2020 MLB Trade Deadline News & Speculation

[Austinfan]

The real problem is owners want to win now, Harris destroyed the SIxers chance at a dynasty, Middleton really thought it was just money that made the Yankees, etc.

Lurie has made mistakes, but always spent the money on facilities, top assistant coaches, etc.

Hextall turned the Flyers around but was a control freak who didn't keep Scott in the loop, that's just bad office politics, had he sold the rebuild instead of pretending they could contend while trading all their veterans and not signing FAs he'd still be GM. But he rebuilt the scouting organization into one of the best in the NHL, and Fletcher has been smart enough not to screw the pooch (didn't trade major assets or get into a bidding war for a top FA).

Middleton has to grow up and give up on instant gratification. He needs to first and foremost focus on building an organization from top to bottom that's more than one or two men (i.e., you can fire the GM without it crippling the organization b/c you have talented turtles all the way down). Then he has to be patient enough to build a farm system that's at least top 10 if not top 5. Then you open the pocketbook not to sign names, but to retain your homegrown talent (imagine if the Marlins had a deep pocket owner!).

Where you spend money is personnel and facilities, outbid for top scouts, hire extra scouts for LA, have first rate facilities in Clearwater. They've done some of this, the academies in LA (just bad luck but should pay off in the long run), but not enough - with spending rules in place, the "moneyball" move is to hire the best people.

[Philsmania]

The real problem is owners want to win now, Harris destroyed the SIxers chance at a dynasty, Middleton really thought it was just money that made the Yankees, etc.

Lurie has made mistakes, but always spent the money on facilities, top assistant coaches, etc.

Hextall turned the Flyers around but was a control freak who didn't keep Scott in the loop, that's just bad office politics, had he sold the rebuild instead of pretending they could contend while trading all their veterans and not signing FAs he'd still be GM. But he rebuilt the scouting organization into one of the best in the NHL, and Fletcher has been smart enough not to screw the pooch (didn't trade major assets or get into a bidding war for a top FA).

Middleton has to grow up and give up on instant gratification. He needs to first and foremost focus on building an organization from top to bottom that's more than one or two men (i.e., you can fire the GM without it crippling the organization b/c you have talented turtles all the way down). Then he has to be patient enough to build a farm system that's at least top 10 if not top 5. Then you open the pocketbook not to sign names, but to retain your homegrown talent (imagine if the Marlins had a deep pocket owner!).

Where you spend money is personnel and facilities, outbid for top scouts, hire extra scouts for LA, have first rate facilities in Clearwater. They've done some of this, the academies in LA (just bad luck but should pay off in the long run), but not enough - with spending rules in place, the "moneyball" move is to hire the best people.

This. ^

[andyb]

Is it unreasonable for an owner to expect they can compete after 6 years of rebuilding? The Hamels trade was in 2015. Rollins in the offseason before 2015. Klentak did the Giles trade after the 2015 season.

Don't criticize Middleton for expecting results in 5-6 years. A good GM would have figured out a way to spend $200 million a year and win. There are lots of ways to do that. Clearly Middleton liked Harper, but that appears to be one of our good moves. If Klentak was too weak a GM to help channel that $200 million a year into something good then that is part of the problem.

[Philsmania]

Is it unreasonable for an owner to expect they can compete after 6 years of rebuilding? The Hamels trade was in 2015. Rollins in the offseason before 2015. Klentak did the Giles trade after the 2015 season.

Don't criticize Middleton for expecting results in 5-6 years. A good GM would have figured out a way to spend $200 million a year and win. There are lots of ways to do that. Clearly Middleton liked Harper, but that appears to be one of our good moves. If Klentak was too weak a GM to help channel that $200 million a year into something good then that is part of the problem.

To answer your question at top, no. If at the end of your five year plan, you don't have a winner, it's time for a new five year plan

[zambonir]

I think the issue is that entering Year Four, Middleton got impatient. Last year's team was supposed to take a run at the wild card with a second-year manager, this year's team would have built on that by winning or at least coming close to winning the NL East (while also making the playoffs). Then you'd shed Arrieta and Santana's $ and reload. Spending $200 million was certainly not part of the plan.

Not saying that plan was actually going to work, clearly they made the moves they did because the cheap/internal options had failed. And I certainly won't argue that it was Middleton, rather than Klentak and his team, who decided Williams, Crawford and Alfaro were not going to be part of a winning roster, though I think his decision to replace all three of those players was due to Middleton's impatience.

Changing the 2019 expectations changed everything. People (including the handicappers) expected 89-90 wins and a possible division title (presumably with an NLCS loss at best) instead of a maybe-wild card, and when it didn't happen the manager didn't even get a third season. And Klentak's patience with the guys he did keep (VV, Pivetta, Eflin, Franco, Hernandez, Herrera) also came back to bite him.

