As if there weren’t enough drama surrounding the Dodgers’ three-way deal for Mookie Betts, departed Dodger Kenta Maeda revealed on his YouTube channel that he had requested a trade out of Los Angeles, per Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times.
Neither the trade nor the revelation of Maeda’s request are particularly shocking as Maeda had made clear in the past his desire to be in the rotation. With Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler providing one of the better 1-2 punches in the league, the Dodgers preferred using Maeda as a roving power arm, especially come playoff time. The Dodgers used Maeda as a starter in 2016’s playoffs, but he didn’t make it out of the fifth inning in any of his three playoff starts. In the three postseasons hence, the Dodgers made Maeda into a relief weapon and saw him post a 1.64 ERA in 22 innings in the playoffs from 2017 to 2019.
While 2019’s postseason run was shorter than expected, Maeda was dominant in the NLDS agains the Nationals. He appeared in four of the five games, surrendering just one hit and no walks to seven strikeouts.
The Dodgers had begun to utilize their postseason strategy with Maeda more during the regular season. Now with the Twins, Maeda should be back in the rotation on a full-time basis as he prefers. Maeda has a personal goal of reaching 200 career wins, per Hernandez, which would mean accruing 14 wins per season for the next for years. That’s a tall order for anyone. Only ten pitchers posted so many wins over the past four years. That said, the Twins offense should help in providing an environment conducive to win collection.
In his first four seasons stateside, Maeda has gone 47-35 with a 3.87 ERA/3.71 FIP, and that’s with starting approximately 26 games per season. If he stays healthy, Maeda could potentially garner another 4 to 6 starts per season, putting him in range to hit his target. While Wins aren’t the tell-all stat of years past, it’s safe to assume the relationship between Maeda and Minnesota will have gone quite well if he does indeed achieve the 200-win mark.
He was feelin’ Minnesota.
But he was looking California
And things aren’t looking so good
Yeah yea
I’d rather blow up the outside world because I’ve fallen on black days
Sad nobody else gets the reference.
And you base that off of what?
Soundgarden brother. I remember outshined very well. Awesome tune.
Chris Cornell was one of a kind and the voice of a generation. He was awesome. Not many people could cover just about any song and make it better. Dude was super-talented.
I got the reference. Well done.
Who doesn’t get the reference?
Just about everybody, I’m afraid.
Me, for one. But I could care less about some obscure musical reference so whatever.
What is sad is you think anyone cares about that
Nobody sings like him anymore
he had to break his rusty cage and run
Metsfan I thiught it was pretty funny. I love soundgarden and audioslave I’m sure you do too. Fuck em if they cant take a joke. Pussies
He ran but took a knee to talk to the man Galilee
Dammit, * from Galilee
Show me the power child. One of my favorite guitar licks of all time
I’ll take the river down to Stillwater and ride a pack of dogs!
not surprising. id probably want to start if i was him.
Pretty sure he has starts/innings clauses in his contract for bonuses
His whole contract is team-friendly and incentive-based. A lot of his potential earnings are based on innings pitched, etc. I don’t blame him for requesting a trade, but I do think the Dodgers were utilizing him in a way that made him most effective for the team. He was better coming out of the pen than he was starting, but he is still a solid starter. Plus, the Dodgers have a lot of potentially good starters, so there is competition for their rotation. As a Dodgers fan, I am sorry to see him go. As a Maeda fan, I would like to see him do well in Minnesota. He seems like a good guy.
Hey Chief………correct! Good post. I am pretty sure he did not want to go to Minnesota, He just did not like the way the Dodgers and Dave Roberts were using him any longer. In their defense, he was much more effective as a reliever, but as you mentioned, his contract was interwoven with innings/appearances pay benefit. As a reliever the Dodgers were cutting into his earning power. I don’t think that was their intent, they were just trying to get him to succeed between the lines. They could have/should have/may have offered to re-work his contract but we can only guess. Obviously, he did not want to be a reliever any longer. He will be missed in Dodger land.
