The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.
This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…
- Dodgers acquire and extend Tyler Glasnow (0:30)
- The Giants signed outfielder Jung Hoo Lee (7:15)
- Diamondbacks sign Eduardo Rodriguez and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (13:05)
Plus, Steve Adams joins to answer your questions, including…
- What’s going on with Atlanta shuffling all these contracts around? (21:25)
- Will the Mariners do anything with the payroll they jettisoned? (30:15)
Check out our past episodes!
- Shohei Ohtani, Juan Soto and Deferred Money – listen here
- Winter Meetings, Ohtani Secrecy, and the Mariners Shedding Salary – listen here
- Sonny Gray, Kenta Maeda and Offseason Questions – listen here
The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!
First time listener, Tim sounds like a muppet.
Great insight, drasco…
My bad. Bees?
Huh. My wife says my voice has some Homer Simpson vibes to it sometimes. Which muppet?
Beeker
Sir, your voice is not deep enough, nor silly enough for Homer Simpson.
Perhaps a poll is in order…
It is a subtle mix of Homer and Kermit. I expected you to sound stern and gruff haha What a pleasant surprise!
There’s nothing puzzling about the Braves’ moves.
Kerr was a cheap pick up, taking advantage of a small salary dump by the Padres.
Kelenic is a starting caliber OFer with 5 years of control for very little money and who has a fair amount of upside.
What’s the problem?
I watched all of Kerr’s outings last year and if he ever develops command he is a plus reliever. I’m rooting for him but it’s still a big if. That being said it was painful to watch him go just because Preller foolishly gave carp all that money for nothing.
RE: TyP
“I watched all of Kerr’s outings last year”
Love when people add this like it means something before saying the most basic thing in history.
Yes, every pitcher will be better if they improve their command. Groundbreaking
Yes, every pitcher has a 10.7 K-rate and upper 90’s FB.
I don’t know that there’s a problem, but as they discussed he could cost over 60 million once you add up the arbitration. That said, my personal belief is that somehow AA knows that Kelenic is amenable to the kind of extension that he’s notorious for giving, making the point about the arb dollars moot.
but as they discussed he could cost over 60 million once you add up the arbitration.
==========================
He can only cost $60M if he is really, really good. It’s like saying the Soto acquisition is a problem because he will cost $33M. That’s a feature, not a bug.
@chiefnocahoma1 The cost of 6 years of a controlled player is roughly 30% of his cost in FA. Make it 35% since Year 1 is gone, so if Kelenic gets 60m total from the Braves he’s been a huge bargain, worth about $170 million over the next 5 years (short of being Mike Trout fr 2024-2028 he won’t get $60m, but I take your point).
I’m skeptical Kelenic will get an extension from the Braves short of giving them excellent terms. He’s just not the sort of player they’re looking for—he’s not professional, his results have been extremely erratic.
My guess is he’ll be packaged with prospects (and / or Vaughn Grissom, maybe) and be sent to some small market team who has an ace with multiple years of control left. The Braves have a lock on getting to the postseason for the next 5 years. If they want another WS title the only thing that moves the needle is an ace for the postseason.
That’s why LAD paid so much for Glasnow. They’re hoping in 3 years out of 5 that he gives them some postseason starts.
Yes because all of these adds isn’t puzzling at all…. and I stopped tracking this like 2 weeks ago so the list of useless adds has grown. No one else is doing these random garbage moves at this volume. AA is not a genius. This is just a waste of time circulating guys in and out for no reason pretending they are having an offseason while everyone else makes real moves. Kelenic is the only real move they’ve made and that was a very modest move at best.
-Max Stassi
-David Fletcher
-Zach Logue
-Angel Perdomo
-Evan White (traded back out)
-Marco Gonzalez (traded back out)
-Jorge Juan
-Leury Garcia
-PTBNL
-Penn Murfee
-Jackson Stephens
-Tommy Doyle
-Andrew Velasquez
-Ben Bowden
-Grant Holmes
-Luis Liberato
-Luke Williams
-Reynaldo Lopez
-Jackson Kowar (traded back out)
-Aaron Bummer
Like… what in the world? Show me another org that’s doing this crap. And these are the adds. Not even factoring in the random departures of guys like Soroka and Wright.
So yeah I’m sorry to tell you puzzling is exactly what it is. Nonsensical moves at some point becomes puzzling.
SE_B
You not understanding something is not the same as the thing being not understandable
There is nothing puzzling at all. They like a guy and took a $4m gamble. If you treat Kelenic like a free agent someone (several teams surely) would take the gamble on him for the price. If he ends up making a lot in arbitration it means he’s good.
