The Evil Empire flexed their financial and player resources again yesterday agreeing to a trade with the Tampa Bay Rays for Tyler Glasnow RHP and Manuel Margot OF. The Dodgers send Ryan Pepiot RHP and Jonny Deluca OF to the Rays, an interesting exchange. Let's break it down:
Tyler Glasnow RHP. DOB: 8/23/1993. 6'8", 225 lbs.
2023: 10-7, 3.53, 120 IP, 12.15 K/9, 2.78 BB/9, GB/FB= 1.62. fWAR= 3.2.
Glasnow is an ace pitcher when he's on the mound. He's just had a tough time staying there with last year's 120 IP was the most of his career. He missed about half of 2021 and most of 2022 with Tommy John surgery. He missed about 10 starts last year with a dreaded oblique strain. The Dodgers don't have a great track record of keeping their pitchers healthy, but they have managed to patch up Clayton Kershaw every year and get him back out there. I mean, that dude's career seems to have been hanging by the thread for at least the last 5 years or more. Glasnow is not coming cheap. In addition to the players going to the Rays, he is under contract for $25 M next season which was then extended to a reported 5 years/$135 M after the trade was announced as conditional on an extension. Again, if he stays healthy he's an ace but there is lots of risk here. As I have said many times, I am not sure risk has any meaning in Dodger Land.
Manuel Margot OF. DOB: 9/28/1994. B-R, T-R. 5'11", 180 lbs.
2023: .264/.310/.376, 4 HR, 9 SB, 5.4 BB%, 16.4 K%, 336 PA, fWAR= 0.4.
At this point in his career I think we can safely say Manuel Margot is not on the edge of a breakout season. He's been remarkably consistent and mediocre for 7 seasons now. Contact hitter who does not walk much, low power, some speed but does not get on base enough to use it. Better against LHP's. Most of value is in CF defense but that has slipped the last two seasons. This feels more like the Dodgers taking on salary to limit what they had to give up to swing the trade than anything. May be able to pair up with James Outman who bats L to form a CF platoon.
Ryan Pepiot RHP. DOB: 8/21/1997. 6'3", 215 lbs.
2023(AAA): 0-2, 3.97, 22.2 IP, 10.32 K/9, 1.99 BB/9.
2023(MLB): 2-1, 2.14, 42 IP, 8.14 K/9, 1.07 BB/9.
Of the Dodgers stable of young starting pitching, Pepiot probably has the lowest ceiling. He's bounced between the minors and MLB over the past two seasons and has also spent time on the IL. He's got two things going for him: 1. A terrific changeup. 2. extremely low walk rates. What he has lacked is a third pitch making it tough to project him as a long term SP. Per Fangraphs, he added a cutter last season which was effective at limiting hard contact. If he can continue to use the cutter effectively, he can be a solid mid-rotation SP.
Jonny DeLuca OF. DOB: 7/10/1998. B-R, T-R. 5'11", 196 lbs.
2023(AA): .279/.380/.590, 10 HR, 9 SB, 9.9 BB%, 18.3 K%, 142 PA.
2023(AAA): .306/.397/.548, 7 HR, 3 SB, 11.4 BB%, 15.8 K%, 184 PA.
2023(MLB): .262/.311/.429, 2 HR, SB, 6.7 BB%, 17.8 K%, 45 PA.
Younger version of Manuel Margot with possibly more power potential. Moved quickly through the minors with an interesting combination of power and speed. Although his SB totals are modest, per Fangraphs, he has exceptional speed in the OF to track down balls in CF. Gotta feel for him a little bit. He made an appearance on behalf of the Dodgers at a groundbreaking out in San Bernardino just hours before the trade was announced. So it goes in MLB.
The key to this trade is whether Tyler Glasnow can stay healthy. If he does, it adds to the Dodgers aura of invincibilty. If he doesn't, well, they still seem to be pretty much invincible.
