Ehjays

Blue Jays To Sign Chris Bassitt By Steve Adams | December 12, 2022 at 3:21pm CDT The Blue Jays have agreed to a three-year, $63MM contract with free-agent righty Chris Bassitt, reports ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Bassitt is represented by Meister Sports Management. In adding Bassitt, the Jays have fortified a rotation that saw Ross Stripling reach free agency, lost Hyun Jin Ryu to Tommy John surgery early in the summer, and experienced substantial struggles from righty Jose Berrios and lefty Yusei Kikuchi. The ultra-consistent Bassitt will step into the mix behind third-place Cy Young finisher Alek Manoah and ninth-place finisher Kevin Gausman, with Berrios and Kikuchi likely to follow.

Yeah SF said the werent looking at Bassit, I dont think they liked the amount of years he is asking for. But they may have said this cause they had this deal ready to roll.

Not sure what they are thinking but this reporter spoke to 10 evaluators and most evaluators said they overpaid, and not a little, they overpaid by a HEFTY amount. They must be very high on him, or just high.

I didn't see it either but when a player signs with a team that is not mine, f*** them!!

Im sure you meant 1985, but yes Atlanta traded Ward for Dolye, then they turned around a few months later and sent Dolye to Detroit for John Smoltz

With this signing, The Mets are now around $104.85MM in tax penalties — 11 teams currently aren’t slated to spend more than $104.85MM on their entire 2023 payrolls. Thats f***in crazy. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/12/mets-to-sign-kodai-senga.html

Where is the link for the Jays saying no to Helsley.

Blue Jays In Agreement With Kevin Kiermaier By Simon Hampton | December 10, 2022 at 12:11pm CDT The Blue Jays have an agreement in place with center fielder Kevin Kiermaier, according to Shi Davidi of Sportsnet. The deal is pending a physical. It’ll be just the second team Kiermaier has played for, having spent ten big league seasons with the AL East rival Rays. He became a free agent for this first time after the Rays declined his $13MM team option for 2023. Center field has been an area of need for the Blue Jays this winter, and they had previously been linked with Brandon Nimmo and Cody Bellinger. The 32-year-old appeared in 63 games for the Rays last season, slashing .228/.281/.369 with seven home runs over 221 plate appearances. He’s always been known for his stellar defense in center field, and while that’s declined a bit in recent seasons he was still worth two Defensive Runs Saved there in 2022. The offensive production amounted to a below average wRC+ of 90, but his defensive work meant he was still worth 1.1 fWAR. Injuries played a big part in Kiermaier’s 2022 season, as he landed on the IL in June with left hip inflammation. He was activated July 1, but by July 10 he was back on the IL with the same problem, which ultimately ended his season early. He’d wind up having surgery in August to address the labrum issue in the left hip, but the expectation at the time was that he’d be ready for spring training. Kiermaier is a three-time Gold Glove winner that’s been one of the best center fielders in all of baseball for the past decade. Since his first full year in 2014, Kiermaier has been worth 147 Defensive Runs Saved, according to Fielding Bible. That’s the best of all outfielders and second overall behind Andrelton Simmons (who had 1,400 more defensive innings). Despite 2022 being his worst defensive year of his career, it was still above average and there’s every chance his hip problem played a significant part in that. After all, just a year ago he was worth 13 DRS in 894 2/3 center field innings. He still ranked in the 93rd percentile in sprint speed and ranked well above league average in arm strength. Offense has never been Kiermaier’s calling, and he owns a lifetime .248/.308/.407 line. That’s largely built off his early work, and since 2018 he’s put up a wRC+ of 79, 79, 94, 101 and then 90. There’s not a lot of power there (82 career home runs), and his strikeout rate has gradually ticked up to 27.6% in 2022 against a walk rate of 6.3%. More to come.

Senga is down to 3 teams Mets, Cubs or Padres

More TJ stuff:

What wouldn't surprise me is if the Yankees updated their Off-season plan: Sign Carlos Rodon Sign Carlos Correa Trade Anthony Volpe for Bryan Reynolds

Yes exactly, in the trade talks with St Louis they asked for Nootbar or Ryan Helsley, also with farm system supplying us, I think Pearson and Merryweather have screwed with the FO plans as their injuries have set back their plans, i think moving forward they view any contributions at all from Merryweather is a bonus and Nates will be some sort of relief only.

Correa to the Yankees in 3...2...

Nope, these are big dollar teams, they will spend according to the market. I actually wouldn't be surprised if Boston swooped in and took Correa. Im sure their fans are more pissed than Blue Jays fans are after losing their SS. As a Jays fan, If I tell you Im gonna renovate your kitchen , dont judge my work when I have everything ripped out. Evaluate my job when I say its completed. Your new cabinetry is in and brand new shiny kitchen sink. Thats when you judge. Right now you are giving feedback on the FO work when everything is torn out. Give them time to put the sink in, If its not shiny, then you can bitch.

I dont think I ever saw how they calculate it, I remember during negotiations the players fought for these arb bonus's but never saw the calculations.