In all fairness people could say the moves are “puzzling” and mean it in the sense that it’s confusing because they are trading for players that seem to no have value (indeed,have negative value) then trading them or releasing them. But I think most people just think it’s dumb which is “puzzling” to me honestly as we aren’t talking about that money (relatively).
While I can understand people not liking Kelenic, I don’t see any way that one can consider this puzzling. They basically paid money, instead of prospects, for a player they like.
@JoeBrady Yes. Nice to see the chaff separated from the wheat so cleanly.
The only ‘confusing’ element is that instead of directly paying money for a player they wanted, they took on salary, then released that player since they couldn’t use him and couldn’t trade him. He just took up a useful roster spot.
It’s also in the middle of the free agency period where more moves can be made. We’re not seeing a full picture. While I doubt that ATL will be reeling in a big SP either via trade or FA, I know they’re interested, but also they see the price of the COF market (Gurriel Jr., T. Hernandez, etc.), which has much less depth, and why they already traded for an option they liked better: The Kelenic Project.
Also, AAA didn’t have much depth last year, and between the adds AA is making now to give some guys a chance at making the roster, while also building depth at AAA, it will benefit the ML roster more than likely when a long season takes it’s toll on arms. Whoever thought Tonkin would be a key long-man in ’23? Frankly, if we never see Jackson Stephens or Penn Murfee pitch, we’ll be in a good place, but that rarely happens.
@RunDMC “While I doubt that ATL will be reeling in a big SP either via trade or FA…”
—-I’m less sure of this. They have two players now in Kelenic and Vaughn Grissom of the kind that small market teams covet. 11 years of control for 2-3 years of a small market’s ace? Throw in a pitching prospect and they might get it done.
When you’ve got a lock on the postseason until 2030 the only way to improve is to add superstars who move the needle, and the Braves can use a postseason #1 or 2.
Can’t forget the Braves also gave up Kyle Wright, Soroka, Phillips, Shuster. High upside young starting pitchers, some with proven high-end track records in the majors. All moved at arguably their lowest value. That’s the real crime here. The kind of upper minors pitching depth that could have potentially acted as a cost-saving buffer to Morton and Fried leaving is now gone, replaced only by Lopez, who has just as big question marks over his rotation viability as any of the above prospects. Tons of money, tons of high-potential starting pitching prospects, all for a couple of lottery tickets. In the dream scenario that Kelenic turns into a perennial all star, Kerr becomes a late inning bullpen weapon, and Lopez becomes a serviceable 4th/5th starter, they still overpaid in every sense for that potential outcome.
Maybe the only saving grace for these moves is that their CBT and real payroll are pretty far apart, and they will have a lot of money coming off the books after this season, and should be able to spend some to replace Ozuna, Fried, Morton. But they could have gotten to that financial flexibility while keeping guys like Soroka, Wright, Philips, Shuster, and Lopez. I’d argue that signing Michael Brantley for a year or two would have made the lineup better now and left them in better shape long term.
But here’s the thing, they won’t actually spend to replace those guys. They never do.
I agree with you SE_beast. Every off season and trade deadline we hope and wish for a Starting Pitcher upgrade that never comes. Then everyone just gives a bunch of excuses why we really didn’t need one anyway. Wash, rinse, repeat, lol
You have to go all the way back to 2021 for Brantley having a full season and he only had 29 doubles 8 home runs and 47 runs batted in. Brantley ceiling production wise is the very least / off year you would hope for with Kelenic. Kelenic was a big time prospect, that has showed signs of putting it together. If the Braves with their staff can get him hitting like he has the ability to do he could be a middle of the order bat for years, very cheap.
I think Kelenic is probably more interesting because of his upside than Brantley, but not at the cost of all of these moves. You could argue they overpaid for Morton, Lopez, Jimenez, and Pearce, also. I don’t care what they do with their money, unless they start using the supposed limitations of it as an excuse when it comes to roster management and free agency, because they haven’t been operating like it is a limitation at all in all of these other moves…
There’s no credible argument they overpaid for Morton. 3/$55m for 8.5 WAR, 521 IP with a 114 ERA+.
There isn’t a large market team in baseball that wouldn’t take that.
The Braves current AAA depth
Huascar Ynoa
Ian Anderson
AJ Smith-Shawver
Alan Winans
Hurston Waldrep
Darius Vines
Dylan Dodd
They can’t ALL start in AAA PLUS adding a broken Michael Soroka, Jared Shuster, and Kyle Wright won’t come back until 2025, not to mention the severity of his injury makes it incredibly unlikely he ever returns to being the pitcher he once was.
Gowens and Phillips are losses, yes, but the Braves have lengthened their overall depth. They’ve built up a ridiculous amount of bullpen depth moving forward, they were able to strengthen their bench, they were able to acquire a young and promising OF that oozes potential and could use a change of scenery, and the majority of the money they took on in those trades comes off the books after this season.