Why would anyone want to relocate to Minnesota from LA? Winters are brutal…
They don’t play baseball there in the winter, you really think he would stay year round? Please, almost all MLB players have offseason homes away from their respective team homes. That argument is moot.
Kenta declined an offer to have his contract renegotiated. Said he wanted to be a starter.
Baseball is played in the summer, Warren. And, while I don’t live in Minneapolis, I have. And there are many reasons to prefer it over LA, 12 months of the year.
Mall of America and basically an entire underground city under Minneapolis. Winter isnt meaningless but it isnt as brutal as you think.
@dodger dog. Do you have a link for that? I didn’t know the Dodgers offered that to Maeda.
Name two.
I had not heard about that offer, either.
Hard to believe any player could have come out of such a negotiation with anywhere near same earning potential, especially since the Dodgers have already shown that they’d happily employ him as a reliever.
Opening team offer could easily be the current contract as if Maeda were never to make another Dodgers start again plus a modest bump, immediately swinging negotiations very much in the Dodgers’ favor.
Well I, for one, would. I hate California’s weather, and LA is trashy and hot. Some people love the sun, but I prefer the color green, rain, and seasons….. I know a lot of people feel the opposite, but for me there is nothing special about dry summers and winters with summwr highs of 105+……
Maybe he’s frugal and doesn’t want to pay the exorbitant state taxes.
dodgerblue.com/dodgers-attempted-restructure-kenta…
Air pollution, Traffic and Laker fans are more than enough reason to pick Minnesota over LA
Ugh, if only the Yankees would’ve…… dammit
What the article fails to mention is the crazy good incentives he receives for starts and IP. THAT and that alone are why he wanted put of LA. They kept his innings down to suppress his pay.
This is from his contract. They had to pay at least a million per 5 starts beyond 14 starts!
No wonder they moved him to the pen each year.
“He will receive $1 million for each of 15 and 20 starts, and $1.5 million for each of 25, 30 and 32 starts.
Maeda each year will earn $250,000 for each of 90, 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, 150, 160, 170, 180 and 190 innings pitched, and $750,000 for 200 innings.”
That’s a crazy contract, isn’t it? Seems more likely to instill mistrust between management and player than a straight-up contract. I wonder how unique it is?
Pretty unique, if I recall the initial MLBTR story about Maeda’s signing.
I believe the initial contract was justifiable given that Maeda was coming overseas with the expectation that he would contribute as part of the active major-league roster from day one.
No, they actually gave him bonus money he didn’t earn because they knew his contract was IP heavy. He also started strong but struggled down the stretch nearly every season as a starter, and with the Dodgers depth, they bumped him to the bullpen. Even if he hit his incentives, he still was only making $10-$11M, which is a bargain for a good pitcher.
Yeah, the Dodgers didn’t care about how much they had to pay him. They just utilized him in way that was most effective in terms of winning games. For the Dodgers, with a stacked rotation and a questionable bullpen, that meant pitching Maeda in relief. A role that suited him very well. I don’’t even think it was all about the money for Maeda. I think he genuinely just wants to be a starter. I certainly don’t fault him for that.
Yes, in his own words, it wasn’t about the money, it was more about pride. He had to feel disrespected when Friedman responded to his stated desire to start that he needed to up his game. At the same time they were stacking the roster with pitchers who’d compete for his slot in the rotation. That was the moment months ago when it was clear that Maeda was going to be dealt. I was sorry to see him go but can see how the FO made it inevitable.
Great post!
Dodgers are loaded with young starters waiting for their opportunity to pitch in their rotation..and more on the way from their farm.
Maeda pushed for what was best for him and his career: role, money future contract.
Dodgers saw him as more of a shutdown reliever…a role hid did not prefer.
The trade will work out for both Parties.
