2017-18 Off-season Trade/Free Agent Speculation

allentown 2018-01-29 20:27:40 UTC #1084

I don't even know what this means. Exactly what has Hoskins done that no player has ever done before, apart from SSS. He has a long, long way to go to match Ryan Howard's HoskinHos put up just-below 1.000 OPS in Reading and AAA and then 170 AB of 1.014 OPS in Philly. That's very, very good, but Howard put up over a 1.000 OPS in Reading and .966 in Allentown and had a full season OPS of 1.04 in Philly. Hoskins has hit 18 MLB HRs. Ryans first 4 full season produced 198 HRs. Hoskins has yet to pass through the period of having to respond to pitcher's/teams adjustments to him. Let's not write HOF after his name just yet. And no, I wouldn't trade him now, either. The SSS makes him not that valuable now. If he hits for a year and does ok defensively in LF this season, then he will have a lot more value a year from now and another replication of that performance will up his value still more.

baseballoldie 2018-01-29 21:00:22 UTC #1085

Stop reading more into the comments than what is written - no where did I associate HOF with Rhys Hoskins. What he has done that no other player had done before was hit more HRs at a quicker pace in his first opportunity in the big leagues than others before him. It doesn't mean that he is a Hall of Famer simply because of what he did in 2017. The point being made was that you don't trade a player that started his career like Hoskins has. Hoskins is not going anywhere.

Austinfan 2018-01-29 21:54:01 UTC #1086

Hoskins is worth more in LF than 1B if he's merely an adequate defensive LF, he is considered a below average defensive 1B right now, though this will buy a few years to work on his 1B defense before he replaces Santana.
It's a small sample, but his UZR in LF was 0.1, so not a disaster by any means.

I'd also point out that his ML showing reflects pretty much his minor league performance of the last two seasons with one caveat, his BABIP was only .241, much lower! So regression to the mean actually works in his favor.

zambonir 2018-01-29 21:54:16 UTC #1087

I guess I just don't think that something somebody has done his first time around the league in a small sample is that meaningful. See also (realizing pitchers are different): Marty Bystrom. Doesn't mean Hoskins isn't a possible star, but what he did for six weeks isn't going to affect this front office's valuation of him either way.

If anything the marketing aspect of it, which CD's argument alludes too, probably counts the most. This guy (along with Crawford and Nola) is presumably going to be on the cover of the media guide and so forth. Pat Neshek wasn't able to get his uniform number back. He's an important and promising player. But you could still trade him for a better player, or a greater area of need, if you have one (positionally, the Phillies have one, but they also don't have a ton of power, so...)

andyb 2018-01-29 22:12:00 UTC #1088

Back to real world free agent speculation. Word out of LA is that Darvish wants to go back to the Dodgers but the Dodgers will not sign him if it means going over the luxury tax line. Hence the delay potentially.

Dodgers I think are less than $10 million under the line when all the benefits are added to current AAV. So to get far enough under to re-sign Darvish they need to get rid of Matt Kemp's salary (which will be hard to do) or get rid of a couple of mid-level salaries like Yasmani Grandal AND Hyun-Jin Ryu or Logan Forsythe (2 of those 3).

Austinfan 2018-01-29 22:17:33 UTC #1089

Let's make a DEAL!
We have plenty of room to take on bad salaries.
Ryu has one year left, Kemp has two years, Rich Hill has two years left.
We could take Kemp, eat a bunch of salary then deal him for prospects.
At $10M a year a lot of teams, especially AL teams, might be interested.

Austinfan 2018-01-29 22:21:39 UTC #1090

Bystrom is a bad example.
As the article I posted points out, Hoskins in his first 50 games played at a level few established stars have ever reached over a 50 game stretch in their ENTIRE careers.
Doesn't mean he'll duplicate it, but it's not some outlier, it's just a continuation of how he hit in AA and AAA ball.
So while he may fall off, I'll take an average or slightly below average fielding LF who puts up .900+ OPS any day.

The power is real, the plate discipline is real, the work ethic is real.

tom81 2018-01-30 00:24:26 UTC #1091

Certainly and we probably will, maybe even a few, but exactly which one is hard to guess. Both the Dodgers and Diamondbacks have a lefthanded starter on the last year of their contract and are looking to shed salary to acquire a pricy free agent. We would definitely improve at a relatively small cost in prospects by acquiring Ryu or Corbin and taking on salary. We also could just decide to deal with the free agent too and and just spend the money. The suspense is killing me.

EDmuch 2018-01-31 15:44:23 UTC #1092

I am starting to think that Corbin may be our best shot at picking up a good starter via a trade. D-Backs are in a tight salary cap situation. Of course other teams will be hanging around the D-Backs like vultures. But Corbin does seem to be the ideal type of situation for which we are looking.

Philsmania 2018-01-31 15:55:18 UTC #1093

The Phillies are not finding takers for odd-man-out Joseph this offseason. Personally, I think he should look into career opportunities in the Far East.

zambonir 2018-01-31 16:37:03 UTC #1094

They would have to sell him, right? Easy enough to do but the money can't be that big a deal, probably just as easy to DFA him and see if anybody actually wants him for nothing. If not, you can send him to AAA without even having him on the 40 (or you can keep him on the 40 and do that. But an emergency 1B back-up seems unimportant, they could just move Hoskins and add an OF).

