If your a baseball fan it’s been a slow off season for you. There haven’t been a lot of big signings or trades and right now everything seems stagnant. It’s difficult to pick one thing that has made the off season go like this, but here are a couple of things holding up player movement.
The Miami Marlins fire sale. While Giancarlo Stanton and Marcel Ozuna have been traded away there are a few assets Miami still has that other teams are interested. Why would a team go out and sign an older veteran player to a long term big money deal when they can deal for a young player like Christian Yelich or J.T. Realmuto. Yelich is signed to an incredibly team friendly deal through the year 2022. Realmuto is just entering salary arbitration and won’t be eligible for free agency until 2021. Yelich is 25 years old while Realmuto is 26; so while you’d have to give up some of your young prospects to land one of these guys it’s still a cheaper option for a team than handed a guy a 7 year $200 million dollar contract.
Big name players keep popping up in trade talks. Again this started with the Marlins and Stanton, but we’ve seen some other big names come up on the trade market. Right now the name floating round is Manny Machado. Now if a team was to acquire Machado he might only be with them for one season as he as eligible to be a free agent after the 2018 season, but if he helped your team win a World Series would it be worth it? Another name that popped up very quickly was Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Zach Greinke. Nothing seemed to go very far with Greinke involved, but just the fact that his name came up will draw interest from teams.
Contract demands might be too high. Jake Arrieta and J.D. Martinez have told teams that they’re both looking for contracts that total in value over $200 million dollars. Another pitcher who was thought to draw a lot of interest as a free agent was Alex Cobb, but Cobb has let it be know that he wants $20 million dollars a season. I did see that Cobb has altered his contract demands a little. He is now saying that he’ll accept a 4 year deal at $70 million dollars as long as that money is guaranteed. While I don’t believe that there are any teams in financial distress these type of contracts do eliminate most if not all of the small market teams from signing these players. These kind of deals are also big commitments for teams and there are times that these contracts blow up in a teams face when the player on this deal is in his late 30’s or in some cases early 40’s.
Now I do believe that hitters will still get their money, but with the way pitching has changed will these starters get the long term big money deals they’re looking for.
Let’s use Cobb as our example. He’s never made 30 starts in a season. He missed the entire 2015 season due to injury. He’s never pitched more than 179 1/3rd innings in a season. Over his career Cobb has averaged 6 innings a start and while his stats are solid and he appears to be a top of the rotation starter; is he worth $20 million dollars a season?
Those are three of the reasons the free agent market has been so slow. I think that once one of the top tier free agents gets signed will see quite a few players start to sign. The question is when will that top free agent sign.
We did have a three team trade this week. In the deal the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired left handed pitcher Scott Alexander and infielder Jake Peter. The Kansas City Royals picked up right handed pitcher Trevor Oaks and infielder Erick Mejia. While the Chicago White Sox ended up with a pair of veteran right handed relievers as Joakim Soria and Luis Avilan go to Chicago. The White Sox will also get $1 million dollars from the Royals and $2 million dollars from the Dodgers in this deal.
It seems that the name everyone is interested in with this deal is Alexander. Alexander is 28 years old and 2017 was his first full season in the majors. He made 58 relief appearances for the Royals last season covering 69 innings. He was 5-4 with 4 saves and a 2.48 E.R.A. He strikes out a little over two batters to ever one he walks and his WHIP was 1.304 last season. Alexander has been compared to Baltimore Orioles left hander Zach Britton and he’ll be part of the Dodgers bullpen for 2018.
With the NFL playoffs kicking off a little later today it appears as though the Oakland Raiders have their new head coach. As soon as the Raiders fired Jack Del Rio the reports where out there that they believed they could finally get Jon Gruden to come out of the television booth and take their head coaching job.
Now it looks like that’s the case, but it doesn’t appear that it will be official until Tuesday. The Raiders have a press conference scheduled for Tuesday where they will introduce Gruden as their new head coach. Reports are that Gruden’s contract will for 10 years and over $100 million dollars. Believe it or not this isn’t the first time that a head coach has gotten a 10 year deal. The other two time it was the Dallas Cowboys handing out those 10 year deals. Back in 1964 they gave one to Tom Landry and then again in 1989 Jimmy Johnson was given a 10 year deal.
Gruden coached the Raiders from 1998 to 2001. He was 38-26 and won the AGC West in his final two seasons. Under Gruden the Raiders went 0-2 in the playoffs. After his 4th season Raiders owner Al Davis traded Gruden to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tampa Bay gave up two 1st round picks, two 2nd round picks and $8 million dollars in cash to get Gruden, but he did win a Super Bowl his year as their head coach.
Gruden hasn’t coached since 2008, but has stayed involved with the NFL as a commentator for ESPN. Gruden has been the color analyst for Monday Night Football since 2009, but has also called some college football games. ESPN also gave Gruden his own little series called Jon Gruden’s QB Camp. In the series Gruden goes over the NFL development process with prospective quarterbacks.
Do you like this move for the Raiders? What are your thoughts on give a head coach a 10 year contract. Feel free to let me know in the comments.
You can listen to the Sports Time Radio podcast on BlogTalkRadio.com, but don’t forget that the podcast is available for you to listen to anytime you want at TuneIn.com
You can find me on Twitter @Burketime
Sports Time Radio 