Should the Os look into Kris Bryant?

[oriole]

This is just a thought exercise right? No way in a million years do the 2021 O’s take on a big contract. And the only way that happens is if Davis is somehow involved and let’s face it, we couldn’t give Davis away even if we paid the entire contract. 
 

Would I welcome it? Sure, it’d be fun and I’d love to see what we could possibly get back in a trade. But for real, you gotta be stoned to entertain the idea with any seriousness. 

[LookinUp]

16 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I don’t care if they pick up any of the contract.  It would be nice if we could get back a prospect or 2 if we picked up the whole thing.

Why would the Cubs do that? I think you're talking yourself through hypotheticals that are getting far away from reality.

[ScGO's]

I know its not the "sexy" thing to do, but I'm all in on Elias' pragmatic, time-encompassing plan to rebuild.  When this whole rebuild started, I though realistically it would be 2023 before we started seeing winning baseball (Not neccessairly playoff baseball).  Angelos left this organization a heaping, steaming pile of you-know-what, and the only way to get back to true competition was to show the patience to rebuild everything.  Part of that plan was cost-cutting, and that is realistic.  That's how international scouting, facilities, analytics departments, and other investments are able to be done more efficiently and quickly.

Adding Bryant creates a few issues. 

If prospects leave in return for him, that is counterproductive to the plan. We want to retain youth and potential. Every talanted player is a variable that can be run through our new investments into analytics and player development.  They all won't become studs but they are playing the numbers.

Spending the money on Bryant means less to be spent on scouting, player development, analytics, and other invisible factors that are necessary to the rebuild, even if its for one year.

If its only one year, what is the point because we are not a playoff team yet, with or without him. If he performs well and we trade him, are the prospects in return really valued at $12+ million dollars of potential value?  How much would a team give up for a couple months of Bryant, even if he is having an MVP caliber season?  We might get a Top 100 Prospect, but we might be able to get that from a Santander, Mancini, or Means trade as well.  Plus I expect another high draft pick.  Is spending all that money on Bryant in the hopes of a trade that may or may not happen worth the investment of 12 mil plus?  If he doesn't perform well, we burned a big pile of money for nothing.  Elias is not willing to divert from the rebuild plan on such a wild gamble. 

If we sign Bryant long term, is he really the face of the franchise?  I would like to think if we sign a big money free agent in the next 3 seasons it would be a big time up the middle player (SS, P, CF, C), and I would like to make that investment when our player development system has packed our roster full of talent and we use that FA signing to plug a big glaring whole.  Right now, the O's MLB roster still looks like swiss cheese.

Let's just wait out the next two seasons and get Cobb and Davis' salaries off the books.  At that time we will probably have traded Santandar, Means, Mancini, etc; Adley and company will be arriving; the international investment may have begun to reach AA (trade value), and we will have a lot of freed up money to spend on a franchise-changing free agent.

These next two seasons the O's are still in the chrysalis stage.  Hays, Mountcastle, Akin, Kramer, and a couple of the bullpen arms may be the only O's on the roster that could be around for when we are winning again. 

Patience and the hope for minor league baseball in 2021.

 

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

Why would the Cubs do that? I think you're talking yourself through hypotheticals that are getting far away from reality.

I don’t think they would but I also don’t know how badly they want to get rid of his salary and how many teams are trying to get him.

[Roll Tide]

21 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

I don’t care if they pick up any of the contract.  It would be nice if we could get back a prospect or 2 if we picked up the whole thing.

So as a complete dump he should cost little to nothing in talent to trade for him.

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, Roll Tide said:

So as a complete dump he should cost little to nothing in talent to trade for him.

Well, we don’t know to what level the Cubs want to dump him and what other teams are bidding.

Im out on him if it takes more than I think it might.  

[LookinUp]

1 minute ago, Sports Guy said:

I don’t think they would but I also don’t know how badly they want to get rid of his salary and how many teams are trying to get him.

I just think that the terms your discussion aren't really realistic, and if they are, something's wrong.

I think you're better off in terms of a realistic deal where we have to send 2 prospects that we like (say Mayo, #15 and Hanifee, #20) to the Cubs in exchange for Bryant, his full salary, and no realistic prospects of giving him a long term deal. 

Would it make sense for this team to do that?

 

[Sports Guy]

6 minutes ago, ScGO's said:

I know its not the "sexy" thing to do, but I'm all in on Elias' pragmatic, time-encompassing plan to rebuild.  When this whole rebuild started, I though realistically it would be 2023 before we started seeing winning baseball (Not neccessairly playoff baseball).  Angelos left this organization a heaping, steaming pile of you-know-what, and the only way to get back to true competition was to show the patience to rebuild everything.  Part of that plan was cost-cutting, and that is realistic.  That's how international scouting, facilities, analytics departments, and other investments are able to be done more efficiently and quickly.

Adding Bryant creates a few issues. 

If prospects leave in return for him, that is counterproductive to the plan. We want to retain youth and potential. Every talanted player is a variable that can be run through our new investments into analytics and player development.  They all won't become studs but they are playing the numbers.

Spending the money on Bryant means less to be spent on scouting, player development, analytics, and other invisible factors that are necessary to the rebuild, even if its for one year.

