Hello, Offseason
With the World Series ending just an hour ago, it might seem premature to welcome the Hot Stove League in before the Giants are even done celebrating. However, changes to the timing of the winter schedule means that the offseason really does start tomorrow.
The free agent filing period, which used to last 15 days following the World Series, has been eliminated. Now, teams only have a five day window of exclusivity to negotiate with their own free agents before they hit the open market. That means that we could theoretically have our first free agent signing happen on Sunday.
Decisions on contract options generally have to be exercised by either the team or the player within three days of the end of the World Series, so we’ll hear official news that the M’s have opted to buyout Russ Branyan’s option by Thursday. And yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going to happen. They might bring him back, but they won’t pay $5 million for the right to do so.
At this point, most of the teams not from Texas or San Francisco already have a pretty decent idea of what they want to do this winter. It won’t take them that long to put those plans into action. Due to the accelerated schedule, we could see some legitimate newsworthy transactions next week. With the playoffs over, I will have some more time to devote to the site, and I’ll be knocking out a good amount of stuff over the next few months. It should be fun.
stoked the Giants won. Glad the end of 2010 is here. Cant wait for the moves and the posts Dave.
*humming* It’s the most wonderful tiiiiime of the year.
Glad MLB made the offseason longer. Should be fun.
109 days ’til pitchers & catchers report. Get us to Peoria Dave!
Dave,
I’ll be looking forward to your off season posts. In fact I can hardly wait for the stove to heat up.
Sayonara, 2010. And not a moment too soon, ohmygod, not a moment too soon.
Certain names, terms or memes get banned here from time to time. And rightfully so. (Congratulations to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named on his WS ring, by the way.) So may I submit “2010 regular season” to the list of non-mentionables?
I was a life long Seattle native until I moved to San Francisco this past spring. It’s been so exciting here to watch my new local team go to the World Series. The feeling in the streets here is electric. The whole time in the back of my mind I’ve been thinking about how I wish I could be celebrating in Seattle.
I hope someday soon my old city gets to have such a celebration. Seattle has earned it for sure. Go Mariners!
And you’re next World Series champion, the Seattle Mariners! WOOO!
104 days until pitchers and catchers report!
^the injured ones wabbles 😉
I hope the Mariners front office isn’t so stubborn that they haven’t been paying attention to the Giants this year.
Only TWO players in their regular starting 9 with 20 or more home runs (Huff and Uribe, Huff led the team with 26 home runs).
But on the other hand:
Andres Torres = 43 doubles
Aubrey Huff = 35 doubles
Panda = 34 doubles
Juan Uribe = 24 doubles
Buster Posey = 23 doubles
Freddy Sanchez = 22 doubles
Pat Burrell = 16 doubles in 96 games, 341 ABs.
That’s SEVEN guys who are extra base guys in their lineup and that combined with their power/ dominant pitching at the top really stuck it to Texas.
If the Mariners ever want to get to a World Series and win, THIS is the way they have to do it.
Don’t be critical of guys like Smoak and Saunders if they can’t hit 40 HRs a year, but let’s have them hit around 20-25 HRs and hit 30-40 doubles.
And San Francisco showed us what could have been had this years team hit up to their averages and we had held on to an unnamed pitcher. Good pitching will prevail with ADEQUATE offense!!!
Can we dream of what if Tim instead of Morrow and then that great trade for Cliff and Bedard actually did heal up this year.
Hernandez, Lee, Linsecum, Bedard, Vargas
Okay. Enough living in the what if!!
Yes or no on being here next year on 25 man roster.
Lopez
Branyan
Josh Wilson
Langerhans
Bradley
Kotchman
RRS
I just noticed that Kotchman is only 27. How come he plays and looks like he is 37???
Wow. Here we are talking about giving up on a couple other players already and they (Saunders, Tui, Smoak, Felix) are not even at the start of their prime years (used to be 26).
Huh?
Who the hell is talking about giving up on Felix?
The Astros know what they want to do this offseason? Well there’s a first.
And what about Strasburg??
The headline I am most looking forward to this offseason….
“Jose Lopez no Longer a Mariner”
The headline I’m most looking forward to this offseason: “Jose Lopez Traded to Kansas City.”
If that’s the case robbbb, then the Royal’s will be complete in their quest to become the 2008 Mariners!
…for Zack Greinke.
I mean, if you’re going to dream…
Good to see a west coast team that hasn’t won a W.S. championship in their respected city win. Makes me really wish the M’s would have picked Lincecum, not that I haven’t thought that way in the last 3 seasons that we should have. Kudos to him though.
