I will admit that I haven’t, at any point this winter, thought about the Diamondbacks trading Zack Greinke. They just won 93 games and reached the NLDS. They have Paul Goldschmidt under team control for two more years, but A.J. Pollock and Pat Corbin for just one. Their window to win with this group is not going to be open very long, but they haven’t made any real noise about rebuilding, at least not publicly. And if they’re going to try to win again in 2018, they probably need Zack Greinke to do it.

Right now, we have the Diamondbacks projected for 84 wins, putting them two wins behind St. Louis for the top Wild Card spot in the NL. The Cardinals are clearly looking to upgrade their roster, and are probably close to landing Marcell Ozuna from Miami, if I’m any good at reading tea leaves. There is a bit of a gap between AZ and the fringe NL contenders, so the Diamondbacks could get worse and still think they’re as good as Colorado or San Francisco, but reducing their chances of making the playoffs would be a weird strategy in Pollock’s walk year.

Of course, if they don’t move Greinke, they have no shot of re-signing Pollock, so perhaps if they thought they could free up enough money to keep Pollock in Arizona past this year, moving a good chunk of Greinke’s contract could make sense. So, yeah, if someone wants to take most of the deal, and you think you can use it to keep the rest of the core together longer, maybe that’s worth thinking about.

But there’s this rumor kicking around that has the Rangers and Diamondbacks talking about a Greinke trade that just doesn’t make much sense to me.

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Last season, the New York Yankees had a top-10 rotation bothby FIP-based WAR and RA9-WAR. They were really good. This offseason, CC Sabathia and Jaime Garcia have left as free agents, and Michael Pineda won’t be around after undergoing Tommy John surgery. But Sonny Gray will have a full season with the club, and top prospects Chance Adams and Justus Sheffield have reached the upper minors, making them ready for in-season call-ups.

All of this is to say, the Yankees will have a good rotation even if they do nothing else this offseason. Right now on the FanGraphs depth charts, the club is projected to have the 10th-best starting rotation in the majors. That’s pretty good, especially when you combine it with a top-notch bullpen, strong offense, and above-average defense.

Nevertheless, the Yankees have an opportunity to get richer.

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — There is a Branch Rickey axiom that goes something like this: when trading an asset, it’s typically better to do so a year too early than a year too late. That is largely pragmatic and true. One could argue that Baltimore is a year too late in considering a rebuild. But late is also preferable to never.

As Dave wrote, the Orioles appear to be coming to their senses in exploring a trade of Manny Machado. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Orioles are engaged in more than listening; they are asking for offers to be submitted for Machado. The franchise-cornerstone talent is interested in returning to shortstop.

From Rosenthal’s piece:

Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports previously reported that the Orioles are listening on Machado, but the team actually is operating with a more aggressive stance, telling potentially interested teams to make them offers, sources say.

Rosenthal goes on to suggest that moving Machado would “trigger a series of moves intended to redefine the future of an organization that currently has only two reliable members of its starting rotation and an improving but still underwhelming farm system.”

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The Yankees are currently in the process of shoving all their chips towards the middle of the table, going all-in on their young core of premium position-player talent. Trading for Giancarlo Stanton was part of that effort. Even trading away Bryan Mitchell in order not to pay Chase Headley was part of it, too. It allowed the club to situate themselves at something like $30 million under the tax threshold. Now there’s a link forming between the Tigers and the Yankees, with Michael Fulmer as the prize. Let’s dream this one up.

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The competitive-balance tax isn’t a salary cap, not in the hard and fast sense, but sometimes it acts in the exact same way. As a consequence, you can have big-budget teams in the business of cutting payroll, which can lead to situations like Tuesday’s, where the Padres have come to the aid of the Yankees. The Yankees are trying to stay below the threshold, even after acquiring Giancarlo Stanton, and that almost fully explains this morning’s exchange.

Padres get:

• Chase Headley
• Bryan Mitchell

Yankees get:

• Jabari Blash

This is a trade involving three major-league players. And even though I’m not at all convinced Blash lasts the winter on the Yankees’ 40-man roster, there are things about him to like. Ultimately, though, this is really quite simple to understand — the Padres are taking Headley’s $13-million final year, and they’re getting Mitchell for the trouble. The Yankees drop their payroll, and the Padres get a project.

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LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The Yankees weren’t necessarily looking to add a player who can earn $295 million over the next 10 seasons, but when you can land Giancarlo Stanton by surrendering only cash and a modest return of prospects, it’s an opportunity worth exploring.

The addition of the reigning NL MVP not only has the Yankees leaping the Red Sox in the AL East — 92 to 91 projected wins according to our projections — but he creates one of the rarest player tandems in history with Aaron Judge, making the Yankees’ lineup extremely potent on paper and also must-watch entertainment.

The biggest negative regarding the transaction for the Yankees is the $22 million Stanton luxury-tax number Stanton adds to the club’s payroll. Read the rest of this entry »

With two important players coming to Major League Baseball from Nippon Professional Baseball this season — Miles Mikolas and Shohei Ohtani, of course — we’re hearing a lot about how differently baseball is played in Japan. While it’s true that they take Mondays off and starters generally pitch just once a week, it’s also true that some of the differences between the two leagues are probably overstated.

Part of that might have something to do with the metrics on which we dwell when discussing the two leagues. Home runs certainly receive a lot of attention. Velocity readings, too. But what about other aspects of the game?

Curious, I decided to look through the lens of plate discipline and batted-ball spray to see how similar Japan’s league is to America’s leagues, major and minor.

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As I sit here in the winter meetings media room, there’s a press conference taking place in front of me, with Giancarlo Stanton being officially introduced as a member of the New York Yankees. If you’re a Yankees fan, you love it, and if you’re a fan of anyone else, you don’t, but one thing every fan understands is that this gives the Yankees something extraordinary. Your mind goes directly to one place: The Yankees lineup is about to feature both Stanton and Aaron Judge, and Stanton and Judge are amazing.

If you’re analytically inclined, you know that Stanton and Judge are Statcast outliers. They’re the two players who most frequently push the upper boundaries of exit velocity. And even if you’ve never heard the word “Statcast” at all, you can understand that Judge just led the American League in home runs, while Stanton led the majors. Stanton was Judge before Judge, Judge v1.0, and he’s as big a power threat as anyone in baseball. Stanton could hit the ball out anywhere even before the ball started flying, and he’s associated with his power in the way Aroldis Chapman is associated with his fastball. The Yankees have landed a premium slugger, to go along with their other premium slugger.

But Stanton’s reputation might be a little misleading. Power is his biggest strength, sure, but there’s more to his game. Stanton’s more of a complete player than you might realize, after making some changes in the regular season.

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The Baltimore Orioles were unlikely to sign Shohei Ohtani. He seems to have had little interest in teams east of the Mississippi — the Chicago Cubs represented the lone exception in that respect — and there was probably little that Peter Angelos, Dan Duquette, and Co. could have done to change that. Still, they had to try, right? That was the opinion held by 27 of the league’s 30 teams, at least. The Orioles weren’t one of them, though.

What was the Orioles’ logic for not pursuing the two-way star? Perhaps not what you’d think.

Huh. That is certainly interesting. While an organization might have (justifiably) felt as though they had little chance with Ohtani, this doesn’t appear to be Baltimore’s main reason for having abstained from courting him. The team’s objections appear to be founded on a greater underlying issue.
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