Hot Stove 2023-2024

We have signed C Austin Hedges to a one-year Major League contract.

To make room on the 40-man, we have designated 1B Alfonso Rivas for assignment.

Welcome back, Hedgey! 😌#ForTheLand pic.twitter.com/8YjPSj8W6L

— Cleveland Guardians (@CleGuardians) December 15, 2023

This tweet is up there as the highlight of the guardians year.

Hope the Dodgers do the same for the kershaw announcement
https://i.postimg.cc/k5smj8SK/o9n3ozzhhrn91.jpg

The Kansas City Royals, who had the 8th-lowest payroll in MLB last season at $92 million, have now spent $65 million in free-agent contracts this winter.
The Royals and Detroit Tigers have easily been the most aggressive teams in the AL Central this winter.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 15, 2023

Fingers crossed we get some fluctuation in the AL Central this year. Royals were only above the A's for lowest win total in baseball last year so I don't quite think these are "compete for the division" deals. They need to make up another 30 wins from what they had last year to even be in the conversation for the division. Tigers are close enough that it would be nice to see them being more aggressive making deals, only been Andrew Chaffin and Kenta Maeda so far (neither of them a bad move)

“I’m not obviously an expert in the medical field, but it was a procedure,” Ohtani said. “I’m not sure what it’s called”

*looks down at cybernetic arm*

I saw that clip and it was really weird, especially since the LA Times interviewed his doctor and it was called a second TJS throughout.

Unknown how it affects his pitching. Bryce Harper returned from a Tommy John at the beginning of May & hit 5 home runs between then and the end of July and 16 the last two months of the season. Ohtani’s first surgery in October 2018 had a reverse pattern: 15 hrs and good numbers(.292/.356/.521, ops of .878 between his return in May and the end of July, before his power fell off a cliff from August to the end of the season (276/.313/.472 . with 3 home runs from the beginning of August to the end of his season on 11th September). Why was that? Oh ok, knee surgery.

I guess in summary: who the fuck knows how it turns out?

Sources: Pirates bringing Andrew McCutchen back. One year, $5 million. Story to come.

— Jason Mackey (@JMackeyPG) December 19, 2023

@Pirates pic.twitter.com/uiFgXqsd90

— Andrew McCutchen (@TheCUTCH22) December 19, 2023

I'm sure no one wants to talk about this but me..... But Yamamoto. Dodgers are looking to own the Asian market, stated by some top-brass during the Ohtani press conference. So I can see them doing very un-Dodger things and giving a silly contract for its combined business and baseball benefits. They've done it once already with Ohtani. Interested whether their financial limit will match Cohen's, who by all reports seems to be foaming at the mouth ready to throw the bank at Yamamoto. I can't see any other team ready to match what the Mets or Dodgers might do here. Time will tell

I’m honestly surprised how high it sounds like teams are willing to go for him. Wasn’t expecting this

how quickly we forget the legend of kei igawa

I'm not surprised at teams wanting to go big for him, but I am surprised that double cy-young winner free-agent blake snell is getting like 10% of the radio-waves non-mlb pitcher Yamamoto is.

Giant get Snell and they give themselves very good odds for a post-season appearance in 2024. 5 games off the wild-card last year and I see Snell as being able to make up most of that difference all things being equal

in that this is the hot stove thread, pls put an 'if' at the top of that!

Snell will not alter the giants’ fortunes no.

Kei igawa had what i am calling the robert lang effect, where if you get a guy (lang) who looks like another guy (jagr) surely they must be equal in terms of ability and outcomes

how quickly we forget the legend of kei igawa

― mookieproof, Wednesday, December 20, 2023 6:26 PM (one hour ago)

Daisuke Matsuzaka: How his shirt got me on Japanese TV

yamamo b there

Lol mookie, my bad

Jimmy the doomer

vry cool Shasta

He's at the Rams game tonight:

The Giants have been told they’re out of the bidding for Yoshinobu Yamamoto, per source familiar with discussions. They pushed hard but expectation is that he will end up in LA or NY.

— Alex Pavlovic (@PavlovicNBCS) December 22, 2023

Nah that turned out to fake

Ohtani is at the Rams game too.

Are you saying he not at the game? The pregame show said he's will be in the owners box.

He’s flying to Toronto.

Yeah saw a tweet that he pulled out (fake the wrong word my bad) Million photos of ohtani there, none of Yamamoto

https://x.com/byjackharris/status/1737953803813437924?s=46&t=ctYJJCHUEV_hBLwH73xO9A

Some tweets saying it’s down to Mets/Yankees/dodgers with at least one bid over 300mil

Welp, being told now that Yoshinobu Yamamoto IS NOT going to be at the Rams game tonight

The Rams were expecting him to be there, but plans apparently changed

— Jack Harris (@ByJackHarris) December 21, 2023

The Yankees offer was $300 million over 10.years.
The Dodgers offer was $325 million over 12 years with signing bonus worth about $50 million.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 22, 2023

I guess the Dodgers are going to win 162 games a year for the next 10 or so years.

Are they going to sign Snall too?

one billlliiioooooon dollars

on two friendly Japanese blokes wtf is going on lol
bigger average + more years with the Dodgers. If these two don't turn out to be everything they've been promised to be this is going to be a very funny off-season to look back on.

https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/payroll/

Dodgers payroll somehow going to be only 7th after all these moves.

Austin Barnes (noted worst hitter in baseball of 2023) is currently receiving nearly double what Ohtani gets in a year

Tyler Glasnow (until Yamamoto becomes official) has the biggest Dodgers take-home paycheck for 2024.

