Only 4 of 13 Accept Qualifying Offer - This week in baseball Ep. 637- 11.24.25

It is the season to be thankful and I'm thankful that we're almost out of the slow season of baseball as we head towards the winter meetings for some free agencies. Signings are underway and the awards have been given out. It's a slow week, but it's a good week this week in baseball. I think this is always the toughest part of the year. If you're a baseball fan, because you really feel it. If you were in a playoff team, because it's like the season ends and there was already nothing about your team.

But now there's nothing about any team right now. Turkey and baseball don't go together. No. You never go to a ballpark, right? And they don't offer turkey sandwiches at the ballpark. Hot dogs, yes. Turkey, no. So Thanksgiving and baseball, I I can't connect the two things other than I'm very thankful for baseball because it sustains me all year long.

Correct. And we obviously had a bunch of news. The awards were all given out. talked about those. We talked about those. I think for the most part they went to who we thought they were going to. I think it's just interesting. We're starting to see some of the qualifying offers go out who was rejected, who was non tender. Only four people actually ended up taking their qualifying offer, which kind of surprised me that it was such a low number of guys. And the guys that took them were probably, how can I say, smart to take them. You think about Shota Imanaga of the Cubs.

You know, was getting, well, he offers $22 million for the qualifying offer. He wasn't probably gonna get that on a new contract on the open market for his future. So just take the 22 now. you pitch your butt off this year and then maybe you can get another good contract. coming back from injury knows whatever he was gonna get this year he was gonna be taking. It's a prove it deal either way. So you take the prove it deal that's gonna make you the most money. That's a pitcher I like a lot and David Stearns, Pete Pobo with the Mets, you know, obviously knows him well and I...

was a part of me going, wish I wish they could maybe, you know, bring in Woodruff, but A, he's he's not a med, B, he gets injured a lot in the Mets have a lot of those guys. And C, he was never coming here because he signed the Q qualifying offer, which means he was never available to us in the first place. Trent Grisham and his thirty four home runs went back to the Yankees. Smart for him as well. Yankees happy if they get half of this totaled next season? If he had 17 home runs, are they happy with him? Here's what I would say if he played better defense.

because when he came to the Yankees, he was a defense first player and a guy who could maybe hit a little. And he outperformed everybody's expectations and probably including his own this year offensively. But defensively, he was ⁓ not a positive player. He was slightly below average, which really surprised me because I thought that was his specialty. And Gleyber Torres ⁓ is going to go back to Detroit and play. And he had an excellent year for them this year. So.

I think it's good. Those are obviously all the big name guys didn't accept it. You Schwab are taking a cue out this offseason. Kyle Tucker ain't taking one either. Right. This is the romancing season for the right. So so Schwab are like you said, Tucker Suarez, Rambo Valdez, Boba Shep, Dylan Seas, Edwin Diaz, Zach Allen, Michael King and Pete Alonso didn't take a call because he had one last year.

But he is not so right now it's romancing the players, right? They all bring them in, they buy them dinner, they tell them how much they're going to love them. And what I think is interesting is this is enough. This is an off season where you're not only, you know, whining and dining these guys that are from, you know, major league free agents. But this year you've got four guys coming in from the NBP and people are expecting expecting things from and you've got two position players in two pitchers.

because you've got the position players in a moon can moon and talk about Murakami and Kazuma Okada Okamoto. And then you've got Tatsuwa Imai and Kona Takahashi to all. You know, people are expecting things from these guys. You know, I think Okada was more of a known quantity. I he's coming over. He's 30. So you kind of know what you're getting hit with him. But Murakami is 25. And, know, he swings and misses a lot. But he hit some absolute bombs. And the Mets have been linked to him as a possible guy at the corner if they don't bring back Peter Lanzo.

