The takes are hot and so is the stove: Hot Stove 24-25

Free agency begins five days after the last out of the World Series. Notable free agents:

- Blake Snell (again)
- Max Fried
- Corbin Burnes
- some other guy, John Sewtoe? Idk, maybe he plays for the Brewers or something

Interesting to see how Boras approaches this winter given he got fired by Monty last year.

Athletic has an off-season timeline:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5884166/2024/10/31/mlb-offseason-schedule-key-dates-deadlines/?source=user_shared_article MLB’s offseason schedule

i put this on the white sox thread but their new manager is will venable

Juan Soto anyone?

Ok

And so the offseason begins: The Atlanta Braves are trading outfielder Jorge Soler to the Los Angeles Angels, a source tells ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 31, 2024

the battle for baseball supremacy in LA is renewed

White Sox opening at 500-1 to win next World Series seems kinda optimistic.

If the NYM sign Soto away from the NYY, Yankees' fans are going to lose it.

#HaloNation

If there are no lingering health issues, I assume the Yankees will cough up the extra year/$36M (especially if Soto leaves).

https://www.mlb.com/news/gerrit-cole-opts-out-of-contract-with-yankees-after-2024-season

Cole to LAD would be *chefs kiss*

yanks only have until tomorrow night to decide on cole. i would be stunned if they let him walk (and i'll bet he would be too)

Cole to LAD would be *chefs kiss*

― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Saturday, November 2, 2024 12:58 PM (thirty-four minutes ago)

Roberts would have him doing endless "always cover first" drills lol

Yeah I’m sure the opt out was just in case he turned out to be dogshit but the Yanks will surely be invoking their option.

i wouldn’t read too much into the opt-out i think cole is just covering his bases

No pun intended!

Jays want in on the Soto sweepstakes? Can it be?

I read on Twitter that he's on a plane right now, headed this way.

KC resigns Wacha for $51M/3y

That feels, excessive for him?!

Actually, I take that back. He’s been very reliable the last three years. 3.30 ERA and averaged 3.1 WAR.

wacha flocka paid

Ok

Right-hander Gerrit Cole is remaining with the New York Yankees on the four-year, $144 million deal that he had opted out of, sources told ESPN. Discussions on a potential contract extension will continue. Essentially, it’s the same as if Cole did not opt out.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 4, 2024

he was completely dominant against the best lineup in baseball for 2 games in the world series, pay the man his money!

huh. maybe i'm wrong and they'll extend him, but it sure seems like cole didn't actually want to leave and that the yankees knew this and made him blink

You know about the +1/35M thing that the yankees can activate to negate the opt out rite?

yes

oh i see what's happening. weird

is cole likely to be worth $36m in his age-38 season? he has a better chance than almost anyone, but i'm not sure it's a *good* chance. and in this new era of relative restraint (lol) i guess the yankees may 'need' that money to spend on soto

It feels like a gamble right? But I guess they view - or viewed at the time he signed this - him as the kind of pitcher who ages well and is still giving you something in his late thirties like Verlander. Wasn’t this year his first real injury?

huh. maybe i'm wrong and they'll extend him, but it sure seems like cole didn't actually want to leave and that the yankees knew this and made him blink

My first thought as well.

we got QO's

Juan Soto, New York Yankees
Corbin Burnes, Baltimore
Alex Bregman, Houston
Max Fried, Atlanta
Willy Adames, Milwaukee
Pete Alonso, New York Mets
Anthony Santander, Baltimore
Teoscar Hernández, Los Angeles Dodgers
Nick Pivetta, Boston
Christian Walker, Arizona
Sean Manaea, New York Mets
Luis Severino, New York Mets
Nick Martinez, Cincinnati

feel like pete alonso is in for severe disappointment this winter

turns 30 in a month, stats already trending down, bad fielder, prototypical guy who doesn't age well, agent scott boras. worried he's gonna hold out for a big deal that simply isn't forthcoming

Sort of like Conforto, who turned down a megadeal at the beginning of this walk year and ended up out of the game for a year.

*his

I find Alonso has made his fair share of excellent plays at first base, even if the stats don’t bear that out

feel like pete alonso is in for severe disappointment this winter

turns 30 in a month, stats already trending down, bad fielder, prototypical guy who doesn't age well, agent scott boras. worried he's gonna hold out for a big deal that simply isn't forthcoming

*his

I find Alonso has made his fair share of excellent plays at first base, even if the stats don’t bear that out

Brian Cashman says there are no contract extension talks going on with Gerrit Cole, per @martinonyc

Cashman says the Yankees were not comfortable adding another year to Cole’s contract, and he agreed to remain on his current deal with four years, $144 million remaining pic.twitter.com/Iqvh4Q4eQh

— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) November 5, 2024

yeah that's a blink! nice try tho

in a sense it's still a W for cole because the yankees are basically admitting that his deal is an overpay at 4/144 bcuz they don't need to use the opt out cancellation as leverage to get him to return. confirmation for gerrit that he has an above market contract

that said, the opt out is an effective cancellation of the contract so the yankees could have in theory not offered him the same deal, which means they must have talked all this out beforehand and cole knew the yankees would still put the same offer back on the table, so it's not clear to me why both sides went thru the process just to remain back in the same place. there must be some contractual fine print or luxury tax loopholing or something going on

I feel like Alonso is perfect for the Yankees

they must have talked all this out beforehand and cole knew the yankees would still put the same offer back on the table, so it's not clear to me why both sides went thru the process just to remain back in the same place

oh, i doubt it! i think cole, recognizing the yankees desperately need him for them compete over the next four years, tried to pressure the yankees, who recognized that cole already had an overvalued contract and was famously a 12yo kid holding up a GO YANKEES sign and didn't actually want to go elsewhere. and that the yankees mostly won that standoff

almost counts as the incredibly rare instance of a mutual option being accepted by both sides

i think it was a "standoff" insofar as cole didn't get the option year added, but i think it was clearly all prearranged. because if they were playing hardball w/ each other, and cole was genuinely trying to leverage the yankees, then it follows that the yankees wouldn't come back to the table and say "hey, no harm no foul on that opt out, here's the same exact deal you just threw in the trash"

you have to assume boras knew long before today that there wasn't a better deal than 4/144 out there for him, and so i find it extremely hard to believe that cole would have opted out w/o knowing that the 4/144 offer would still be on the table, which leads me to believe this was all hashed out ahead of time, and also that there is some explanation be it luxury tax or whatever for why this whole charade went down just for him to end up on the same deal

i remain skeptical but am looking forward to jack curry blasting cole for being greedy and disloyal!

idk, if this was all prearranged why leak it to the media?

occam's razor - mookie's theory is the more convincing one to me. i'm betting cole didn't get any whispers from other teams after the opt out went public, hence his willingness to basically mutually cancel the opt out.

don't think the yankees could have offered a lower contract than 4/144 even if it was within their prerogative because of all the press that would have generated and the psychic damage it would have caused cole.

This wasn't one of those deals where the player opts out and becomes a free agent, the Yankees had veto power. There's always the risk of opting out and sitting at home without getting any good offers, that wasn't what happened here. The Yankees said "nah, we'd rather not pay the extra $36M if you don't mind" and Cole said, "OK, I'm not dumb enough to walk away from $144M guaranteed" and that was that.

I'm not sure why Cole tried pulling this stunt after a year where he was injured. Maybe he thought he could get a deal like deGrom's?

Accurate

Free agent hitters tier list pic.twitter.com/udcB9Y4Ds8

— jack (@Jolly_Olive) November 5, 2024

beloved but washed 35yo RHP kyle hendricks (trio) to the angels for one year/$2.5m

dodgers poised to sign roki sasaki??

Based on what? Him being posted? It hasn’t even happened yet. Jeff Passan wrote about it when he said they’d have an advantage but Sasaki would also not enjoy the extreme coverage that follows Ohtani and Yamamoto, also flagged up Sasaki’s closeness to Darvish.

Alex Bregman make a decision for Pete’s sake

I had a nightmare he joined the dodgers last night

You do have to mark it down as the funniest possible option though

On a related note: Kenley Jansen to the Angels, 10M one year

And Kershaw back too! (Though no surprise there)

Alex Bregman make a decision for Pete’s sake

Also, Adam Weinrib who is one of two good writers on fansided (the other is Robert Murray, who he does a podcast with): https://fansided.com/ranking-the-worst-alex-bregman-rumors-from-scott-boras-leaks-to-never-gonna-happen

https://bsky.app/profile/alexjstumpf.bsky.social/post/3lhya2qxros2j

congrats to the buccos

Bregman to the Red Sox

3/120

not long term, but that's still a hefty haul

Sheesh

Wowzas

jinx

Opt outs after every year lol

WHOA WHAT THE FUCK

Also good for Pivetta landing in SD. He’s going to get some protection from his HR problem in that park. Bregman and Pivetta were both QO guys, because they both signed within hours of each other they can afford to sign Bregman for essentially a year if he opts out. Once the news came out that he was going to think of short term deals, Fenway made the most sense for his swing. He can statpad for a year and go back to the market in a year if he wishes.

Underrated is how much Devers did not want to move off 3B. Passan confirmed the reports out of Boston all winter, that they wanted him for 2B but I still think they’ll play him at 3B some and DH Devers more.

But Jesus, I did not think Craig had it in him.

Bregman has some balls to take that offer, didn't he have 6Y, 150M offers from at least one other team?

I suppose he is thinking that he's guaranteed 120M no matter what, but if has two good years he'll make 80M and then opt out for a new 3-4 year deal that will pay him more (over the entire 5-6 year starting next season) than he could have signed for today.

I would be surprised if he opts out after one year, unless he has a monster season and the Red Sox make a playoff run. If he puts up "just" a very good 3-4 WAR, would he really get more money next offseason that what he could have gotten now?

