MLB Offseason Moves/Rumor Thread

[Sports Guy]

24 minutes ago, ThisIsBirdland said:

If/when Cease gets traded to another team I'll start to assume they won't be making any moves. I still think that's too logical of a move and that it will ultimately happen. Luzardo, Skubal, etc feel too expensive.

It won’t be Luzardo but I think they end up with a Marlins starter if they don’t get Cease, which I don’t think they will.

[Can_of_corn]

4 minutes ago, interloper said:

Santander is looking at this deal like 

"I'm a $20 million player??"

Which is why you don't hit him with a QO.

 

[wildcard]

46 minutes ago, interloper said:

Not sure Elias really expected to sign anybody. 

Its looking more and more like Michael Lorenzen if they can get him on a one year deal with as option.

[interloper]

Just now, Can_of_corn said:

Which is why you don't hit him with a QO.

 

Yeah, doubt Angelos would allow that anyway. Would have loved to be in the room with Duquette and PA when Wieters accepted his QO. 

[interloper]

3 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Its looking more and more like Michael Lorenzen if they can get him on a one year deal with as option.

I think I'd rather just go with Cole Irvin. He's pitched more innings in a year (twice!) than Lorenzen ever has. 

Edited January 8 by interloper

[Sports Guy]

3 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Its looking more and more like Michael Lorenzen if they can get him on a one year deal with as option.

This would be horrific.  Much better off giving the ball to Hall and signing a guy like Stephenson for the pen.

Edited January 8 by Sports Guy

[owknows]

FA starters don't seem to be in the cards. So it looks like the trade route. Seems like the primary dance partners want outfielders. We have infielders. 

In the grand scheme of things I think we could be better than we were last year (for starting pitching) by standing pat. The young arms are a year older and wiser, and some combination of Irvin, Wells, Hall, is probably as good or better than what we'd trade for.

We still need to thin the herd of infielders though. So trade them (or those they supplant preferably) for mid-high minors arms and bolster the 2025 season while getting a look at infield alignments.

Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make.

[wildcard]

36 minutes ago, interloper said:

Honestly, Irvin was supposed to be a pretty good option to eat innings. When we traded for him he had just pitched back-to-back seasons of 180 innings at a very solid ERA and FIP. 

The fact that he fell off early last year was kind of a surprise. He righted the ship late though, so maybe we're discounting him as an option more than we should. 

Irvin not pitching well to start the season was not surprise to me.  I predicted it.  He pitch well at home in the big Oakland park but not on the road.

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Irvin not pitching well to start the season was not surprise to me.  I predicted it.  He pitch well at home in the big Oakland park but not on the road.

OPaCY doesn’t play much different than Oakland’s park anymore.

And Irvin struggled because his command was an issue…it had nothing to do with anything else but that.

He is a command/control guy.  When those are off, he will struggle.

[Tony-OH]

1 hour ago, Can_of_corn said:

Why would someone be upset about workers getting raises?

 

Ok Che Guevara. You and the revolutionaries can stop beating the same drum over and over and not derail this thread about what players are going where for what why it's better for the "workers" to make money than the owners. 

All owners are Billionaires nowadays. No one feels sorry for them, but the last I checked, while the owners are still billionaires, many players are now tens and hundreds of millionaires. Meanwhile, regular folks have to now pay crazy amounts of money to go see baseball games or pay exorbitant cable fees to have channels they don't want or need because MLB won't allow them an in market streaming option.

This is exactly why I dislike the monetary part of the off season because fans seem to focus on owners vs players while knowing they will keep dishing out more and more money for tickets and concessions. The MLB system is designed to milk the fans in order to keep billionaires billionaires and make the Harrison Bader's of the world worth $10 million. 

Now if you want something to really be perturbed about, the Orioles had the 10th highest average ticket price sold in 2023 while having the second lowest payroll. Meanwhile John Angelos is telling the press he'll need to raise prices to keep the Orioles young stars.

So yeah, I'm not crying for any of them and as long as fans are willing to pay the prices of tickets and concessions, then I guess the system works. Personally, I limit my time at the park because it's not worth paying hundreds of dollars for tickets, food, and parking when I can watch it on my big screen TV at home.

