NEWS/RUMORS/DISCUSSION Thread

i like what you did there

 

meh, more of the same...

Dodgers Rumors: Greinke, Price, Murphy, Utley
by Michael Bradburn | SB Nation — 34 minutes ago

Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi -- the Los Angeles Dodgers brain trust -- are at it again. While trying to retain Zack Greinke is still their chief concern, Jon Heyman of CBS reported Wednesday morning that the Dodgers are keeping their eye on David Price as a potential replacement.

Price, who could be worth $200 million or more this off-season, has already been linked to the Chicago Cubs, as well as the San Francisco Giants, Boston Red Sox, and St. Louis Cardinals. While letting Greinke slip away is by no means ideal, the Dodgers could receive a compensatory draft pick as they did make a qualifying offer to their free agent pitcher. Signing Price while earning a draft pick isn't a terrible trade-off for losing Greinke.

That being said, that would project the Dodgers rotation to have three left-handed pitchers at the top-end of their rotation in Clayton Kershaw, Hyun-jin Ryu, and Price. If Brett Anderson returns and Alex Wood cracks the rotation, there's a legitimate chance that the Dodgers open the season with a completely left-handed starting rotation. While left-handed pitchers come at a premium, this isn't typically a strategy most teams deploy. Then again, the Dodgers aren't 'most teams'.

While the Dodgers are weighing what to do with their starting rotation, they also have to deal with their second base scenario. Chase Utley is the incumbent second baseman, but he also became a free agent. According to Heyman, Daniel Murphy could fill that spot instead. Murphy, who is looking for a handsome payday after a red-hot postseason, makes sense for the Dodgers. Or, at least, the Dodgers payroll makes sense for Murphy. The Dodgers may be the only team willing to pay Murphy. Of course, it helps if there is another team bidding, but Anderson signed a deal last off-season that seemed out-of-nowhere.​

 

Zaidi addresses Ethier's future with the team
by Dylan Hernandez | Los Angeles Times (reporting from the GM meetings) — 46 minutes ago



If Andre Ethier remains with the Dodgers, he will become a 10-and-5 player in the first month of the upcoming season.

As a player with 10 years of major league service time, including the last five with the same team, Ethier would have the right to veto any trade. Ethier has two years and $38 million remaining on his contract.

At baseball’s general managers meetings this week, General Manager Farhan Zaidi said the Dodgers wouldn’t trade Ethier for the sake of preventing him from gaining his 10-and-5 rights.

“Our goal to put together the best roster,” Zaidi said. “If a guy is part of that roster, in that time he’s going to secure those rights, that’s fine.”

Get news and notes on all the Dodgers matchups >>
Ethier had a bounce back season this year, batting .294 with 14 home runs and 53 runs batted in.

“Andre had a big year for us, and he fits very well on our team going forward,” Zaidi said.

Zaidi said he wouldn’t mind if Ethier, who turns 34 in April, plays out the remainder of his contract with the Dodgers. The team’s outfield unit became younger last winter when Matt Kemp was traded to the San Diego Padres.

“I think getting Joc [Pederson] into the outfield mix sort of injected youth into that group, which is what we were looking to do,” Zaidi said.

Zaidi said the Dodgers have other young options in the outfield in the likes of Enrique Hernandez, Jose Peraza and Scott Schebler.

“We have a group of younger outfielders sort of mixing in with Carl [Crawford] and Andre, we have pretty good balance,” Zaidi said.

 

• MLB Trade Rumors contributor Matt Swartz projects Aroldis Chapman to earn a steep $12.9MM in his final year of arbitration eligibility. And while that’s top-of-the-market value for a relief arm, Chapman has undoubtedly proven himself worthy of that much, if not more. The 27-year-old struck out more than 15 hitters per nine innings for the fourth consecutive season in 2015 while averaging 99.5 mph on his fastball. Over the course of the four seasons in question, Chapman has a 1.90 ERA and has saved 33 or more games per season.

 

Friedman says Dodgers will work on rotation but is mum on plans
by Dylan Hernandez | Los Angeles Times (reporting from the GM meetings) — 3 hours ago

With Zack Greinke now a free agent, Clayton Kershaw is the only frontline starting pitcher on the Dodgers.

By first baseman Adrian Gonzalez's count, that's not enough.

"I definitely think that in this day and age you need three frontline starters to go deep in the playoffs," Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez would like for the Dodgers to start by re-signing Greinke. Or if they can't, by acquiring another top-tier free-agent pitcher.

But is that in the Dodgers' plans?

Andrew Friedman, the team's president of baseball operations, isn't saying.

Speaking from baseball's general managers meetings, Friedman wouldn't detail his conversations with Greinke's representatives or gauge the Dodgers' chances of retaining the All-Star right-hander.