I think playing at Fenway should pad his numbers enough for him to get the big contract to retire on somewhere next year and he’d sacrifice aav for years. IIRC the free agent market isn’t great next year for bats. He’d be doing the same as Chapman and Snell last season.

Personally, I hope he opts out.

Chapman and Snell didn't receive 150M offers last offseason. If they had, they would have taken them.

If he has a good season in 2025, there's no way he's getting a six year deal when he's a year older, when many teams were reluctant to sign him this year for the long term.

I hope he has a great season and finds a way to make more bank, but he's taking a gamble. I assume he's really confident about hitting in Fenway and the team's chances this year.

Passan says he’ll be playing second base.
Guess I’ll be moving Campbell down on my prospect list

think about it this way, he’ll be a top 10 prospect for a whole nother year

Campbell will play this year. He’s also capable of playing every position in the outfield. Just means they don’t have him there on day 1 when he’s had barely a month in triple A.

I'm actually a little surprised he doesn't have any HOF'ers on his through-age-30 similarity list, just a lot of good players. With 40 WAR, I'd say a bit of rebound puts him back on a HOF course--and he has been 4.0-5.0 the past three seasons.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6134352/2025/02/13/alex-bregman-red-sox-astros-the-windup/

buried in there --

Last May, I wrote about the amount of time that Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon had missed over the previous three-plus seasons. Trout hasn’t played since. Rendon played 38 games in July through September, hitting .191/.297/.244 (.541 OPS) with no home runs in 155 plate appearances.

Perhaps as a result of those numbers, his place in the Angels’ Opening Day lineup was no longer a foregone conclusion — even if he were healthy.

Well, we can put that question to rest. Rendon suffered a setback in his rehab that required hip surgery. He’ll miss the entire 2025 season.

only $77,142,856 left on his contract!

It really takes a lot to be a worse FA signee than Josh Hamilton but congratulations Anthony. It’s crazy how the angels have whiffed on those massive deals almost every single time. Pujols, Mo Vaughn, Justin Upton..

… taking on the Vernon Wells contract. They love their disaster contract vets

Feb. 13: Kershaw is guaranteed $7.5MM on a one-year deal, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. He’ll unlock a $1MM bonus for making his 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th starts of the season. The deal also contains active roster bonuses; he’ll add an additional $2.5MM for 30 days on the active roster, $1MM for 60 days and $1MM for 90 days.

In all, that $7.5MM base can more than double to $16MM so long as Kershaw starts at least 16 games and stays healthy for about half the season.

Who runs the medical staff on the Angels, Dr Death?

the saying "they're with the angels now" carries a certain meaning

Big deferrals in the Bregman contract. Ends up being about 90mil all up.

of course the one year Rendon was still good was his first with the angels, the shortened 60 game season.

From MLBTR:

Over the past four seasons, Rendon has played 205 of a possible 648 games (31.6%) and posted an anemic .231/.329/.336 batting line. Dating back to 2021 alone, Rendon has had a staggering 12 different IL placements. This hip procedure will account for his 13th. He’s missed time with a near-interminable list of injuries which, in order, reads as follows: knee contusion, hamstring strain, hip impingement, wrist inflammation, wrist surgery, groin strain, wrist contusion, shin contusion, hamstring strain, back inflammation, oblique strain — and now hip surgery.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/we-tried-tracker-alex-bregman-edition/

Amazingly, Bregman is the first position player Craig Breslow has signed to a major league deal since the Red Sox hired him in October 2023. That’s why we keep trying. You never know when lucky number 13 is going to pay off. If you just stick to your guns, keep lowballing free agent after free agent, one of them will eventually be so beaten down by the process that he will accept your terms. It’s truly an uplifting tale of hope in these bleak times.

red sox had more 'we tried' than the jays? wow!

Most teams aren’t even able to try!

seems like there's quite a few unsigned players this year, as spring training starts, more than usual? just thinking of guys like lance lynn and kyle gibson, typical 4th starters for mediocre teams, both teamless so far

ahhhh, Jesse Chavez is a Brave again

eight-year, $60 million deal for kristian campbell with the red sox

oh and a 9-year, $135 million extension for jackson merrill

which means merrill is worth exactly twice as much as campbell

(which i'm not arguing about, it's just funny the numbers line up exactly)

Campbell got robbed but also he’s slightly older and has exactly five games in the majors.

white sox ship andrew vaughn to the brewers for aaron civale
glad to be rid of vaughn in chicago, he sucks

Is Civale’s arm about to fall off?

Oh ok.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/06/brewers-rumors-aaron-civale-requests-trade.html

curious what the brewers see in vaughn, they made the trade really quickly

Watching a bit of Pirates-Cubs. Skenes laboured the third inning - first inning with more than thirty pitches - but got out of it

posting that on this thread means that the pirates have to trade skenes to the cubs now

haha