MLB 2013-14 Offseason Thread
 

<font color=goldenrod>MLB doesn't mess around getting started with its offseason anymore. Teams now have 5 days of exclusive negotiations with their free agents, but as of 9 AM this morning the following players all had their contracts expire:

Atlanta Braves
Luis Ayala, rhp
Scott Downs, lhp
Freddy Garcia, rhp
Tim Hudson, rhp
Kameron Loe, rhp
Paul Maholm, lhp
Brian McCann, c
Eric O'Flaherty, lhp

Arizona Diamondbacks
Willie Bloomquist, utility
Eric Chavez, 3b
Wil Nieves, c

Baltimore Orioles
Scott Feldman, rhp
Jason Hammel, rhp
Nate McLouth, of
Michael Morse, of
Brian Roberts, 2b
Chris Snyder, c

Boston Red Sox
Stephen Drew, ss
Jacoby Ellsbury, of
Joel Hanrahan, rhp
John McDonald, if
Mike Napoli, 1b/c
Jarrod Saltalamacchia, c

Chicago Cubs
Scott Baker, rhp
Kevin Gregg, rhp
Matt Guerrier, rhp
Dioner Navarro, c

Cincinnati Reds
Bronson Arroyo, rhp
Shin-Soo Choo, of
Zach Duke, lhp
Cesar Izturis, if
Nick Masset, rhp
Manny Parra, lhp

Cleveland Indians
Matt Albers, rhp
Jason Giambi, dh
Rich Hill, lhp
Scott Kazmir, lhp
Joe Smith, rhp
Kelly Shoppach, c

Colorado Rockies
Rafael Betancourt, rhp
Jeff Francis, lhp
Todd Helton, 1b
Roy Oswalt, rhp
Yorvit Torrealba, c

Chicago White Sox
Gavin Floyd, rhp
Paul Konerko, 1b

Detroit Tigers
Joaquin Benoit, rhp
Jeremy Bonderman, rhp
Octavio Dotel, rhp
Omar Infante, 2b/utility
Brayan Pena, c
Jhonny Peralta, ss/3b
Ramon Santiago, if

Houston Astros
Erik Bedard, lhp

Kansas City Royals
Bruce Chen, rhp
Carlos Pena, 1b
Ervin Santana, rhp
Miguel Tejada, 3b

Los Angeles Angels
Jason Vargas, lhp
Jerry Hairston Jr., if/of

Los Angeles Dodgers
J.P. Howell, rhp
Carlos Marmol, rhp
Ricky Nolasco, rhp
Nick Punto, if
Skip Schumaker, of/2b
Juan Uribe, 3b
Edinson Volquez, rhp
Brian Wilson, rhp
Michael Young, if

Miami Marlins
Matt Diaz, of
Austin Kearns, of
Juan Pierre, of
Placido Polanco, 3b
Chad Qualls, rhp

Milwaukee Brewers
Yuniesky Betancourt, if
Mike Gonzalez, lhp
Corey Hart, of/1b

Minnesota Twins
Mike Pelfrey, rhp

New York Mets
David Aardsma, rhp
Tim Byrdak, lhp
Pedro Feliciano, lhp
Frank Francisco, rhp
Aaron Harang, rhp
LaTroy Hawkins, rhp
Daisuke Matsuzaka, rhp

New York Yankees
Robinson Cano, 2b
Joba Chamberlain, rhp
Curtis Granderson, of
Travis Hafner, dh/1b
Phil Hughes, rhp
Hiroki Kuroda, rhp
Lyle Overbay, 1b
Andy Pettitte, lhp
Mark Reynolds, 3b/1b
Mariano Rivera, rhp
Brendan Ryan, ss
Kevin Youkilis, 3b/1b

Oakland Athletics
Grant Balfour, rhp
Bartolo Colon, rhp

Philadelphia Phillies
Roy Halladay, rhp
Carlos Ruiz, c

Pittsburgh Pirates
Clint Barmes, ss/2b
John Buck, c
A.J. Burnett, rhp
Marlon Byrd, of
Kyle Farnsworth, rhp
Jeff Karstens, rhp
Justin Morneau, 1b

San Diego Padres
Ronny Cedeno, if
Mark Kotsay, of/1b
Jason Marquis, rhp

Seattle Mariners
Endy Chavez, of
Raul Ibanez, of
Kendrys Morales, 1b/dh
Oliver Perez, lhp
Humberto Quintero, c

