Finally! Official Hot Stove League Thread

[ice99]

The Astro have Alvarez, who hasn't reached his prime, same with Tucker. Rookie Pena, who's been good. Bregman in his prime. Altuve who may be heading past his prime. Bregman and Altuve are signed thru 2024.

To me, the M's should be looking to peak at 2025. Getting Tescar to patch holes is fine. Someone like Chafin too, but I'd like to get a young player like Nootbaar or whoever, to help in the future.

[D-train]

I prefer to hold onto Ford. If we develop him right and he has a couple of good years, his value could shoot through the roof!

More than GG and Montas?

Mannnnn....it would just depend on who we got back in the deal. I have them really really close. We have less depth at catcher than we do at SS.

Those two are OFers...

[D-train]

The Astro have Alvarez, who hasn't reached his prime, same with Tucker. Rookie Pena, who's been good. Bregman in his prime. Altuve who may be heading past his prime. Bregman and Altuve are signed thru 2024.

To me, the M's should be looking to peak at 2025. Getting Tescar to patch holes is fine. Someone like Chafin too, but I'd like to get a young player like Nootbaar or whoever, to help in the future.

If we make the appropriate upgrades we can complete with the Astros in 2023. Sounds like JV is gone. Teo is a good start and a sign they are going all in for next season.

[ice99]

The Astro have Alvarez, who hasn't reached his prime, same with Tucker. Rookie Pena, who's been good. Bregman in his prime. Altuve who may be heading past his prime. Bregman and Altuve are signed thru 2024.

To me, the M's should be looking to peak at 2025. Getting Tescar to patch holes is fine. Someone like Chafin too, but I'd like to get a young player like Nootbaar or whoever, to help in the future.

If we make the appropriate upgrades we can complete with the Astros in 2023. Sounds like JV is gone. Teo is a good start and a sign they are going all in for next season.

We are upgrading and are contending, not sure what you mean by all in, it sounds like gm speak.

[D-train]

The Astro have Alvarez, who hasn't reached his prime, same with Tucker. Rookie Pena, who's been good. Bregman in his prime. Altuve who may be heading past his prime. Bregman and Altuve are signed thru 2024.

To me, the M's should be looking to peak at 2025. Getting Tescar to patch holes is fine. Someone like Chafin too, but I'd like to get a young player like Nootbaar or whoever, to help in the future.

If we make the appropriate upgrades we can complete with the Astros in 2023. Sounds like JV is gone. Teo is a good start and a sign they are going all in for next season.

We are upgrading and are contending, not sure what you mean by all in, it sounds like gm speak.

Obviously way too early to tell but we just traded one of our top 2 relievers with 3 years of control for a rental. I take that as an initial sign we are looking to win the division in 2023.

[ice99]

If we make the appropriate upgrades we can complete with the Astros in 2023. Sounds like JV is gone. Teo is a good start and a sign they are going all in for next season.

We are upgrading and are contending, not sure what you mean by all in, it sounds like gm speak.

Obviously way too early to tell but we just traded one of our top 2 relievers with 3 years of control for a rental. I take that as an initial sign we are looking to win the division in 2023.

It doesn't preclude what I said, we are still going to try to contend.

[Sexymarinersfan]

Now MLBTR is reporting it.

Sounds like none of the four shortstops are willing to move to 2B Jerry. You just gotta keep trying to cram that square peg in the round hole, dontcha!

If the Mariners are punting interest in the shortstop market in deference to Crawford then they deserve to be as mediocre as possible. It’s absolute malpractice to have a readily available upgrade and dismiss it over thoughts and clubhouse feelings. Slide JP over and sign somebody that can really hit. Simple.

[GL_Storm]

I really hope they're talking to the Yankees about Gleyber and if the Yankees aren't willing to move on that yet, then go ahead and wait. Kolten Wong should be your fallback plan. You don't need to rush through a fucking Kolten Wong trade.

[Seattle or Bust]

RE: D-Train

I'm trying to find ways for the M's to offload bad payroll + get rid of the logjam of nobodies we have in left field. There are some decent BP power arms with 1 year left of control who wouldn't take a ton to trade for and accomplish the goal of getting rid of Flexen/Marco + moving some dead roster weight like TT, Winker, etc.

Alvarado: He throws 99-101 with a 95 mph cutter. He had a 1.92 FIP w. one of the worst D's in baseball playing behind him. He fired a 2.81 ERA on the road and struggled a bit more at home with a 3.55 ERA in what is the 4th hardest ballpark to pitch in. This reared it's head even worse in 2021 with a 5.33 home ERA compared to 3.14 on the road. Something tells me coming to SafeCo would bring that home ERA way down and he'd have a killer year. In the trade you move TT who I'm just over... you shed $8 million from Flexen and get rid of sort of a middling bullpen prospect who should entice PHI due to the control they'd have. Not to mention the M's would net $4 million in the deal that they could use to land another reliever in f/a. It just seems like an awesome move to augment a bullpen for a year by not giving up a ton.

Barnes: The trade is simply a 1-to-1 swap of bad contracts. The M's don't want to be paying Marco a combined $19 million over the next 2 seasons. Is Barnes still a star? No. But he's also been drilled by pitching at Fenway. He had a 5.14 ERA at home this season compared to a 3.38 ERA on the road. Same thing happened in 2021 where he had a 4.50 home ERA and a 2.78 road ERA... again, seems like a guy who would really thrive pitching at SafeCo. He still throws 95-98 mph. Taking Barnes on nets the M's an $11ish million net gain in '23/'24.

Lowe: I don't really care who it is that the M's trade for Lowe so long as the move gets done. I will say that I prefer to keep the power arms over Dollard. I would prefer to keep players who are somewhat closer to helping the Mariners than players who are 4-5 years out. I like Montez but the kid literally just turned 18. I still think Moore is overvalued and I viewed him as more of a throw in for this deal... I'm not really operating under the assumption that JP is either so bad or injured that the M's need an emergency SS... but Sam Haggerty was literally a shortstop in college. Even if Lowe comes to Seattle and is a .750 OPS hitter with a 115 OPS+ who hits 20-25 bombs we've significantly upgraded the position and have 3 more years of somewhat cheap control past 2023.

[D-train]

I really hope they're talking to the Yankees about Gleyber and if the Yankees aren't willing to move on that yet, then go ahead and wait. Kolten Wong should be your fallback plan. You don't need to rush through a fucking Kolten Wong trade.

Totally agree. But confirms what idiotic lip service it was talking about the FA SSs or JP moving to 2B. That was NEVER remotely in their plan. PURE PR, nothing more, nothing less.