With about 30 hours to go before the deadline (no waiver trades this year), this trade season has been surprisingly quiet so far. So perhaps this title is tempting fate.
Stroman is the only major piece to be traded thus far, and the A’s acquisitions of ex Royals have been barely enough to whet the palate.
A’s have been linked to Syndergaard, Wheeler, Roark, and various relievers. We’ll see if they go incremental upgrades like last year (tbh my preferred route) or cash in everything (ala 2014).
Feel free to use this as a GT for the series against the Brewers starting tonight.
It’s interesting that everyone prefers the cautious approach. I wouldn’t mind a blockbuster as long as there are multiple years involved. If you make Luzardo available, he’s probably the best prospect available in MLB. Zig while the market zags.
I do think that the prospect hoarding across MLB has become too much. But because of that, it has to be almost an overpay for a top prospect. Think Luzardo/Mateo/Beck for Syndegaard AND Wheeler. Or maybe a little more for Syndegaard AND Diaz. Keep two of Luzardo/Puk/Murphy though. If you go pure valuation, the A’s will come out drastically ahead in those deals. Because when you offer something no one else is offering, you get a premium. Maybe I’m reading the market wrong. And if that’s the case, I guess I agree with those who want to stand pat.
But there’s also a benefit to a blockbuster. The A’s need some good publicity. They have to have some postseason success. These next couple years determine whether they can actually build a ballpark, and can ever steal market share in the Bay. They positively need to win in the postseason in the next 2-3 years. Or else the new park becomes too expensive to privately finance, they remain 30/30 in TV and no casual fan even knows they exist. Hell, national media deadline articles don’t even mention Oakland. National writers don’t know they exist!
Luzardo/Barretto/Beck?
Thanks, and go As.
For secondary pieces, you’re at the whim of the team you’re dealing with. Maybe it’s Mateo, maybe it’s Barreto. Maybe it’s Lazarito instead of Back. Maybe they love Daulton Jeffries or Grant Holmes or Kap. Maybe they really want the rights to Kyler Murray.
The only real thing you get to insist is if you’re getting Luzardo, you aren’t getting Murphy/Puk.
I would agree if this was 2014 pre meltdown and they looked like the best team in the league. But even with Thor, there’s just too many questions throughout the roster to go all in for me.
Maybe if Montas didn’t get suspended, or if KD, Treinen, Trivino, and Piscotty were having great years, and 2B wasn’t a black hole…
But that’s the thing. Are you going all in? You get Syndegaard (for example) for 2.5 years. You only have Chapman for 4 more years after this. Basically you’re sacrificing 4 years of Luzardo (2 of those without Chapman) and all your secondary offerings for a (likely) improved chance in 2020-2021 and maybe 10-15% win expectancy increase in a wild card game in 2019.
Say everybody hits their best case scenario. Looking back, would you have traded 2000-2006 Mark Mulder for 2000-2002 Curt Shilling?
Right, the concern is that with the amount of holes the roster has, and probably still has going into the 2020-21 window, paying the price to get Thor to fill one hole will cost the team’s ability to take care of other roster deficiencies. Assuming the secondary pieces given up are potentially impactful ones as well, I suppose my hope is that they could’ve been utilized to plug those holes either by themselves or through other trades.
Thor could solve one major problem for you in the window, but both the price to get him, and the money required to keep him, will hurt your ability for everything else.
I think I could stomach losing Luzardo or Puk for a package that includes Syndergaard. I’d lean toward to keeping Puk over Luzardo, because shoulder injuries scare me.
I really do not want to see Murphy traded. A young, potentially elite defensive catcher who can hit is just not something i would feel good about giving up.
A lot of this probably depends on what the A’s scouts are telling them about Syndergaard right now. Pitchers being what they are, there is a non-negligible chance that the age 22-23 seasons of Luzardo are more valuable than the age 27-28 seasons of Syndergaard. That outcome would turn it from a reasonable move to maximize the Chapman/Olson/Semien/Laureano affordability window to an utter disaster.
Only Murphy is untradeable IF we go big. But Syndergard or Wheeler alone no way I’d give up Puk or Luzardo. If they both came or Diaz was added, I’d be open to either and if the circumstances were right, even both of them.
I don’t think I could trade both unless it was for like Trout. That really would be going all in. As for Murphy, if the dude could stay healthy, I’d love him. But can he? As is, I want him up on August 31, just in case he lights the world on fire.
But untradeable? If healthy, maybe. If Luzardo/Puk had pitched every game, they’d probably be untradeable too.
