2016 MLB thread. THE CUBS HAVE BROKEN THE CURSE! Chicago Cubs are your 2016 World Series champions

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So they were gonna pay these two dudes $293M combined while they couldn't meet their best player in the middle at $190M....maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand that logic.
 
The only thing that was getting it done for Robbie unfortunately was 10 years.

I still think he ends up in Detroit or Texas eventually...might drag out a bit with this new kid from Cuba defecting.
Free agent outfielder Shin-Soo Choo  has not yet found a fit for 2014, and part of the problem has been the loss of a draft pick  that comes with signing him. Another stumbling block to a deal has been his contract demands, as it's believed that Choo is looking for  an eight-year deal. 

Now here comes another fly in the ointment. Ben Badler of Baseball America reports  that Rusney Castillo, "a 26-year-old center fielder who had been one of the top players in Cuba", has defected in an effort to eventually find a job with a team in the United States. 

There are still several steps for Castillo to take before teams can start the bidding for his services, as he first must establish residency in another country, and then be cleared to play by the United States government. That process could presumably be completed before the start of the 2014 season, but perhaps not until spring training games have already gotten under way. 

So what does this have to do with Choo? Well, teams that were pondering a Choo signing might now be tempted to wait for Castillo to save money and a draft pick, not to mention they would avoid committing long-term to a player who will turn 31 in July. At the very least, there's now an "alternative" to Choo, which may force the outfielder to lower his asking price significantly. 

Castillo might not have anything close to Choo's upside, especially in the short term, but he profiles as a pretty good player. Here's how Badler describes Castillo's skill set: "Castillo is short but has a strong, athletic frame at 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds. His best tool is his speed, as he's an above-average runner and one of the better base stealers in Cuba. More of a doubles hitter than a big home run threat, Castillo puts a charge into the ball with a line-drive right-handed swing. 

"Primarily a center fielder in Cuba, Castillo has also played some second and third base, so his versatility could be a draw for some teams. He’s an aggressive, high-energy player, though some teams view him as a fourth outfielder."
 
Boras is that dude, getting money for his clients. Regardless how you feel about him, he does his job and he does it well.
 
Choo goofed, but I'm glad that signing didn't go down for those years/that price.

Beltran for 3 should be sufficient, and then some.
 
Jeff Passan just tweeted it, and he says the contract was offered after Ellsbury

"Superagent Scott Boras does some of his finest work in the latter stages of free agency. And in the case of Shin-Soo Choo, he faces yet another challenge in a career built on slaying them: find Choo a contract for the $140 million the New York Yankees offered him even after they signed Jacoby Ellsbury.
In the aftermath of Robinson Cano's defection to Seattle, New York presented Choo a seven-year, $140 million deal, three sources outside the Yankees' organization told Yahoo Sports. When Boras countered asking for more money – one source indicated he wanted "Ellsbury money," or $153 million over seven years – the Yankees pulled the offer and signed Carlos Beltran to a three-year, $45 million deal."

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/10-deg...iddle-of-the-free-agent-market-165809610.html

so he blew his deal for $13 mil...would have loved to be a fly on the wall when Boras told Choo that the Yankees pulled the deal
 
Choo is one of the most humble, unassuming athletes at his talent level ever. This is surely all Boras' doing.
 
Heyman said that was a rumor and could be true. He also said we offered Beltran a deal first and if he didn't agree, then we would get Choo.


Who knows if it's true or not but I'm happy we didn't get him.
 
Lough
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Jenny Dell ‏@JennyDellNESN 1m
OFFICIAL: #RedSox acquired INF Jonathan Herrera from Colorado in exchange for LHP Franklin Morales and minor league RHP Chris Martin.
 
Kudos to Scott Boras for taking a high spender out of it. 
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@Ken_Rosenthal: #Mariners drawing strong trade interest in IF Nick Franklin with multiple teams involved, sources tell me and @jonmorosi.
Hopefully the rumblings for Billy Butler are coming to fruition. I still believe in Ackley..slowly but surely he's coming around.
 
You can do a lot better than Butler for Franklin.  Gotta aim really high to move him :lol got a lot of 1B already.
 
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Breaking down Doumit trade and more
We've had a slew of minor moves over the past 24 hours, and I figured it would be easiest to wrap them all into one post. 

Doumit to the Braves for Gilmartin  (trade details)  

Ryan Doumit's best attribute was always his bat, as he's never had a real position and his offense has slipped since he left Pittsburgh -- unsurprising for a player like this entering his early 30s.  Doumit gave the Twins two mostly healthy years, setting a career best in each year in games played and plate appearances, but his production declined each year while he's become mostly a dead fastball hitter without the pitch recognition to survive a steady diet of off-speed stuff. 

Doumit could platoon with Evan Gattis  at catcher if Atlanta just wants to forget about defense entirely while it waits for prospect Christian Bethancourt  (a superlative defender). Over his career, Doumit has hit better from the left side, with a reverse split in 2013, while Gattis doesn't hit right-handers at all, so the two of them could combine for good production at the position. The problem is that Atlanta doesn't have a spot to move him to if it decides it can't live with his catching, with first base and all three outfield spots filled. He could end up an expensive bench piece for a team that could use the help but operates on a budget that doesn't allow for that kind of extravagance. 

