Now that the KEMP deal is official...

what do we do?...
are we done?
or do we go after scherzer/shields and/or trade for hamels?...

discuss



bkitches

 

in all honesty
if we're not going to go after one of the big name SP's
i wouldn't necessarily be opposed to offering chad a low risk/heavy incentive based contract

 

I think what's left is trading Ethier for anythin, maybe trading one of our thousand middle infielders, and maybe upgrading Brandon Leagues spot in the bullpen. All meanwhile trying to upgrade the SP depth with some cheap cost controlled starters. Not great starters but some that can come in and spot start from the minors when injuries occur

I would be surprised at a huge move

I would love Bills to come back especially if he agrees to start in the bullpen and be a long man, eventually joining rotation once he gains arm strength. Wonder if he does it though cause some other team more desperate for pitching might offer him a great spot in the rotation

 

yeah, I've probably said it way too much but the amount of marginal depth in thin positions the team has been able to acquire is fantastic. The catching position is MUCH better positioned for 2015 and moving forward. If nothing had been done, it would have been a fucking nightmare

 

yeah plus 1B is an easy position to get someone to field. Much more important to find depth at C, up the middle and with starting pitching, which this team has done.

 

fuk, nvm

Giants To Re-Sign Jake Peavy
By Tim Dierkes and Steve Adams [December 19, 2014 at 7:05am CST]

Pitcher Jake Peavy has agreed to a deal to return to the Giants, tweets Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports. It’s a two-year, $24MM deal with a full no-trade clause, according to ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick. Peavy, a CAA client, will be paid a $4MM signing bonus and salaries of $7MM in 2015 and $13MM in 2016, writes Crasnick.

Peavy, 34 in May, posted a 3.73 ERA, 7.0 K/9, 2.8 BB/9, 1.02 HR/9, and 38.5% groundball rate in 202 2/3 innings for the Red Sox and Giants this year. The Red Sox traded him to the Giants on July 26th with cash for Edwin Escobar and Heath Hembree. Peavy posted a 2.17 ERA in 78 2/3 innings for the Giants after the trade. While his control improved with the Giants, his sharp drop in homer-to-flyball rate (3.2 percent) isn’t sustainable, even in the pitcher friendly AT&T Park.

While the level of production he showed in the season’s second half is very likely to come back down to Earth, there’s no doubt that a full-time move to AT&T Park and the NL West will be of benefit to Peavy’s numbers. He’ll provide the Giants with some much-needed stability in the rotation, as the team currently has a great deal of uncertainty behind ace Madison Bumgarner and veteran workhorse Tim Hudson. Matt Cain is coming off elbow surgery, Ryan Vogelsong is also a free agent, Tim Lincecum hasn’t been reliable for the past three seasons and Yusmeiro Petit, while excellent in 2014, has never held down a rotation spot for a whole season.

Peavy’s contract closely mirrors that two-year, $25MM contract extension that fellow 34-year-old NL West hurler Jorge De La Rosa signed in August, and it’s also in line with what both Hudson and Bronson Arroyo signed for last winter. While each of the latter two pitchers is considerably older than Peavy, they signed in a free agent market with less quality pitching available. In a free agent profile back in late October, MLBTR’s Jeff Todd correctly predicted that Peavy would top Hudson and Arroyo, though Peavy’s final deal fell a bit shy of his $28MM prediction.​

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This marks only the second significant move for Giants GM Brian Sabean this offseason — he agreed to terms on a two-year, $15MM deal with Sergio Romo earlier in the week — though not for lack of trying. The Giants made a legitimate run at re-signing Pablo Sandoval and have also been connected to Jon Lester, Yasmany Tomas and Chase Headley, among others, but each has signed elsewhere, leaving the Giants to seek upgrades elsewhere.

 

ray:

Scherzer would be finishing touch on impressive Dodgers offseason
by Richard Justice | MLB.com -- December 18, 2014

All the Dodgers need at this point is a finishing touch. Swing the bat, circle the bases, tip the hat. Goodnight, everybody, and drive carefully.