The one move AA hasn’t made, that he probably should have already made, is signing another starting pitcher. I highly doubt Lopez will work put as a starter, but if he does, then AA has already even addressed that need.
Even so, I still suspect that he will pull off a trade for a steady and reliable, mid-rotation type that’s capable of eating up quality innings.
They’ve addressed almost every single one of their current and future needs while still maintaining future financial flexibility and keeping all of their top prospects.
That is NOT an easy task whatsoever. It is dang near impossible, yet here we are with the Braves having one of the most complete rosters in all of baseball and a wide open competitive window.
@richardc Great comment. I only disagree on the target–I think the Braves are a decent bet to trade Kelenic and Grissom for a #1 or 2 SP with 2-3 years of control, someone they’ll want to go in the postseason.
They’re almost surely in contact with the usual suspects. When you’re a postseason lock, this is the likeliest route to the WS.
“Maybe the only saving grace for these moves is that their CBT and real payroll are pretty far apart, and they will have a lot of money coming off the books after this season, and should be able to spend some to replace Ozuna, Fried, Morton.”
One thing you could see AA doing is dipping back under the Luxury Tax Threshold in 2025. Doing that, and avoiding the ever-increasing tax penalties (including losing higher and higher draft picks) would be a good move to keep the competitive window open for the next 4-5 years after that.
All the guys they moved were ready to start making money in the minors, braves didn’t want to do that
If money was the issue why’d they take on so much money for literally nothing in all of these corresponding moves? That part doesn’t seem to add up…
Calling them “high upside” is a little far fetched. Most of those arms are damaged goods. Shuster hasn’t shown much in the majors and will probably end up in a bullpen.
They really haven’t lost anything. None of those players contributed. They are at their lowest value and close to having no value at all if you wait. Shuster is a MLB caliber pitcher but not a good one. To the BEAST guy that muted me for no reason: what is there to replace? Getting them off the 40 man roster immediately is an improvement. Wright is a good player but his injury was quite severe and he was only ever good one season and the clock is running up service time so chances are he wasn’t gonna be productive for them.
There’s a good chance that the Braves organization knew that Wright and Soroka may never pitch again to the level they’ve shown in the past, and that’s why AA moved on from them. It may just have been the right time to get *something* for them.
@GabrielJames One problem for the Braves is that you can’t come close to hanging onto all these guys, so you deal them while OTHER teams believe it’s possible they might get another season, for example, out of Wright, v. 2022.
Rather than say they were sold at their “lowest value” it may well be that they were sold before their value reached zero—an art the then-Indians perfected in recent years.
(Still, the 5 for 1 for Bummer threw me.)
Him looking to opt out doesn’t necessarily mean he’s succeeded in producing $90m in performance, he just needs to think he’ll get more than he’s signed to. It’s entirely possible that he’s bad for the start of that contract, then figures it out and opts out, leaving the Giants with like 1-2 years of production for $90m.
Yes, I agree with that and it is a more nuanced take on it. So much of it has to do with how Lee plays in 2027.
Ryan Divish’s statement, “Let’s be clear, the Mariners are not broke or leveraged. They have money” reflect a well known fact.
The ownership group of John Stanton, Chris Larsen, Griffey Jr, Nintendo, and others, possess tens of billions of dollars.
The “rebuild” is appearing to be a waste of fan devotion to a 47-year old franchise unwilling to break the cycle of doing what it takes to get to the World Series.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Be honest. Is the “Show all x comments” feature only intended to make it harder for us to gravedig old comments? Make it harder to tell which thread the comment we are looking for was on?
No, definitely not. It’s a work-in-progress, improvements coming tomorrow (fewer comments hidden). The goal is to make it possible for readers to navigate comments sections with hundreds of comments more easily. Threads where you have comments or there are replies to you will always be visible in the next iteration.
So when are you going to post about Matsui signing?
Yesterday Darragh made a post about it I believe.
It’s on the side bar.
mlbtraderumors.com/2023/12/padres-reportedly-close…
Thank you MLBTR team for an interesting site with all the news and speculation especially during the fascinating hot stove time period.
Tim, you made a great point about Glasnow’s injury really being a single injury. His experience, and those of a few others, probably will change the approach to forearm strains. Well, at least the more serious ones. Likely to see less rehab and wait and more going right to surgery.
Been there with the toddler and newborn Steve.
Hopefully the market gets going soon. Think the problem is that we have had a lot of players and teams waiting on Ohtani and now Yamamoto. Once Yamamoto signs I think the floodgates will open and we’ll have a flurry of moves. So gets some rest Steve and the rest of the MLBTR staff, you are going to get really busy soon enough.
Lee will probably be the worst AAA signing in franchise history