Stop
They used his contract to not pay the luxury tax
It’s not hard to see
Stupid comment. The total value is what counts against the threshold. That includes the bonuses. The reason it was so incentive laden is that there were concerning reports about the health if his pitching elbow when he was coming stateside. So Maeda was betting on himself being healthy and the Dodgers were protecting themselves in case he was hurt. More contracts should be structured like this but players want the protection so they dont sign incentive laden deals
More contracts are likely to begin looking like this, though of a shorter duration, to the benefit of the teams and the players signing future deals of this kind.
I guess it was convenient that he appeared more effective as a RP during the playoffs than a SP.
According to reports last Fall, Dodgers offered to renegotiate his contract so that his incentives were related to both starts and bullpen appearances, but Maeda and his agent turned the Dodgers down as Maeda only wanted to start (30 to 32 times a season); and, was unhappy with how the Dodgers had been switching him to the bullpen.
Honestly, given the way we’ve seen careers implode with the constant “is he a starter or a reliever?” shuffle over the last decade or so, I don’t blame him one bit. The guy uprooted his life to come here from Japan and be a starter, signed a contract to start and then got shuffled between the rotation and the pen.
Joba Chamberlain, Manny Banuelos, and even Dellin Betances, were shuffled between the rotation and the bullpen so often that they were never able to stay stretched out as starters and therefore couldn’t succeed. Two of them are out of baseball.. Betances has worked out as a reliever to an extent, but he hasn’t been able to stay healthy, and part of me wonders of Luis Severino’s injury problems the last two years are a result of being sent to the pen in, what was it, 2017? He’s been hurt ever since and is now out until the middle of next year, most likely.
Maeda wanting to start and only start makes more sense for him and his career, incentives aside, as it keeps him in a routine and keeps him stretched out with the knowledge that, barring days off, he’ll pitch every 5th day.
Yanks conditioning coach and team should be replaced. You guys have gone through a ton of injuries since last year
Betances had one injury year and now he cant stay healthy? He was one of the most heavily used arms from 2013-2018. Severino made 10 relief appearances in 2016, thats it. No shuffling. Hurt ever since? He threw 190 innings the 2 years after that.
I retract my comment because they actually did move on from their conditioning coach of a long time upon my own research, sorry about that
How can you have a name that clearly indicates you are a Yankees fan and be so unbelievably ignorant as to guys like Severino and Betances? Even putting them in the same category Chamberlain and Banuelos is just a slap in the face. Lemme guess, you think the Yankees had Gardner play too much CF so that he never could focus enough on becoming Babe Ruth
Really frustrating that this fact was not mentioned in the article when it clearly represents the reason he wanted out of LA.
Did they, mcslims? Did they really do that or did the Dodgers just want to win?
Honestly why complain? Especially if the stats show you’re better out the pen. Getting paid the same to throw less. May help career longevity.
it’s because the dodgers conveniently kept putting him in the bullpen when he was close to triggering huge pay out clauses in his contract. almost every year
The Dodgers aren’t a team extremely concerned with money. They’re cost efficient yes, but I doubt they would’ve held back Maeda had he performed consistently as a top of the rotation arm…he’s a good pitcher and as about a safe bet you can have in the rotation but he was never quite dominant
I agree. If this guy was an 15 – 18 game winner, they would have kept him in the rotation and paid him whatever. There is no way you suppress innings on any good pitcher. Think what you will, but if I’m trotting a guy out there every 5 days, and he gives me a chance to win every game he pitches, Imma run him out there until the wheels fall off. As far as his contract, he should blame himself and his agent for signing it in the first place. Now he’s headed to the AL that has the DH, and no “easy” outs in the lineup. Something tells me he wasn’t as effective as everybody thinks. He’ll have a chance now because outside of Odorizzi and Berrios, the Twins starting staff is the weakest link on that team.
Hambone, wins have nothing to do with it. Guys have won 15 games with an ERA over 5. Wins & losses depend on bullpen, run scoring, defense, etc and those are all outside of a pitcher’s control. I thought everyone knew that by now. I get your point – if he had pitched better as a starter..
but please stop with the wins.
Here we go again with predictions that a pitcher who was good in the NL will get beaten up in AL because of at most two PAs a game.