Asked whether he thought it was necessary for Kershaw to be paired in the rotation with another ace-caliber starter, Friedman replied, "I don't think we have a hard and fast rule on that."

Friedman pointed to the four teams that reached the championship series in their respective leagues: the Kansas City Royals, New York Mets, Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago Cubs.

"All were constructed very differently," he said. "It's just another illustration of the fact that you can get there in different ways. It's very much about assessing the 25-man roster and not looking at any one component to say, 'Can you win with this, can you not?' "

Friedman said after the Dodgers hire a manager their efforts would focus on setting a starting rotation.

Kershaw and Alex Wood are the only two established starting pitchers on the Dodgers roster who are healthy.

"Fortunately," Friedman said, "there are a lot of pitchers on the market."

Along with Greinke, David Price, Johnny Cueto and Jordan Zimmermann are frontline starters. But each is looking for a lucrative, long-term contract. Greinke and Price are expected to sign deals worth more than $150 million.

"You look back over time and so many long-term free-agent contracts have worked out really poorly," Friedman said. "More than anything else, you get to a point where you're significantly hindering your ability to win in the future."

Last winter, in Friedman's first off-season with the Dodgers, the free-agent market included two standout starters: Max Scherzer and Jon Lester. Scherzer signed a seven-year, $210-million contract with the Washington Nationals. Lester inked a six-year, $155-million deal with the Chicago Cubs.

Meantime, the Dodgers acquired Brandon McCarthy for four years and $48 million, and Brett Anderson, for one year and $10 million.

If the Dodgers adopt the strategy they employed last year, they would have a multitude of options, including Scott Kazmir, Mike Leake, Jeff Samardzija, Marco Estrada, Bartolo Colon, J.A. Happ, Hisashi Iwakuma and Doug Fister.

Friedman said the Dodgers have also started to explore trade possibilities.

While Greinke is certain to reject the qualifying offer he received last week from the Dodgers — if accepted, Greinke would be under contract next season for $15.8 million — Anderson could take his.

Anderson was a solid middle-of-the-rotation pitcher for the Dodgers. He was 10-9 with a 3.69 earned-run average in a career-high 31 starts.

The Dodgers started last season expecting Anderson to be their fifth starter. After season-ending injuries to Hyun-Jin Ryu and McCarthy, he became their third.

Ryu and McCarthy are still under contract.

Gonzalez said he views Ryu as a potential frontline starter.

"Ryu, if he comes back and is the Ryu that we know, he's one of those three guys," Gonzalez said.

However, the Dodgers don't know what to expect from Ryu, who was a combined 28-15 with a 3.17 ERA in 2012 and 2013.

Ryu is recovering from an operation on a torn labrum in his left shoulder.

Friedman called Ryu a "big wild card."

"I don't know yet if we can fully count on him or not," Friedman said. "We'll know more in the next few weeks, the next month."

McCarthy is expected to return some time next season from reconstructive elbow surgery.

One area where Friedman thinks the Dodgers will be improved is in starting pitching depth.

The club's triple-A Oklahoma City rotation could include several pitchers who started games in the major leagues last season, including Mike Bolsinger, Carlos Frias, Joe Wieland and Zach Lee. Joining that core could be Julio Urias, Jose De Leon and Jharel Cotton, who are among the organization's top pitching prospects.

"That being said," Friedman acknowledged, "we still need to round out our opening-day pitching staff."

 

an argument for simmons...

Andrelton Simmons: Why the Dodgers make sense
By Bob Ellis | Baseball Essential — 8 minutes ago



Last night, rumors on Twitter suggested the Atlanta Braves were in talks with a team from the NL West regarding a possible trade of Andrelton Simmons.

The Giants were ruled out, according to MLB Trade Rumors — and let’s be honest, they aren’t a fit anyway. They already have Brandon Crawford, who just beat out Simmons for a Gold Glove.

A general consensus leaned towards the Padres being the mystery team. However, if the Braves were to trade a guy like Simmons, one would think a condition of that deal would be the potential trade partner taking on a bad contract, like that of Nick Swisher or Michael Bourn, both due quite a bit of money in 2016. I’m not sure the Padres have the ability to take on that kind of financial dead weight.

That left me thinking the perfect spot, if the Braves are indeed looking to shed some financial dead weight, would be the Los Angeles Dodgers. Why? Well, for one thing, they have enough money to buy a small country, so taking on a bad contract and eating the money probably doesn’t hurt them too much. And their current infield lends itself to adding arguably the best defensive shortstop in the game (no offense, Crawford and Alcides Escobar).

“But the Dodgers have Corey Seager.”