Bonkers stuff going on

MLBTR;

The deal comes with a $27.08MM average annual value. Regardless of the precise salary distribution, that’s the relevant factor for the Dodgers’ competitive balance tax picture. That pushes L.A. well into the third tier of luxury tax penalization. Roster Resource calculates the club’s CBT number in the $282MM range.

The Dodgers are set to pay the tax for a third consecutive season.

Fucking finally, maybe now there’ll be some movement in the market.

Free agency scoreboard:
Dodgers $1.053 billion
Rest of MLB $873 million

— Travis Sawchik (@Travis_Sawchik) December 22, 2023

hell yeah we're winning

so Ohtani deferred his salary to allow LA to more flexibility to comfortably land Yamamoto.

...BUT knowing it's the Dodgers, I can't wait to hear about Yoshi's UCL worries (packaged to the media as "oblique soreness" or whatever) come July.

...

...then in 2029 he'll have his record 4th TJ.

Shasta injury notebook at the ready?

The dumbest thing you can do is go only one dollar over the luxury tax

well, so much for all that stuff about how ohtahi’s contract set a precedent that undermined his fellow players and was going to make them all take deferred money

i feel like this is the first time the NL has had a truly overdog villain a la the yankees. evil empire West.

God I hope both he and Ohtani stay healthy

Tbf j0rdan, Yamamoto’s nbp team gets a percentage of his contract as posting fee, which makes that whole deferred situation much more complicated and less likely to happen, if it’s even possible at all.

Well they’ve definitely blown the luxury tax! Expect them to resign Kersh closer to spring training. Otherwise, think the Dodgers have their team for the year.

——————
Mookie Betts
Freddie Freeman
Shohei Ohtani
Will Smith
Max Muncy
James Outman
Gavin Lux
Jason Heyward/Manuel Margot
Chris Taylor

Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Tyler Glasnow
Walker Buehler
Bobby Miller
Kershaw/Emmet-Sheehan
——————
Seems pretty hard to beat that day in day out. The bullpens nothing to sneeze at either

and yet they still may not even be the best team in the NL

Thankful that team isn’t exactly known for its post season success either

save us Spencer Strider! you’re our only hope!

i was going to say that rotation stability feels like an advantage atlanta has over LA but fried was on the IL with forearm stuff last year, strider is an arm injury waiting to happen and morton is 40 so that’s prob not true. the dodgers are also always after the top SP available at the deadline and i can’t imagine that will stop

Eventually baseball will be played again (please soon) and all will come to order. Here’s to another Dbacks

ilx posters i question their frankness
they say they back snakes but it’s easy to say this

I look forward to our new thread — 2024 mlb general chatter: dollar bin bats vs the billion dollar pitching rotation

As I pointed out to HP on upthread, the back 3 of LAD's rotation will not be starting games in September and the playoffs. MLB is not a video game, you just don't stretch out 2nd year pitchers to be season-long workhorses, those guys get shutdown in the weeks after the ASG usually, or babied in July/August.

I'll repost it again for posterity:

Buehler is recovering from his 2nd TJ, he pitched a total of 2 (two) innings in 2023 for AAA OKC. He pitched 36 innings in 2020 and 65 innings in 2022. He will be lucky to get to 100 IP/20 starts in 2024 before he gets shutdown IMHO. He could possibly pivot into a leverage guy, I just don't see him as a workhorse innings eater this season or even next.

Miller & Sheehan will probably get shutdown at some point after July. Young talent with massive workload issues.

Glasnow has never pitched over 120IP until last year, but even so he looks like the only guy that fits as a #1 SP.

Kershaw will have a flash or two of brilliance, but will inevitably get hurt (or is already hurt).

May could actually be back in the back of 2024 but I can't see him as a starter despite LAD trying to make him one. He's only started 34 games in 5 seasons which is very light, especially for a guy recovering from his second Tommy John surgery in 3 years time! He will be babied back into action.

Kershaw is recovering from surgery atm and his existing contract has actually expired, iirc he’s not due back till the summer

Hey I’m on the record backing those snakey boys in all the post season threads!

Agree that most of your points are most likely Shasta, but not necessarily a given. I disagree about Miller/Sheehan. I think one of them (most likely Miller) will be giving a full seasons work. Miller hit 120+ innings pitched last year and he was called up in late May. Emmet will probably be called upon to fill in injuries of the others. Kershaw indeed going through his ritual of back problems coming into the season, think he is a summer starter. Yamamoto as likely as any other starter in mlb to go the distance. Glasnow probably getting what happened this year, some minor IL stints throughout but a 2/3rd kinda season that goes into the post. Buehler…… hoping he’s the second coming of Nathan Eovaldi who threw 100+ innings of above average ball coming back from his second TJ.

I dunno if we’re going to see multiple 130+ inning starting pitchers, but we’re definitely going to see multiple 100+ up guys and that’s normally how the dodgers starting pitching is run. Liberal on resting guys/using the IL, pull up the farm mid season to rest the big stars and give the young guns a try out.

2023 kershaw threw the max of 130 and everyone else was between 100-120
2022 Tyler Anderson and Julio Urias wirh 170 and the rest a bunch of 60-110ip guys
2021 replace TA with Walker Buehler, otherwise the same as 2022

ETC. etc.

The dodgers got the bones of the building. They’ll fill it in with different pieces as the season goes along

To be clear, I don’t think this rotation is necessarily better than many the dodgers have had this decade, but it’s sure costing a lot more money.

Scherzer/Kershaw/Buehler/Bauer/Urias in 2021….
Kershaw/Ryu/Buehler/Hill/Maeda from 2019 was big.
Same boys but with prime Alex Wood and Yu Darvish instead of Buehler in 2017 also big.