Well, well, well! I can't say I saw this one coming either, although I was starting to wonder why the the Giants signed so many lefty relievers, even if they are all on minor league deals. They traded Taylor Rogers to the Reds along with half of his $12 M remaining salary for a minor league reliever names Braxton Roxby RHP. Hmm...like the name anyway. Although Rogers posted a 2.40 ERA last season, several of his indicators pointed in the wrong direction including declining FB velocity and K rate. His BB/9 remained above 3 for the 3'rd consecutive season after hovering around 2 early in his career. He appeared in 64 games, finished 16 but had 0 Save Opportunities. He took the Loss in 4 games while recording 1 Win.
The move leaves only one lefty reliever on the 40-man roster, Erik Miller, but the Giants signed multiple lefty reliever types to minor league contracts. The most prominent of those is Joey Lucchesi LHP who also has a $1.5 M MLB contract contingent on his making the opening day active roster. Enny Romero LHP is an under-the-radar signing who I think is a real darkhorse to watch in spring training. Other lefty reliever minor league signings include Raymond Burgos, Antonio Jimenez, Ethan Small and C. J. Widger. Chris Wright LHP is coming off injury and is listed on the AAA Sacramento roster.
I’m rooting for our hometown favorite, Lucchesi … although he has a tendency to look great, then fade quickly. If he can overcome his past control problems, Joey could be a real contributor.
ReplyDeleteEnny Romero is my guy, but Lucchesi seems to have the inside track to replace Rogers.
DeleteUh oh … newly promoted pitching coach JP Martinez thinks the Giants are heading into spring training with 15-16 “legitimate” starters, according to Baggarly.
ReplyDeleteLike i mentioned in the other post, it boggles my mind that the Giants traded/sold a pretty darn good lefty reliever in Taylor Rogers for some 25 year old never will be minor league schlub and 6 million. By all accounts a salary dump...Are the Giants ownership that hard up for money??? From a baseball standpoint, unless forced to do it, this move seems idiotic by either Buster or GMZM... as they are willing to leave the team with only ONE LHRP in Erik MIller, and even that is not a sure shot, with nothing but the recent minor league trash dumpster dive signings....I have seen many times where, especially early in the season, an incompetent and leaky bullpen quickly destroys a season before it even gets started...But, that will be on Buster.
ReplyDeleteSteveVA
Taylor Rogers has not exactly been a guy you could count on in high leverage situations and his numbers are trending down. We'll see if Buster really believes in the current roster or if he's just keeping his cards face down. After Burnes signed with the D'Backs, Buster said he was going to pivot to looking for a hitter but then signed Verlander.
DeleteI’m pretty sure Grichuk will be the next move they make. I wasnt a big fan but guess I could warm up to him. If I squint really hard I can almost see what Buster is thinking…. This guy could be the next Burrell or Pence!
ReplyDeleteBuster says they are set at around $167 mil with the roster they have. Thats about $40 mil less than last year. I think this team is good enough to finish around .500 again which I thought was a trend Buster was going to break one way or the other. Maybe they are worse than .500 and hopefully much worse so this season actually means something.
ReplyDelete- Concerned fan
Real payroll and CBT payroll are two completely different numbers and it's not completely clear to me which payroll number is being quoted. Per Cot's contracts, which seems to be the most accurate tracker of payrolls, The Giants CBT payroll prior to the trade was approximately $220 M and the threshold is approximately $241 M. I may be wrong but I think they can take $11 M off the CBT payroll with the trade which would get them down to about $209 M or $32 M below the threshold. So it's conceivable that Buster is angling for a run at one of Alonso/Bregman/Flaherty. Or, he could make a lesser add and keep a war chest for a big midseason trade or two. Or, he could be just going cheap to please his fellow owners.
DeleteCan't subtract all of Rogers' salary, Giants will pay ~half
DeleteRosterResource (via fangraphs) shows $217,467,143, or ~$23.5M to the $241M threshold
Deletehttps://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/payroll/giants
I just looked up MLB.com and it says there the CBT threshold for 2025 is $237 M. I am also not sure about the rules for money that is included in trades. The Giants are sending $6 M to the Reds in the deal but technically the Reds will be paying him $12 M this season. The only thing I could find in the CBT "rules" is that the calculation is based on the AAV of the contracts of players on the 40-man roster. One other point. Payroll for CBT is calculated at the end of the season not at the beginning so it is extremely difficult for teams and outside analysts to know exactly where a team's payroll is in relation to the threshold. It's all very confusing. It's like the verse in the Bible that says "some cried one thing, some another" in describing a situation of mass confusion.
DeleteDon'cha think they wanted the $6M to get them to $23½M for something g-o-o-d?
ReplyDeleteWon't be Randal Grichuk: he goes to AZ for ~$6M after incentives and buyout for one year. Buster obviously didn't want him.