Question – what do you think of us getting Prince Fielder? Probable?
maybe they’d take Leuke…
Now that Jack Z has had a couple seasons of wheeling and dealing, it’ll be interesting to see if other teams are a little more cautious/conservative in making trades with him. He kind of made a couple GMs look silly.
If we trade, I wanna trade to Philly. No matter what it is, lets go back to Philly for some players. I like the deals we do with them 🙂
Sorry Carson didnt actually mean Felix too. I was thinking about the youth and lumped him in with the others. Guess I should finish one thought before moving on to the next!!
Two questions of Prince Fielder – Would he be happy as just a DH?? Can the Mariners really afford his contract at this point?? I guess if Milton was off the books and you didnt buy anything else!!
If only someone would have discussed Prince Fielder already or his prospects as a DH already…
NODO beat me to it. I was too slow on the keyboard.
@NODO and Paul B – This is why I try to avoid the comments section in the offseason. Yet I still decide to be an “M” and read it anyways.
Gotta stop that.
I don’t want Price Fielder, I feel like that would be the second coming of Kevin Mitchell for some reason.
Otherwise, Dave, thanks for the ROSTERBATION thread! I don’t want to participate, but I can’t help myself.
“Mariners Sign Cliff Lee, Trade Felix For (insert kings ransom list of players here).”
Discuss!
No thanks. As awesome as Cliff is, all things considered I’d rather have Felix, since with what’s going to take $$-wise to sign Cliff they probably wouldn’t be able to afford the fruits of the Felix trade under their salary structure.
Posey + Bumgarner and Jonathan Sanchez
Heyward + Jurrgens + Infante
Montero + Robinson Cano
Trout + complete minor leagues of Angels
Josh Hamilton + Martin Perez
Unless either one of these options, I hope that Felix never leave Seattle
Why on earth would you want to trade away your 24-year-old stud pitcher and pick up a 32-year-old stud pitcher? As good as Lee was, he wasn’t demonstrably better than Felix.
Isn’t that the sort of thinking that led Bavasi to sign guys like Sexson?
There’s no way Lee will be worth what he ends up signing for, even as good as he is.
Simple bottom line for the FO:
Just focus on acquiring (via FA, trade) players who have shown good numbers hitting at Safeco.
Small sample size to a certain extent (let’s not get ridiculous now) be damned.
I think you’d be surprised on how few batters would meet your criteria.
Why would you trade the face of your franchise a true #1 who can be that for years to come and pay a kings ransom for a guy who is 33 and will most likely regress in 3 years?
Just off the top of my head, Matsui, and although we missed the boat on him, Vlad.
These aren’t top dollar guys (although Vlad’s price may have increased this year thanks to his comeback which we missed out on because this FO was too busy throwing money at Jack Wilson, Figgins, and Kotchman last offseason).
Surely the FO can find more since they’re highly paid to do so.
Surely there are some guys like Ibanez (at the time), who are not famous “name” players and that we can afford, but happen to have some good numbers here
I’m so relieved to be able to say:
“It’s next season… And we’re tied for 1st place.”
Since about June I’ve felt like I’ve had the positive and negative leads of an electrical cord plugged into an outlet attached to my right index finger and my left index finger. And the switch has been in the “on” position all that time until this past Monday.
A slow annoying jolt going straight through my heart for 5 straight months.
Irritating, painful, exhausting, and absolutely impossible to ignore.
But now it’s over, and the salve of “wait till next year” is finally relevant again. Thank you, baby Jesus.
(It’s also getting close to December, so I can’t wait to see what Santa Jack brings us this year…)
Well, that’s because they’re not wedded to guys with Proven Results.
I’m pointing out that you’re falling into the exact same trap as Bavasi and previous Mariner execs–note that your examples are on the downside of their careers and are probably going to be fairly expensive.
You got my point completely wrong. I thought it would be quite clear and easy enough to get.
I’m saying that the FO needs to go over all the records of hitting at Safeco and find players with good numbers. And then see if it’s feasible to get any of these guys.
NOT search for expensive players with good numbers over the board (who may come here and suck like so many did before).
If the FO has to gamble, gamble on someone who has actually shown he likes hitting in Safeco (though it may be a relatively small sample size). It may be some relatively unproven or non-famous guy like Ibanez when we signed him from the Royals.
I just listed a couple of guys off the top of my head (besides Ibanez) so of course they are relatively famous (and old) players and will be expensive.
(By the way, will they really be so expensive at that? Matsui will probably cost less than 5 million which is what the FO spent on Jack Wilson. How much did Casey Kotchman cost? 2 million? 3 million? for a pile of.)
The FO has the resources to easily do such an extensive search as I wrote, and find more (younger and cheaper) candidates.