And I think we know now about Japanese players in general that there are going to be more of them coming because they're handling it, obviously, I'm not talking about Shohei, he's a wrong guy to try to compare everything to. I think Shohei, when you look at Japanese players coming over, you almost have to remove Shohei because he's an outlier. You have to look at the other guys. Yamamoto, he's adjusted, he's looked unbelievable.

Sasaki it took a little while, at least he seemed to something I think has been a solid major league pro right saying I had an unbelievable start but injuries have sort of been a good season right and then he kind of fell off a little bit this year I'm blanking on the name of the guy that's up in Boston yes, she did. Yes. I don't know how good he's been for that. You know, not as good as they hoped it would be when I paid him all that fact that I'm saying that probably speaks to that but I think we have a

now that these guys are not only going to be decent major league players, they're going to be actually good major league players. Right. And so what are these guys going to be and where are teams going to value them in relation to guys like Schwab or in Kyle Tucker and Rangers Suarez? Like you've got big name players available and then you've got these guys that you know, it's like Murakami is 25. He might be able to hit 3040 home runs like some of these other guys, you know, like your Pete Alonzo at first base, but he's like

almost five or six years younger than him. Yeah, yeah, and won't cost you what Pete's gonna cost you. Exactly, so but there's the fear of you don't necessarily know, will it translate? Yeah, yeah, and Alonso did come, I guess, through his agent, Scott Boris, ⁓ say that, you know, I think Boris said that he is willing to DH, ⁓ you know, for some of the time. He doesn't want to be an exclusive DH, but, and I think that was sort of a ⁓ bouquet.

thrown at not only the Mets, but any other team, because if you were to have to sign that guy as a first baseman, I'm only going to play for a space to all that kind of stuff. I don't know. And it's interesting. He's going to want to do that. Especially that that announcement came out even after Josh Naylor has now signed with the Seattle Mariners long term, because that was one of Pete's biggest points of competition. a guy I wanted. Right. And now he's off the market. So Pete is really the big name left at first base for a team to make a move there. So him acknowledging sort of his own

flaws and limits as a player going forward. Certainly is going to open him up, open him up a lot more to top teams being interested in him. And we were talking about before we got on there, you were mentioning about, you know, does a player like Luis Arias, does he fit the blue J mold of contact and high, know,

You know, ability to get a hit when you need it. I think just sort of in general, like when you're looking at this offseason, the Blue Jays and the Brewers, because you have to put them up there, even though they had that terrible series against the Dodgers, though I think in part that a of teams do does work as an argument against this. But you saw that teams that had offenses that were built around high contact guys that could put the ball in play did relatively well this year. Larisa Riaz is a first baseman, at least.

by offensive metrics. Generally, he's not particularly well, like he doesn't hit for power. He's mostly a plus defensive player. Right. He was a terrible offensive guy last season, but he fits the mold of a guy that's going to put the bat on the ball and put pressure on the defense. So our team is there going to be some team out there that goes, you know what? We're going to buck trend and say what we need and maybe for the right team. That's what they need. They're like, we don't need a guy that's going to hit 30 homeruns at first base. We need a guy in this lineup.

That's gonna put the ball in play and be a consistent pesky bat low in our lineup. I think you would agree with me though that Luis Arias ain't no John Olerud. No. Right, so the point is that for me as an old guy, my corners, I want power from them. Not just me, but really at first base from a guy who just has no speed, right, so much you don't get at first base and no power. It would be different if Arias hit 40 doubles a season. Yeah.

don't know he hits 20. But exactly, if he hit 10 home runs in a season, but he was the type of guy where he hits a zillion doubles, I'm like, okay, I can live with that because he's still gonna have a slugging that's relatively high because he's hitting all these doubles all over the place.

and he's still keeping the bases moving, he's getting extra base hits, he's just not a guy that's hit you a ton of home runs. I can live with that. I can't hit a guy that doesn't hit any doubles and any home runs. Or he has to contribute in many different ways. You remember, I don't know if remember Doug Mankiewicz? Yeah. You know, right? So he was a guy who didn't really But he was an unbelievable defensive Unbelievable defensive first base spin. You know, good bat winning, he really helped the Red Sox win that World Series. you know-

That's a rarity, though. Right. Right. If Araya is also at the speed to steal 30 bases and play great defense now, it's like, OK, maybe you can change what a first baseman is normally thought But he's not doing that. He's really a one to a player. So another guy who is thought to and this happens a lot now is is Cody Ponce pitched in the KBO last year. And there's this thing about the KBO where you're broken.