The Original Sin is still what happened before Klentak was hired, but he and MacPhail's decision to slow play everything is the other. They wasted two years with Mackanin. 2016, especially, was sold as a year that didn't even count, just for evaluation. All 8 starters from 2017 are out of the organization. Only 2 remain from 2018. And the revamp at the top of the minor league and development/scouting levels was still puttering along over the past two seasons, while the 2016-2017 drafts may fail to produce a plus everyday player (we'll see). So it's hard to see what's failing now as the culmination of any plan. They've just been winging it, and to add insult to injury the only two good inherited position players who you were supposed to be able to write down in ink are floundering, while a third self-destructed.

Anyway, we look like sellers, huh?

[Philsmania]

MacPhail/Klentak frittered away the first two years if the rebuild. They kept Amaro's management team intact for two years. Then, after 2017, they revamped the field staff and the upper levels of the front office. It wasn't until after their third season they revamped the player development staff. Then, after year four, they revamped scouting. So, for 2-4 years of rebuilding, they essentially relied on many of the same people who drove the organization into the ditch they were trying to get out of. The results should not be surprising.

[zambonir]

And so the question is, was that the plan that they sold Middleton? Or, perhaps, the plan Middleton (and Gillick) imposed on them, i.e. Klentak didn't have the authority to fire Jordan etc. and it has taken this long to weed them out?

To be fair, a lot of the people in the front office Klentak inherited were also people and he and MacPhail knew from Baltimore, and were on board with.

Brass tacks, certainly if Klentak promised Middleton a division title and a thriving farm system by 2020, he failed and it's a fireable offense. But the fact that he got a contract extension just last year suggests MacPhail was happy with Kapler and happy with how Klentak handled the previous off-season and thought everything was going in the right direction. And while the farm system wasn't great they also traded away what they had.

Now I just think this season make it hard to evaluate, and the red ink makes it hard to eat two years of Klentak's deal (expires 2022) as well as one year of MacPhail's (expires 2021).

[Austinfan]

You can't buy a winner, I'm told $9M a WAR is reasonable for FA acquisitions, but that's only 22 WAR if you spend your entire $200M on FAs - so that tells you two things

1) you'd better spend a lot less than $9M per expected (not hopeful, actual rational expectation) WAR
2) you'd better get the majority of WAR from players in their 2-5 years before arbitration raises their pay to close to FA levels

Arrieta - $25M a year, 2.8 WAR, 0.8 WAR, this year ???
Harper - $26M a year, 4.3 WAR, already 1.0 WAR this season
McCutchen - $17M a year, 1.7 WAR, -0.7 WAR this season
Segura - $14M a year, 1.5 WAR, 0.0 WAR this season
Harper was signed in his prime, the deal is long but underpriced per year.

It's the 30+ year old additions that are sinking this team - the win now/pay later moves that aren't even winning now. If you resign Didi and Realmuto, you'll have another $40+M in 30 year old or older players going forward.

Middleton is about to enter baseball hell, up against the cap with an aging, mediocre team and a struggling farm system - this is what happens when you don't build a solid foundation to your organization.

[andyb]

Nobody is trying to buy a winner solely on free agents. Nobody. Ever. In the history of baseball.

Free agency can supplement an existing player base. Money can also help keep your own players.

Our biggest problem has always been player development. Lately that has been supplemented by bad trades, the Segura one in particular. Klentak is the one entering baseball hell because he is the one who has not produced the young player base needed so free agent acquisitions can put us over the top. Middleton won't be happy of course, but he is not the one making the baseball decisions. Klentak is the one responsible for that foundation of which you speak.

[Philsmania]

Middleton is about to enter baseball hell, up against the cap with an aging, mediocre team and a struggling farm system - this is what happens when you don't build a solid foundation to your organization.

Basically where the Sixers were before they started The Process. Why I believe the Phillies need a "The Process" of their own but they got to do it right this time. I would be quite content with 100+ loss teams for 2-3 years as long as we are scouting, drafting and signing good players and by 2024, our farm system is a monster.

[zambonir]

Win now pay later has its merits if you win, of course. Would have been true of the 2013-2014 teams too (even if they'd just won a second championship between 2010-2012 it would have made the collapse more bearable).

I don't think they'll re-sign Didi, unless they can unload Segura. And even then, would be crazy to give out another three-year deal that could go wrong as soon as Year 2 (if not Year 1).

The lack of depth/reinforcements is really what's distressing. There is not much in the pipeline. Even if you could magically erase Segura and Cutch, along with losing Arrieta and Robertson, they would still have to buy or trade for an OF (Haseley/Quinn as full-time LF/CF isn't gonna cut it), a starting pitcher and a top reliever, and would actually need a SS or 2B on top of that (as Segura and Didi would both be gone and Stott's gotta be two years away, too soon to even say he'll pan out).

