Frayed Knot

- Clayton Kershaw, who had an opt-out window in his mega-deal signed back in 2014, has agreed to a new three-year deal with the club. The deadline for opting in/out was originally Thursday but the two sides at first agreed to extend it by a day and today reached a new agreement which gives Kershaw an extra season on top of the two years it still had to run. The $93 million dollar price tag is actually a small decrease in the rate he was scheduled to receive but, again, the extra year which will take him through his age 33 season. - the Cubs picked up the club option they inherited on Cole Hamels for next year. No brainer, especially in light of how several of their other high-priced pitching pickups in 2018 [Yu Darvish, Brandon Morrow, Tyler Chatwood] crashed and burned.

But, as always, the problem with 1st basemen is that they HAVE TO hit, and that's true even if the guy is Keith Hernandez revisited w/the glove which, by all reports, is the opposite end of the spectrum from where Alonso resides. If Rosario turns out to be an only OK hitter, for instance, he'll still have some value due to his glove and speed (an additional reason NOT to move him off SS ... but that's an argument for the Machado thread). Mediocre hitting 1st basemen, on the other hand, wind up unemployed (Ike) or just not that valuable (Lucas) and you wind up kicking yourself for not having made the Realmuto deal when you had the chance. Bottom line: It's not that I think Alonso is going to fail, only that the margin of error on guys like that is narrow to the point where I'm leery of putting all my chips on him NOT failing (or even only partially succeeding).

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: you're coughing up the club's top 2 prospects, and a good pitcher, for a veteran catcher. get out of here, man. And this to accommodate Kuechel whose turning into a rich man's Jason Vargas. nope I agree a lot with this. Centerfield wrote: And I’d rather keep Alonso than give him up for Realmuto. Even straight up. But not so much with this. Realmuto is a catcher, and a good one both offensively and defensively (plus he runs!!) who's 27 y/o and two years away from FA-gency. As I've said before, I think some of youse guys is over-rating Mr. Alonso, or at least over-rating the odds of him becoming what we hope he can become. But, until then, he's a 1st baseman who'll turn 24 in a few weeks with contact issues and defensive issues who can't play anywhere else and who might some day be better than the slightly younger Dom Smith and who might some day hit ML pitching enough to justify the aforementioned potential downsides. If offered that deal straight up I'd do it in a second and he IS the kind of guy Miami would be looking to pick up in trades (plus they need a 1B man). But for him plus Gimenez plus a good starting pitcher getting better in front of our eyes? ... ummmm, no.

The problem isn't with Minaya staying (or even Ricco or Riccardi) it's if he/they are allowed or encouraged to go directly to the Wilpons rather than through Van Wagenen. You wouldn't think they'd do that after paying him (whatever?) to coax him out of his lucrative business, but yaneverknow.

sharpie wrote: I was living in the Bay Area during the latter part of McCovey's time with the Giants. His return, and particularly his play in the '78 season, was really quite infectious. At least a certain percentage of Bay area fans considered McCovey 'theirs', seeing as how his rookie season came in their third season there, as opposed to Mays who, while certainly popular, was seen more as a NYC transplant.

Dang!, although I knew he hadn't been in good health for a number of years now and was often seen in a wheelchair. And all this comes as I was just thinking the other day how it's been a couple of years since I've seen Mays, seven years older than McCovey, anywhere in public.

And in the end, as Sherman points out, none of today's hot questions -- background, prior resumes, potential conflicts of interests, etc. -- are going to matter. What's going to matter is results.

deGrom is the biggie though since he's so close to possible FA-gency and a big deal and BVW was his agent up to and including yesterday. Having an assistant GM handle those discussions makes sense and is likely the kind of thing they ran by Manfred and Tony Clark as they finalized the hire. Maybe Syndergaard falls under that as well depending on what the immediate plans are for him, but there's nothing to decide with Vargas (well they could cut him but there's no money to discuss) and Nimmo is still a year away from arbitration much less any potential big deals so even if/when that does come up with him then he's likely several years into a new agent and any conflict is much further in the rearview by that point.

Ceetar wrote: Here's Brodie with Kesti and Brandi ... Of course those are their names. The only real surprise is that neither opted for the double-i spelling.

April, come she will. When streams are ripe and swelled with rain -- Paul Simon

Frayed Knot wrote: 41Forever wrote: Last team to lose back-to-back World Series? I think it was the MFYs in 1963-64. Am I missing one? Dodgers 1977-78 Braves 1991-92 Rangers 2010-11

41Forever wrote: Last team to lose back-to-back World Series? I think it was the MFYs in 1963-64. Am I missing one? Dodgers 1977-78

Of course Price still suxx vs the Yanx, but we'll work on that later.

Gotta give it up to Price here. For a guy with a bad post-season rep, in two consecutive series he's been matched up against Verlander and now Kershaw in potential close-out games and (so far) out-pitched them both.

Of course one thing they can do to 'extend the season' is just keep playing like they are. The 7th thru 9th innings last night took 1:42 to play, more than 1/4 of which was commercial time. I hadn't realized until last night that, in addition to the between innings breaks being lengthened to 2:55 (up from 2:05 in reg season or 2:25 in GotWs), the pitching changes have also been lengthened to the same 3 minutes and usually longer once they get around to the new guy actually throwing his first pitch. That 2:55 is just when the telecast comes back. So between the five half-inning breaks and the four in-inning pitching changes during that span, that's 27 minutes of dead time out of the 102 it took to get through those three innings (26.5%). That total doesn't include mound conferences (I lost count), the checking of the replays to decide whether or not they want to have the umps check the replay (no actual replay reviews were done), or all other types of time-killing non-action. Prior to that 7th inning things were actually sailing along in the game, but yet it still clocked in at just under 4 hours. And, yeah, the 7th thru 9th were when most of the runs were scored, but still, 105 pitches were thrown in total in those three innings (not THAT MUCH higher than the norm of around 90) and they were spread across 102 minutes. The top of the 9th alone took 28 minutes to throw just 26 pitches. Oh well, at least today is Sunday so it'll be a day game ... oh wait, it's not!