You leave Major League Baseball, you go over there, and somehow it's happened to Eric Fetty. It's happened to a few of these guys. They come back and they find something when they're, you know, over there and they bring it back. All of sudden, they're like, wow, this guy's good now. He wasn't that good before. There might be some guys that just they're not going to that they're right on the line between AAA and the majors and sitting in AAA. They're never quite good enough to figure out what's wrong.

when they try to come up to the major leagues, but when you go to the KBO, which is- They don't care if they win or lose the KBO. No, no, no, no, no, no. The KBO is better than what's ever in the AAA, but it's not quite as good as what's in the major leagues. So now the guy that could dominate AAA but couldn't figure it out in the majors gets to the level where he's like, okay, that's what I need to do to be successful consistently. And I think also in both the NPB, right, in Japan and in Korea, that, you know, it used to be that these were like,

I don't call them junk ball leads, but they were curveball sort of more oriented. Not anymore. Right. These the both of those leagues have a lot of fastball pitchers and they have they have the curveballs as well. So now it's so much closer to Major League Baseball. And that's and that's why when guys are coming over, there's there's not an adjustment period as much because it's not like you're suddenly all you're really doing is being like, OK, every team's pitchers were like the best pitchers I was facing pretty much that like you're used to see. It's like, ⁓

Not every picture I face is like the best guy I ever saw. It's like, OK, yeah, he's like the better pitchers on each team pretty much. Cody Ponce is a guy that, you know, is like getting some looks right now because apparently a great success and what the heck is Cody? Right. But we saw it work for Fetty for a season and then it didn't quite work. it's not the kind of thing that necessarily is sustained. Like all of a sudden he found the miracle in Korea and now he's better forever. Not that way. The our favorite team were or not the Atlanta Braves. They did bring back Rossi Alex Glacier says they're closer and I'm

I guess I'm unhappy as a MetFan because he's really good and I thought, well maybe they won't have a closer, know, and they'll blow. Yeah, okay, the Braves are gonna go to the season without a closer. they also made a move, the trading there, Shortstop, who was a gold glove contender in Nick Allen and he got traded to ⁓ the Astros for Maurice Dubon, who's a ⁓ utility gold glove player.

So it's kind of an interesting swap and it makes me think that the Braves may want the shit. That's what I was saying. Shortstop there. Right. They've needed a shortstop for a long time. Their team that typically doesn't go out and put big money on free agents. But given the struggles they've had the last few off seasons and sort of the general malaise that seemed to kind of settle into that fan base where just nobody's been happy with where they've been since the World Series really. It's a high bar. But they felt.

You know, they had that unbelievable regular season just to go into the playoffs and get bounced by the Mets. And they've really never felt. Well, some of it's obviously a lot of its pitcher injuries, which, I assume the Braves are saying, OK, everybody should be OK. Good to go. Give them a lineup where if at this point this year, if we go out and we get boba shot and you pitchers still can't get it done, we have to move on. They're only from injury, though, because when you go in with the guys we talked about in our last podcast, right, sale and.

