Trade Deadline Thread

[CJD]

(08-10-2023, 12:03 PM)bengalfan74 Wrote: I'm not "fit to be tied" that they didn't mortgage the farm for a couple rentals. As we have seen these rookies and younger players are lets be nice and say "streaky" at the plate.

Hopefully this is Votto's last hurrah, and we can free up money there. But I can't help but wonder what we really have in our pitching staff?

Greene and Ashcraft give me some hope but after that it starts tapering off. I believe Abbott could be a good un. But I need to see more. What will Lodolo be when he comes back? Is he for real? 

Williamson might be a decent #5 or Lively. But I'm not overjoyed with what we'll be bringing to the table next season from the mound. 

In short I'm just hoping they'll shore up the pitching staff this off season. And not just wing it HOPING. The rest of this season is a lets look and see what we have trial for me.

I think our team has a lot of potential, but most of it is still unrealized. That's a tricky situation to be in going into an off season. Do you believe in your young stars to take another step? Do you surround them with veteran help, at the risk of having to sit talented youngsters? 

Whatever they decide to do, I hope it works out for us next year like it did the Orioles this year.

[kevin]

(08-10-2023, 05:45 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: I think our team has a lot of potential, but most of it is still unrealized. That's a tricky situation to be in going into an off season. Do you believe in your young stars to take another step? Do you surround them with veteran help, at the risk of having to sit talented youngsters? 

Whatever they decide to do, I hope it works out for us next year like it did the Orioles this year.

When in doubt, go with youth.  Yes it is working for Baltimore, but it has worked for Tampa even more for years as they finish high with half the payroll of New York, Boston or Toronto in a league I would hate to see Cincinnati try to compete in. 

Now when Reds have added a veteran player on the cheap such as Tony Fernandez or Scooter Gennett, sure.  However what Reds paid to bring in The Moose was insane, plus Reds already had high paid Votto at First and Suarez at Third.  What Reds paid The Moose hurt this team, and Reds are still paying him.  

So when in doubt, go with youth, a move that has served Tampa well in keeping up with New York, Boston, Toronto on half the payroll in Tampa. 

Reds have plenty of youth to go with.  Again, if they can add a good veteran on the cheap, fine.  Just no more Moose type moves. 

Moose type moves have forced Reds to let go of good young pitchers and hitters. I would hate to see Hunter Greene or De La Cruz shoot off to Yankees or Dodgers because Reds continue to make Moose type high paid additions.

[CJD]

(08-10-2023, 09:09 PM)kevin Wrote: When in doubt, go with youth.  Yes it is working for Baltimore, but it has worked for Tampa even more for years as they finish high with half the payroll of New York, Boston or Toronto in a league I would hate to see Cincinnati try to compete in. 

Now when Reds have added a veteran player on the cheap such as Tony Fernandez or Scooter Gennett, sure.  However what Reds paid to bring in The Moose was insane, plus Reds already had high paid Votto at First and Suarez at Third.  What Reds paid The Moose hurt this team, and Reds are still paying him.  

So when in doubt, go with youth, a move that has served Tampa well in keeping up with New York, Boston, Toronto on half the payroll in Tampa. 

Reds have plenty of youth to go with.  Again, if they can add a good veteran on the cheap, fine.  Just no more Moose type moves. 

Moose type moves have forced Reds to let go of good young pitchers and hitters.  I would hate to see Hunter Greene or De La Cruz shoot off to Yankees or Dodgers because Reds continue to make Moose type high paid additions.

The problem with the Moose signing was we paid for what he had already done, not for what we thought he'd be able to do. He was 31 when we signed him and was coming off of an all star season, but I remember he was still viewed as a player on the decline.

Oddly enough, he had his 2 worst seasons since 2012 with us, and then he has had a rebound year with Colorado and LAA this year. With a season slash line of .278/.337/.469/.806 so far this year, it makes you wonder if maybe the expectation of being a big name free agent in Cincinnati got to him.