Hammmbone
Looks like they only gave him a full year’s worth of starts in his first, when he won 16 games. The next year they gave him 25 starts and 4 relief appearances. 13 wins. Maybe he wins your 15 if he starts those 4 extra games. Maybe he makes more money. The next year he only gets 20 starts on 38 GP. He wins 8. Could he have won your 15 wins. Maybe. Maybe just 13 or 14. Close. No surprise he didn’t, though, given just 20 starts. Then in 2019 he starts 26 of 37. Wins 10. Could he have won 15. No. Not with just 5 or 6 more starts. I guess the point is he could have won 12-15 wins each of those 3 years if given the starts. Since only 4 pitchers have won 14 wins or more each of those 4 years, the Dodgers should have been satisfied with the wins he could have gotten them with 29-32 starts each of those seasons. The relief appearances, IMHO, were all about money on the Dodgers’ part. They just weren’t being honest. As for ERA, he had 4.22, 3.81, and 4.04. Not great but certainly serviceable for somewhere 3-5 in the rotation.
I absolutely agree, mcdusty49.
Could be that maybe Maeda saw it differently and didn’t believe that he should have to be a top-of-the-rotation arm to earn $10MM to $11MM per year for the SP numbers that he did produce.
Everyone leaves out the part where he conveniently signed that contract in the first place. If he wanted relief incentives he should have negotiated them.
True that.
that’s what a small market team would do. in l.a. it’s about the performance and not the money.
because he’s not getting paid the same. his contact is largely incentives based on the number of starts/innings
But he doesn’t get paid the same.
He’s on an 8 year 25 mill deal
According to Cot’s Contracts, Maeda is paid $1.5 million for his 25th, 30th, and 32nd starts of the year. He’s also paid $250,000 for every 10th inning beginning with his 90th.
Shifting him to the pen nullifies innings and starts which costs him money.
No reliever that I can think of has come close to 90 inning work load.
Betances, tyler clippard, and Jim johnson have as true relievers. A few Rays guys have as the long man after the opener. And then there are guys like Jesse Chavez who’ve done it. Liam Hendricks pitched 83 last year
He had an elbow issue when he signed, so majority of his earnings are IP and starts based
Lad moved him to pen to avoid his incentives and therefore avoid the luxury tax. Someone said they paid them out after the fact, idk, but it’s pretty clear what they were doing for a couple seasons. If he got just 1-2 more starts, they woulda busted the lux tax line prob both in 17 and 18. Instead, just below at 199M
This comment should be the only one in this thread
Nailed it
I didn’t see anyone bring up the fact that Maeda would also suffer in FA the more he becomes a pen arm. As a FT starter he increases his total innings / games started, and that increases his value in this current market exponentially, unless he does terrible, of course.
They moved him to the bullpen because they had outstanding rotation depth, not much bullpen depth, and he has performed significantly better out of the bullpen. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Wait, the math on the wins is not right… he has 47 career wins. I think you mean 100 wins?
He would need 38 wins a season plus one extra for the next four years to reach 200 if he is at 47 wins.
He’s talking about career wins including overseas…..
Yeah, I started wondering about that too and suspected what Jorge just confirmed.
I was wondering..lol I was like, um, that clearly doesn’t add up, and then had to scroll way down here just to see someone say something about it..
Miller Lite…. good call guys..lol
Spell check four*
“.. which would mean accruing 14 wins per season for the next FOR years.”
Don’t you mean FOUR????
Spellcheck is turning people into morons!
maroons
They were already morons, Scott. Spellcheck just reinforced it.
I lol’d at this ^^
This isn’t a high-paying media site. I am unsure of what the editing process is for MLBTR but I would be willing to wager that the commenters are part of that process. Be happy you’ve contributed.
No, he meant “for years” in this case 11 years. He’s 32 in 2020. If anything it should be either “per season for many years.” or “per season for the next 11 years.”
But being that pitcher wins are the dumbest and worst stat in all of professional sports that even Cy Young voters have finally agreed don’t mean a thing, Kenta is really showing us all that he’s out of touch.