If its only one year, what is the point because we are not a playoff team yet, with or without him. If he performs well and we trade him, are the prospects in return really valued at $12+ million dollars of potential value?  How much would a team give up for a couple months of Bryant, even if he is having an MVP caliber season?  We might get a Top 100 Prospect, but we might be able to get that from a Santander, Mancini, or Means trade as well.  Plus I expect another high draft pick.  Is spending all that money on Bryant in the hopes of a trade that may or may not happen worth the investment of 12 mil plus?  If he doesn't perform well, we burned a big pile of money for nothing.  Elias is not willing to divert from the rebuild plan on such a wild gamble. 

If we sign Bryant long term, is he really the face of the franchise?  I would like to think if we sign a big money free agent in the next 3 seasons it would be a big time up the middle player (SS, P, CF, C), and I would like to make that investment when our player development system has packed our roster full of talent and we use that FA signing to plug a big glaring whole.  Right now, the O's MLB roster still looks like swiss cheese.

Let's just wait out the next two seasons and get Cobb and Davis' salaries off the books.  At that time we will probably have traded Santandar, Means, Mancini, etc; Adley and company will be arriving; the international investment may have begun to reach AA (trade value), and we will have a lot of freed up money to spend on a franchise-changing free agent.

These next two seasons the O's are still in the chrysalis stage.  Hays, Mountcastle, Akin, Kramer, and a couple of the bullpen arms may be the only O's on the roster that could be around for when we are winning again. 

Patience and the hope for minor league baseball in 2021.

 

So much of this I disagree with, primarily the idea that spending money on him means spending less on the areas you mentioned.  No way that’s true.

And again, the rebuilding stuff you are talking about here happens whether the team wins 50 games or 100 games.

[Sports Guy]

Just now, LookinUp said:

I just think that the terms your discussion aren't really realistic, and if they are, something's wrong.

I think you're better off in terms of a realistic deal where we have to send 2 prospects that we like (say Mayo, #15 and Hanifee, #20) to the Cubs in exchange for Bryant, his full salary, and no realistic prospects of giving him a long term deal. 

Would it make sense for this team to do that?

 

I probably wouldn’t trade Mayo in the deal. Like I said, I would in if we could acquire him for 2-3 guys outside of our top 20 or if they would like any ML like Mullins, Severino or Sisco (not sure their C situation off the top of my head)..or some ML guys like that.

[Ruzious]

10 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Well, we don’t know to what level the Cubs want to dump him and what other teams are bidding.

Im out on him if it takes more than I think it might.  

The early rumors focused on the Nats being very interested but being unwilling to consider trading either of their top pitching prospects - Rutledge and Cavalli.   

[Roll Tide]

13 minutes ago, LookinUp said:

I just think that the terms your discussion aren't really realistic, and if they are, something's wrong.

I think you're better off in terms of a realistic deal where we have to send 2 prospects that we like (say Mayo, #15 and Hanifee, #20) to the Cubs in exchange for Bryant, his full salary, and no realistic prospects of giving him a long term deal. 

Would it make sense for this team to do that?

 

No ... You'd take his salary and offer them Johnny Rizer and Brian Gonzalez type players. If they are not looking to dump salary you obviously arent interested.

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, Ruzious said:

The early rumors focused on the Nats being very interested but being unwilling to consider trading either of their top pitching prospects - Rutledge and Cavalli.   

Yea of course not.  You aren’t going to get upper echelon guys for him.

The question is, do you need to give up guys that would be in the 8-15 range? If so, I’m out on this idea.  
 

[Roll Tide]

Quote

If you’ve been reading CI for more than a day or three, you may know we’ve said from the start that the Cubs should avoid some sort of impulse trade that ships Kris Bryant out just to save money. Ideally, they’d be able to extend him and reap the benefits of a healthy MVP-level player who’s got job security and is no longer fielding questions about his contract or trade rumors.

“I think that’s been treated as a certainty,” Jed Hoyer said of a potential trade while addressing the media after the Winter Meetings. “Listen, Kris is a great player — he’s a superstar player — that obviously didn’t have the year last year that he had hoped. But when you look at our offense, there were several other players that had similar struggles.”

. For Bryant in particular, health is a huge factor. He battled wrist and finger injuries most of the season after dealing with knee and shoulder issues in the two previous campaigns.

 

“I don’t think it should be treated as a fait accompli that [a trade is] going to happen,” Hoyer said.

 

There’s also the notion that Bryant’s performance and injuries have depressed his value to the point that the Cubs could probably get as much for him at the deadline should an extension still not be in play. They wouldn’t save much money in that scenario, but if this was simply a matter of slashing expenses by any means necessary, they wouldn’t have tendered him in the first place.

 

 

 

 

https://www.cubsinsider.com/2020/12/11/kris-bryant-trade-not-fait-accompli-even-as-budget-conscious-cubs-enter-new-phase/

[jabba72]

I'd rather hang onto our prospects since Bryant does nothing to help the club for one season.

[DrungoHazewood]

Is this really a Sports Guy trade thread if we haven't gotten 3-4 other teams involved?