Never said it was a hard sell.

BRC asked if the players he named would get a deal for Machado done and O.City is acting like the Orioles wont get jack shit for a guy that will get them a 1st round draft pick with a trade or not.

I dont see why the Orioles would have any interest in Jose Martinez. You can argue that Jose Martinez will be there longer than Trumbo, but I don't believe that Chris Davis is in their long term plans at 1B. I expect him to be hitting DH for them after Trumbo makes his exit.
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If Chris Davis continues on this arc, he'll simply be cut and Angelos will eat the money. The dude's looking less and less like a major leaguer. His contract is actually worse than Pujols at this point, IMO.

As for Trumbo - the Orioles are losing a couple OFer as well next year and they've played Trumbo in left at times. But what Martinez provides over Trumbo (and Davis) is a completely different skill-set that their lineup simply doesn't have and is frankly difficult to acquire.

If they see Martinez as an .800 OPS guy then you're right - they're not going to move a ton to get him and he wouldn't have a great deal of value to them. But if they see a guy that can get to Camden and put up an .850+ with genuinely strong bat/ball skills, that's a different creature. That's something they don't actually have much of in that lineup.

For everything Martinez isn't (like...an actual baseball player), he is a polished, professional hitter. And his stroke would wreck shit in Baltimore. There's a chance for him to be a significant asset for them.
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Don't know for sure but I woudl do that in a heart beat. We have tons of OF prospects and another catcher in the wings.
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If they wanna do that i say go for it. It's the most likely path to a superstar player they're gonna get.

I just think they're to afraid to do it.
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If Gyorko is hitting the ball so much better than Carpenter right now, why is his exit velocity the exact same and his hard hit percentage worse?

If the problem is him hitting into the teeth of the shift, why is his pull percentage lower than the last two years?

No one seemed to have a problem with him having a 48.1% pull rate in 2016, but now his 44.6% rate is problematic?

Is Bryce Harper suddenly a dogshit hitter because he has a .143 BABIP over the last two weeks?

Maybe it's just a small sample size.
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Probably.

It's been a chickenshit organization since LaRussa left and there was nobody to put pressure on DeWitt. Mozeliak is a fucking bag man; a spineless company guy who's not going to go into DeWitt's office and demand he trade for Mark McGwire. And Mike Matheny isn't clever enough to start sending Adam Kennedy into the OF for the last 2 weeks of a lost season in order to send a message to the front office.

And since Mozeliak has set fire to about $50 million on replacement level players this season (and last) and Mike Matheny probably needs an assistant to help him tie his shoes, they both likely lack the organizational capital to demand aggressive moves anyway.
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Yeah, a 5th of the season is just a blink of an eye.

So what's your bet? How long do you think he's gonna do absolutely nothing before he turns it on again? And what do you suppose that will look like when he does?

He's not going to be this shitty all year (nobody has ever been this shitty all year), but he's not going to suddenly start smoking liners into gaps either.

Starting from this point forward I'm betting he still manages a WRC+ of maybe 100 (and it will be almost exclusively walk-fueled since that's all he tries to do these days). And he'll combine that with shitty defense at positions he shouldn't be playing anyway.

My preference would be for Carpenter to figure it out, get himself to at least some playable version of the good Carpenter and ship Martinez out so we can field an actual major league caliber defense (and we could really use Carpenter's LH stick). The ability of this team to do damage in the post-season with Carpenter and Martinez out there defensively is effectively nill. To my eyes, that's at worst a 1b platoon. But he's doubling down on this super-patient approach of his and I don't think that's going to pull him out of it.

Like I said - ambush guys for 2-3 weeks and try to get them off kilter. Try to get some confidence back and quit going up there begging for walks. Do something other than stare at 3 pitches and then hit the ball where people are standing.
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Not too worried about the Cubs minors. Their roster is pretty much set for the next 3-4 years with young players for better or worse. I wish he would have gone more scorched earth and made a move for Christian Yelich. He fit what this team needed and it was apparently too obvious.

Theo brought a WS so I can't be mad but him not trading Soler after the 2015 playoffs and holding onto Ian Happ when he has no position on the field and is now tanking harder than Jason Heyward are 2 pretty devastating long term decisions.

At least Schwarber changed his physique and isn't an embarrassment in the outfield so far this year. Although, he did recently feed the Cardinals one of their wins in their recent sweep of the Cubs by lazily going after a fly ball that ended up scoring 2 runs.
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I was at that game. I was dumbfounded that he let that ball get down. I actually wonder if they could've sent out Schwarber instead of Jimenez in that Quintana deal. Long-term I think they'd be better off for it and it might not hurt them too badly in the near term (would give Happ someplace to play). Then again, Maddon had massacred his value by that point so maybe not.

I'm starting to get a little worried that Heyward might just talk himself into opting out, though. He's looked decent every time I've seen him this year (though maybe he just tortures the Cardinals). I think he only made one truly bad out in that series; most of the time he struck the ball well. If my memory serves, his deferred money accelerates into 2019 if he opts out so that's a pretty solid immediate incentive to test the market if he thinks it would yield anything approaching his present deal.

Seems extremely unlikely, but not as impossible as it did 2 months ago...
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Whether he opts out or not I dont see Heyward being with the Cubs next year. His deal was frontloaded so with just a little cash thrown in with the deal he shouldn't be too hard to unload. That's assuming they throw the kitchen sink at Harper and go all in for the next 4 years before Bryant leaves and Harper opts out of the contract for a new pay day.
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I don't think Heyward gets anywhere near what his current deal pays him on the open market. If he opts out, he would have to put together a better offensive season than he has the past 4 years in order to even come close.
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If Heyward opted out he would get his salary for the 2019 season immediately from his deferred signing bonus.

What would effectively be left would be 4 years and $86 million. It would just depend on the years, but I could see a team offering more over the life of a contract. He'll still be only 29 years old. He would need to at least be an average hitter for him to do it and it probably wouldn't happen til after next season, imo. This next off season is a bit too crowded with better players. For the '19-'20 FA he'll be competing with just Ozuna for the most part.
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That is too much. That is too much for a rental. Bader/A. Garcia/Mercado/O'Neill alone would be where I would start. That is where we have depth.
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I wish I could believe he will improve drastically, and I get the balls in play theory that could swing more towards his norms. However, it isn't just his offense that has gone south, he is now a huge defensive downgrade anywhere but first, and that is only because the only other option is Martinez who is barely passable.

Give him at bats to get him out of his funk, but not at the expense of shelving your hottest hitters. If he takes off in limited duties then you can rethink what your best lineup should be.
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Boom
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