Oh wait, I was wrong there, he meant career including Japan, nevermind lol
Please cease with the nonsense SF. it got old a long time ago.
In this case, he was pointing out something that was not entirely clear in the post..
It lists his record at just about 50 wins, it states he wants to reach 200 wins, and also goes on to say he only needs to average 14 wins for four seasons..
To make things alot more clear, the article could have easily mentioned he wanted to reach 200 COMBINED CAREER WINS, but it did not..Without that information, it made things a little confusing.
Pitcher wins? Oh Kenta, my poor guy, didn’t anyone tell you no one cares about those anymore because they’ve become largely asinine since the introduction of relief pitching and are based on team factors not just solely pitching factors? Shoot for 40+ WAR my dude.
WAR isn’t legit at all. While wins are a bit overrated, that is HIS personal goal.
If “WAR isn’t legit at all,” what do you suggest is?
It is just one of those milestones that at least partially means a pitcher has been pretty good over a fairly lengthy period of time..
It doesn’t hold a ton of weight for me either, unless we are talking about 300 career wins. That’s just because you would have to be able to sustain a relative level of high quality pitching over alot longer, and because the list of pitchers shrinks significantly from 200 to 300..
Guys, proof your articles. There are typos everywhere.
Capitalism deciding editors were not financially viable on internet media really destroyed the quality of journalism all-round.
Hate the whole “write then hit publish without anyone else looking at it because content -must- be produced many times a day regardless of time” world we live in, not the player.
There’s a thing called “edit”
Your comment has the option for about 3 minutes.
Errors happen. Edits can be made. Not that big of a deal.
But no one edits the articles…
Or you could go get a subscription to the Athletic if this FREE fan site doesn’t meet your expectations.
He’s blaming capitalism? Lolololol. I’m sure Socialist countries have much better major league articles……… oh wait
Will anyone ever win 300 games again?
Nope
Well, Verlander has 225 wins. If he wins 15 games a year and pitches 5 more years he will get to 300. He would still “only” be 41 years old. Incredibly rare, yet clearly within his reach.
15×5 is quite a reach considering his age going forward and the fact that only 4 pitchers have won 14 or more games per year for each of the past 4 years. I’d say it’s very unlikely he reaches 300 (unless he pitches beyond 41) though he could come close. Whether or not the Astros ownership/FO keeps the juggernaut together will also affect his shot at it. Either way he’s a lock for HOF.
Maeda was at times used in a fashion to suppress payroll. He wasn’t in the best of 4 group which made it convenient when they wanted to acclimate him back to the pen. We’ll never know what the incentives looked like to restructure his inning incentives. But it was clear he wanted to start, which you can’t blame him. At the end of the day, I don t think the Dodgers believed in him as an integral rotation piece even though he has always had the stuff. To many times he would nibble and see himself get into trouble thus shortening an outing from the get go or attack guys and end up missing a pitch and revert back to nibbling. He was partially a victim to the depth, a victim of suppression of innings to suppress salary, and not being an integral guy in the rotation. I’m glad he’ll get a chance to start every 5th/6th day, and generally guys perform better without having to look over their shoulders at the competition. In somewhat In the same light, I was happy when Strip got traded for a fleeting moment.
he wanted to be a starter but prolly wouldn’t in LAD
I like Maeda, but I find it odd that he would put a very individual long term goal of winning 200 games above winning the Word Series, for this year at least. The Dodgers look like they have a good formula especially with Betts, but he is going to another playoff caliber team in Minnesota.
He has 4 years left and wants to win 200 overall games. He needs to start to do that
Long term? It’s 4 years!
You’re inferring that this will be his last contract.
The Dodgers were willing to ruin someone’s career for their own good.
Oh come on.
Lmfao what!?
They didn’t want to pay his incentives. But he was better in the pen=Ruined career…are you high?
If you grew up in lA, well some point it’s inevitable to want out.