San Francisco Giants
Chad Gaudin, rhp
Javier Lopez, lhp

St. Louis Cardinals
Carlos Beltran, of
Chris Carpenter, rhp
Rafael Furcal, ss
Edward Mujica, rhp

Tampa Bay Rays
Jesse Crain, rhp
Roberto Hernandez, rhp
Kelly Johnson, 2b
James Loney, 1b
Jose Molina, c
Fernando Rodney, rhp
Luke Scott, of/1b
Jamey Wright, rhp
Delmon Young, of

Texas Rangers
Lance Berkman, 1b/dh
Nelson Cruz, of
Jason Frasor, rhp
Matt Garza, rhp
Colby Lewis, rhp
David Murphy, of
A.J. Pierzynski, c
Geovany Soto, c

Toronto Blue Jays
Rajai Davis, of
Josh Johnson, rhp
Darren Oliver, lhp
Ramon Ortiz, rhp

Washington Nationals
Dan Haren, rhp</font>

<font color=goldenrod>First re-signing off the offseason goes to the Indians. Jason Giambi is headed back to the Tribe. Got a minor league contract with an invitation to Spring Training. He'll be trying to crack the roster again at age 43.</font>

VITO IT'S HOT FUCKING STOVE TIME!!!!

$189! LETS GO

I dunno. I think Cashman & Co. are gonna go over that $189 mil. figure.

Wonder if Toronto will try and sign Roy (Doc) Halladay

Of that group, the Sox probably end up keeping Salty, Napoli, and maybe Ellsbury.

<font color=goldenrod>The Mets have a lot of holes to fill. Word is they want to repeat the Red Sox' offseason plan of not giving out huge deals or anything, just giving out reasonable short term deals to veteran players. Problem is a bunch of other teams will try the same approach, which will lead to needing to overpay anyway. But they should. They need to do SOMETHING. Alderson has said for three years now that the 2013-14 offseason is when they will have a lot of money coming off the books. Time to put up or shut up.

Can't go into another Mets season trying to convince myself that players like Brad Emaus, Andres Torres, or Collin Cowgill matter.</font>

Who the fuck does he think he is? Kenny Powers?

Phillies will probably re-sign both Halladay and Ruiz.

Could see the Rangers bringing back both OF and probably Lewis. Hoping Berkman lands somewhere. Big fan of that guy.

Forgot Eric Chavez was still playing. Damn.

Yankees resign Capt. Jeter to a 1-year, $12 mil. deal.

Yeah, I don't know how this works. There was a player option for $9.5 mil. and supposedly if they cut a new deal they save around $3 mil. and change to get below $189.

Get your tickets early, me thinks this is the last year of the last of the Core Four.

Tigers hiring Brad Ausmus as their new manager.

Core Four Minus 2

Jeter deserves a send off season like Mo got. Hopefully he can last long enough.

Yeah Mo's celebration wasn't overkill at all.

Brad Ausmus is your new Manager of the Detroit Tigers.

<font color=goldenrod>I love how if you're a former catcher, you really don't even need to have managerial experience at this point. It's just implied that you'll be good.</font>

Why?

Brad Ausmus can't be any worse than AJ Hinch. He has a low bar to hurdle.

Napoli is on a tear right now.

Clint Hurdle?

No more Munenori Kawasaki :(. My heart has been ripped out.

mlbtraderumors.com has their predictions on the top 50 Free Agents and where they think they'll end up.

They lost me at #2.

Marlins GM says the team isn't interested in any trade deals that involve Giancarlo Stanton.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/99...ncarlo-stanton


Add in a failed 2006 drug test among the roid related issues A-Rod has been involved with during his career.
http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/stor...timulants-2006

So has Ortiz ever gotten to the bottom of that 2003 test?

I call bullshit.

When's the 2015 season thread start? Go Cubs Go!

Oh...2015..ok. The year of Javier Baez!

AL MVP finalists
• Miguel Cabrera (Detroit Tigers)
• Chris Davis (Baltimore Orioles)
• Mike Trout (Los Angeles Angels)

NL MVP finalists
• Paul Goldschmidt (Arizona Diamondbacks)
• Andrew McCutchen (Pittsburgh Pirates)
• Yadier Molina (St. Louis Cardinals)

AL Cy Young finalists:
• Yu Darvish (Texas Rangers)
• Hisashi Iwakuma (Seattle Mariners)
• Max Scherzer (Detroit Tigers)

NL Cy Young finalists:
• Jose Fernandez (Miami Marlins)
• Clayton Kershaw (Los Angeles Dodgers)
• Adam Wainwright (St. Louis Cardinals)