The city really wouldn't tolerate another rebuild. They (the media) were tired of it even by 2017, because that was already four years of losing, the team just wasn't actually trying to do to it for the first 2 1/2 years (and still won too many games in 2013, 14 and 16 to truly ape the Astros draft-wise).

[Philsmania]

The city really wouldn't tolerate another rebuild. They (the media) were tired of it even by 2017, because that was already four years of losing, the team just wasn't actually trying to do to it for the first 2 1/2 years (and still won too many games in 2013, 14 and 16 to truly ape the Astros draft-wise).

Will the city have a choice? As it is, the Phillies are on a streak of eight going on nine straight nonwinning seasons. This is the organization's worst stretch since the 1940's (1934-1948, fifteen years). At some point, the years just blend together. Baseball was already lost in space to Generation X and will be lo Generation Z as well but maybe by 2025 or so Millennials will still remember the fun they had at the Ballpark in their young and young adult years and be having kids of their own who will be getting into baseball.

[flyers19rw]

Will the city have a choice?

We know the answer to that and it is, "no". The team is here and it is the city team. A bigger question is how far can the Phillies ownership push Comcast with its investment in the club via its broadcast rights? If the Phillies continue down their present path of not being competitive and becoming more irrelevant, their broadcast rights mean less to the media. What is going on right now is not what either MIddleton/Bucks or Comcast saw happening. If the rest of the season fails to perk interest in the club around town, look for major heads to roll both on and off of the field.

[Philsmania]

Will the city have a choice?

We know the answer to that and it is, "no". The team is here and it is the city team. A bigger question is how far can the Phillies ownership push Comcast with its investment in the club via its broadcast rights? If the Phillies continue down their present path of not being competitive and becoming more irrelevant, their broadcast rights mean less to the media. What is going on right now is not what either MIddleton/Bucks or Comcast saw happening. If the rest of the season fails to perk interest in the club around town, look for major heads to roll both on and off of the field.

What choice does Comcast/NBC have? If they tell the Phillies to get lost, what will the fill their schedule with between the very last Flyers or Sixers game in the spring and the very first Flyers game in the Fall? They could, however, pay the Phillies considerably less.

And it should be duly noted that the current Phillies broadcast rights deal runs through 2039, so it would take a few failed rebuilding projects for us to get to that point.

[zambonir]

The Comcast deal is locked in until 2039. Not a big problem. Truth is the success of the team has almost no bearing on baseball's value to them, only about 100,000 people watch local games to begin with, so of course it's much better for your ratings and your advertising rates when those numbers go up with success and an engaged fan base, but the content is the content, and it's more about the cable and streaming fees overall than individual views or subscribers.

But still, that is part of what I meant: "the city" might not have a choice, but they will still complain about it, and the organization is very PR-conscious. To admit failure now and do three years of 105 losses and 16,000 people in the stands does not seem likely to me when they could barely stand to rebuild in 2015, and got impatient after 2018.

They hired Girardi to win now, and if they make a change at GM it will be some veteran baseball man who tells Middleton things aren't that bad and he can get this team back where it should be right away, not someone who wants to take things back to the studs again. Consider the Bucks have owned part of this team since the '70s and Middleton since the early '90s, the familiarity of that shouldn't be surprising.

[zambonir]

Interested?

Yankees Activate Aroldis Chapman, Designate David Hale

[zambonir]

Looking at the schedule, our next 12 games after these upcoming two-game pairs (Boston/Blue Jays) are against Atlanta and DC. It would be smart to make a trade before those games, rather than waiting for six of them to determine the course of the season on August 28.

It's not like we're gonna be trading one of our Top 10 prospects anyway (though technically De Los Santos is still MLB #10). The trick is finding a seller, I suppose.

[zambonir]

MLB trade rumors: Could J.T. Realmuto be on the move? Is Starling Marte an...

Basically a round-up of rumors, obviously a JT trade is quite unlikely if not impossible.

Morosi is behind the Marte speculation (which is pure speculation as well).

[andyb]

It is scary to think about a JT trade but it would have been kind of obvious if the Phillies went 1-5 or 2-4 this week heading into the deadline. The win last night makes that unlikely. Whether the Phillies would have pulled the trigger is another story. Would we have given up if we were 4 games out of the 8th NL playoff spot? We are 1 game out now (but 2 games ahead in the loss column!). Looks like SF at 15-16 is in that last spot.

[Patchmk88]

I agree with this. This team has its limits, but if you take way the horrible bullpen (which you can't), it is probably a 2nd place team in the division with everyone else's key injuries. Hell we might be a 2nd place team eventually, even with the bullpen.