That area is Gang infested
Iowa is gang infested? Interesting.
born in LA almost 60yrs ago (awk!) We had a family friend who lived right near DS….i watched the neighborhood go down hill so fast. Sad as it’s actually a nice area except for the danged hills trying to get in & outta driveways…
Maeda will want to reach 200 wins (career NPB & MLB) specifically because membership in one of the Japanese baseball Hall of Fames is (Nippon Puro Yakyū Meikyūkai, The Golden Players Club) is conditioned on a player reaching 2,000 hits, 200 wins, or 250 saves in their career.
Statistics in the MLB accrued after a player’s NPB debut are added to the career NPB totals. (So an MLB veteran with 200 wins going to NPB would not automatically become eligible, but if they played long enough to accrue 200 wins after that point they would.)
Maeda’s probably hoping for a career like Hideo Nomo’s who had 78 NPB wins and 123 MLB wins for 201 total wins.. It’s also why a 36 year old Nomo was allowed to get 5 wins for the 67-95 2005 Tampa Bay Devil Rays despite an ERA of 7.24.
“which would mean accruing 14 wins per season for the next for years. ”
Four?
Dodgers will probably deny it just like they Denied they pulled the trade off the table against Angels
Yer all wet. Moreno said that he backed out, more than once.
Just like I hear you Brooklyn fans keep saying it wasn’t necessary
The home of Chavez Ravine
Why would you boo Mike Trout at Chavez ravine
An all-wet troll. That’s what you get for hanging out under bridges.
No entiendo amigo
That Arte confirmed he pulled out of?
It wasn’t necessary?
Does anybody proofread these articles?
* 200 should be 100 wins
100-47=53÷4=13.25
* agains should be against
* for should be four
Pretty sure no one does. The writing quality here has really gone downhill in recent years.
Untrue and unnecessary. You can always stop reading. That would be the honest thing to do. Reading and complaining is kinda contradictory and…low.
Oh god, here come the white knights…
It’s for his entire MLB+ Japanese career…..
Yes, like I said earlier, this is not some high-paying gig. Writers rush out stories and move on to the next one. They do their best. Sometimes it is OUR job to do a little friendly proofreading for them. And I do not think for one second that the writing has gone down on this site. The content has expanded, the stories have expanded, the varieties of stories have expanded, and the writing quality is as good as it ever was.
If you’d read the comments before posting your comment, you wouldn’t have posted at all. Your mistake has already been noted multiple times.
No, it’s not your job to proof read for the writers. All it does is make it so we have to look through the weeds for the content we want to respond to.
@silver. Are you concerned that you aren’t getting the quality reading experience you want out of this FREE fan site? You have options you know. Go buy a subscription to the Athletic.
@SalaryCap- The article was very informative. I just wish they had a 3rd party check for errors before posting it! Also, he wasn’t real clear about his Japanese League wins being included in the total…
Congratulations, cowboy.
You scored a 67 (2÷3=0.666667 x 10 and rounded = 67) in your own personal copy-editing rodeo.
Hey, How about those Pittsburgh Pirates?? Which Big Market is ready to swoop in ( like vultures)on our next round of young talent.
Not the rest of the league’s fault that Pirates ownership isn’t willing to spend in order to compete.
The Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles in 1958 — playing their first several years at the Coliseum — was a seminal event, heralding what many saw as the city’s arrival in the big leagues of world metropolises. But the removal of more than 1,000 mostly Mexican American families from Chavez Ravine to make way for the stadium is a dark note in L.A.’s history.
The last family was dragged away kicking and screaming and weeping, and the removals became a rallying symbol of Latino L.A. history and activism.
Guess what those people didn’t own the land. If you live in a housing project there is always a chance that it gets taken away.
