Him

Geez, I wonder where you got that one from. from sbanation Trading with the Cubs If the Mets were to trade Niese to the Cubs, it would make sense to ask for a young shortstop in return. The Cubs have a trio of shortstop prospects and the Mets have a stockpile of young arms, so naturally the two teams have long been mentioned as possible trade partners. Chicago currently has Starlin Castro and Addison Russell in the major leagues and top prospect Javier Baez in Triple-A, where he is rehabbing from a fractured finger. Due to his recent struggles, it would appear that Baez would be the most likely trade candidate of this trio. He was named the fifth-best prospect in all of baseball by Baseball America before last season, but his stock has dropped somewhat over the past year. Baez batted just .169/.227/.354 in 52 games for the Cubs last season and failed to make the big league squad out of spring training. Even though his stock may have fallen, a straight trade of Baez for Niese appears to be highly unlikely. Fox's Ken Rosenthal reported that the only way the Cubs would trade Baez for Niese would be if it was part of a larger deal. So if the Mets want Baez, they would either need to eat a large sum of Niese's contract or trade a prospect or two with him. Or both. This scenario seems very unlikely. Another more realistic option for the Mets on the Cubs' roster could be third baseman Mike Olt. Olt, who was once a top prospect in the Rangers organization, has been a huge disappointment since the Cubs acquired him in the Matt Garza trade. The 27-year-old has batted just .158/.245/.333 in 111 major league games, and his future as a starter with the club is in serious doubt now that Kris Bryant occupies third base. Despite his discouraging batting line, Olt has shown some pop in the majors, hitting 12 home runs in 89 games last season. The Mets have a void at third base with David Wright's injury, so acquiring Olt for Niese represents a much more realistic trade option for the Mets. Attempting to catch lightning in a bottle with a player like Olt could eventually pay dividends. Nowhere in this article does it say the Cubs offered Olt. Aside from Rosenthal saying the Cubs wouldn't trade Baez for Niese (shocker), this is pure speculation.

Right division, right handedness, wrong team and player The guy gets $9 mil next year... And $10 mil or a buyout? Can I hire his agent to work my next deal? That's seriously like the most common thing. Like nearly every contract with an option year has a buy out. I was referring to MLBTR saying $9 mil next year and $10 mil/buyout for 2016. Next year = 2016.

Right division, right handedness, wrong team and player The guy gets $9 mil next year... And $10 mil or a buyout? Can I hire his agent to work my next deal?

Man Starlin needed that haha

Every day Schwarber is up this year is one more day we'll have to leave him down next year for service time considerations. That said the idea above about bringing him up for one series wouldn't be bad.

if we're going off similar recent trades, kimbrel really didn't fetch much and he's under team control for longer. Mevlin Upton's contract is to blame for that. The Braves still got a solid prospect in Wisler (#41 in Fangraph's rankings) even though the Padres took on $56 million in salary for Upton and Kimbrel ($80 for those two - the $24 for Quentin and Maybin). The Braves would've had to give a lot more if the trade had been just Upton.

According to the ESPN announcers I have not muted for some reason, Adrian Gonzalez is the first player in the history of MLB to have 5 homers in the first 3 games of a season.

Well there's your problem. This is a good point. Good? No. Literally anyone can tell you? Yes. Not making fun of CTCF. It's just not a hard thing to realize Dew. Come on bro!

Winning "it" will always mean a ton, but it's less meaningful with Ernie gone. RIP.

I think the safe bet is that he's a September call up at best, but there's a lot of moving pieces. Number 1 is his performance at Iowa, if he's got a .900+ OPS at the all-star break there's going to be some pressure to put him on the MLB roster. After that it depends a bit on MLB need and how the team is doing in the standings. Bryant's 3B defense and the bats of Baez, Alcantara, and to a lesser extent La Stella will all dictate that. I doubt they'll call Russell up before September if he's not going to be playing every day, so he'd need an opening, or one to be created for him with a deadline deal. Or if we trade Russell mid-season for an upgrade elsewhere.