Yes, they do. And Seager can play third base. In his 21 games and 192 innings played at short for the Dodgers this year, he wasn’t all that impressive in the field. I know, it’s a small sample size. But with four fielding errors and a throwing error in 93 chances, well, you could do a lot better. Simmons, for example, is a lot better. Seager posted a UZR/150 of -9.3 at short, which is not great. Of qualifying shortstops this year, it would have put him close to last last, with Marcus Semien and Asdrubal Cabrera the only two behind Seager.

Simmons, on the other hand, had a UZR/150 of 17.5, second only to Adeiny Hechavarria. He also led major league shortstops in 2015 with 25 defensive runs saved (DRS).

So what could the Dodgers do to make room for Simmons? If Seager were to make the move to third base, that allows Justin Turner to slide over to the right and man second base. Is Turner a great defender at second base? No, he’s not. In 952.1 career innings at that spot, he’s got a .977 fielding percentage with 12 errors. At the same time, his range over that stretch is pretty lousy, and his DRS for those innings logged at second base is a dreadful -19.

In an attempt to be a little more fair to Turner, let’s keep in mind that much of his time at second base came in small doses of 50 or fewer innings, with only three seasons surpassing that small amount of playing time. In 2011 he played 642.1 innings (-13 DRS), 2012 logged 91 innings (-1 DRS), and most recently played 108.2 innings in 2014 (-1 DRS). That adds up to 842 innings and a total of -15 DRS, along with a .975 fielding percent. So, still pretty bad.

Look at it this way, though: in 2014, the Dodgers had an infield defense that included (for the most part) Jimmy Rollins at short, Howie Kendrick at second, and Turner at third. I would think, with the departure of Rollins and Kendrick, Simmons could be a nice fit at short. If Seager can even play an average third base (translating to, in terms of 2015, roughly 2 DRS), they have a nice left side of the infield for the foreseeable future. Turner had 5 DRS in 774 third base innings this year. I think it’s highly likely Seager would outperform Turner at the hot corner.

If we take the Dodgers 2015 infield trio of Kendrick, Rollins, and Turner, the combined DRS is -14. Now, let’s give Simmons his 25 DRS from 2015 and add it to the career total for Turner at second base (-19 DRS). Next, I’m going to project Seager to play third at a rate somewhere around that of a Mike Moustakas (4 DRS) or Todd Frazier (6 DRS) and give him a 5 DRS. That gives the new Dodgers trio a net of 11 DRS for a defensive swing of 25 DRS, even with some lousy play by Turner at second base. And it’s not like the Dodgers can’t deploy a slick fielding utility man at second late in games.

So not only can the Dodgers afford to get creative in dealing with the Braves, they also have plenty of room for a shortstop who has averaged about 31 DRS over the past three years.

What we have yet to mention, though, is what the Dodgers could offer the Braves. Atlanta’s outfield in 2014 saw most of its at-bats come from the trio of Nick Markakis, Cameron Maybin, and Jonny Gomes. Markakis is a fine hitter, Maybin had something of a breakout year, and Gomes finished his season as a clubhouse presence for the Royals.

The Dodgers have a young outfielder named Yasiel Puig they seem like they might be okay parting with. According to a July report from MLB Trade Rumors, not long after telling Puig they would not trade him, the Dodgers then informed teams they would in fact be willing to listen to offers. With the other outfield options on the roster, the Dodgers might do well to move an outfielder for something more scarce, like a shortstop who will likely post a 3+ fWAR. According to that MLBTR report on Puig, “his less-than-inspiring play this year and a variety of off-field issues have raised some questions about his true value.” Would a change of scenery for Puig, who is built something like a cross between Bo Jackson and Mike Trout, help him mature and reach his potential? Maybe.

So, could there be a discussion of a deal built around Simmons for Puig? Who knows? But while the Giants have been ruled out, and the Padres have only been said to have “checked on” Simmons, that leaves us with three choices for an NL West mystery team: the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, and the Rockies. In my opinion, the Dodgers have a lot more financial flexibility to get creative and pull off a blockbuster type of trade this winter, and it’s going to take something special to pry Simmons away from Atlanta.​

 

In his latest notes column, Jon Heyman of CBS Sports begins by classifying the Angels, Giants, Tigers, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals and Dodgers as the expected “big spenders” of the offseason, breaking down some targets that each club could pursue....

DODGERS
Of course the $300-million team had to make this list. While their ultimate goal is to blend in more kids and win through development, the immediate concern is re-signing Greinke, or replacing him. Greinke is the top choice but they also very much like Price. Meantime, they need to replace free agent second baseman Howie Kendrick, and they lean toward a lefty swinger such as Murphy, who will probably get a four-year deal, or perhaps the more cost-efficient veteran Chase Utley, who may be more in the $6-million, one-year range. They like Utley for the tone he sets, though his productivity is obviously slipping.