You are viewing the chat in desktop mode. Click here to switch to mobile view.
X
Chat With MLBTR's Steve Adams: 11/7/19
powered byJotCast
Prev Page View Full Chat
Betances
4:00
Can I be an all star again or is there not enough tread on the tire?  I should get 3 years for $40 mill of healthy?
Steve Adams
4:01
A healthy Betances might've been in that financial sphere, but he's looking at a year and under $8MM right now, I think.
Bucco bleeds
4:01
Who’s the favorite to win the Pirate GM race?
Steve Adams
4:01
I doubt Bob Nutting even knows the answer to that this early in the process.
Braves Fan
4:01
Rendon for short-term, high AAV, to the Braves while they are paying pennies on the dollar value to Acuna and Albies? What say you?
Steve Adams
4:02
I think the whole "short-term, high AAV" salary a lot of people are suggesting would quickly be thrown out if they were more clear on what it'd take. The Dodgers offered Harper something like $45MM annually for four years last winter ... if you get into that territory for Rendon, maybe, but he's not taking 4/140 or something.
Love these chats.
4:03
That's all I wanted to say.
Steve Adams
4:03
Thanks! They're fun to do
Brandon
4:03
Who would trade for?  Ender, JBJ, Marte
Steve Adams
4:03
Marte's easily the best of the bunch
4:05
That said, I also don't mind the idea of the Braves and Red Sox just straight up swapping JBJ and Ender. They're comparable players, and the Braves would save a few million total while the Red Sox would take on more overall money but reduce their luxury hit.

They could also just flat-out non-tender JBJ and reduce the hit much more substantially, of course, but they'd need a CF then. Could try to go cheap on Akiyama, I suppose, or pick up a buy-low guy like Almora.
Right field
4:05
Wheeler to nats if the miss on stras
Steve Adams
4:05
I've gotten so many questions on where Wheeler will go and why we predicted him so highly, so  I'll take a minute and say this:
4:09
When we were mapping out our free-agent predictions, we tried to identify the teams that are in most desperate need of an arm. That led us to the Phillies, Angels and Twins primarily.

Only a select few teams will be able to stomach the bidding on Cole and Strasburg. We put Stras back with the Nats as a World Series hero who's repped by Boras (Lerner/Boras connection is well documented). It seemed too hard to imagine him going elsewhere. He already spurned FA to sign an extension (against Boras' wishes) once because he loves DC.

Once we put Cole on the Angels, we had the Phillies, Twins and a bunch of other teams -- Braves, Yankees, Astros, etc. -- who need a high-end arm. Looking at the next tier there's Bumgarner and Wheeler -- one whose stuff has dipped a bit in recent seasons while coming off a weird dirtbike injury and posting solid but unremarkable peripherals (Bumgarner).

(There's a character limit in these replies! Who knew)...
4:10
...The other was Wheeler, who throws harder than any FA but Cole, has premium spin and movement on his pitches, is relatively young. It's easy to dream on that stuff in front of a better defense with a better game plan. He's the guy who we feel more modern teams are going to be willing to actually get into a bidding war.
He got the contract bump as a result.
4:12
I think teams like the Twins, Phillies and Padres will be willing to talk themselves up on Wheeler and pay him a pretty premium price; Bumgarner will have appeal, but it's harder to envision a big bidding war coming off solid but unspectacular performances with similar peripherals.
That's a lot of words about pitchers! But there you go -- hopefully that answered a lot of questions on the two, ha.
Baseball fanatic
4:12
2020 comeback for Bartolo Colon?
Steve Adams
4:12
We should be so lucky!
Fred
4:13
Any chance the Mariners go after Wheeler?
Steve Adams
4:14
They're not far enough along in the process. They'll look at 1-year and maybe 2-year guys. Probably with a bit of ceiling. One of the reasons we put them on Alex Wood.
Ammiel
4:14
Ozuna fits at cincinatti right?
Steve Adams
4:14
Certainly.
Pot roast
4:14
I say again David Price for Eric Hosmer who hangs up?
Steve Adams
4:16
I can see some logic to it ... Padres get the better player and take on more money up front/bigger luxury hit. Red Sox fill a need, save $15MM, thin out their luxury hit.

My immediate reaction was that neither team would be open to it, but it's not a terrible bad-money swap.
Obstagoon
4:16
Do you like Lindor leading off ?(indians,dodgers or yankees etc)
Steve Adams
4:17
I don't care where Lindor hits in the lineup. He's almost certainly the best player on the team if h's in any lineup.
Well, I shouldn't say I don't care. Don't hit him ninth
Or eight
Just hit him in the top four somewhere.
4:19
Ok. I couldn't let Connor show me up too much so I went two hours to match him! (Also I missed last week's chat so I went long) But I'm at the end of the rope here, ha.

I'm on Twitter for more questions: @Adams_Steve

Jeff should chat tomorrow, and I will remind his absent-minded ass to do so. Unless my own absent-minded ass forgets to remind him! Mark's up with a Sunday chat, Connor on Monday and me again next Tuesday.

Have a great weekend everyone, and thanks for reading/chatting!
Connecting…