Front Office Subscriber Chat Transcript

• Hey everyone, hope you had a good weekend! I'm not feeling great today so I'm going to keep this one around an hour. Let's get rolling

Duffy Scliff

• You’re gonna get a million Devers questions, but tell me this, have you ever seen a trade like this? Where a contending team trades a player early into a massive contract? This is not Mookie, or Sale, or Nomar. This is not like A Rod or Stanton being traded in a salary dump. This is 100% unprecedented. This relationship must have been so far beyond repair and we didn’t see it. This is one of the most shocking trades in baseball history.

Devers

• Why would SF do this deal? They don't have 3B open for him and with Eldridge coming up soon, Devers is going to be a very expensive DH only bat. The upside exists, but that's gambling a lot on a guy adjusting to the NL West gaunlet and changing his clubhouse negativity for a team surprisingly in the midst of a tough playoff race.

Anthony Franco

• A quick control Ctrl-F shows there are 18 mentions of Devers in the queue. Not going to publish all of them for obvious reasons
• Broadly speaking, I like it more for SF though I get where both sides are coming from. If Boston felt the relationship was truly beyond repair, I have a hard time seeing them getting more than this. Giants took the whole deal (minus the Hicks contract, which is a negative value asset but a short-term commitment) and Harrison and Tibbs are arguably on par with Top 100 type prospects
• Harrison obviously is no longer a prospect but I think he'd be valued equivalently to a back of the top 100 guy if he hadn't exhausted his rookie eligibility
• There's definitely risk for the Giants in creating a long-term logjam at the corner infield with Chapman signed forever and Eldridge knocking on the door. But we've also seen the top of the market for elite hitters spike in the couple years since the Devers contract was signed -- Vlad Jr. might be a worse player and just got $500M -- and they're in a division where there's always going to be huge pressure to pursue top-end talent

Dear Evan Carter

• do you see the Mets transitioning well given canning is starting to show his true colors and senga being out awhile? i am concerned about what we could expect from montas/manaea given the time off.

John

• Would it make sense for the Mets to trade one of their depth starters to try to get a higher leverage reliever or use some of the younger prospects in a bullpen role later in the season? I get a feeling the bullpen market will be light given how scarce quality arms are, especially lefties

Anthony Franco

• Yeah I think they're going to be fine. The rotation is going to regress a little bit but the offense was heating up (at least going into the TB series) and they were starting to produce more with RISP
• I imagine they'll just deal prospects to a non-contender for lefty bullpen help but I wouldn't be wedded to keeping Blackburn if they had another win-now team that wanted to swap MLB assets

Bat first

• Yankees' designating Pablo Reyes for assignment in favor of keeping Ben Rice in the lineup is a bit surprising. With Rice/Escarra on the bench, that leaves Peraza/Grisham (or whichever outfielder is sitting that day) as the only pieces on the bench that can play a position other than 1B or C. Wouldn't it have been better to give Rice or Escarra everyday reps down in AAA, rather than let your 100 wRc+ players rust on the bench if you simply don't have everyday spots for them?

Anthony Franco

• They like Escarra more than Rice defensively as the backup C and I'd much rather have Rice on my team than two of Reyes and Peraza
• Tough to count on Stanton playing every day and there's not much harm in mixing in a few more rest days for Goldy. Between that and maybe an occasional start at catcher, I think they can find 3-4 starts a week to keep Rice in a groove

Robert from SC

• I saw that Braves fans were disappointed today when Nacho Alvarez was optioned. I don't understand why. He's not going to save this team from the disappointing season they're having. Is Nacho the long term answer at SS?

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