NL East Notes: Marlins, Parè, Neshek, Phillies, Gio

As you might expect, the Marlins aimed high in their trade talks with the Yankees about Giancarlo Stanton.  According to FanRag Sports’ Jon Heyman (Twitter link), Miami initially asked New York about such top prospects as Chance Adams, Justus Sheffield, and Estevan Florial.  Those demands weren’t met, however, and the Marlins had to settle for two lesser prospects (Jorge Guzman and Jose Devers) plus second baseman Starlin Castro in exchange for the big slugger.  It wasn’t as if the Marlins had much leverage, of course, as the Yankees were one of the few teams Stanton was willing to waive his no-trade clause to join and Miami’s top priority was getting as much of Stanton’s enormous contract as possible off their books.

Some more rumblings from around the NL East…

• The Braves announced the hiring of Jason Parè as their assistant general manager, research and development.  (The previously-reported hiring of Josh Tamin as the club’s director of Major League operations was also announced.)  Parè spent the last two years as the Marlins’ senior director of analytics, and he previously worked with Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos in Toronto’s front office, where Parè worked as an analyst in 2014-15.
• The Phillies have had internal talks about signing Pat Neshek, NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Jim Salisbury reports.  Neshek was acquired by the Phils last winter in a trade with the Astros and then pitched superbly before being flipped to the Rockies for three prospects at trade deadline.  Neshek enjoyed arguably the best of his 11 MLB seasons in 2017, posting a 1.59 ERA over 62 1/3 combined innings with Philadelphia and Colorado, recording 69 strikeouts against just six walks.
• The Phillies are reportedly open to the possibility of starting the season with a surplus of infielders, though Matt Gelb of the Philadelphia Inquirer argues that the team is best served by trading at least one of their veteran players (i.e. Cesar Hernandez or Freddy Galvis) this winter and giving J.P. Crawford and Scott Kingery a clear path to regular playing time.  Juggling those four players and Maikel Franco during the year leads to fewer at-bats for everyone and, Gelb notes, less opportunity for Hernandez or Galvis to improve their value for a midseason trade.
• Could the Nationals use Gio Gonzalez as a trade chip?  MASNsports.com’s Pete Kerzel discusses the possibility, as the Nats could obtain some controllable talent by dealing the veteran as he enters the final year of his contract.  Gonzalez is coming off one of the best of his six seasons in Washington (2.96 ERA, 2.38 K/BB rate, 8.42 K/9 over 201 innings), though advanced metrics were less impressed by his performance, so Kerzel believes the Nats could look for a trade while Gonzalez’s value is high.