That note is, like everything is going to be going forward I suspect, from The Athletic

(Noted in that story: Joseph hit the fourth-most home runs of any Phillies player ever in his first two seasons

https://www.baseball-reference.com/play-index/tiny.fcgi?id=F2If7)

DurhamBull 2018-01-31 17:19:59 UTC #1095

Would not have expected that statistic! He did it in fewer PAs than some of his peers, too.

For his sake, I hope he gets a shot somewhere, even if it is Japan.

allentown 2018-01-31 22:02:54 UTC #1096

That's an okay, not stupendous, number of HRs for two partial seasons, but when you put up a .289 OBP, it's going to be a problem. It is not really any sort of record, because guys like Dick Allen and Mike Schmidt are penalized for 'first years with Phillies' in which they had 24 and 40 ABs, respectively. Any reasonable accounting does not put Joseph anywhere near 4th in most HR in 'first two Phillies seasons". Last year, Joseph had a WAR of minus 1.3 and in his first Phillies season a WAR of O.5

zambonir 2018-02-01 07:56:09 UTC #1097

It is more of a "fun fact" than a stat.

zambonir 2018-02-03 02:34:00 UTC #1098

Things are really getting bonkers

julio 2018-02-03 03:31:21 UTC #1099

But you know, when you actually start looking at the lists of unsigned free agents... there's an awful lot there that would add nothing to the Phils' roster... and given that the Phils aren't exactly top contenders, that suggests that these guys wouldn't excite many (if any) clubs.

And the top guys, by all reports, DO have offers - just not the offers they appear to want. Eric Hosmer has a seven-year deal on the table from the Royals, per reports. What's he looking for? Or does he just want to go to a major media market?

There were nine top FAs offered QOs. NOBODY accepted a QO. Three of nine have signed with new clubs. Hosmer and Moustakas - well, we know about Hosmer; possibly Moustakas over-values himself as well. I know that the sentiment here is that he's not attractive enough to give up on Maikel Franco. Need I say more? Arrieta, Lynn, Cobb? Comes down to what they would sign for (they certainly have offers, if not six-year ones), and who's willing to forfeit a draft pick to sign 'em.

Beyond that... Do you need a shortstop? You want Erick Aybar? Right. Do you need a catcher? You can choose between OLD and BAD. Second base? Neil Walker, Chase Utley, Darwin Barney, and guys who are minor-league FA or non-tended because they weren't worth arbitration.

Now, there are undoubtedly some good values among all those FA. But most of 'em...old guys who aren't willing to just retire (although perhaps they should), marginal players who were non-tendered as not worth arbitration, minor-league six-year free agents who were outrighted off 40-man rosters.

Former Phils: Blanco, Nava, Buchholz. Also Chase Utley, Carlos Ruiz. Ben Revere, Jayson Werth.

Per ESPN, 88 free agents have been signed this winter (some to minor-league contracts, but that's normal). 112 are unsigned. Of the 50 that ESPN lists as "ranked," 26 are signed.

DurhamBull 2018-02-03 03:44:37 UTC #1100

Didn’t realize Werth was 38 and coming off three mediocre-to-bad seasons. Time flies.

julio 2018-02-03 04:06:18 UTC #1101

Yeah. We all tend to assume that players who are household names are still good to go. But they get old...fast. (Faster and faster, as I get older!) I think in a lot of cases they get old faster than THEY realize, as well. You look at that list of unsigned FA - Werth, Utley, Chooch. Of the 112 unsigned, 24 (by my eyeball count) are 36 or older. 30 more are either 34 or 35 years old. Part of what's going on here is that salaries have gotten so high that players are loath to retire, even when their skills have largely gone. And of course, we don't know how many of these guys may have been offered minor-league deals with non-roster invitations to spring training, but passed on such offers in hopes of getting a major-league deal.

zambonir 2018-02-03 08:03:44 UTC #1102

Yeah, I'm not saying the players are right, exactly. But they do seem to be destined to get less of a share of the $ this year (given the MLBAM payout), and to hear agents and players talking out loud about string training boycots and strikes is pretty extraordinary. And while it's true that front offices are wising up about not wasting their money on older players it's also true that having a handful of teams simply choosing not to spend or not to try to win (rather than just losing due to incompetence or thrift) is also new. Plus you've got the luxury tax resetters. The sheer quantity of unsigned players may not be as shocking as it seems but not having most of the top guys signed - regardless of which side is misreading the market - on February 2 is pretty unusual.

Question is, are the Phillies with their $48 million payroll part of the landscape, or will they make another move given how the landscape is?

LoneStarPhan 2018-02-03 08:08:46 UTC #1103

Clubs have been assuming all the risk in these multi-year deals for years and now that most teams are using analytical analysis of every aspect of the operation, it is clear that the type contract these free agents expect just do not make sense. Would players sign a 7 year deal that allowed the team to void the contract at any time without any further payment to the player? Yet they expect a team to continue to pay them even if they are no longer on the team due to injury or due to decline of their skills to the point they cannot even make the team.