biggentleben

One of the under-the-radar moves in the reliever market was Boston trading Wade Miley and Jonathan Aro for Carson Smith and Roenis Elias. The Red Sox now have Kimbrel, Uehara, Tazara, and Smith at the back of their bullpen.

And one thing brought up the other day - the year Bryce Harper hits free agency is the last year of the current terrible Atlanta television deal. Getting out from under that and getting something new in place could drastically change the direction of the franchise. New stadium in 2017 and new TV deal for the 2019 season, at which time the huge influx of talent from their lower minors should start to hit the bigs. It's likely going to be a rough few years in Atlanta, but they're setting things up that could be very solid.

Technically two teams'. San Diego last offseason and Arizona since the beginning of the 2015 season.

Add Mike Leake as well to that rotation.

In all seriousness, the report was that a quartet of Swanson, Bradley, Blair, and Brandon Drury was the STARTING point for Fernandez from Florida along with an unconfirmed major league outfielder (assumed to be Inciarte).

I really like Dave Stewart. The Braves have traded Shelby Miller, Phil Gosselin, and Gabe Speier to the Diamondbacks and received back Ender Inciarte, Touki Toussaint, Aaron Blair, and Dansby Swanson.

No kidding. Incredible. The #1 pick last season, a major-league ready starter, and a MLB CFer for Miller. That's a huge haul. Impressive to say the least. Per the MLB.com list, it'd give the Braves 8 top 100 players, which would be unprecedented in the time they've had lists. Hard not to like the deal as a Braves fan.

This should just be in the Twins forum...

And again, we discuss more reasons why the system is broken...

Craziness is that if Chapman gets suspended, he could end up actually MORE desirable in the trade market. If he misses more than 25 games or so, he'll end up adding another year before he hits free agency, so he may end up having two years of control instead of one.

In two days, the two threads on the Twins boards nearly have more posts than this one in a month of being up, so how this one would become "unwieldy" is yet to be seen...

Quite a few, actually. It's just that many aren't covered like Harper, so when Yoenis Cespedes was given a day off this year for not hustling, it was simply a day off. Kyle Seager had such a day off this year after a game where he notably didn't hustle out a grounder. Brett Gardner was given a day off after a fly ball fell between he and Jacoby Ellsbury that should have been an easy catch for him. Yet, none of those were called into question, and all three even have reputations as being "grinders" and "high effort" players. How a day off is spun doesn't change that it happens to many players in a season, not just Harper. Hell, Hanley Ramirez was pulled from the game and benched by Fredi Gonzalez when both were in Florida, and the backlash from the media and fans cost Gonzalez his job there. That was for effort incredibly more egregious than Harper's in this case or any other I've seen on the field, and yet the manager was the one called into question for being too harsh in that case, mainly because Hanley was considered at the time to be extremely likable, jovial, and "fun" player in the game.

Based on his managing, he likely did not.

It's really quite basic. Pump some money into the minor leagues, increasing the pay for players somewhat, sure, but drastically improving their living conditions, including buses, hotels, and per diems. The biggest issue is the insurance issue. Minor league players having to purchase their own health insurance is bunk to me, and I cannot believe that teams can still get away with this. I'm not terribly worried about the Kris Bryants of the world. I'm much more worried about the Ryan Webers of the worlds, guys who spend near a decade in the minors before getting their first chance in the major leagues. The big thing that opened my eyes on this was the bus crash in the Braves system this year with the Carolina Mudcats. There has been so little information publicly available about the crash that it's disturbing, but the bus they were driving was in very poor repair, the driver was driving beyond the hours he should be driving in a week, and he had alcohol in his system (not beyond legal limit, but enough that he was fired after the crash). It ended the season for one player and derailed the season for multiple others, and the guys I talked with from the club mentioned how two of the guys injured who were too old to be on their parents' insurance had inadequate insurance to cover their medical bills from the crash, and the team took a collection to help. That sort of crap should never happen in a sport where there are nearly 11 figures of profits rolling into the game.

Then in your 99% of the world...what do you do with catchers? They mature much later in their development, frequently a high school guy not hitting the major leagues until his mid-20s.