Angels Pursued Willson Contreras Prior To Cardinals Deal By Darragh McDonald | December 9, 2022 at 2:03pm CDT In recent days, it was reported that the Cardinals and Astros had each given multi-year offers to catcher Willson Contreras, with the Cardinals eventually winning the bidding by giving him five-year, $87.5MM deal. However, there was one other team apparently at the table, as Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the Angels were one of the teams outbid by the Cards. The Angels have been fairly active so far this offseason, adding to their pitching staff by signing Tyler Anderson for their rotation and Carlos Estévez for their bullpen, while adding Gio Urshela to their infield and Hunter Renfroe to their outfield. It seems they are still hoping to make further moves, but the fact that they pursued a catcher like Contreras is at least mildly surprising since that doesn’t stand out as the club’s most obvious weak spot. Max Stassi had a nice breakout for the Halos over 2020 and 2021, getting into 118 games and hitting .250/.333/.452 for a wRC+ of 113, indicating he was 13% better than league average. When combined with his strong glovework, he produced 3.6 wins above replacement over that time, according to FanGraphs. With Stassi set to reach free agency after 2022, the club signed him to an extension that went through 2024 with an club option for 2025. Unfortunately, he had a dismal campaign in 2022, hitting just .180/.267/.303. He probably deserved better than that, however, as his .239 batting average on balls in play was below his .276 career mark and well below his .325 from 2021. With another two guaranteed seasons on his deal, he’s sure to be in the mix somehow with a chance to bounce back. Then there’s also Logan O’Hoppe, who came over from the Phillies in the deadline deal that sent Brandon Marsh to Philadelphia. Between the two clubs, he annihilated Double-A pitching last year, leading to a batting line of .283/.416/.544 and a wRC+ of 159. He skipped Triple-A to get a five-game cup of coffee in the big leagues as the season was winding down. Neither Stassi or O’Hoppe are a sure thing, but it would have been reasonable enough to go into the season with the two of them each jockeying for playing time and letting it get sorted as the season went along. However, it seems the club has at least some openness to upgrade, based on their pursuit of Contreras. It’s possible they want to give O’Hoppe more time in the minors or maybe that they would have pursued trades with Stassi if they landed Contreras. General manager Perry Minasian recently told members of the media that the club could push pay the competitive balance tax in 2023 with no ownership mandate against it. Roster Resource currently pegs their 2023 payroll at $198MM with a CBT figure of $213MM. The first threshold of the luxury tax will be $233MM next year, giving the Angels about $20MM to work with before they have to think about whether they are willing to cross the line or not. Contreras ended up signing a five-year, $87.5MM deal, with comes to an average annual value of $17.5MM. We don’t know exactly how much the Angels were willing to spend on Contreras, but something in this vicinity would have gotten them close to luxury tax territory. Assuming the Angels still have that money to spend on other players, it’s a good sign for Angel fans. The club could look for another backstop but have also been connected to shortstops and bullpen help. Since Contreras was clearly on a different tier to the other available free agent backstops, it’s possible that the Angels were willing to make an exception for him and won’t necessarily circle down to the other options. However, if they are interested in pursuing help behind the plate, the free agent market has options like Christian Vázquez and Gary Sánchez. The trade market is highlighted by Oakland’s Sean Murphy and Toronto’s Danny Jansen, though the asking prices on from both the A’s and the Jays are reportedly quite high.