I’m not too worried about Murphy’s injuries. Certainly not to the level of Luzardo/Puk both with critical arm issues. Murphy is playing a premium position we have no others really on the roster. And by most accounts his offense is right back on track. He’s not totally untradeable, but I’ve yet to see any names thrown around that would make it worth it.
Ugh. Did we jinx him?
We? No, I’m pretty sure this one was all me. And you warned me.
The more I think about it, the more I would be 100% on board for dealing Luzardo to get Thor, but I really don’t want to include players currently on the 25 unless it’s Profar.
Luzardo/Bolt/Kapreliean/something else?
Thanks, and go As.
Since a Syndergard trade would be with the Mets, maybe they would just take a lot of bad prospects.
roark seems like a guy that will cost too much for too little.
As said above 20-21 need to be optimized.
Butwhy.gif
Thanks, and go As.
He definitely wants out of Cleveland but I suspect other teams are wary of the baggage he brings.
I like the angle where you can see Francona say “what the FK is wrong with you?” when he gets to the mound.
There’s no way he is as crazy as Milton Bradley was.
I want him and I want Puig.
Thanks, and go As.
Actually I could see Billy being uncomfortable with the Puigs and Bauers specifically because of the Bradley adventure.
In addition to those issues Bauer also brings a big-money arbitration situation for next year with him. The A’s already have Semien to deal with and while they might be willing to take on another one of those, the head-case stuff regarding Bauer could be a deal-killer
puig?
I may or may not be covetously watching Syndergaard pitch right now.
Schrodinger’s Syndergaard?
He’s dominating and I want him bad.
Someone go to CJ Wilson’s car dealership and tell him.
It’s already the final week of games at the Coliseum before the Raiders tear up the field. I wonder how many people will show up for that first preseason game. You’d think the bleachers at the practice fields over in Alameda would handle the crowd.
Note: There aren’t any Raiders games at the Coliseum between August 10 and September 9 (second preseason “home” game will be played in Winnipeg). After that, their first two regular season games are at home (Sept. 9 and 15), then no more games at the Coliseum until after the World Series (one “home” game is at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium).
lol
Pretty crazy looking situation.
Why the FK would Puig have still been on the field?
To show his new team how quickly he can get suspended.
Indians are getting Franmil Reyes, Puig, and LHP prospects Scott Moss, Logan Allen, and a 18 year old OF prospect.
I gotta say, I think they made out like bandits here.
I don’t understand what the Padres are doing.
They really like Trammell who was ranked as a top 15 prospect by some publications before the season.
Basically, you are doing arbitrage on Reyes v Trammell
How did the jays get such weaksauce for estrada?
You mean Stroman?
yes… thats what i meant
guys, guys.
are we reverting to oldcountry tactics?
i mean, enough with the stroman arguments?
BOTTOM L1NE
Rim shot.
Flipped on the radio broadcast and the first thing I heard was Fosse speaking in emotional tones about brats he has eaten in Milwaukee.
I’ll look at the A’s Access changes but I doubt they can make it make sense for someone coming from 200 miles. I’ll get to 10 home games this year and that is my ceiling, and just don’t think I can use enough of the benefits to make the 10-game plan make sense over buying individual games.
Diekman time
can we retire the “the thing about ________, he can get both lefties and righties out”
Fully onboard the extend Marcus train.
is he a Boras guy too?
According to Cot’s, his agent is Steve Canter
Diekman’s delivery is indeed weird.
good new guy
I don’t think I would trust him in a bases loaded situation any more than I trust Buchter though.
like getting a #3 at the deadline
just walk him bob
Buchter sucks.
I know it’s Yelich and everything but it just never feels like Buchter comes through in an important LOOGY situation.
was yabu not warmed up?
New guy moves to closer
I wondered how long it would take for Hendriks to revert to the mean. Maybe a little longer than I thought, but we’re here. They need to get Treinen fixed for these next two months.
KD!!!
That Friday night game was so pathetic, it must have lit a fire in there somewhere.
Murphy pulled from the game after hitting a double…
Murphy pulled in Vegas. Call up or #hugwatch?
Can’t go with one catcher for long. I’ll bet call up.
Yeah almost definitely Phegley to IL.
Or, more like Murphy to the IL. Crap.
That isnt supposed to he an option! But it’s the A’s so of course…
Welp, this makes sense. I figure his injury stuff wasn’t long term and therefore less willing to trade him. So naturally he proves me wrong.
I was right about Phegley to the IL anyway.
Pls see Soaker’s “revert to mean” comment.
I really wanted to have to retract that one but, nope, it stands.
Ugh, same thing happened in the Rangers game. Hendriks falls in love with throwing his fastball and doesn’t mix in his breaking pitches as much.
He seems to have realized this – 4 straight sliders to the next batter for the K.
