The JLB free market — it
can be a puzzling thing sometimes.
It took me several years
to accept it. It wasn't until I finally gave in and got rid of the commissioner veto
several years ago that I was able to accept that it just didn't make sense for me or any assistant commissioner to decide whether or not a player is worth the deal.
Who was I to judge whether
or not Trevor Story was worth the players coming back?
Who are you to judge
whether sending Jose Altuve for an emerging prospect in Ronald Acuna and
unknown Japanese pitcher in Shohei Ohtani was worth it?
Who are you to judge
whether I should have sent them all back for Altuve?
(OK, you should have judged
me on that one, preferably before I did it!)
But that’s what is crazy
about this market. An owner knows what they want and they go after it.
I wanted Austin Riley as a
keeper over Hunter Dozier and it cost me an extra two players. Expensive? Yes,
but it’s what I wanted and within my plans, it worked.
The Sex Panthers wanted Bo
Bichette.
“I’ve watched him play and
I think he’s going to be really good,” she said scrambling to pack up for a busy overnight
shift at work.
I tend to agree, and for
Gina’s sake, I hope she's right.
But that’s JLB trades —
some work, some don’t and many are forgotten because the players acquired are
traded again. Don't believe me? Go click on that PAST LEAGUES button and look at the transactions from the last three years. Players come and go and go again.
That’s the Choo way.
And my way, recently. And
a lot of people’s way this offseason.
So good luck to Gina in her bold move. Sometimes, it's those bold moves that shock us. Other times, we look back and shake our heads at them. #Lindor
Without further delay, there have been several
moves since the JLB Winter Meetings. Let’s run through so of the headlines.
YELLING MATCH
May as well start here.
Crox got an MVP candidate — who is coming off a scary injury — and he’ll
certainly help the Crox be a contender for the AL crown in 2020.
He did give up a potential
perennial All-Star in Bo Bichette and a 40/100 guy in Joey Gallo, who in a new,
air-conditioned ballpark in Texas could be in for a monster season. Add in
Mitch Keller, who has some legit stuff, but certainly didn’t show it, and the
Sex Panthers got a decent trio of players back. They could all certainly make
her forget about Yelich.
But for now, Crox is off
and running in this deal.
RED ROVER, RED ROVER, ALL REDS COME OVER!
The Big Red Machine is
alive in Gamblerland as Parker brought in every possible starting Red he could
get his hand on. Nick Senzel wasn’t one of them — we’ll hit that later — so
he’s happy. Will this lead to a return trip to the AL playoffs? If it does,
he’ll dispel the myth that it’s not a good thing to have too many players from
one team.
ARMED AND READY?
The Cheese Steaks has sent
some pitching packing in guys like Greinke, Kershaw and Syndergaard, and he’s
brought in … Yu Darvish, Frankie Montas and Julio Urias?
Interesting choices there,
but hey, as I said at the start, who am I to judge?
Montas is probably the
best of the group with that slider/sinker pitch that took him from a struggling
starter/reliever in the minors and majors for more than nine years to one of
the game’s top pitchers in 2019. That was, of course, until he got busted for
PEDs.
So was it the breaking
pitch or the PEDs that turned a perennial 4-plus ERA guy into a stud? We’ll
find out on this year’s edition of Major League Baseball!
CHOO CRAZY?
Choo made some weird deals
breaking up The Greatest Outfield Ever Assembled 3.0.
I’m sure the 4.0 version is about to come together
soon.
He added a speedy, but
aging Whit Merrifield who saw his stolen base totals go from 45 to 20, and he
managed to play four more games last year. And it’s not like he wasn’t getting
on base. He actually had a higher average and OBP than 2017 when he stole 34
bases. So maybe he’s slowing down?
Choo also added Caleb
Smith and Chris Archer in a strange three-way deal that saw Crox getting the
best of the deal in Noah Syndergaard — again, my opinion, we all have them
after our deals.
Smith likely has the best
upside in this deal because Archer just cannot seem to get back on track. If
Ray Searage can’t fix him, who will?
I feel like I’ve asked a lot of questions here.
SLAMMER-GO-ROUND
In what has been a weird
18 months for my team, I have continually tinkered to get the right lineup
together, and dare I say, I may finally have it.
Some of the deals this
offseason have been great, others have led to questions like, “What are you
doing?; Do you care about pitching?; Do you realize there are 12 pitching
categories?”
Nick Senzel and Austin
Riley are two upside guys I really wanted to roster and they’ll fit in well
with what I already have, so even if on paper I lost the offseason trade, I’ll
hold off waving my white flag until 2022. I have enough starters to wait if for some reason they end up platooning in 2020. That said, I'm betting on starting gigs for the two of them. (Parker, put it on a Post-It note.)
I also got Paul
Goldschmidt in this post-JLB Winter Meetings period and I’m extremely excited
for the power this team will have.
Pitching? Eh, I’ll see you
in the draft.
CAN’T LEAVE WITHOUT BREAKFAST
World Series champion
Breakfast — sounds nice, doesn’t it? — added George Springer and Nico Hoerner
in that weird Choo deal. He definitely got the best of that one — I don’t care
what Razzball’s trade-o-meter says, Choo.
Sam also sent Jon Gray
packing to Monkey for a sixth-round pick. Why? Well, probably because that’s
about when Sam starts drafting, so he may as well get a pair of picks there.
This deal actually makes a
lot of sense, though.
Jon Gray is an avid ghost
hunter. He often comes on MLB Network Radio to talk about it.
And is there a more
appropriate team to go to in the JLB? Monkey is a ghost to the mlb_jlb_chatter
in Slack. … Maybe Jon Gray will find evidence that he exists!
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