Regardless, if we sign any high priced free agents this off season, I would like for them to be up and coming players rather than peaked guys. He opted out of the contract, but Nick Castellanos was a really good signing for us. We signed him following his age 27 season in which he had a career high 153 OPS+ in 51 games after being traded to Chicago and then, in 2021, he topped his 2019 season with a 138 OPS+ over the course of the full season.

The high end of the pitching market would be a guy like Julio Urias. He is a 26 year old left handed pitcher with a career ERA of 3.03 over 154 games (118 starts) with a WHIP of 1.10. He is entering the market on a relative down year, with an ERA of only 4.39 (101 ERA+), so there's a chance he would take a 1 year deal to re-establish his value in 2024. He will still probably cost somewhere around 25 million per year which would be a hard pill to swallow considering Luis Castillo signed for just 21 million per year with Seattle, but the free agent market is always inflated in cost.

On the lower end of the market that would still interest me, Jack Flaherty, Brad Keller and Lucas Giolito are all sub-30 pitchers with career ERAs in the high 3s, low 4s. 

Flaherty is the best of the 3, with a career 114 ERA+, and 3.58 career ERA, but 2023 will have been his second straight average year following a dominant start from 2018 to 2021 (ERA+ of 116, 152 and 122 in 2018, 2019 and 2021.)

Keller and Giolitto are much closer to league average pitchers (ERA+ of 100 or so) but Keller is another one who has been below average recently, with his early years buoying his career stats.

And then Luis Severino could be a 1 year "prove last year was a fluke" option, as he has a career ERA of 3.81 and ERA+ of 111, but his 2023 ERA is 6.64 and 2023 ERA+ is 52. 

It's difficult to find all stars in the free agent market because, usually, if a player is any good the team with control of him will either extend him or trade him before his contract expires. But if they're looking for a veteran presence in the rotation that isn't on the wrong side of 30, those would be potential options that wouldn't destroy their bank accounts (with the exception of Urias)

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(08-10-2023, 10:39 AM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: Buying rentals at the deadline is risky business. Despite the struggles we've had coming out of the trade deadline, I am still glad we didn't buy. We have 5 years ahead of us with all these young guys before we even need to pay for them. 

Hao-Yu Lee was the Phillies' 8th ranked prospect with a FV of 50. I think "no power" is a bit of an exaggeration. He has 15 HRs in 160 career games. That seems about average to me. Especially since several stops in the minors tend to be pitchers' ballparks more so than hitters parks like GABP.

The general equivalent from our system would have been maybe Sal Stewart. He's our 7th ranked prospect, 19 years old in A+, 2nd round pick in 2022. Also plays on the infield. 10 HR in 98 games, similar batting averages etc.

Would it have been worth it to trade Sal Stewart for 2 months of Michael Lorenzen? It's hard to say.

The team that has played the last 10 games does not look like they're one starting pitcher away from the World Series or even a playoff win. 

The last thing you want to do is be the LA Angels, who are on the fringe of the playoff picture, buy at the deadline and then lose 7 straight, essentially playing themselves out of playoff contention. Granted, they play in a much more competitive division than we do.

But I bet they are kicking themselves for not trading Ohtani right now. They could have set themselves up very nicely for the future. Instead, they are heading for losing him for free and still missing the playoffs.

Our situation is obviously not that dire, but if we did something like trade Marte (+ more, most likely) away for Dylan Cease, who has a 4.42 ERA this year and was just chased out of the 2nd inning in his start last Wednesday, I'd be a bit frustrated right now.

Except they don't if the rookies are any good. If they are any good (which they will need to be for there to be any window in the future) they will make a lot of money in arbitration. 

A very mediocre former Red, Kyle Farmer, got over $5.5m as an Arb2 guy this season. Alex Verdugo, a league average bat, got $6.3m. 