That was the best Treinen inning maybe this season.
Now pie.
Hader pie?
Haderade.
replenishing
Pass me another bottle.
i’m sorry to those who reported it first, this was the first I heard
We’re getting Roark
Ok. I mean. OK.
OK is the perfect way to describe this.
If our second round pick in that draft got us Roark, imagine what our first round pick could bring back!
But Hannah isn’t very good tho
https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects/the-board/2019-in-season-prospect-list?sort=-1,1&team=oak,cin
neither is Roark.
Thanks, and go As.
I disagree. Very solid upgrade. Hes going to eat a ton of innings and give our bullpen a break. The cost was a middling OF prospect who wasn’t hitting. Someone who even now doesn’ project to be a regular.
https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/as-nab-tanner-roark-from-reds-deal-of-jameson-hannah/
Reds picking up $2.1m
That’s all they give a fuck about. My god this ownership disgusts me
Thanks, and go As.
This is sorta cool though
Thanks, and go As.
So overall a pretty non flashy deadline, same as last year. Admittedly it seemed like more upgrades were made last year, but they had the advantage of the waiver period where they conducted most of their additions (Fiers, Rodney, Kelley, Gearrin).
The prices bandied about by the sellers seem to be pretty ridiculous (especially by the Mets who are somehow keeping everyone). I’m ok with the A’s strategy – there’s a chance that the internal additions of Puk/Manaea, maybe even Piscotty/Luzardo could be more impactful that an overpriced addition.
I really wish they did something about 2B
Ugh, we couldn’t have done this?
Are we sure he’s better than Profar?
He has a strong track record and while he’s been bad so far this year, it’s a small sample and I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt that it’s taking him time to round back into form after missing most of the season. Profar has been bad the entire season and it shouldn’t take much to do better than his 0 WAR.
Zaidi also dumped the Melancon contract and somehow got value back from Pom Pom. A pretty solid day’s work by that guy.
I’m hoping Pom Pom has occasion to punch another Coliseum chair before the Brewers leave town.
Now’s our chance.
Damn, the Astros just got Greinke. How nice to have an ownership that pays for shit.
Martin, Bukauskas + two others, it seems
they are happy to be good through 2023, so they can trade some assets
Murphy reinjures his knee :-(
We are heading into the pennant race with Chris Herrmann and Beau Taylor as the catching corps. Not great.
the unified deadline is dumb with a playin wildcard.
If the problem was too many big trades in August, all that needed to happen was someone needs to claim and be willing to pony up the cash for big ticket players like Verlander. The Astros should be rewarded for being willing to do it.
The anti-Canha
Don’t encourage his bad choices, Stomper!
Was that in Oakland? Cause they don’t have an Arby’s that not an hour away. I can’t imagine those fries still being any good. Certainly not fresh.
Barreto’s approach is so FKed up. I’ve never seen any A’s player take so many hittable pitches and swing at pitcher’s pitches.
Stop sending the fking runner on 3-2. It distracts the batter and makes them swing at shitty pitches to “protect”.
hey guys, Homer bailey might not be good-
I’m almost tempted to keep Mengden in the rotation over him.
And definitely Bassitt, who Slusser indicated would probably lose his spot when Manaea is back.
In an entirely unrelated observation, Brett Anderson’s 127 IP is the 3rd highest total in his 11 year career.
So last night at the game I saw a fan walking around with a milton bradley shirt but the numbers on the back were weird. no gold outline on the “22.”
Ken: At that point Goldschmidt had homered in seven of the past eight games.
Ray: Sounds like a broken record! … or… a record that keeps on repeat ing itself!
Chapman’s completely disappeared at the plate ever since the ankle injury.
lol
Nice.
If this kid can learn a changeup or something in the next couple of weeks, the seventh inning is his.
Might be time for me to dust off the old arm and see if I can break 50.
*Walking through Coors Field concourse*
“Hold my beer, gonna try out for the A’s.”
I can’t seem to find it now, but I swear when I first read this I saw that he was doing work at the Academy/whatever you want to call it run by Jarrod Parker. Which I mean, hey who better to take a risk on, right?
It’s mentioned here.
more like need to learn to deal with the mound
real the link ed
It’s super FKed up that there is no A’s game tonight.
Getting a chance to see this “Gingergaard” fellow with the Dodgers who looks like he’s cut from the same cloth as Mark Fidrych.
and lucroy DFA
So the Astros nearly killed Lucroy and then traded Max Stassi to make sure Lucroy wouldn’t have a job when he got back.
Without going through all 29 I’d assume there are a few teams that are a little thin at catcher and could use a veteran fill-in to finish the year, one such team being in Oakland.
