Bertz

Baseball Trade Values thinks it'd be fair to net Nick Lololol, Nick Senzel, and one of several relievers in exchange for taking on Mike Moustakas' contract Jed really needs to make a move I don't hate because I'm basically spending my day at this point staying green on Teams and coming up with trade proposals for various bad contracts

Reds are really tearing it down. Luis Castillo and Joey Votto pretty much all that's left?

Aside from the LH/RH imbalance, which they don't help at all, this is why I've been pounding the table for a shortstop. The team has a lot of 1-2 WAR guys who are not hard to see as 2-3 WAR guys. What they need is some actual bankable star power. There are currently 3 guys left in FA who project north of 3 WAR: Freeman, Correa, and Story. And among the 2-3 WAR guys, Kris Bryant is the only other one on the positive end of the defensive spectrum. Then, on top of the near term roster construction considerations, you have the farm. The farm is in a good spot, but there is no shortstop anywhere close to MLB. And on top of *that*, the next FA class of shortstops is Trea Turner (surely getting extended), Xander Bogaerts (rapidly becoming unviable defensively at short), and Dansby Swanson (fine). I am absolutely not the guy who throws a temper tantrum every time the Cubs don't sign a guy (I couldn't care less that they missed on Suzuki for instance), but Jed absolutely cannot afford to sit out the good part of the SS market. If he does, then he needs to eat a bad contract or three and build up capital to go trade for a star (probably still at shortstop) next winter.

Wow, what a haul. Have to assume the Freeman decision has happened and just isn't public yet. Between this and Suzuki I'd imagine the position player side of things starts moving pretty quickly from here.

I'm increasingly pessimistic about landing Correa, but Jed would say that regardless. It was notable when right before the lockout he said they weren't happy giving the spot to Hoerner, because the default for most GMs is generally "we're always opportunistic but we're happy with the guys we have."

Trying to put on my positivity hat in a morning where it certainly seems like we're getting primed for a kick to the nads, should we be bracing for Trevor Story? Simmons + Correa IMO didn't make any sense, but Simmons + Story makes a lot. Trevor Story is historically a pretty good defensive shortstop, but was bad last year, especially in the second half. That was probably just because of a shoulder injury in his throwing arm, but you would understand wanting to not risk it. Plus, as more of a pretty good defensive shortstop generally, it's not as infeasible that a team would bump him over to 3rd a few days a week when they have a superior glove on hand. Financially, we know Jed wanted Correa on a shorter term, 6-7 year deal. Well Story is/was expected to get something like 6/150. And hell, you could always pay up and try to get that shorter term too, something like 3/100. That's essentially what Jed just did with Stroman. There's also the matter of who else is going to sign him. He might be who the Twins were clearing up money for last night? Otherwise while there are teams who could use a SS, most of them seem to be in tank mode or focused on improving elsewhere.

https://twitter.com/Machete1224/status/1502447719457169410?t=54PS0qqR-FLqvazure4KAQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/Machete1224/status/1503199932546695170?t=3HRwRb6CsBpK0G37WZV-Dg&s=19

Grrrr, I wanted him

Do we know if that's for everyone or just pitchers? Lindsay's tweet made it sound like everyone but the Dombrowski quote sounded like pitchers only. It's emblematic of the PA's improvement this go around that the small quality of life stuff they focused on this go-around is stuff like this and not leg room on airplanes. Looks like the latter

Fangraphs thinks he was 14th in the Twins system, projects as a reliever, and has an ETA of 2026 Yikes

Do we know if that's for everyone or just pitchers? Lindsay's tweet made it sound like everyone but the Dombrowski quote sounded like pitchers only. It's emblematic of the PA's improvement this go around that the small quality of life stuff they focused on this go-around is stuff like this and not leg room on airplanes.

The floodgates appear to have opened

I'll preface this by saying that I don't think that signing both Simmons and Correa is a particularly neat fit, and the *best* interpretation would be that Hoyer doesn't think Correa is a lock, and desperately needs to guarantee that there's a true defensive SS on the roster(and doesn't rate Alcantara that way). Having said that, I think you can come up with some reasons that don't shut the door on it even with the facts you're stating. - Correa hasn't played another position, but he has missed his share of time to injury. Insuring against that is worthwhile and can even be a point in selling him("we're gonna keep you in the lineup more often by DHing you every week or two") if that resonates with his mindset. - Simmons hasn't played another position because he's too good at the position he does play. It makes no sense to play an inferior defender there while both are in the lineup, so as a bench option his utility is in playing SS while others slide down the defensive spectrum. Admittedly Correa dilutes this benefit a bit, but if he's open to a handful of games at DH and/or 3B, great. Plus Correa isn't signed. But in any case, the idea that Villar(who I'd hesitate to call a SS or at least a better defender than Hoerner) or Iglesias(who has a worse defensive history than Simmons and hasn't played a different position in 9 years) have played other positions isn't a selling point in their favor. - Simmons isn't exactly in a position to make big demands of his role. He's 32, coming off a sub-replacement season, made himself into a potential locker room distraction, and signed for backup catcher money. Even if the odds of him being the primary SS are only 10%, that's probably more potential playing time than he could bank on from other suitors. - Simmons' skill balance is extra helpful on this team. While he is right handed when he does hit, we've talked before about this team really needing defensive strength to suck up the groundballs that Stroman/Hendricks/Miley are going to induce. You can make the argument that in a limited role he provides more benefit than a Villar or an Iglesias because his strengths are so maximized. I sure hope so. I hope we're really far along with Correa, and he gave the thumbs up to sliding over to 3B on Stroman days. Those days we'll have an all-galaxy infield defense, and otherwise Simmons is just a standard backup. I've been vocal about us needing two left side infielders, so hopefully this is just an unexpected way of getting there. Occam's Razor though is pretty clearly Hoerner and Simmons splitting SS, probably Andrelton on Stroman and Miley days plus against some lefties.

I'm all for "it's just a little airborne" rationalizing, but neither Simmons nor Correa has played an MLB game anywhere other than shortstop. If Jed was still signing Correa, and this was just to have a better defensive backup than Hoerner, they would have gone with Jose Iglesias or Jonathan Villar who could slide around the infield.

Literally the worst on field choice amongs the shortstop options, and also a vocal anti-vaxxer Horsefeathering Christ

This is probably a day of the week deal. I know they've tried to not have it on Sundays previously, so they might set it to always be e.g. Friday

Consider me very curious about what "corresponding move" could mean

That's done. Joe Davis does a really nice job as Fox's #2 baseball guy, I'm sure he'll just get bumped up. The NFL spot is the interesting one. I really like the Kevin Burkhardt Greg Olsen duo. To me this is a win win because Buck/Aikman upgrade the ESPN booth and those two presumably get more prominent games. I hope Joe Davis doesn't have to partner with Smoltz.