Sox: Shut up Frayed!!

Meanwhile back to this year's Red Sox, they've suddenly forgotten how to hit. 2 runs scored in the last 27 innings and 1 hit so far tonight (w/1 out in the 7th)

Mex17 wrote: ". . . [bloom] was involved in all aspects of the Rays minor league system, including player evaluation and assignments, the expansion of the department's video, strength and conditioning and mental skills initiatives, the creation of the "Rays Way" player development manual and the execution of individual development plans for the organization's prospects." Well, yeah, it's logical that he was involved in all aspects of the minor league system seeing as how, prior to being co-head of baseball operations in TB, he spent a lengthy time as minor league director (or whatever his title was). My point is that I think it's far too simplistic to say that we know that candidate X is going to act a particular way (and therefore know why he was hired) because that's the way he went about things in a different job at a different time for a different organization, just as I don't think it's logical to see BVW as a FA-heavy quick turn-around artist due to his former job of repping FAs. Both views ignore the complex nature of the job and of the task. Nor, btw, do I believe that Fred is at the moment sitting on piles of unspent cash just waiting to unleash it on FAs in a WIN NOW! attempt based on him being 81 y/o instead of 79 like he was, oh say about two years ago.

Yeah, I remember that now. I remember virtually every move they made, whether with foresight or one they lucked into, paid off big time, including their fourth choice for closer, 38 y/o Koji Uehara, being unhittable for months on end having never done so before or after. And mostly I remember NYDN writer Bill Madden telling the Mets and Yanx (by which I mean he was telling the Yanx) that they had to immediately copy the Red Sox and Cardinals "formula" for success. In the case of the BoSox that meant having every single FA signing work out much better than possibly anticipated. And in the case of the Cards it was have like seven draft picks from the same class a few years earlier all arrive at the same time. Shyeeet, if you could pull off "plans" like those you wouldn't need any plans.

Mex17 wrote: 1) Fred Wilpon is 81 years old. To me, that means that he is looking to make one more "last stand" to grab a ring before he leaves this Earth. As such, although it turned out that he was prepared to listen, he is not in a position to hand the reigns over to a guy from Tampa in order for him to holistically terraform the Mets into another, larger market, version of the Rays ... He does not have the time to see that play out. Instead, he is bringing in a mega-agent to do mega deals involving mega players this winter. It might not work (as evidenced by the link below), but that is what they are going for. I think we (you, me, any of us) are making a mistake by thinking that either Bloom or BVW are one-trick ponies capable only of a single way to operate. Yes Bloom helped break down the Rays but they're the Rays and it doesn't mean he'd act the exact same way if suddenly dropped behind enemy lines of any of the other 29 teams. And, yes, BVW is an agent, but he's not going to be one anymore if he accepts this job and to think his only skill, and therefore his only possible M.O. going forward, would be big signings is kinda silly as well. 2) The ever present obsession with public perception is also at play here. They did not want to look like they were going down the "safe road" with an old scouting fossil such as Melvin or LaRocque. They knew that there was a clamoring for them to go outside the box and outside of their comfort zone. Hiring the agent accomplishes this (to them) while also satisfying the conditions of point #1. Not to defend the Wilpons too vigorously here, but this is a damned if the do damned if they don't situation. Either we criticize them for same-old/same-old or assume that they must be trying to trick us by NOT doing same-old/same-old. This move, assuming it goes through, is unusual but not unprecedented and maybe, just maybe mind you, they're doing it because they think he's a smart guy that can run a club well -- under their terms of course. And speaking of those terms, if we're going to complain about a dearth of analytics or an insufficient payroll well then, guess what?, those conditions would have existed no matter who they hired and those complaints, valid though they may be, are pretty much independent from the choice of Van Wagenen.

Centerfield wrote: Who does the analytics? The analytics department. Same as with every club. It's not like even the so called "Analytic GMs" are the ones crunching the numbers. The difference is how receptive the man in charge is (or is not) to following such data. How receptive is BVW going to be to analytics? ... I have no idea, but I think it's safe to say he's certainly familiar with them.

Yeah, it was Barnes (not the Barnes who's the Red Sox pitcher) but it was a nice grab, tag, and hold-onto. Kimbrel gets Turner to ground out in the battle of the red beards. No way should that pickoff call w/Kinsler have been overturned. That Buck was so sure it should be indicates, to me anyway, how invested in replay networks are.

The BoSox have used six relievers to face 22 hitters and secure the last 13 outs.

In one of these game defining situations, shouldn't you bring Beowulf in from your bullpen to face Grandal?

More Sherman since he's been totally on this topic from the beginning. Van Wagenen is bright and energetic. Those who know him say he has a strong cooperative spirit and will recognize what he does not know and listen to experts. He was a college player at Stanford. He has extensive relationships with all 30 teams. Bloom is just 35 and has worked for the small-market Rays but has worked his way up through an MLB organization and is well-regarded by other executives in the sport. Van Wagenen is the bigger gamble. But these owners have surprised us with this process. Cardinals executive Gary Larocque was initially viewed as the favorite, then Brewers official Doug Melvin. It turns out Fred Wilpon was not wedded to older and scouty. From a hardly textbook job search, the Mets have wound up outside the box.