Houston, We Have Rule Changes! The Official 2023 MLB Season Thread

god shamgod

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That doesn't mean the Mets wouldn't bid on him is my point. This doesn't indicate that they won't be active this offseason.

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According to Scherzer, “I was like, ‘OK, are we reloading for 2024?’ [Eppler] goes, ‘No, we’re not. Basically our vision now is for 2025-2026, ’25 at the earliest, more like ’26. We’re going to be making trades around that.’ I was like, ‘So the team is not going to be pursuing free agents this offseason or assemble a team that can compete for a World Series next year?’ He said, ‘No, we’re not going to be signing the upper-echelon guys. We’re going to be on the smaller deals within free agency. ‘24 is now looking to be more of a kind of transitory year.’
 

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To be fair, if I want you to waive your no trade clause, I'm probably not telling you the complete truth about 24.

Just cause they say transition doesn't mean they plan on tanking. Might just mean it's not world series or bust. They came into this year with sky high expectations so they are trying to tone them down for next year
 

god shamgod

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I’ll use the Yankees as an example because that is a legit team, right? We know they’re interested in moving this thing forward, because their team is not that great. They were ALL IN on Cody Bellinger, until he came off the market. From what I understand … they have a really good prospect, Jasson Dominguez, I think he may have even been thrown in a deal. That would surprise a lot of people in baseball. But the Yankees are in some sort of dysfunctional moment in their organizational timeline here. And I think they wanted to push all in. They would have on Ohtani, they would have on Bellinger, now the drop off is huge.
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The Yankees would have been stupid to trade minor league assets for Cody Bellinger.
As good as Bellinger has been, the Yankees would need a lot more than him to be serious October contenders. Bellinger also has a 12.5M mutual option for next year, and he might decline it to be a free agent after having such a great 2023 anyway. So I guess on some level the Yankees still can go chase after him.

Giving up assets for Ohtani would have been better. But still with major risk.

As I see it, the only position players that are probably untouchable for the Yankees are Judge and Volpe.
Rizzo, as bad as he’s been since May, is probably still of some value.

But everyone else doesn’t matter. Harrison Bader, Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu, Gleyber Torres (who has actually performed better than I expected)...all of them could be traded or cut and it wouldn't bother me at all.

The Yankees still have to pay Stanton through 2027, before there's a 10 million dollar buy out in 2028. Basically they owe him $118M and if they moved him out west somewhere they'd have to eat at least half that money.

Free Agents this winter:

Harrison Bader
Josh Donaldson
Frankie Montas
Isiah Kiner-Falefa
Luis Severino

Anthony Rizzo is effectively a free agent for 2025 (he has a 6M buy out).
DJ LeMahieu gets 15M per year through 2026 but it's hard to imagine he stays with the team until then.

I've stated this before but I think Manny Machado would have been their top focus this winter, before he re-signed with San Diego.

I think Rodon hasn't proved to be as dominant as he was in San Francisco in his return from injury so while they're committed to him, his lackluster play along with Severino leaving pretty much means they'll make a strong push for Ohtani....though I still think LAD is the favorite there.

Best case scenario: they sign Bellinger and Ohtani and figure out what to do with Left Field later. They let Rizzo walk in 2025 and slide Bellinger to 1B, Judge to CF and Ohtani splits time between RF and DH (with or without Stanton).

What about Jasson Dominguez? What about him? That kid is probably 18 months from reaching the Majors and even when he does he'll struggle so you can't keep a roster spot hostage for him.

If the Yankees don't get Ohtani, their attention probably shifts to Julio Urias, Aaron Nola, Kenta Maeda or Blake Snell.
 

god shamgod

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I know money talks but Bellinger likes it here ,so I think the cubs have a strong chance of re-signing him.he fills a need with lefty power + he can play 1b when pca is called up next year

And with stroman opting out(he’s going to the giants) & Heywards woat contract coming off the books they’ll have dough to spend
 
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