Los Angeles-based author Mike Davis, in his controversial, often polemical, history of the city, City of Quartz, discussed the process of gradually convincing Chavez Ravine homeowners to sell. Davis asserted that with nearly all of the original Spanish-speaking homeowners initially unwilling to do so, “developers”, representing the city and its public housing authority, resorted to offering immediate cash payments, distributed through their Spanish-speaking agents. Once the first sales had been completed, it is said that remaining homeowners were offered lesser amounts of money, allegedly to create a sense of community panic that people would not receive fair compensation, or that they would be left as one of the few holdouts. Some residents continued to resist, despite the pressure being placed upon them by the “developers,” resulting in the Battle of Chavez Ravine, an unsuccessful ten-year struggle
They still did not own the land… We have laws in this country and if you don’t follow them you are open to punishment. Dodger Stadium has done so much more for LA than a housing project lol.
Dodger Stadium has done so much more for LA ohhhhh
Fernando Valenzuela?
And what year is it? We might as well bring up slavery, but, how about the Native Americans that were systematically removed from the entire country, into small sects, usually in undesirable areas, or just killed if they didn’t comply. They were impacted far more Than the single community to which you refer.
But you know what, nobody on this thread is responsible for that, so instead of talking about Dodger Stadiums impact on a specific community in the 50s, let’s talk about baseball in 2020?
We do have laws. Among them are squatters rights. So yes they did own the land. Stupid comment
Please don’t enable this troll’s efforts to change the subject of the discussion to something completely off-topic.
No squatter’s rights don’t apply to residences owned by someone else. That’s trespassing.you cannot misappropriate the law to suit your utilitarianism. Under the same vein, I can walk into your house when you’re not there and ca it home and it’s my right?
I’m done with the tangential idea of squatting because it’s so far off.
Guess what, amk3510? The families bought out and/or displaced by eminent domain did own the land.
The City of Los Angeles was acquiring and consolidating the land into a development site for a public housing complex that was never constructed.
Why did you completely ignore everything else? This is a baseball website, you said your piece, people responded and you cannot change the past.
I repeat, nobody here is responsible for that so drop it. Go to a rally at city hall and blame the pictures of the dead city commissioners and mayor from the 40s and 50s for that.
All in all, the Dodgers received great value from the Maeda contract. If Graterol pitches to his potential and becomes a star, the Maeda contract would be considered genius!
I liked Kenta but Graterol, Raley and the 67th pick is great value for him. Dodgers made out great.
Lol Kenta missed the mark pretty badly, Dodgers offered several times to re-do deal to have him make more money on his deal even in pen. Now he is gonna get launched in the al and probably head to the pen for a discount. Cant tell you how many times this dude given up multiple homeruns in his 2nd or 3rd trip through the lineup.
Most pitchers give up home runs the “3rd trip through the lineup.” That’s why so many managers are yanking them before/during the 6th inning. And it’s the smart thing to do.
And that’s also the purpose of the opener. Get long pitcher deeper into the game before the third time comes around.
A big missing detail is that he wants to accrue 200 wins combined between MLB and NPB. 14 wins over the next FOUR years would do that.
MLBTR needs to hire an actual editor or three. Their articles are either filled with errors (like this one), drone on and on and on, have inconsistent tone, or are heavily wordy.
I saw where they are hiring if you are interested. Since it’s not a paid gig, I really appreciate what they DO bring to table. Thanks MLBTR!
It’s a fairly amateur site in general. Don’t set your expectations too high. The people making decisions for this site can’t even settle on whether posters should be able edit their own comments or not. For some articles it is an available option….others it is not. Just a small example of amateur decision-making, but an example nevertheless.
richt I doubt you would qualify to write here. Just sayin’. The gall of some commenters. Frankly given the hassle of ungrateful commenters, I’m surprised they accept commenters at all. They should just tear down the comment boards and be done with all the stupid grief.
@Mo4ever..I have never agreed with a poster on MLBTR more than I do with you right now. I wish I could upvote your post 10 thousand times.
I’m a professional copyeditor, so I’d be more qualified than most of these writers, frankly. You, on the other hand, appear to be an amateur white knight based on all your silly comments on this thread. Or one of the writers’ burners.