You knew this was always a thing with sale. can't be like, we got multiple healthy seasons out of him. So the idea that somehow now the Chris sale injury is like, you know, something you could ill afford. It's like, okay, you were always borrowing from Peter to pay Paul with that guy. A healthy season from him in 2024 and 2025.

probably means there's some time missing coming in the next few seasons. And you said, you know, the Braves weren't going to sit on their hands. Alex Anthopoulos has never been a guy to do that. And so you had to expect that they were going to. I'm just really worried about that team, as I always have. But we're right. You they've had some addition by subtraction because Alex Manoa apparently showed up on the Braves at some point last season. And now they've non tendered him. I don't think he's going to be able to find a team going. I remember Alec Manoa when he was pitching in the All-Star game, they had him miked up.

you know, in the All-Star game. I thought, well, how distracting, by the way, to be mic'd up and talking when you're pitching. But he did it because that's the All-Star game. And I thought, well, that was like the pinnacle of his like his powers. And then he had a pitch. got injured. And then the pitch clock came in and he's never been the same. just had to watch a guy fall that far that fast. Just really, it was surprising. ⁓ Other signings. And you'll remember this guy. And I had a thought about it. So Phil Maiton, who was briefly a med in two thousand and twenty four.

He signed with the Cubs for two years and you look at Maytown's advanced stats. They're really good, right? Really? I'm like, you know, it's like a whip of like one and know, he's ERA is low relievers though are really volatile You could have a season like that and then be terrible the next season. Here's what I remember about Phil Maytown

when the Mets needed him the most in the playoffs, he gave it up. And so, as a Met fan, I wouldn't trust that guy because of what happened in the biggest situations. he didn't somebody help you get The problem is that's such a bad way to evaluate players. course way of looking at it. But I just like, oh, you know, it's fine as long as he doesn't have to pitch in the playoffs, know, will we go? Well, you know what, if you're the Mets, that means you made the playoffs. Yeah, well, right now they could use that at this point, so.

And let's see, other guys that were resigned. Nothing that's going to really move the needles for a lot of teams. know, McCann resigned with Arizona James McCann, right? Jake Bowers signed in Milwaukee. Jonathan India resigned with the Royals. Tyrone Taylor resigned with the Mets. I think for all of those teams.

Really, think India is the only guy of those four that there's gonna be huge, any kind of expectations. I think the India also would have been, traded Brady Singer for him, so to let him go would have, you Right, they're gonna at least try and bring him back and pray he can rediscover being a good baseball player next season. But how about the non-Tendred guys? You were talking about this. I mean, look at Texas. They showed no mercy to their World Series heroes getting rid of Adolas Garcia and Jonah Hyde.

John Hyme was good, know, like, like what happened to like have him just fall out of favor so much. But he wasn't good. Yeah, apparently it wasn't good last year. Adalus Garcia had that monstrous April, I think, two years ago and pretty much since then, he's been one of the worst hitters in baseball. mean, he was a big contract guy to write. Right. But I mean, all of these guys, when you look up and down this list of non tendered guys, I mean, J.J. Bladay, Jake Fraley, M.J. Melendez, Alex Manoa, Mike Tauchman, Mark Laderjee, none of these guys.

we're putting together, you know, Michael Toglia. I thought Nathaniel Lowe being non-tended by Boston. They have a lot of first basemen you think about the fact that they're to get Cassis Right, with Cassis coming back, there's no need for But he's a guy, you know, as a team that might be for a first baseman, I would kind of go, well, you know, I wouldn't be my number one choice. Right, right. But how many teams are really being like, oh, well, we need to make sure we tighten up our backup first baseman position. Right, well, and.

be. Well, that's what it is for the Mets. You probably the starting for his right. they're not going to go sign him to be their starter. So he's kind of stuck on the sidelines until everybody else is done with their actual free agent moves and needs to move on to the tinkering stage of their offseason. Yeah, we're not there yet. And like you said, you've got, you know, a couple of you've got big things to happen in the next 30 days. And it seems like the real free agent season gets going with the beginning of the winter meetings next month, beginning of next month. So yeah.

