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Jeff Sullivan FanGraphs Chat -- 12/8/17
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Jeff Sullivan
9:05
Hello friends
Welcome to Friday baseball chat
Coz
9:05
Please tell me you have more twin brother stats
Jeff Sullivan
9:05
There have been so few twin brothers
9:06
I'm very interested in these particular twin brothers, so Ben and I are going to try to get Johnny O'Brien on a podcast
Millie
9:06
so is the Gordon trade a signal that Stanton is staying put?
Jeff Sullivan
9:06
I don't think so. Gordon has been included in rumors for a long time. The Marlins want to shed a *lot* of money, not just Stanton's
Rick Hahn
9:07
With Tyler Chatwood out of the mix, who should I take a flier on to fill out the White Sox rotation next season?
Jeff Sullivan
9:08
Blech. It's bad out there
As such, I'd hunt around the potential NPB and KBO markets. I don't know who all is available off the top of my head, and Mikolas is already off the board, but those markets tend to be underrated
9:09
Maybe that ends up more about addressing the bullpen than the rotation, but, you know what? The White Sox have a million available spaces in the bullpen too
Brandon M
9:09
Assuming the Mariners do not sign Ohtani, do they make the playoffs this year?
Jeff Sullivan
9:10
Let's see. They won't be as good as the Astros, nor do I think they'll be as good as whichever of the Yankees/Red Sox doesn't win the East
So there's that one wild-card spot again, competing against the Angels, Twins, Rangers, Blue Jays...and the Angels might sign Ohtani, if the Mariners don't
9:11
I'd give them like a 30% chance of making the second wild card, as is
Tom
9:12
Hear me out.
Matt Kemp for Adrian Gonzalez and Scott Kazmir.
All players subsequently DFA.
Combined AGone and Kaz cost $35.5 million in 2018. Kemp combined salary costs $38 million over the next 2 years.  
This trade saves the Braves $2.5 million and gets Kemp off the books a year early.  
This trade saves the Dodgers $18 million in their taxable salaries, and gets them underneath the tax threshold. Saving (bare minimum) $9 million in taxed money, and potentially significantly more (10’s of millions) if they stay under the tax threshold in 2018.
Jeff Sullivan
9:13
I shouldn't have accepted this question from the queue. This is too complicated for a live-chat format
Well, my bed is made
9:15
It...seems...like it's kind of doable?
Maybe a little extra money would have to change hands, but there could be something here, unless I'm missing an angle
9:16
The biggest complication, presumably, would be Gonzalez and his 10/5 rights. He doesn't have to go anywhere if he doesn't want to. I don't know where his head is at these days
Ben L
9:16
Is my other baseball podcast deceased?
Jeff Sullivan
9:16
I haven't asked him but I wouldn't be shocked if it were strictly a baseball-season thing
Jack
9:17
Saw a suggestion that the Rays should go after Zack Cozart, the thinking being that there’s so little of a shortstop market that he could end up having to settle for a cheap enough deal for them to sign him. I suppose in this case, they could trade Hechavarria to free up some money, too. How realistic do you think this is?
Jeff Sullivan
9:18
If the Cozart market is just dead, then sure, the Rays could try to swoop in. But if anything, they're looking to move higher-priced veterans right now. And Tampa Bay is a far worse hitting environment for Cozart than Cincinnati
That's the kind of move you might see in January, but my sense right now is that Cozart re-signs with the Reds
Tugs
9:18
Jeff, I would like your general opinion on Chimichangas.
Jeff Sullivan
9:18
pro
but I'm a lot higher on chilaquiles
toki
9:19
So with the Stanton list of places he wants to go.  What do the Marlins do here?  Accept less from LA to ship him out of town?  Call all of the teams frantically asking for their "best offer"?
Jeff Sullivan
9:20
Feels like the Marlins really need the Dodgers to get involved. They should open a line of communication with Stanton right now and ask him where he'd actually accept a move. If it's just LA, make something work with LA. If it's not just LA, then you have some teams to play off one another
It doesn't really seem like St. Louis or San Francisco is going to happen
Sean
9:21
Would a Joey Gallo for Gerrit Cole trade work for both teams?  What team would need to add pieces?
Jeff Sullivan
9:21
Not sure why the Rangers would move five years of a position player for two years of a starting pitcher
9:22
Doesn't even really make them better in the short-term since Gallo is their starting 1B
Nick T.
9:24
It's been said repeatedly that Shohei Ohtani is "leaving money on the table" by coming to MLB two years before he would be eligible to be a FA, but it seems to me that all of the teams he has selected will have the ability to give him the 7/$200M contract extension in two years that he would have gotten anyway.  Sure there's the risk of getting injured and being bad, but he has that risk if he just stayed in Japan also.  If he's truly betting on himself right now then how much money does he really stand to lose?
Jeff Sullivan
9:24
It's absolutely true that Ohtani wasn't just two years away from a guaranteed $200 million. He'd have to stay healthy and good
9:25
But Ohtani was two years away from unrestricted free agency. With a team, he's two years away from...four more years of team control, which will drive down the price
Mike Trout signed for $144 million and six years when he was a two-year player. And even that extension covered three arb years and three FA years
9:26
Ohtani won't get $200 million two years from now unless he's really and truly something unprecedented. The team-control years will cost him tens of millions of dollars he might've earned otherwise
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