Carlos Rodón Seeking Seven-Year Deal By Darragh McDonald and Steve Adams | December 9, 2022 at 11:58am CDT The Yankees are one of many teams known to be interested in lefty Carlos Rodón, but Jon Heyman of The New York Post reports that they would prefer to limit him to a four- or five-year deal. That might be a problem, since Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Rodón is looking for at least seven years. Reporter Marino Pepén says the Red Sox are interested, though the extent of interest isn’t clear. Just a few days ago, it had been reported that Rodón was seeking a six-year deal, but there may be good reasons why he’s upped his ask. The free-agent market has been broadly aggressive, with many of the top free agents going well beyond expectations in terms of contract length. In recent offseasons, teams have generally cut off guarantees to position players in their age-37 seasons, but Aaron Judge got a nine-year deal taking him through age-39. Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts each landed 11-year deals that run into their 40s. Brandon Nimmo will be paid through age 38 with the Mets. Pitchers, meanwhile, have struggled to land guarantees beyond their age-36 season (with older veterans like Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander standing as exceptions for obvious reasons), but Jacob deGrom signed through age 39 in Texas. The length of all those deals is generally rooted in lowering the luxury-tax hit, though, and Rodon’s ostensibly new goal of seven-plus years could be a matter of falling in line with that broader market trend. DeGrom and Rodón are somewhat analogous, though not the exact same. Both are extremely talented pitchers with some injury concerns in recent years. DeGrom is arguably the best pitcher alive when healthy but missed over an entire year from mid-2021 to mid-2022 due to forearm and scapula injuries. Rodón is much younger, as he will turn 30 years old tomorrow. Injuries limited him to just over 40 combined innings in 2019 and 2020 and the concern was high enough that the White Sox actually non-tendered him after that. There were enough red flags that he had to settle for a one-year, $3MM deal to return to the Sox. He’s been on a straight upward trajectory since. Rodón tossed 132 2/3 innings in 2021 with a 2.37 ERA and excellent 34.6% strikeout rate. He seemed to run out of gas down the stretch, leaving some lingering health concerns as he returned to free agency. He didn’t get a qualifying offer and had to “settle” for a two-year, $44MM deal with the Giants, though one that gave him a chance to opt-out after the first campaign. He pushed further away from the injury worries by making 31 starts and logging 178 frames with a 2.88 ERA and 33.4% strikeout rate. He made the easy decision to opt out and also reject a qualifying offer from the Giants. The fact that Rodón is now reasonably seeking a seven-year deal is nothing short of remarkable, given where he was just two years ago. It’s also not surprising that he’s looking to strike while the iron is hot, given the ups and downs he’s had in his career. Still, contracts of this length for free agent pitchers are quite rare. Gerrit Cole got nine years but with a much stronger record of health than Rodón. Prior to that deal, he had made at least 19 starts for seven straight seasons and at least 32 in the previous three. Kenta Maeda got eight years when coming over from Japan, but that was a unique situation. Maeda was going into his age-28 season but had some health concerns, leading the Dodgers to give him a modest $25MM guarantee spread out over eight years but with $10MM in incentives available each year that Maeda could trigger by staying healthy. There are a handful of aces that have gotten to seven years, including Max Scherzer, David Price, Stephen Strasburg, CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka, the latter of whom was only 25 at the time and is hardly a similar situation. Strasburg had dealt with some injuries but was coming off a World Series MVP performance that pushed his bidding up. The others in that group, similar to Cole, had fairly solid records of health and durability. As great as Rodón has been for the past two seasons, any seven-year deal would generally be rarefied air for a pitcher. Now, with this offseason’s trend of utilizing longer contracts to tamp down AAV (and, thusly, luxury-tax penalties), it seems more plausible than before that Rodón might indeed command seven-plus years. Initial reports indicated that he was seeking six years with a $30MM+ annual salary. If Rodón and agent Scott Boras are fixated more on the contract’s total than on its length, then spreading that, say, $175-200MM goal out over a period of seven, eight or even nine years would greatly reduce the potential luxury penalties for whichever team signs him. That’s more a concern if he signs with a major-market club that regularly finds itself in luxury peril (e.g. Yankees, Red Sox) than if he were to sign with one of his reported suitors that has never held much of an appetite for the luxury tax (e.g. Twins, Orioles). The Yankees are clearly willing to spend, as they just gave Judge a record-breaking $360MM guarantee. How much they want to continue spending, however, is an open question. Roster Resource currently pegs the club’s payroll for next season at $250MM with a competitive balance tax figure of $266MM. That already places them beyond last year’s Opening Day payroll of $246MM, per Cot’s Baseball Contracts, and beyond the second tier of luxury tax penalization. The tiers begin at $233MM next year and go up in $20MM increments to $293MM. Adding $25-30MM for Rodón would push them near or above that top penalty threshold. The club doesn’t strictly need an elite starter like Rodón, but he would certainly be an upgrade for any rotation in the game. The Yanks currently have Cole, Luis Severino, Nestor Cortes and Frankie Montas for four spots with solid options for the last spot including Domingo Germán and Clarke Schmidt. That’s a solid group, but Montas and Severino both have some recent injuries that make them question marks going into next season, so there would be plenty of sense in adding another arm and pushing some guys down the depth chart. The question will be whether the Yanks would prefer paying the price for an ace like Rodón as opposed to turning to mid-rotation options like Chris Bassitt or Sean Manaea. If Rodón indeed is open to seven or more years in order to obtain the contract total he’s eyeing, that would be an interesting situation for the Yankees to ponder. They already have expensive contracts for Cole and Judge on the books for the next six and nine years, respectively. Giancarlo Stanton has five years left with a $25MM club option for 2028 with a $10MM option. Adding a lengthy deal for Rodón would likely mean their 2028 payroll would already be well beyond $100MM. The Red Sox, on the other hand, have plenty of space before thinking about the tax. Roster Resource currently has their payroll at $172MM and their CBT figure at $192MM. That leaves them about $40MM away from the lowest threshold, meaning they could add Rodón with room to spare. There would be plenty of sense in adding to their rotation given all the question marks they have there. Nick Pivetta is probably the only solid member of their group right now, as Chris Sale and James Paxton have hardly pitched in the past three years. Brayan Bello and Garrett Whitlock are penciled into two spots, though they are young and only have 20 MLB starts between them. They also have other areas worth addressing on the roster, such as catcher and figuring out how to deal with the departure of Bogaerts from their infield. Long-term, they have Story and Masataka Yoshida locked in for the next five seasons but nothing guaranteed for 2028.