I mean, there were a couple of like little trades this week. had Joey Weimar going to the Giants from the Marlins for cash. I mean, he's never really done much in the major leagues, it's just a two thirty six or three homers. the twins and the the Orioles exchanged some minor league players. But I don't think you're going to see a lot of movement in the offseason, like we've said, until we get to the winter meetings. Naylor resigning this early was unusual. Yeah. Yeah. So a writer I like a lot in both both for baseball and for not not.

is Will Leach and he wrote an MLB.com post an interesting question last week and that was all right. we expect the MVP race in in twenty twenty six to be between Aaron Judge and Cal Raleigh. guess you want to include him and Shohei Otani. So the question is, who are the other guys that might unseat him? And he put his his 10 guys out there and the American League. He put Nick Kurtz. Well, he put Raleigh as one of the guys because he didn't win it this year. Jose Ramirez.

Julio Rodriguez, and Bobby with Junior. That's not really going too out there. I think of those four guys, or of those five guys, Julio Rodriguez, the guy that kind of stands out to me, is the least likely guy to do it, just because he's never really statistically put up a season where if you looked at it going like, okay, well, in a different season.

that would win MVP, where all of those other guys have put together with exception of Kurtz, but Raul Ramirez and Bobby Wood Jr. have all had seasons where you go, well, in a different season, that guy's winning an MVP. All right, so give me one guy in the American League that's not on this list who you would throw out there. I have a thought pop into my head going, it would have I think if Bo Bichette resigns in Toronto, he could win an MVP. Wow, that's good, that's good. I'm gonna pick a guy who had a really good year in 2024.

Didn't have a really good year this year plays for a team that really needs him to have a good year plays a premium position in Gunnar Henderson Another guy that Gunnar Henderson could definitely win an MVP. I think your dad could win an MVP. Yeah, he just had to play full season

and match the whole time, right? Because when you're DH, I think, you know, unless you're Otani, it's really hard to, you know, And then in the NL, he named Corbin Carroll, he named Juan Soto, he named Paul Skeens. Skeens is tough because it's just so hard to win it as a pitcher. It happens, but it hasn't in a while. Tatis.

The one I disagree with on that he put on here is Ali De La Cruz. I don't I don't see he would like the Reds are going to take the next step. That's kind of what would have to happen. Right. But when I look at his player profile, his career profile for what he's put together in any given season, I'm like, OK, well, wait a second. He has to see massive growth in like multiple areas offensively for me to think of him as an MVP candidate because right now he's pretty much a minus defender and he can steal bases.

Yeah, minus the fender. Remember when he was, you know, like, he's not a great defensive shortstop. He's a good base dealer. He hits he hit 20 home runs, but he hit for a terrible average last season. So it's like, OK, that means all of a sudden he has to go from hitting 20 home runs to hitting 30 home runs. That's a big jump. He's hitting 50 percent more homers next season. He has to go over and strike out a ton to 30 to like probably hitting close to 300 or above if you're going to consider an in for an MVP.

Okay, wait a second I predict now I'm predicting a 10 home run crease and like a 60 70 point batting increase for this guy And he has to suddenly start playing good defense. like, okay That's too many things for me to put him in MVP discussion at least all the other guys I can kind of see it. The thing that surprised me was that Juan Soto has I guess I know this but Like right he's been playing nine years excellent years and he's never won an MVP and and is he gonna be one of those guys? I mean cuz show says Shohei's still in town, you know, so

He only takes is a year where Shohei gets hurt for him to win an MVP though. Well, he's had judge in what the other league He's also the guy that hurt by the existence of judge and Otani because Soto just sort of does his thing every year and then like if you look at his sum total in all of those years He actually sometimes ends up grading better out than these other guys But they have these crazy peaks where he loses out to them And it's also he's playing at the time of like there's three generational baseball players playing right now

Juan Soto can't be held at fault because he's one of the three. So it brings me to a question I don't have the answer to but I'll think about them. Who is the best player in the Hall of Fame to have never won an MVP? So that's a question, right? And think about like, oh yeah. We'll definitely be answering that next week. So that's pretty significant. yeah, and you mentioned one other thing we were talking about, which was.