The best remaining free agents include 3B Alex Bregman, 1B Pete Alonso, SP Jack Flaherty, RP Tanner Scott, INF Ha-Seong Kim, RP Carlos Estévez, SP Nick Pivetta, OF Alex Verdugo and SP Max Scherzer.
Scratch Kim
DeleteScratch Tanner Scott, signed by you-know-who down south for $72M plus a vesting optio non the 5th year
DeleteGrichuk remains unsigned, no?
DeleteThe highest grade i could give this trade is a C. Roger's had become an effective lefthanded 6th inning middle reliever for the Giants. But overpaid at $12 mil per year. I can understand why they would want to dump his salary, but this leaves the team with only 1 experienced Major league reliever which is risky. Its too bad for former 1st round pick LHP Reggie Crawford that he's out for 2025 due to shoulder surgery. He would have been the perfect replacement for Roger's. But if this trade leads to a bigger move, maybe the grade will go higher.
ReplyDeleteI see it as more than a salary dump. I think it was also a player dump. There were just too many games in which Rogers just didn't get the job done. The Giants brought in a bunch of lefthanded relievers on minor league deals. They want to give those pitchers a real shot at making the team and Rogers and his contract were blocking a roster spot.
Delete"Reggie Crawford...would have been the perfect replacement for Rogers"
ReplyDeleteWHAT????
Reggie Crawford would have been the perfect replacement for Roger's coming from their farm system. He threw a high 90s fastball. Before he got hurt. There was talk that he would have been called up before he got hurt.
DeleteCrawford had the tools to be a dominant reliever but he's pitched a total of 37.1 innings in his pro career.
DeleteAs the last poster said, if the money saved is poured into another significant acquisition, some of the rest is irrelevant....but....if not???
ReplyDeleteWell, I am a huge Buster fan, the player and person, but the more i read about this move, the more i think Buster and GMZM are being idiots and risking making the season inconsequential from the get go..The rotation is worse and has more questions than last season, the bullpen is worse and has more questions and less depth that last year....And Taylor is dealt why, because this great high and exalted aging out of touch manger Bob Melvin didn't trust him? OK..
At least the Giants improved at SS, but that is the extent of their improvement from a pretty mediocre moribund team. and I hope Adames doesn't see the team and think who cares if I continue to decline in the field, we ain't going anywhere..
SteveVA
Bob Melvin is not the only person who didn't trust Taylor Rogers. As a fan, every time he came in the game I said to myself, "oh no!".
DeleteThis is the bluesky comment from Andrew Baggarly: "Just talked to Posey. He said he hated breaking up the Rogers twins, but they wanted to create chances for younger arms in the bullpen. Doesn't sound like there are plans to reinvest the $6M SF saved. "We'll keep looking. I will say, we feel pretty set with the roster the way it is right now.""
ReplyDeleteBuster must have a reason, otherwise, does it make sense?
ReplyDeleteSince the Giants will pay $6M of Rogers' $12M salary, they are just getting $6M salary relief for his 1.1 bWAR. (Fangraphs shows a lower WAR because, for the most part, they don't value relief pitchers, stating "it does not make sense to give a reliever full value for the credit of his leverage index": see https://blogs.fangraphs.com/war-and-relievers.)
Again, it's not clear to me how this affects the CBT threshold. It's not completely clear to me what that threshold is or how it is calculated and it's not clear to me if the Giants internal payroll target is the threshold or some other number.
DeleteThe CBT gets complicated with trades, churn, and bonuses. I think Snell has a bonus that hits the CBT somewhere down the line and players on 60 day IL are on it. I’m not clear how much the Rogers trade affects the CBT if it’s $6 million saved or $11 million.
DeleteWhen Buster says "we're fine with our team as it is" its better than Steve Cohen saying "we need a pitcher" and then the price goes up.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who watched every game last year, I just don't understand how anyone could be surprised and/or peeved about trading Taylor Rogers. Shipping out his brother, on the other hand, would've been a different matter. The writing was on the wall when the Giants put him on waivers at the end of the season, but there were no takers. And one of the busiest areas for Buster this offseason has been adding relief arms through minor league deals, which seems like a pretty savvy way to add a lefty set up arm in the bullpen.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Baggarly says:
ReplyDelete1. Logan Webb
2. Justin Verlander
3. Robbie Ray
4. Jordan Hicks
5. Kyle Harrison (presumptive)
6. Ryan Walker
7. Camilo Doval
8. Tyler Rogers
9. Sean Hjelle
10. Erik Miller
11-13 Pick 3:
Hayden Birdsong
Landen Roupp
Keaton Winn
Tristan Beck
Spencer Bivens
Mason Black
Carson Seymour
Carson Ragsdale
Trevor McDonald
Randy Rodriguez
Plus Joey Lucchesi, Raymond Burgos, Ethan Small, and a wrath of FA signings
Baggarly concludes with, "It does not sound as if the Giants have immediate plans to reinvest the $6 million they saved in the trade."