Hot Stove Update: Stanton to the Yankees

1 day after rejecting a trade to the Giants, Giancarlo Stanton waived his no-trade clause to accept a trade to the Yankees which almost feels like a cliche.  It's ARod 2.0 almost to a T.  The Marlins, who were at the mercy of that no-trader were almost certainly forced to accept a lesser return than they would have received from either the Cardinals or the Giants, although there are very few tears being shed for the Marlins after all this.  Stanton now joins Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez as the latest incarnation of the "Bronx Bombers" or "Murderer's Row". What's a bit unusual for the Yankees is they are all RH batters.  The Yankees, who fell 1 game short of going to the World Series in 2017, are now the favorites to do that in 2018 and possibly beyond.

The Marlins "haul" in this trade is Starlin Castro who is owed $22 M over the next 2 seasons and 2 prospects from the lower minors who might be described as lottery tickets.  Jose Guzman seems to be the more promising.  He's a RHP with nice size and a high-90's FB who looks like he's most likely on the reliever track.  SS Jose Devers is defense-first with some projectability at the plate.  But basically, this was a massive salary dump for the Marlins.  It stinks for their fans and for all of baseball, except for Yankee fans, but maybe the Marlins new ownership legitimately feels it needs to clean up Jeffrey Loria's mess before they and start to build a winner in Miami?  That process does not appear to be particularly accelerated by either this deal or the recent trade of Dee Gordon as the Marlins are not getting top notch prospects back in either deal.

This trade appears to make a mockery of all of the efforts in recent CBA's to limit spending by big-market teams.  Bonus pools, CBT's, harsh penalties for circumventing the rules all punish prospects, but have done little or nothing to stop the big spenders from spending.  In baseball, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  This deal may make ownership more determined to push for a hard salary cap in the next round of CBA bargaining which could lead to a work stoppage, which would be very bad for everybody.  A hard cap might make the league more competitive, but would probably serve more to suppress the salaries of low-mid level players than to suppress superstar salaries.  The players might want to counter with a proposal for a payroll floor if MLB wants them to accept a hard cap.