So you are a copy editor that couldn’t figure out what the writer meant when he wrote for instead of four. But white knight? Sure, I’ll take that. Better than a stuffy professional editor who is full of himself coming on these boards who is frankly more qualified than most of these writers. Are you listening to yourself? We have enough people like you, doing what you do, validating everything you say by claiming things like being a copyeditor.
No, I’m a retired Real Estate Broker…
I mean, you’re going of grasping for low-hanging fruit going on a free site where the main goal is to get as much information as possible out in a very short period of time. Quite frankly, I go to this site all the time because they get up-to-date information out expeditiously.
Maybe you can donate the time you read the articles as an act of good faith and send them their corrections upon reading them? Then you’re actually contributing to making the site you read better?
And, I’m almost a retired – I’d tell you but then…….. we’ll, let’s say a good teammate.
Yankees will be more than happy to sign him.
True that!
I had a performance job before and was redirected several times in an effort to keep goals from being reached. They did not want to pay out the big commissions. So I get where he is coming from. I’m his newest fan. Go Maeda
My god, all of the stupid, wasted effort of people going out of their way to correct “for” for “four.” Obviously it did not stop them from understanding the sentence so what was the point? Nothing of consequence. No dam point at all.
And, ironically, many of the criticisms tend to contain grammatical errors within the post.
Gets old and stupid doesn’t it? People go on a free sports fansite and feel like they need to correct spelling. A lot of these posters don’t think about how long the article has been here and consider if its already been brought up several dozen times.
I didn’t understand what he was saying in that sentence at all, actually. I had to go to Maeda’s stats page AND read the article that the MLBTR writer was citing to figure out what this writer was trying to say, because his writing did not make it clear.
I don’t buy that. You can read the context and figure it out.
*damn
Makes sense. They always treated him like an afterthought
Basically Maeda is saying that the Dodgers are shysters. They told him lies and then he asked to be traded because the Dodgers were scamming him
He isn’t saying that basically or at all.
Basically he simply said he prefers to start so asked for a trade. No conspiracy here
Unfortunately, you’re saying that to a bunch of people who either want to assume the worst, or want to paint the Front Office as inept and evil. Your common sense isn’t common around here.
Dodgers will struggle on the mound and struggle at the plate when the weather cools in October. They should rake in June/July though.
Somebody thinks the weather in LA gets cool in October. What else do you know for a fact?
Maeda, Ryu and Stripling were top 10 in soft contact last season. Dodgers traded them all at one point. Thinking maybe 88-74 this season.
Ryu was never traded or even discussed as someone to be traded, not that I can recall.
All In favor of excommunicating Geno55 from this baseball site? Aye it is! Adjourned
Geno- I’m just kidding with you…. let’s do though. There is too much political grandstanding on these. I get roped in myself sometimes but in reality, none of is are responsible and none of us can fix it on here.
Maeda just wants to pitch and get paid! What is he BTW, the only story written about a pitcher that isn’t about TJS? Man, SPs are going down like flies
Maeda was originally supposed to sign for much more, however there were issues with his medicals and rather than trashing the deal altogether they renegotiated it to its current state. Makes me wonder if maybe Japanese dr had one opinion of his elbow and US dr had a different opinion which would only benefit the dodgers. The allure of playing in the MLB kind of forced him to renegotiate and take his current contract. Also I think he received like a PRP injection and rested before pitching for the dodgers(could be mistaken). Def. sounds like the dodgers had the upper hand in negotiation and after that contract was signed they had every right to use him in the bullpen (where he proved to be more effective), but significantly hurts his earning power.
I’d love to see Wes Johnson turn him into a cy young winner. Maybe the Twins will face the Dodgers in the world series this year or next. It would be a great storyline.
It seems to me that Randy Dobnak has locked down the Top Spot in the Twins rotation. Who will follow? Jose Berrios looks like the leading contender for the Second Spot in the rotation. Homer Bailey got through his one spring training outing with an 0.000 ERA with 2 K’s, albeit giving up 2 hits. Maeda and Odorizzi look to be in the lead for the 4th and 5th spots. Could be interesting.