AL Rookie of the Year finalists:
• Chris Archer (Tampa Bay Rays)
• Jose Iglesias (Detroit Tigers/Boston Red Sox)
• Wil Myers (Tampa Bay Rays)

NL Rookie of the Year finalists:
• Jose Fernandez (Miami Marlins)
• Shelby Miller (St. Louis Cardinals)
• Yasiel Puig (Los Angeles Dodgers)

AL Manager of the Year finalists:
• John Farrell (Boston Red Sox)
• Terry Francona (Cleveland Indians)
• Bob Melvin (Oakland Athletics)

NL Manager of the Year finalists:
• Fredi Gonzalez (Atlanta Braves)
• Clint Hurdle (Pittsburgh Pirates)
• Don Mattingly (Los Angeles Dodgers)

Ortiz is on something. Pretty damn sure of it. No one gets a "second wind" like him without some sort of performance enhancement.

Jr. Griffey never did any. How do I know? Because he sucked at the end of his career like a baseball player should.

:-\ Such a shame that Griffey became injury prone shortly after going to Cincy.

I was a huge Paul O'Neill mark, saw it happen to him. Saw it happen to Piazza, Jeff Kent, Griffey and Larry Walker. Awesome talent indeed declines, it does not naturally follow the tracks of Clemens, Bonds, Ortiz, etc...

According to Peter Gammons and others, the Cubs currently likely to name Rick Renteria as their new manager tomorrow but he wasn't their top choice.

The Cubs were more interested in Torey Lovullo but were unable to get the Red Sox to change the terms in the deal that sent Theo Epstein to the Cubs. The biggest being the Cubs couldn't hire any more Red Sox personnel within the near future.

Glad to see the Curse of Frank Drebin is alive and well.

Here are my picks

Hey, you know who'd be a great manager of the Cubs?

Ryne Sa....

MIKE QUADE

- Quade proceeds to lick balls

Hey, we need a manager again. How about Ryne Sandb....

DALE SVEUM

and so forth.

Fuck Ryno. Philly knows they have some retooling to do. Why invest in a high profile manager?

Do the Cubs NOT have some retooling to do?

They'l both be fired in 1-3 years.

When do they fire Theo?

never, because by my calculations, Kris Bryant is going to hit 60 homers in the bigs in 2015 at the latest.

No playoffs or significant advancement by 2016 the rumors fly. He would probably still get 2017 though.
Only way out is to break the curse of Drebin.

Also love how they explicitly said they would look for someone with significant managerial experience, then hire someone with zero MLB managerial experience.

I need some baseball action (not A-Rod)

Arizona Fall League is great. If you go, DaveWadding will offer to give you a handy too.

Exp. 10/18/2013

Ricky Nolasco wants 80 million this year. :lol:

Not much of a stretch when you think about possible comparisons. So he thinks hes AJ Burnett, John Lackey, Josh Beckett, CJ Wilson or Anibal Sanchez. Potentially maddeningly inconsistent with the possibility to be a good to great #2 starter if he can put it all together.
I can see the parallels and Ill bet someone gives him close to what he wants.

and all those contracts have turned out shitty except Sanchez. 80 mil is #2 starter money, not "oh hey, I'm going to eat innings as your #4 and not embarass myself" money.

People who complain about Ortiz are morons.

I agree, but tell that to the Red Sox about Lackey and the Pirates about Burnett.

To be fair, EVERYBODY was saying Tigers overpaid Sanchez when that deal was signed

Cubs weren't offering him that much less. Teams were in on him.

I thought the Sanchez deal was nuts, and to be honest it's only been 1 year with 4 (I think) left to go. Things could still happen, though this years results were spec-tastic.

qualifying offers are 14.1 million theses days. The numbers aren't terrible when you look at things with that perspective

Yes, but the first 3 years of Lackey's deal were a total disaster, and the Pirates have to overpay everyone because they're the Pirates.

that's changing by the looks of it

Was a Championship worth it for the Red Sox? The franchise turnaround for the Pirates?

If the Cubs had won 1 championship in say, 2008, you would be perfectly fine with Soriano's garbage contract.

Atlanta just announced a new park that's opening in 2017. Just crazy...third Atlanta park in my lifetime, and I'm still in my 20s.

When did Turner field open?

Braves were there since 1997, I think it was built in 1996 for the Olympics.