Well, we did claim a former A’s catcher on waivers from LAA:
Rough couple of years for Ryan Dull, but I’ll take a moment to recognize his truly excellent 2016 for a bad A’s team. I still don’t know how he did it, but he did it.
Shitty right-handed hitter Bob Melvin must have gone to Beane and Forst and insisted that having a shitty right-handed hitter as a catching option would be better than having two left-handed hitting catchers. Cheap price on Garneau too with no obligation to take on Lucroy’s remaining $1M or so.
They can also wait out Lucroy’s DFA status and try to snatch him up for the pro-rated minimum. Assuming either he or the A’s are interested at that point.
Garneau has already used up his full allocation of hits and RBIs for August so that might still be considered. I was thinking Lucroy is decent enough that somebody in the line ahead of the A’s would make a waiver claim.
I know the Angels have 7 days from the DFA, which was Thursday, to do something with Lucroy, but since trades aren’t an option now I don’t quite understand why they would not put him on waivers immediately.
Why would we (or anyone) want Lucroy? He’s not good at anything anymore.
He has familiarity with much of the A’s staff, and specifically I would say he caught Trivino and Treinen when they were pretty dang good. Is he that much worse than Phegley? I don’t think so, and if Phegley is going to be out until the rosters expand Lucroy seems like a better way to go than Garneau. I get the Garneau pickup, they must think Phegley will be back before the end of August and then they can DFA Garneau, outright him and have him as the third catcher in September.
he doesn’t, however have familiarity with catching a baseball
Offensively he’s awful. But he’s potentially better than what we have, which is dreadful. Defensively, he’s likely better than what we have too. Though early reviews of Garneau are promising.
Dull claimed off waivers by the Giants.
please be up on the 13th
Nice try, Ed.
He pitched all of 3 innings for Sacto, allowing 3 runs (2 HR).
His K rate has remained decent, in both majors and minors. Even in his 1 or 2 good years here he was somewhat HR prone, so it might just be that he is especially ill-suited to the current scoring environment.
the ball has to be altered next year, yeah? this is unsustainable
Yeah, whatever manufacturing issue that they’ve created has to be fixed.
The theory I heard was the the reason the ball is carrying so well is that they did fix some manufacturing issues, resulting in a ball that wobbles less in flight.
right, it needs to be fixed back
Like when they put the crayon back in Homer’s head
It’s a new manufacturer from my understanding. I thought they used a “better” method that causes the string to be wound tighter making it fly smoother/farther. But it’s dumb. Whatever it is, as Ed said, they need to fix it back.
Please be up on the 20th!
He’ll be released again just before they face the A’s.
What’s the record for MLB teams in 1 season for a single player?
Five set by Oliver Drake last year.
Dull never played for SF (only Sacto) so will only get up to three if he gets in a game for Toronto.
Of course it would be the Rays who made Drake good enough to keep.
And Toronto closes the season with 3 games vs. Tampa Bay.
Looking forward to going to the games this weekend. My roomie is a Cubs fan and fuels on Cardinal hate. So far we’ve only been to one game this year, but it was the no-hitter, so that was pretty sweet.
Keep that up then for this weekend, then get tix for the rest of the year. That would be a record of some sort I think.
We’re going to Sunday’s game, I’ll keep an eye out for you. We’re in S124 on the aisle between 124/5 if you want to wander over that way. Possibly with a Cards fan.
MLB.com’s new top 30 prospect list for the A’s
1. Luzardo
2. Puk
3. Murphy
4. Mateo
5. Puason
6. Allen
7. Davidson
8. Neuse
9. Barrera
10. Beck
Speaking of Beck: Jo Adell, the guy the Angels picked four spots after him, is already in AAA.
Wild game going on in Philadelphia. The Phillies used pitcher Vince Velasquez as a pinch runner in the 13th, and then left him in to play left field in the 14th while moving centerfielder Roman Quinn to the mound. Quinn threw a scoreless inning, helped by Velasquez throwing Jose Abreu out at the plate.
Hearing Bob Costas call the Yankees game today on YES is giving me warm flashbacks to simpler days.
Two-homer game for Eric Sogard.
Including today, the Rays’ next 21 games are Miami, Toronto, Seattle, San Diego, Detroit, Seattle, Baltimore.
That could be a problem.
Over or under on 19-2?
I love the powder blue uniforms.
One of my earliest baseball memories is watching the 1982 World Series on tv, so these uniforms are pretty evocative for me.
Yeah, I think it’s based on early memories for me too.
Even amongst the clubs with powder blues these are top notch. The red is a nice complement and those birds on the bat…
They look like pajamas.
All baseball uniforms look like pajamas.