Max Scherzer?

Is he the final piece to the puzzle? In fact, he'd put an offseason of dramatic change into an entirely different context. Andrew Friedman has reshaped the Dodgers so dramatically in the last few days that it'll take some time to get our minds around all of it.

When the Dodgers hired Friedman to be their president of baseball operations, some of us thought he might take a go-slow approach. He'd been on the job a month and was joking about still learning names and trying to figure out what needed to be done.

Turns out, he's a quick learner. With a sweeping series of moves, he has cut ties with Matt Kemp, Hanley Ramirez, Dee Gordon and Brian Wilson. This list isn't final.

Give Friedman credit for guts. To remake a team that won 94 games shows both confidence and courage. In the end, though, he did perhaps the hardest thing any baseball executive is ever asked to do.

That is, he saw his club for what it actually was. He saw a rotation that was thin and a bullpen that was shaky. He saw a team that needed a defensive upgrade and also more defined roles.

He may have seen the need to shake things up in the clubhouse, too. That's the part we may not know because Friedman won't say it. Jimmy Rollins at short and Howie Kendrick at second are defensive upgrades over Ramirez and Gordon.

Gordon stole 64 bases, but Kendrick is a tremendous all-around player, a guy who does everything well. Rollins, 36, is still one of baseball's best defensive shortstops and a catalyst near the top of the lineup.

He's also an energetic player, a good teammate, the prototype of the kind of player Friedman wants to add. He's a winner, too, having been a part of Phillies teams that won five straight division championships.

Friedman made the Dodgers better at catcher, too, with the acquisition of Yasmani Grandal from the Padres. And he deepened the rotation by signing Brandon McCarthy and Brett Anderson to line up behind Clayton Kershaw, Zack Greinke and Hyun-jin Ryu. If all five stay healthy, the Dodgers will have a starting group that will rank among the best in the game.

Now about Kemp. He's the tough one. He represents Friedman's biggest gamble even though Gordon's 64 stolen bases will be missed at the top of the lineup.

Still only 30, Kemp seemed finally to recover from two years of leg injuries in the second half of the season. He may never run well enough to be a center fielder, but he homered 17 times in 64 games after the All-Star break and was in the center of everything as the Dodgers sprinted to an National League West championship.

Kemp is the kind of talent a franchise doesn't find very often, and when a team gets a player like that, it doesn't trade him. Friedman either didn't find that his other outfielders had enough value or he felt the time had come for big change.

Kemp missed 185 games in the 2012-2013 seasons, and Friedman may have worries about his long-term health. Despite the trade, the Dodgers have interesting outfield options. Carl Crawford seems set for left, Yasiel Puig for right. Top prospect Joc Pederson may take over in center.

If Pederson isn't ready, the Dodgers can turn to an Andre Ethier /Scott Van Slyke platoon. That's exactly the kind of thing Friedman had so much success with while in charge of the Rays.

So to review, the Dodgers have a better defense and a better rotation. Friedman still has work to do on his bullpen, but there are interesting relievers remaining in free agency.

Still, despite everything, it feels like the Dodgers have one more big move left in them. One big one might create significant space between them and the other four NL West clubs.

Scherzer is the best free agent on the market, and can you imagine a rotation that begins with Kershaw, Greinke and Scherzer? That would be one of the most dominant in recent history and might just make the Dodgers the consensus favorites in 2015.

James Shields, another top-of-the-rotation arm, is also on the market. He and Friedman have a history from their years in St. Petersburg. He, too, would allow Friedman to finish the offseason in style.

Or Friedman may not do one more significant thing outside of his bullpen. With the Giants trying to fill some big holes, the Dodgers will be the NL West favorites regardless of what else happens.

And this is the kind of offseason we'll look back on again and again. It has been wildly entertaining. Friedman's track record says it'll be successful.

Richard Justice is a columnist for MLB.com. Read his blog, Justice4U. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.​

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