On the high end, Shohei Ohtani got $30m for his last year of team control. Pete Alonso as an arb2 guy got $14.5m which means he'll get even more next year despite being under team control.

This is a team that waived Wade Miley rather than pay him $10m, gave away Sonny Gray rather than pay him 2yr/$22m, and gave away Raisel Iglesias rather than pay him $9m. So once all the young rookies from this year hit arb2, that's already the beginning of the end. The only way they will all still be around is if they aren't very good, and thus won't cost much in arbitration.

So really the Reds have just 3 more years before they become too expensive for this cheap FO. Assuming they stay healthy and keep getting better like we hope.

India and Stephenson reach arbitration for their first time next year, so goodbye to their combined $1.52m payroll. Heck, in 2 years Hunter Greene will be $8.3m and then the year after that he'll be $15.3m.

They do not have 5 years before having to pay guys.

- - - - - - - -

Yes, because I have never heard of him before just now. I'll also probably never hear of him again.

I didn't want one starting pitcher. I wanted 2 starting pitchers and a long reliever. I wanted 2 starting pitchers like 2 months ago. It was 100% predictable that Abbott would get tired out with a career high workload plus rookie wall, and all the bad starters would burn up the bullpen.

The playoffs are largely a crapshoot, mostly anyone there has a puncher's chance. You have to get there first and this division was wide open to take. Nobody has ever won a World Series while watching the playoffs from home. It will never be the year if you wait for all the stars to align before you are willing to make ANY moves towards winning in the current year. 

We knew the starting rotation was going to be bad before the season even started and did nothing in a winnable division. That's a bit of "you make your own luck" there. If they added 2 league average starting pitchers to this team on Opening Day and they've easily got an 8-10 game lead in the division right now.

Heck, maybe if they made some moves at the deadline this team wouldn't look so dead in the water because they wouldn't have seen the front office just punt the season away and wave the white flag. If your FO isn't trying and is already looking towards next season, naturally so will you.

[*bengalfan74*]

(08-11-2023, 06:07 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: So really the Reds have just 3 more years before they become too expensive for this cheap FO. Assuming they stay healthy and keep getting better like we hope.

Which is why I'm praying they go out and get a top shelf starting pitcher with a proven track record this off season.  I'm hoping they don't just rely on all these young pitchers developing. I feel we have a decent staff, but.
MLB is about pitching, period. And like you say we only have a short window to get it done.

[CJD]

(08-11-2023, 06:07 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: Except they don't if the rookies are any good. If they are any good (which they will need to be for there to be any window in the future) they will make a lot of money in arbitration. 

A very mediocre former Red, Kyle Farmer, got over $5.5m as an Arb2 guy this season. Alex Verdugo, a league average bat, got $6.3m. 

On the high end, Shohei Ohtani got $30m for his last year of team control. Pete Alonso as an arb2 guy got $14.5m which means he'll get even more next year despite being under team control.

This is a team that waived Wade Miley rather than pay him $10m, gave away Sonny Gray rather than pay him 2yr/$22m, and gave away Raisel Iglesias rather than pay him $9m. So once all the young rookies from this year hit arb2, that's already the beginning of the end. The only way they will all still be around is if they aren't very good, and thus won't cost much in arbitration.

So really the Reds have just 3 more years before they become too expensive for this cheap FO. Assuming they stay healthy and keep getting better like we hope.

India and Stephenson reach arbitration for their first time next year, so goodbye to their combined $1.52m payroll. Heck, in 2 years Hunter Greene will be $8.3m and then the year after that he'll be $15.3m.

They do not have 5 years before having to pay guys.

- - - - - - - -

Yes, because I have never heard of him before just now. I'll also probably never hear of him again.

I didn't want one starting pitcher. I wanted 2 starting pitchers and a long reliever. I wanted 2 starting pitchers like 2 months ago. It was 100% predictable that Abbott would get tired out with a career high workload plus rookie wall, and all the bad starters would burn up the bullpen.

