Everyone has the same information now. And about 80% of the league puts roughly equal weight on the same stuff.

So when everyone's working from the same playbook, you just don't see as much movement because nobody's willing to 'lose' a trade even if it might make a lot of baseball sense.

Cards have too many RH hitting OFers w/ holes in their swing but plus raw power. They should be willing to move a guy like Tyler O'Neill for someone who isn't strictly as valuable but perhaps brings a lefty bat you can bring off the bench with some line drive power and contact skills. They may 'lose' that trade but make themselves better on the field.

But GM's just won't do that anymore. It's all so data-driven that baseball trades are getting harder and harder to come by.
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There are a few teams that take chances...for example the Padres moved Urias who had made a ton of top 20 lists after 300 MLB at bats because well he hadn't been good. And they moved him for Grisham a left handed bat they need for their lineup.

Most people think they lost that trade but they are deep in the middle infield and had a desperate need for a left handed bat.
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Yeah, I mentioned above that I really like Grisham.

He'd help a lot of teams. Kudos to the Padres for recognizing how his skills fit their lineup and their ballpark and their organizational depth and not just how his minor league numbers play on strat-o-matic.

And ultimately they may end up coming out on the lower side of the WAR calculus when all is said and done, but as you noted - sometimes losing a trade is a win if it works better on your roster.
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The Mets’ atrocious defense victimized him a lot this year.

I suspect his performance will tick up playing with a better squad behind him in Philly.
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Am I reading right that the Royals got the 33rd pick of next year’s draft via competitive balance?

That reminds me of the Dozier/Manaea draft. GMDM needs to hit on both like he did then.
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Phils are nuts.

Symborski posted the Zips on his deal. War goes from 3.0 to 2.0 reducing by .25 per year. Putting aside the unlikelihood he stays healthy enough for that it still only gets you to 108M. So either

1) they expect serious salary inflation, unlikely as that is or
2) they expect 4 wins the first couple years. He was 4.7 last year so they’re banking on a Corbin type debut
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Yep. He does nothing above avg.

Me too. After 2016 I wanted to make him 3B and move Moose to DH. But he went backwards as a hitter and can’t run or field. Other than that he’s sweet

My impression this year was he swung and missed all the time, and can’t carch up to anything 93+. I just looked st his swing data and couldn’t prove that, his K rate is only 20%. He is 4th/278 hitters (with 300+ PA) in first pitch strikes and all the leaders can’t hit. So either pitchers groove it to him quickly and or he can’t do anything with it.
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MLB 2020 Competitive Balance Draft
So KC Royals will have the 4th and the 33rd pick in the 2020 MLB Draft
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Fire Dayton.

Hire Rusty Kuntz!
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His hair is all I needed to convince me.
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Blockbuster ideas for each team, espn schoenfield



Kansas City Royals trade OF Jorge Soler to the Atlanta Braves for OF Ender Inciarte, RHP Kyle Wright and C Alex Jackson

We know Liberty Media is too cheap to re-sign Josh Donaldson, so let's think outside the box for a way the Braves can replace his bat. Whit Merrifield is the player everyone keeps trying to have the Royals trade, but maybe we should look at AL home run champ Soler, who is eligible for free agency after 2021. Are the Royals going to be a playoff team in the next two years?

The Braves deal from their arsenal of pitching prospects. Wright was the fifth overall pick in 2017 out of Vanderbilt and made four starts for the Braves in 2019, but his stuff has backed up a little and he looks more mid-rotation starter than potential ace. Jackson hit 26 home runs at Triple-A, although that came with a .229 average and a lot of strikeouts. Inciarte is included to offset most of Soler's salary -- remember, Liberty Media and the Braves may be maxed out on payroll after signing Will Smith and Travis d'Arnaud -- and the Royals can keep him or flip him to a team looking for a center fielder.

The Braves can then slide Austin Riley to his natural position at third base, play Soler in left field and run with a Nick Markakis/Adam Duvall platoon in right. And Ronald Acuna Jr. permanently settles into center field for the next nine years.
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I saw that yesterday I don't think that deal makes a lot of sense for either team.

Dylan Bundy was dealt to the Angels for 4 minor league players. With moves like this happening does this begin to solidify that Gerrit Cole is going to be a Yankee?
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Source: #SFGiants hire Brian Bannister, former #RedSox vice president of pitching development. @MLB @MLBNetwork

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) December 4, 2019

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So some pretty serious stuff on twitter right now that the MLBPA is going to go apeshit in the next labor negotiation.

In that you see things like Cohen is going to buy the Wilpon met share for 2.6 billion dollars...that would make the total team value 3.25 billion, in 2002 the Wilpons paid 135 million for it. That means the teams value increased 170 million per year.

The Angels are using baseball money to spend 325 million dollars to own their new stadium and the area around it.

The Indians last Forbes value piece, had $282M in revenue and were worth $1.2B. They have quadrupled in value in the last 19 years. They certainly can afford Lindor, but they certainly have suckered into thinking they can’t.

Lots of this stuff everywhere that all of these teams are worth a crap ton of money and they're turning huge profits while crying poor. That they're spending big money on non baseball shit and players are getting pissed, mid level vets can't seem to get paid anymore so it appears the union is going to try to go to war over a lot of this stuff.
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The problem in hammering the 'worth' equation is that there's not a good way to differentiate between legacy teams and teams that have new ownership.

What a franchise is 'worth' doesn't help Cohen when he's trying to cover that debt service, for instance. Now if you're the Yankees and you're owned free and clear and could be sold for probably $5+ billion, yeah - that's a different story.

But then you're talking about vastly uneven playing fields. MLB's goal ISN'T to extract every thin red dime from every owner, it's to put the richest owner in a position that's not so substantially better than the poorest owner so as to maintain competitive balance as best they can.

MLB doesn't care that the Yankees could spend $600 million/yr on player salaries for the next 50 years and never got broke. They care that the Pirates can't do anything approaching that and they'd prefer not end up back where they were in the late 90s when 4 teams could buy up everything.

Look, the MLBPA can piss and moan about this all they want, but the bottom line is that ALL of this comes from a refusal to consider a salary cap. And the amount of negotiating leverage they would get if they would do so is IMMENSE. They could then start talking about a floor. They could then start talking about a direct ratio between Leaguewide revenue and leaguewide spending. They could look into a system that gets guys into FA sooner.

But they've been so antagonistic and so dogmatic when it comes to discussing a cap that they don't have a willing participant in the negotiation on the other side of the aisle. All they've been willing to do for years is take their ball and go home - they're not offering any concessions in return for all the things they're going to 'demand' from MLB. In an era where they're ALL wealthy, some just more wealthy than others. The closest thing they've done is the drug testing policy and even THAT was pulling teeth.

They mostly just say "You'll do this or we won't play" without putting anything on the table apart from that. If they're going to make these demands, they're going to have to start discussing a cap.
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