Sean Gilmartin going to the team that once seemed to take only soft-tossing, strike-throwing college pitchers in the draft is just too perfect, and even now the Twins seem to value that class of pitcher over power arms, even at the major league level. (They did go against type in last year's draft, taking hard-throwing prep right-hander Kohl Stewart in the first round.) Gilmartin's fastball sits mostly 87-89 mph with a decent changeup, below-average breaking ball and good control. He's a solid athlete who could swing the bat a little in college, but at this point the main benefit to his athleticism is that it helps him keep his delivery consistent. 

He might be a fifth starter, although it's hard to see him even being average in the majors with fringy stuff and no out pitch. I think this was more of a salary dump than anything for the Twins, so getting a guy who can be a touch above replacement level is a good return. 

Rockies make two deals  

The Rockies were busy acquiring extra pieces Wednesday, picking up outfielder Drew Stubbs  from the Indians  and reliever Franklin Morales  (once their own top prospect) from the Red Sox  in separate deals. 

Stubbs is an elite defensive center fielder with some power who strikes out way too much to hold an every-day job. It's possible that playing 81 games in Colorado, where the ball doesn't break the same way, might help his contact rate, and it's likely it will help him hit a few more homers, but with Carlos Gonzalez  and Michael Cuddyer  locked into jobs andCorey Dickerson  and Charlie Blackmon  looking for playing time, I'm not sure how much Stubbs will play. He would be an expensive if useful backup. 

In exchange, the Rockies send Josh Outman  to Cleveland. He is coming off a year in which he posted the best peripherals of his career, including a huge ground ball rate, and I'm a little surprised that Colorado would give him up, especially since he has two years of control remaining to Stubbs' one and will likely cost less over those two years than Stubbs will in 2014. 

The Rockies reacquired Morales from Boston after he couldn't follow up a solid 2012 season, walking 15 in 25 1/3 major league innings and dealing with minor injuries. Morales lost about 2 mph off his fastball, couldn't throw his curveball for strikes and had to work in a slider to make up for those issues. If health was the reason for the lower velocity, he could be a valuable pen piece for the Rockies, who always need extra relief innings and could make particular use of a four-pitch reliever like Morales is (or might be, depending on the curveball). 

Jonathan Herrera  is just an extra infielder, nothing more, something the Red Sox needed but not someone the Rockies -- who still need an every-day second baseman -- are likely to miss. 

Relievers get snatched up  

We've had a bunch of reliever signings over the past few days, all one- and two-year deals (good, as maybe teams are finally learning that giving relievers longer deals is irrational) but some overpriced relative to their potential production. The bargain, if we can call it that, was the Cubs getting Jose Veras  for a year and $4 million with a club option for 2015. 

The other two deals were both two-year deals for a rich $7.5 million per year, the Padres with Joaquin Benoit  and the Orioles with Grant Balfour. I prefer Benoit by a slight margin, but it's interesting how the clubs reached this point. 

The Orioles traded Jim Johnson, due to make $10 million in 2014 and probably a nontender, for a lottery ticket ex-prospect in Jemile Weeks  then signed Balfour more cheaply to do Johnson's old job and likely to do it better. The Padres traded Luke Gregerson, likely to make $4-5 million in arbitration, for a comparably priced fourth outfielder (Seth Smith) then gave Benoit far more money to do Gregerson's job and probably not do it as well. 

The Padres would have been better off standing pat and maybe trying to extend Gregerson; the Orioles, on the other hand, clearly come out ahead in the series of moves, even if I would have signed Benoit to the same money rather than Balfour.
 
Golden State Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber interested in buying the A's and building a waterfront stadium in Oakland.
 
Golden State Warriors owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber interested in buying the A's and building a waterfront stadium in Oakland.

That would be ideal, but there's so much melodrama that still has to play out with this current ownership group (not to mention Bud Selig's own admission that the A's should never have moved to Oakland to begin with). I can see a sale occurring if the new commissioner proves to be just as meek on the issue as Bud has been.
 
 
You can do a lot better than Butler for Franklin.  Gotta aim really high to move him :lol got a lot of 1B already.
He has that kind of value around the league? If he's the only name being thrown around I'd like to see the type of return they'd get.

If it's a package deal we're talking then maybe Kemp is back into play.
 
Yup.  He has big offensive potential in the middle infield.  Just gotta hope he learns how to hit/lay off breaking pitches.  That killed him last year, struck out way too much.  But he has the stuff.  He'd be the centerpiece of a Kemp deal if I were LA.
 
Apparently, the Rakuten Golden Eagles are not going to let Masahiro Tanaka go to the United State without a fight. The team appears prepared to make the pitcher an offer he can't refuse in order to get him to agree to pitch one more season in Japan.

According to multiple reports, Rakuten is going to offer him at least an $8 million salary for 2014, if not more, which would make him the highest-paid Japanese pitcher in history. Last season, Tanaka's contract was for only $4 million.
 
Brown's got some pop, but he never really got a chance in DC. Hit 22 bombs in AAA last year.
 
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