The playoffs are largely a crapshoot, mostly anyone there has a puncher's chance. You have to get there first and this division was wide open to take. Nobody has ever won a World Series while watching the playoffs from home. It will never be the year if you wait for all the stars to align before you are willing to make ANY moves towards winning in the current year. 

We knew the starting rotation was going to be bad before the season even started and did nothing in a winnable division. That's a bit of "you make your own luck" there. If they added 2 league average starting pitchers to this team on Opening Day and they've easily got an 8-10 game lead in the division right now.

Heck, maybe if they made some moves at the deadline this team wouldn't look so dead in the water because they wouldn't have seen the front office just punt the season away and wave the white flag. If your FO isn't trying and is already looking towards next season, naturally so will you.

You know what, that's a good point. I'm used to thinking of pre-arb and arb years as a player's "rookie contract" like in football, but it isn't the same, especially if they're star players.

This is why I hate the lack of parity in baseball haha. Small market teams are at such an incredible disadvantage relative to the big market teams because there is no salary cap and no salary floor, so if your team is any good, you are basically guaranteed to lose it all at some point in the near future.

With that said, I think adding some league average pitchers to the team would have helped us, I think this offense would have still had the same power outage these last 2 weeks regardless. Averaging 3.3 runs per game over the last 7 games with a team BA of 0.203 is not going to cut it. The pitching averaged giving up 5 runs over those 7 games, so you'd think they would have been able to win more than 1 of those 7 games. 

I would not have been happy if we sold off a bunch of prospects to get a couple 4.5 ERA pitchers, only to still lose 6 of 7 (since starting pitching wasn't typically the problem, with 3 quality starts in that time frame).

[The D.O.Z.]

Let’s hope Krall & Co.’s “eliminating peaks and valleys” strategy isn’t just a nice way of saying “expect .500 baseball, minimal additions, do just enough to keep the fans coming”.

This upcoming offseason should be a real eye opener. They did little to nothing (added Wil Meyers who is no longer on the team) FA-wise this year. The same FO that wasted money on Mike Minor the season prior is the same FO who knew this pitching staff would need some help this year, and did nothing to add to it. There wasn’t a better option than Luke Weaver out there to sign? C’mon maaaaan! There wasn’t more than one Luke Weaver-tier signing to be made out there? Even if you don’t foresee the success this team saw pre-ASB, you have a young, largely untested SP staff, made up of guys who haven’t pitched a lot of innings yet, you HAVE to plan for that and this FO thumbed their noses at the notion of doing more than barely bare minimum. If they do that again, this offseason, with money to spend, there should be a full-on revolt in the fanbase.
They don’t need to spend big. They need to spend SMART. The IF is generally set. Marte in the wings for 3B, CES getting valuable time at 1B this year, EDLC and McClain up the middle. Get a big bat to man an OF spot. I like Benson a lot and think he could be that OF power bat, but I want to see how he finishes. And even if he finishes strong, I want a back up plan there incase he regresses. Maybe a better platoon catcher than what we currently have to pair with Tyler S? Maile isn’t a bad defender but doesn’t offer a lot of pop at the plate. Tyler’s offense has fallen off, which may be due to the injuries he took last year, but even so, his pitch framing is BAD. I’m willing to give the guy another offseason to put it all together but again, I want a better backup plan in place there incase progression doesn’t happen. And finally, even if you are banking on your young SP staff to carry the load, supplement the pitching staff with a couple vets. Guys that you can count on to be spot starting / long relief at bare minimum. A Sonny Gray type.

[*ochocincos*]

(08-10-2023, 02:50 PM)kevin Wrote: I don't agree Votto is having a great short season.  Is he performing for what he is being paid ?  NO.   He is batting under .200 which is bad.   Now Willie Mays and Hank Aaron once described what they considered a home run hitter. They said someone who hits 30 homers or more and bats .300 or close to .300 

I laugh when Voto gets a hit and Reds announcers rave about Votto.   How much are Reds paying for that one hit, and the answer is Too Much. 