How many teams had nobody hit more than 20 home runs in the middle more than 30 more than 30 Yeah, there were 12 teams last year that had their their home run leader were less than had less than 30 home runs on the team and it well 12 out of 30 four of them made the playoffs 40 percent folks right four of those so 33 percent of the teams that didn't have a 30 home run hit or made the playoffs that included the Brewers the Padres the Boston Red Sox and the

Cincinnati Reds who made the playoffs with their home run leader having 22 and that being Ellie Dela Cruz. The Baltimore Orioles took it a level even further at not having a guy that hit 20 on their roster. Jordan Westberg and a couple others led the team with 17. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, does it signal that Major League Baseball is starting to head away from?

The long ball at all costs, I don't know if that's the Well, eight of the 18 teams that did have a 30 home run player on their roster, they made the playoffs. So just looking at that, generally having a 30 home run hitter on your roster is more conducive to making the playoffs than not. And then when you get to the playoffs, as we saw, it can go both ways, right? I made the comment about the Milwaukee Brewers who played small ball all season and kill people that they scored among the most random.

runs in baseball, not having home runs, a guy hit 20 home runs, or 30 home runs. And then they got to the playoffs, and then as we said, the Dodgers kind of shut them down. They didn't have any big boppers, right? It's harder in the playoffs to develop rallies because it's hard to get a lot of hits off a good pitcher. Whereas the Blue Jays, they were kind of a power team during the regular season.

but they also were a contact team and they relied more on the contact. Right. And they were two outs. They were like a player two away from winning the World Series. But, know, I think that the playoffs becomes a lot more about lineup depth overall, whether or not that lineup depth is hitting home runs like the Dodgers was or that lineup depth was getting hits like the Blue Jays was having a lineup one to nine that is giving good consistent at bats in the playoffs.

is the difference and that was the undoing of a lot of teams in the regular season like the Mets. Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point, right? Because you you want to get down to, OK, the point in the order where, you know, you can maybe bring in a guy or leave a guy in a second time going, OK, well, seven, eight, nine aren't as good as their one, two, three, four, and particularly in a top heavy team. You know, that'll be the case. And then you get to the playoffs all of a sudden, man, that eight hitters are real pain in the neck. And even if they're not getting hit.

They're given good at bats and they're not giving up easy outs. That just makes such a difference because it makes the starting pitcher work so much more. So you have to create a roster to make the playoffs, obviously, and you have to do the things you do that. But then at the same time, you're remaking your roster as the season goes along to make sure that once you get to the playoffs, that you have a lineup that's not going to make you vulnerable to pitching. And so you're kind of.

fooling around with stuff as you get Right, because you end up with a lineup like the Phillies, which was ultimately a lineup you could kind of pitch around. Which is hard to believe when you think about how good an offensive team that is. Right, but in the playoffs, because it's like, OK, well, if we don't let Kyle Schorber and Bryce Harper kill us, nobody else is going to, so we just don't let them kill us. And that is exactly what happened. And I'm sure Dave Dabrowski and the Phillies are keenly aware that they probably need to.

I think they're going to bring the band back, but they need to tweak a little bit and have a little bit, you know, a little bit of mojo difference. I hate the evil that I'm about to speak in the world here, but I am sure Philadelphia Philly fans would love to see Kyle Tucker in right field as an upgrade over Nick Castellanos. You're right. You're like, oh, man, that would fit amazingly well. They're like, oh, our defense just got way better and our offense just got way better. This is great. I Kyle Tucker would fit in a lot of places. Yeah. Except New York. I don't know if he works in New York, interestingly.

He's a New York guy or in the New York mid-outfield. You're to play him in center. Yeah, no, no. Right. That's a problem. Yeah. You no Kyle Tucker coming here. Tyrone Taylor is a problem, too. Yeah. You have that long term. So all right. Well, here's this week in baseball and happy Thanksgiving. We will. We wish you and your families the best and we'll have another podcast for you next Monday.