It was opened a year or two after the 1996 Olympics, which was why it was built in the first place. So technically the Braves (I believe) have been leasing the stadium from whoever paid for it previously and probably want a larger stake in the new stadium. Atlanta fans are stunned right now. Turner has never been my favorite park (it's not exactly in the best location in Atlanta for people to get to easily, and it's near a pretty run-down area), so I'm not mad or anything, but I'm not sure moving the park is going to change some of the problems Turner already has (public transit in Atlanta is completely awful). The new park is next to an exit for two big interstates in Atlanta, so while getting there might be easier in theory, traffic at that intersection is always bad and this will just make it worse.

Not to mention, the park will no longer technically be in Atlanta...but that's not all that unheard of for sports teams anymore.

But having been to two Os games in the past few years on trips to Baltimore, it is insane how much easier it is to get to Camden than Turner. In fact, I didn't go to a Braves game two years ago (Chipper's retirement year) just because it was too inconvenient for me to get to the stadium. I went opening day at Turner this year, and the traffic was so bad I didn't get to the park until the third inning (I stayed underneath the sign for one of the Turner exits for about an hour at one point).

New park is going to be in Cobb County, GA? GETTING READY TO SERVE HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD TIME

Good. Turner was a house of horrors for the Mets. Crazy to get a new stadium so soon though.

Probably trying to shy away from the Turner legacy which is why they are letting lease talks die down in Atlanta.

Some MLB news:

* Nelson Cruz rejected a $14.5 million qualifying offer from the Rangers.

* Jacoby Ellsbury and Stephen Drew both rejected their qualifying offers from the Red Sox while Mike Napoli is expected to reject his soon and Jarrod Saltalamacchia wasn't offered one.

* Dodgers state Don Mattingly and all except one of his coaching staff will return for next season.

* Twins state Joe Mauer will become a full-time 1B starting next season.

Fuck yeah. Big Bossman is finnaly getting a statue.

Wil Myers and Jose Fernandez are your Rookies of the Year.

MLB.com has an article on Masahiro Tanaka. Great combination of Japanese wrestler's names. He should be great.

Jay Bell moving from Pirates to be Bench Coach for Reds

<font color=goldenrod>Sounds like the Mets are going after Curtis Granderson. I dunno. He'll give them power but probably not at the level he got at Yankee Bandbox.</font>

I want the Rockies to go after Granderson

would be a nice fit here

Champs

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>THIS JUST IN: Clint Hurdle named NL Manager of the Year. Hurdle led Pirates to first playoff appearance since 1992.</p>&mdash; SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) <a href="https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/statuses/400403623424708608">November 12, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Marlon Byrd to the Phillies. 2 years, $16 million. Loved the guy last year and he was deserving of a raise but that's a massive overpay.

Terry Francona took the AL Manager of the Year award.

I was hoping the Phillies would make a run at Granderson or Cruz or someone like that, but getting Byrd for that price isn't terrible. Plus it allows for a little wiggle room to fix some other issues.

I am officially banned from ever complaining about Alfonso Soriano for any reason.

and 80 million dollars worth of Ricky Nolasco isn't ever turning the Cubs fortune around

Don't get their reasoning. Farrell brings the worst to first and the AL East Crown. Giradi getting any fucking votes at all is bullshit.

Jays are apparently going to spend more money this off-season. It'd better start with a fucking catcher.

Worst to first means nothing these days. Clubhouse purge and a management change is the fastest way to fix a team.

Francona brought the Indians back to the postseason with some players and a sense of direction. Something Cleveland hasn't had in a while.

Girardi held the Yankees together with nothing more than duct tape and superglue with all the problems they had and they still contended. I would have thrown a vote his way.

Dionner Navarro.

Now Ervin Santana is aiming for 5 years, $112 million. :lol:

3rd starters gonna ball!

Santana is at least better than Nolasco. Still crazy, though.

Jeff Wilpon is truly clueless. He said that the Mets were getting very close to making an announcement. Any fanbase, especially New York, takes this as a sign that a player addition may be forthcoming.

Nope. A couple of hours later the announcement was made that Huey Lewis and Boyz II Men would be performing at Citi Field in 2014.

Wooooo! Finally!

:lol:

Is he still involved in that Ponzi scheme scandal or got cleared/let off the hook?

Cy Young winners were announced:
NL - Clayton Kershaw
AL - Max Scherzer

WILL "THE NEWS" BE WITH HUEY??

Multiple teams are apparently interested in J.P Arencibia. Guess the market is high on catchers hitting below the Mendoza line and being able to throw out 10% of runners.

Chicks must still dig the occasional long ball.

You can have McCann. Braves have Gattis now so they don't have to keep McCann, and likely won't.

Feel like someone is going to sign McCann to a huge contract and he will tear his acl during April.