I shared this at the time, and I'll share it again now. I took a two-week honeymoon this summer in which I saw 10 baseball games across 10 stadiums. Two of those games happened to be Nationals games (one of which was the Scherzer near-perfecto against the Pirates), and when you ask my wife about the players she remembered from the trip, she named Scherzer, Miggy, Wilmer Flores, and Andrelton Simmons by their team name, position, and/or accomplishment in a game on the trip. Bryce Harper she could mention by name along with Matt Harvey. Harper gets a bad rep because people want to find reasons to dislike a guy who's so brash and bold with the media and "disrespects" the game, much like they do with Yasiel Puig and have been doing this offseason with Jose Bautista. Harper may be a lot of things, but to say he doesn't hustle is one of the biggest BS statements anyone can make and tells me that they simply do not watch the guy play. He made multiple plays that impacted the games we saw with his hustle, and that's what my wife remembered, interestingly, not the home run he hit during Scherzer's no-no. He made an impression on her BECAUSE of his hustle, but I also think there will be plenty who don't take the time to watch the guy play the game and just assume the stories are true as well.

What do you do with the guy who is signed from independent ball at 28? The Braves signed a guy like that who will likely be at AA this year, but he really wasn't worthy of being in even minor league baseball before last season.

It just gets frustrating when things get so muddied between the two and a Mike Pelfrey thread on this board turns into a 4-page Twins bickering thread, yet a legit baseball discussion thread gets linked out of this board to another post.

Yes, but some of us stay here for non-Twins stuff and head into that forum for Twins-related materials. If I'm talking about the Twins, I head to that forum, otherwise, I stick here.

This Shelby Miller stuff is absolutely fascinating to me - it seems each team competing is talking DOWN what they are offering to the Braves, yet the Braves are reporting they are having increasing offers from the four teams making the biggest plays - Diamondbacks, Cubs, Red Sox, and Rockies.

Rockies sign Jason Motte (2/$10M) and Chad Qualls (2/$6M) to multi-year deals. Not bad prices for two fairly reliable relievers, albeit not elite guys.

I completely respect Bryant's position on this, and it sucks for young players, but frankly, for the economics and sustainability of the game, baseball is the one sport that has this right. Think of the long list of NFL first-round picks that busted and yet had millions of dollars in guaranteed money. Even worse, think of the NBA first-round picks that busted and had that same big money. In major league baseball, there is a signing bonus upon drafting, but the big money for actually playing that game is controlled somewhat, which allows a team to mentor a player into the big leagues, easing a transition from the minor leagues into the major leagues as needed. You simply don't see Carson Palmer/Jon Kitna situations anymore in the NFL because no one in their right mind would draft a guy 1-1 and have him hold a clipboard all season, let an Aaron Rodgers/Brett Favre situation where you have a guy learn the game for multiple seasons behind an experienced starter as a back-end of the first round pick. The NFL game requires those first round guys to produce immediately, as does basketball (I'll be honest that my knowledge of the NHL is limited enough to not know how this plays out there). The main reason isn't winning, it's absolutely financial. You have that player for four or five years for significant money invested, and you need to get your money's worth out of that player, not let him stand on the sidelines or sit on the bench observing the game. Heck, even Kevin Garnett wasn't a starter in his first season with the Timberwolves, not even getting his first start until the 9th of January in his rookie season, and not becoming the full-time starter until January 30th that season. That simply doesn't happen with the #5 pick in the draft anymore in the NBA. For all the things baseball does to screw over its players, this is one that I think actually may help the quality of the game and the players in the long-term as well.

AJ was my biggest screaming "hell no!" move of a rough Braves offseason, but he handled the young pitchers well, and he even attempted to help the future of the team when he walked into the manager's office and insisted they give Christian Bethancourt a real chance to start because they were hurting his development by having him be a platoon-at-most catcher. Say what you will about his antics, but AJ's a guy who had borderline big league ability and got every drop of production he could from that ability over a long career. He's one of the few guys in my lifetime that I can say left it all on the field in this game, and I'm not even one of his fans.

This was filed in May, but not allowed to be public until yesterday. He has good grounds, but his case is more he said/Cubs said than Papelbon's.

So I'm assuming you'd never want Johnny Cueto on the Twins?