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It’s almost Christmas but free agency is still loaded
Monday’s Say Hey, Baseball includes the free agents still waiting, the latest on Jose Fernandez and five years after the Greinke trade.
Photo by Elsa/Getty Images
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The offseason has slowed down, but that doesn’t mean the exciting parts of it are over. There are still far too many impact free agents remaining, and even the tier below that has enough going for it that those eventual signings will be significant. Maybe baseball is just taking a little extended holiday break before they start signing all of these guys. That, or these few days before Christmas this week are going to be loaded with activity. It’s probably the former, but you can dream for the latter. It’ll help pass the time, if nothing else.
Chris Davis has yet to sign, and he’s looking for upwards of $200 million. Yoenis Cespedes, Alex Gordon and Justin Upton are all still available, and each could make at least $100 million, with Cespedes and Upton maybe signing for much more than that. There just hasn’t been that much movement on the position player side of free agency, so you not only have those standouts, but also productive role players like Howie Kendrick and Denard Span. Neither should get ridiculously rich this winter, but both could have an effect their new teams in the early parts of their deals.
It’s not just position players waiting to be signed, though, as there are still some pitchers worth talking about available. Wei-Yin Chen might be the best value still out there, as he very quietly produced in the AL East the last four years, and especially so in the last two. Scott Kazmir might not be the rotation topper his first half in 2015 with the A’s made him out to look like, but he can still serve a valuable role in the middle of a rotation. Kenta Maeda hasn’t even been officially posted yet, but once he is, there should be a number of $20 million bids -- the max -- just to get the right to negotiate with him. Basically, if things don’t pick up before the holidays, we’re going to have an uncharacteristically busy January in MLB.
- The Zack Greinke trade went down five years ago. It uh, worked out pretty well for both the Royals and Greinke, wouldn’t you say?
- New Phillies’ GM Matt Klentak does work under boss Andy MacPhail, but Klentak is allowed to make moves on his own, as the Dan Otero transaction showed.
- Speaking of organizational hierarchies, David Laurila spoke to front office members across the game for their anonymous thoughts on how it’s all changing.
- A Jose Fernandez trade is not imminent, says a representative of the team you can never trust about anything.
- The Nationals won’t be getting Brandon Phillips, and Jason Heyward signed elsewhere, so they might want to call up the rebuilding Rockies for Carlos Gonzalez and DJ LeMahieu.
- Eduardo Rodriguez has the potential to be the No. 2 starter the Red Sox need behind David Price.
- The Rangers are still looking for rotation depth, which shouldn’t be a surprise given how many arms it took for them to get to the playoffs this past summer.
- Noah Syndergaard hopes the Mets bring back Yoenis Cespedes, probably because he doesn’t want to lose games where he gives up just two runs.
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