever would be part of any package. That’s madness.