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Buster Posey spoke with Andrew Baggerly of The Athletic in the wake of the Shohei Ohtani negotiations which created a bit of a social media firestorm. Posey played a central role in the ownership group trying to persuade Ohtani to come to SF and transform the team and city. Although Buster did not get into specifics of what was said, apparently Ohtani expressed concerns about the reputation of San Francisco as a city in decline and rife with drugs, homelessness and crime. It sounds like Buster pushed back on that narrative with a heartfelt expression of love for the city and region, including the fact that he and Kristen chose to move back from Georgia after being gone for just 1 year, but he went on to say Ohtani is not the only prospective free agent to express these concerns and opined that at some point perception is reality.
Unfortunately, Buster may be finding out the hard way that when you open up like that, media and social media are going to cherry pick the most provocative segments and leave out the context so this is being painted as Buster trashing the city of San Francisco, the city he just moved his family back to! Sadly this is all part of a concerted narrative being built with political motivations to demonize San Francisco's reputation as a bastion of liberal politics. While I personally consider myself more middle of the road politically than some San Francisco politicians and in some cases the voters there may have gone too far in their progressive voting, the narrative of a failed city is grossly overblown, IMO.
While San Francisco has long had it's share of homelessness and accompanying problems, it is nowhere near alone among American cities. I and my family recently visited friends in San Diego which is not exactly known for it's liberal politics, and went to a ballgame at Petco Park. Driving to the park, it was shocking to pass block after block of encampments lined up along the sidewalks as well as in and around the parking areas for the ballpark. The next day we ate lunch with family in Little Italy part of town. There were many people roaming around in obvious socioeconomic distress literally foraging for food out of garbage cans. It was a shocking and heartbreaking. I wrote a post on my private Facebook page declaring it to be nothing short of a humanitarian crisis requiring a top-priority, long term commitment to solutions by our state and national leaders. My daughter, who lives in Georgia, tells me Atlanta has similar issues there. So, it's not just San Francisco and not just California. Statistically, San Francisco is nowhere near the top of the list of American cities in violent crimes.
The silver lining in this kerfuffle is it gave players like Logan Webb, who are committed to the team and city, to speak up and defend the city which might not have happened if Buster had just kept quiet and not said anything.
Well, has he really moved to SF? Or back to Lafayette? Certainly the critics are cherry-picking from his comments but I appreciate that BP is just pointing out the obstacles to attracting top players. That kind of straightforwardness must have been invaluable in the clubhouse during the Posey era of super success.
ReplyDeleteThe first step in addressing or solving a problem is recognizing it exists.
DeleteThink it's beyond politics, baseball players have to go through lots of hardships to including minor leagues
ReplyDeleteI have advocated for better working conditions for minor leaguers for a long time. Not sure what that has to do with the subject at hand.
Deletesorry went off track a little, somehow they seem related.
DeleteNo worries. Thank you for reading and commenting.
DeleteI have friends in Iowa and Arkansas. Very right-leaning, both. And to hear them talk (ignorantly) of San Francisco, you'd think it's Sodom & Gomorrah x a million. In general, California is completely villainized. But then SF is the focal point of that hate. So it's a perception thing definitely.
ReplyDeleteI was down at Petco a couple of years ago, and yeah, was very surprised at the number of homeless encampments near the park. The vibe felt very mellow though and we never felt any threat or hostility from the homeless people. Mostly they seemed to be younger. But it really does emphasize that these are issues in most, if not all large cities.
I think Ohtani kind of drank the kool-aid here if SF's issues factored into his decision. I have to believe that Triples Alley and the state of Giants were larger factors.
I have visited San Francisco, LA and San Diego within the last 2 years. SF has it's homeless population but not more than LA or SD. It's more visible in California than other states but mostly because we just have way more people in California so the same percentage is a much higher absolute number. It's a national crisis. Also, death rates from drug OD's and gun violence are greater in rural areas across the country.
DeleteUS homelessness up 12% to highest reported level:
ReplyDeletehttps://apnews.com/article/homelessness-increase-rent-hud-covid-60bd88687e1aef1b02d25425798bd3b1
This is a real crisis. It is frustrating to hear idiots attributing to this crisis to "wokeness."
Rates of homelessness are directly proportional to the cost of housing. It's an economic crisis. Cities have always had their skid rows. It's easy to look at people in that type of socioeconomic distress and say it's their own fault. On some level it might be but when you see it on this scale it's a system failure.
