Hot Stove Thread 2014-15

Cuddyer and David Wright are buddies, so I'm sure that played a role. They came out of the same youth program in the Tidewater area of Virginia that also produced the Upton brothers, Ryan Zimmerman and Mark Reynolds.

Wright, Reynolds, Zimmerman and B.J. Upton were all on the same summer league team in 2000. (Cuddyer was a couple of years older and Justin Upton was a couple of years younger).

 

Steak beat me to it. This was a relatively low-risk move due to the length of the deal, though Steak did a good job pointing out Cuddyer's other flaws. I just don't see how he is worth it when they have to give up the 15th overall pick in the draft, too.

 

The only way it makes sense to give up the 15th overall pick to sign Cuddyer to that deal is if you plan on signing other QO players too and losing multiple picks.

 

Rookies of the Year:

AL: Jose Abreu (unanimous)

NL: Jacob DeGrom

 

I look for the qualifying offer to go away in the next labor deal. Everyone turns it down. What doesn't make any sense financially is Cuddyer turns down $15.3M for a year to go to a team that pays him $21M for two seasons.

He must have wanted out of Colorado.

 

He's pretty old. There's no guarantee he stays healthy and gets another year after this one.

And the point of the QOs isn't to be accepted. It's to drive down the price of FAs.

 

Since when does a hitter want out of Colorado? It's not like the Mets are in that much better shape as an organization.

I think he wanted the security of two years. If he had another injury plagued year in Colorado, he could have very well been out of baseball.

 

With the Humidor, Colorado is not the hitters haven it once was.
Plus it's a terrible team that will probably move its two best players this offseason.

 

Cuddyer has hit .331/.389/.530 & .332/.376/.579 the last two years in Colorado.

And like I said, the Mets as an organization aren't in that much better shape than the Rockies. They do have a wealth of young pitching, but their budget is still hamstrung by the Wilpon hijinks.

 

The Rockies led the National League and were third in the majors with 755 runs scored in 2014. They scored 500 of those at home and only 255 on the road.

The team's slash line was .322/.372/.529 at home (a .902 OPS) and .228/.279/.357 on the road (a .639 OPS).

Cuddyer also had dramatic home/road splits in 2013 and 2014. In 2014, his line was .400/.455/.800 with eight home runs in Coors Field and .282/.316/.418 with six homers everywhere else. In 2013, his slash line was .356/.414/.582 at home and .311/367/.485 on the road. He hit 11 of his 20 home runs at home even though he played 10 fewer games there.

Cuddyer is a career .279 hitter who never got close to .300 for a season, much less a batting title, before playing his home games in Coors.

Now, I do believe that some hitters actually get worse away from Coors Field when they play home games there and that accounts for part of the dramatic splits, but the statistics clearly show that ballpark is still a huge factor.

 

I don't know if this even interests people here anymore since we've debated it half to death, and it got no run when it happened two days ago, but Steve Dilbeck of the LA Times greeted Zaidi with a paint-by-numbers, sabermetricians-are-nerds column.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodgersnow/la-sp-dn-geeks-inherit-dodgers-front-office-20141105-story.html

Zaidi handled it with grace, and teased Dilbeck in his presser. The baseball bloggeratti was still furious.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/new-dodgers-gm-farhan-zaidi-has-funny-response-to-insulting-l-a--times-column-193915488.html

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/11/05/dilbeck-the-geeks-and-nerds-have-taken-over-the-dodgers/

Dilbeck saddled up again and said "nerds gonna nerd."

http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodgersnow/la-sp-dn-zaidi-humorless-geeks-20141110-story.html

Ibid.

 

Wow. That was unfortunate.