 

[interloper]

8 minutes ago, wildcard said:

Irvin not pitching well to start the season was not surprise to me.  I predicted it.  He pitch well at home in the big Oakland park but not on the road.

Let's take a closer look.

4/2 @ Boston - 4 IP, 6 ER
4/8 in Baltimore - 4.2 IP, 3 ER
4/13 in Oakland - 4 IP, 6 ER

At this point, when he couldn't even have success in his old ballpark, he got optioned. Though I agree with SG that it was just about his command. 

He was back up making both starts and relief appearances June through August. He got his ERA down from 10.38 to 4.42 by the end of the year, pitching to a 3.79 ERA over 64.1 IP. Of the games he started during this time, he only pitched less than 5 innings one time. 

I'm talking myself into Cole Irvin. I think he got off to a rough start and then figured it out. If he's a guy than can regularly go 5-6 innings and pitch to a 4 ERA, that would pretty huge for us. 

Edited January 8 by interloper

[RZNJ]

6 minutes ago, owknows said:

FA starters don't seem to be in the cards. So it looks like the trade route. Seems like the primary dance partners want outfielders. We have infielders. 

In the grand scheme of things I think we could be better than we were last year (for starting pitching) by standing pat. The young arms are a year older and wiser, and some combination of Irvin, Wells, Hall, is probably as good or better than what we'd trade for.

We still need to thin the herd of infielders though. So trade them (or those they supplant preferably) for mid-high minors arms and bolster the 2025 season while getting a look at infield alignments.

Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make.

We have infielders and outfielders for trade.   We have 3 outfielders.  Then we have Cowser, Kjerstad, and Beavers.  Then we drafted Bradfield and Horvath + last year.   There’s no reason we can’t make a deal unless the other team is trying to hold us up.

[Tony-OH]

2 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

OPaCY doesn’t play much different than Oakland’s park anymore.

And Irvin struggled because his command was an issue…it had nothing to do with anything else but that.

He is a command/control guy.  When those are off, he will struggle.

It's also worth noting that after his three bad starts in April, Irvin pitched to a 3.20 ERA while holding batters to a .241/.293/.395/.688 slash line over his next 64.2 IP that included 9 starts. Irvin actually was underutilized a bit last year in my opinion. For some reason he did not have much command when the season started but once he found it, he was fine. My bet is he'd be ok in a 5th starter role here in 2024, though I'd like to see better options up front that would send him to long relief.     

[Sports Guy]

Just now, Tony-OH said:

It's also worth noting that after his three bad starts in April, Irvin pitched to a 3.20 ERA while holding batters to a .241/.293/.395/.688 slash line over his next 64.2 IP that included 9 starts. Irvin actually was underutilized a bit last year in my opinion. For some reason he did not have much command when the season started but once he found it, he was fine. My bet is he'd be ok in a 5th starter role here in 2024, though I'd like to see better options up front that would send him to long relief.     

Agree with all of this. I actually forget about him when talking about things and part of the reason for that is that I also feel they’re underutilized him last year. 
 

He is tremendous depth for us to have imo. 

[RZNJ]

1 minute ago, interloper said:

Let's take a closer look.

4/2 @ Boston - 4 IP, 6 ER
4/8 in Baltimore - 4.2 IP, 3 ER
4/13 in Oakland - 4 IP, 6 ER

At this point, when he couldn't even have success in his old ballpark, he got optioned. Though I agree with SG that it was just about his command. 

He was back up making both starts and relief appearances June through August. He got his ERA down from 10.38 to 4.42 by the end of the year, pitching to a 3.79 ERA over 64.1 IP. Of the games he started during this time, he only pitched less than 5 innings one time. 

I'm talking myself into Cole Irvin. I think he got off to a rough start and then figured it out. If he's a guy than can regularly go 5-6 innings and pitch to a 4 ERA, that would pretty huge for us. 

I never saw the stuff from Irvin that would give me confidence in him moving forward despite the better results in the 2nd half.  Maybe he’d surprise me.  Does he have one plus pitch?