DeleteGood post Doc. I'm a big Buster posey fan and love visiting San Francisco. Larry Kruger, long time bay area sports talk person touched on what Buster said on a short you tube video. He said that what Buster talked about free agents not wanting to play for the Giants because of the bad stuff they're hearing about the city is not a flimsy or weak excuse. The city has problems That's Buster being honest and forthright. It's tough on FZ and the Giants when bad things about the city are spread among players and their wives. It surprised me since Larry is usually critical of FZ and how the Giants do business. The lesson for me is to be aware of the problems the Giants deal with regarding free agent pursuits, not all their doing. Hopefully players like Logan Webb can start spreading the good stuff about playing in San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteGood post...Cities do have problems..Not just SF..but LA, NY, CHI, Baltimore/DC (leonis moving his NHL & NBA team out) even my smaller city of Charlottesville! but we all know that in this country it is the media and social media that colors almost everything. We gotta remember, players aren't just signing to play baseball in a city for 5-10 years, they are moving and raising their family there...They will take any reports, anecdotes, media opinions seriously when comparing options. . Being an East coast guy, I don't know much about SF but if I go on what i read and see from, out here, an east coast bias media (we'll leave left vs right alone for now), SF gets slammed much more than the woeful cities out here. Is it true? Doesn't matter.. Matters what is said in media/social media...And that's what Posey is in part hitting on in identifying the problem...Unfortunately, identifying a problem, even if it is the way the media or social media reports it, gives the reported problem more weight......................However, are we making a mountain out of a mole hill here?..Are players not coming to SF because of the reputation of the city, or is it the recent reputation and performance of the team and especially the front office????...Maybe players just don't get the warm & fuzzies seeing how FZ & Kapler ran the team the last few years and they also don't get FZ or whoever as a salesman??
DeleteAlso, on another topic, it sure looks like the official Giant media are going into overdrive to build LEE into a star already. I like the pick up but let's not go overboard on his potential impact...Are they being proactive in advance of more expected FA failures (Yamamoto, Snell..)..Anyways..
SteveVA
The whole premise that players don't want to play for the Giants I think is overblown and on some level a false narrative. I do think hitters are wary of the ballpark for statistical reasons and elite free agents have more non-playing business opportunities in large media centers like LA and NY. The Giants have a pretty good track record of signing players to short term contracts, perform well and go on to sign bigger contracts with them or other teams. At this point I think the stench of how last season ended might be a bigger factor than the condition of the city.
DeleteI liked the Ray Ratto column in the defector which said that admitting San Francisco is your problem isn’t helping attract the next free agent. Also I’m very skeptical it is. Giants are just seen rightly or wrongly not seen as an top organization. And if they don’t offer the most money like with Ohtani — they merely matched — they won’t land players. I think that has more to do with people not taking their money than the city. Maybe the city hurts if all things are equal — but giants don’t seem to want to tilt things in their favor with cash.
ReplyDelete- Fan
An overpay for the right player is OK but you don't want to build a whole team out of overpays. As huge of a star as Ohtani is, I am not sure he's the guy you want to overpay at this point in his career. Maybe the Dodgers can handle the long term fallout of that contract but I would not want the Giants to be on the hook for it. I think it's way past time to move on from Ohtani and celebrate that they signed Jung Hoo Lee.
DeleteGood comments, I enjoy this blog very much, yes, I hope we can move on. I am tired of the name Ohtani.
DeleteHappy to agree to disagree on this one doc. I’ll stop beating the dead horse. Happy they signed Lee. Now onto Yamamoto!
Delete- Fan
I commented in another one of your threads Doc about Buster being niave and being one of Greg's "Boys"!
ReplyDeleteNothing further to say on that.
I live in Winnipeg Manitoba. Our NHL team is the Winnipeg Jets.
In the past it has been said players from other NHL teams dont want to sign with or be traded to Winnipeg.
The reason vary from its to cold in the winter, our hotels have rooms with doors that are to heavy, the wifi sucks, there is nothing to do for leisure activities.
Poor misbegotten yokals.
2 of our best players signed 7 year extensions to stay. One fellow is from Southern Ontario, the other is from Michigan.
They resigned and at their signing conference they said they resigned because they believe the team has a very strong chance of winning a Stanley Cup!
Players like to play on contenders/winners,
Richard in Winnipeg