MLB 2024-25 Hot Stove Thread

Vogt and Murphy should be slam dunk winners. Voting is done at end of regular season.

 

And there's still plans for a new yard by the end of this decade?

 

I highly doubt many fans will ever look at a reliever’s season the way they look at Gibson’s. I certainly don’t.

 

Opening in 2028.

 

Very few relievers establish the consistency to be classed with the great starters. History's full of bullpen guys who had eye-popping never to be matched numbers in one season which were never repeated, and very few of 'em didn't bounce from team to team. Eckersley and Rivera are the exceptions. Each was great for multiple seasons. Hell, IMO Rivera was the MVP of the Yankee dynasty of the turn of the. century and the greatest Yankee pitcher of all time. Ford's the only one close. But as noted, those are big exceptions to the overall pattern.

 

Thing Rob Manfred is thinking but can never say aloud: Why couldn’t this have happened before they got a new stadium lined up? This was the perfect excuse to get them out of Tampa.

 

I agree, but even just as a single season, what I think there is a big difference between what Gibson did as a starter and what Clase did as a reliever.

 

Clase will never have those numbers again, but he has been the best closer in baseball for three years. I do think Cleveland would be shopping him this offseason if he had not melted down in the postseason. He is cheap and under control, so he’d fetch a good starting pitcher in a trade while they could slide Cade Smith into the closer’s role while Andrew Walters and Trevor Stephen move into the middle relief role. No way you can get full value now that the last thing a team saw of him was that postseason.

 

Never underestimate the ability of the pencilnecks to discount the emotional aspects of baseball and chalk up a performance like that to statistical regression (or even a statistical anomaly to be ignored).

 

Not a good week to be the pet of an announcer.

 

I'm getting very close to the point where the value of a No. 1 starter is diminished by the UCL Protection Plan -- get five innings out of him and go to your bullpen.

And when a closer can come in every other night and throw a shutdown inning when it's most needed ... do you know how different Baltimore's season is if Felix Bautista is throwing that inning rather than Kimbrel and the late cast of thousands?