And the idea that IF Votto wasn't old and IF Votto was like he was 12 years ago.  There came a time Pete Rose was batting around .200 and hits turned into weak ground outs.   It came time for Take A Seat Pete.  Now it is time for Let Go of Votto. 

I could also add the Reds were winning more games before Votto came back. His return forced others to take a seat when the young team was playing great.  I really don't want to see Votto back next year at the cheaper price, because it's time for him batting under . 200 to clear the way for the young players Reds have. 

You clearly missed the last part of my first sentence that said "FROM A HR PERSPECTIVE"

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(08-10-2023, 02:50 PM)kevin Wrote: I don't agree Votto is having a great short season.  Is he performing for what he is being paid ?  NO.   He is batting under .200 which is bad.   Now Willie Mays and Hank Aaron once described what they considered a home run hitter. They said someone who hits 30 homers or more and bats .300 or close to .300 

I laugh when Voto gets a hit and Reds announcers rave about Votto.   How much are Reds paying for that one hit, and the answer is Too Much. 

And the idea that IF Votto wasn't old and IF Votto was like he was 12 years ago.  There came a time Pete Rose was batting around .200 and hits turned into weak ground outs.   It came time for Take A Seat Pete.  Now it is time for Let Go of Votto. 

I could also add the Reds were winning more games before Votto came back. His return forced others to take a seat when the young team was playing great.  I really don't want to see Votto back next year at the cheaper price, because it's time for him batting under . 200 to clear the way for the young players Reds have. 

He is hitting .219

Source? Also that means that the entirety of MLB had only 2 "home run hitters" last year.

The person who lost playing time was Kevin Newman. Oh no, 29-year-old career 79 OPS+ Kevin Newman was sent to the bench because Votto came back. The horror.

The first 14 games Votto played the Reds were 11-3. Until the Cubs blowouts leading to this team collapse, the Reds were 20-13 in games Votto played (.606 winning %).

- - - - - 

It's shocking how many objectively false things you can state in a single post.

[*ochocincos*]

(08-11-2023, 02:32 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: He is hitting .219

Source? Also that means that the entirety of MLB had only 2 "home run hitters" last year.

The person who lost playing time was Kevin Newman. Oh no, 29-year-old career 79 OPS+ Kevin Newman was sent to the bench because Votto came back. The horror.

The first 14 games Votto played the Reds were 11-3. Until the Cubs blowouts leading to this team collapse, the Reds were 20-13 in games Votto played (.606 winning %).

- - - - - 

It's shocking how many objectively false things you can state in a single post.

Yep, here's the BA for each of the HR leaders this year:
Ohtani - 40 HRs, .306 BA
Olson - 40 HRs, .267 BA
Alonso - 35 HRs, .227 BA
Robert Jr - 31 HRs, .271 BA
Betts - 31 HRs, .283 BA
Schwarber - 30 HRs, .182 BA
Garcia - 29 HRs, .262 BA
Muncy - 28 HRs, .195 BA
Soler - 28 HRs, .246 BA

You can hit homers without having a high BA.

[CJD]

(08-11-2023, 02:59 PM)ochocincos Wrote: Yep, here's the BA for each of the HR leaders this year:
Ohtani - 40 HRs, .306 BA
Olson - 40 HRs, .267 BA
Alonso - 35 HRs, .227 BA
Robert Jr - 31 HRs, .271 BA
Betts - 31 HRs, .283 BA
Schwarber - 30 HRs, .182 BA
Garcia - 29 HRs, .262 BA
Muncy - 28 HRs, .195 BA
Soler - 28 HRs, .246 BA

You can hit homers without having a high BA.

Ohtani is such a freak, dude. It's crazy.