I know many on this board don't like Cameron, but this was a good article on why the deal is essentially $170 million / 7 years. Hopefully it can clear up any confusion anyone has on the deal... http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/max-scherzer-and-when-210-million-isnt-210-million/

It's not looking good but we have to remember he was the youngest player in the league until September call ups and will likely be among the very youngest players on opening day. Yeah, but he was striking out at a pretty bad rate last year in AAA where guys like Eric Jokisch and Dallas Beeler are good pitchers and he's doing it now in a league (where I presume) most guys won't even make it to AAA next year. http://www.northsidebaseball.com/images/JavyKRate.jpg Unlabeled axis and no description of which line is which? What a terrible graph. Come on Tim, step your game up! :D As it has the least variation, I'm assuming the blue line is Javy's Cumulative K%, with it not starting until stabilization. So to the poster above me, I'd say he was never "very high" after stabilization. Just high to high. In AAA.

Meh. It feels like people want a loophole like this to be there so badly, but I'm just not sure the talent you get in year 1 is all that much more impressive than the talent you get for playing it straight. Better to get the talent ASAP. Start developing them all in year 1 instead of half in year 1 and half in year 2.

Have to assume they wouldn't be signing for these 25 if the other ~56 weren't close behind.

What? Montero would get more starts over the course of a season than Johnny Gomes or Ross. Plus Miguel is definitely better at baseball at this point.

That quote really tilts me. I really, really hope that if we hadn't landed Lester it wouldn't have been straight to Operation Shutdown Part 4. But it's moot, so woo-hoo! I'm looking at it going forward. They had said they wanted a "veteran presence" type leader. That very well may wind up Ross and/or Gomes. But the FO knows those guys aren't moving the needle on win projections either. It's not likely another FA SP would either. So it does have me hopeful of one more rather meaningful move this offseason. Granted, we'll be buying at the deadline, so it's definitely plausible to see us holding off on anything big for now. And Im fairly certain if we had been told on November 1st we could skip to April 1st and be given Lester, Hammel, and Montero, the vast majority of us would have jumped at it. That said, it really seems like they're not ready to deal our top prospects yet. Could we get a very good rental guy using some combo of Castillo, Wood, Valbuena, and Vogelbach? Because I think that's honestly the ammo I think we'll be using if we DO find a nice upgrade somewhere. Why don't you think Montero will fill this role?

If we want a veteran, we should really go after Miguel Montero.

Miggy also fills the "Veteran clubhouse guy" role we've been supposedly pursuing.

Zimmerman is floating Headley to the A's within the week. Stick Lawrie at 2B?

I was initially shocked by this, but the more I read about it the more I like it from Oakland's side. 4 years of control of Donaldson vs. 3 years of control of Lawrie. Lawrie will be 25, Donaldson 29. A 125 projected wRC+ for Donaldson and a 115 for Lawrie, but that will be largely affected by Lawrie's injury history. And Beane, being Beane, may have plans to platoon Lawrie in such a way to keep him healthy. They are getting a very high upside prospect in Barreto. Kid is 17 and was blowing up the NWL. He'll take time, but could eventually be a replacement for Russell for the Athletics. And the two other guys aren't just two other guys. They'll be cost effective relievers for Oakland, which has some surplus value. Toronto is going to be scary next year, especially for righties. Oakland needed a move like this to restock the system a little while still allowing themselves to stay competitive next year.

And now Rosenthal is saying this on twitter. Sources: Trade #Athletics are discussing does NOT involve Samardzija.

http://www.rotoworld.com/player/mlb/4648/jeff-samardzija Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Athletics are close to a "very significant deal" involving Jeff Samardzija. Slusser notes that the team would receive several pieces back in return, and that the A's are targeting hitters. The 29-year-old right-hander, who is set to hit free agency after the 2015 season, posted a terrific 2.99 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and 202/43 K/BB ratio over 219 2/3 innings with the A's and Cubs in 2014. Stay tuned.

On a per IP basis, that projection looks to be pretty similar to his 2012 and 2013, if a bit pessimistic. As to why it's only projecting 180 IP, I dunno, maybe his 2010 is still held against him. It's got him 1 win per 62.8 innings. '14 - 38.4 '13 - 59.3 '12 - 57.5 Seems silly. The projection will include the risk that he has TJS and misses a significant portion of the season or has a smaller injury. That cuts a significant % of his IPs off. As for the rate stats decreasing, I don't know what that will be due to. Regression to the mean? Age? Seems very harsh, especially considering how great his FIP was. It's not like he massively over-achieved last year.

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/11/al-east-notes-maddon-os-headley-bosox.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook And that should end the tampering discussion.

Maddon's contract with the Rays may allow for his agent to do some testing of the waters. If so, the Rays would not be able to make a case for tampering.