| Al's Ramblings | |
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Sunday, July 31, 2016 (7/31/2016 09:33:00 AM) - Al No update on Lucroy. CLE also trades for Andrew Miller from NYY. At the very least, Lucroy and his agent appear to be taking ths opportunity to politely ask for some incentive(s) to waive the no trade, because like when you are offered a job, you know they want you, so you ask for more money and vacation. Sometimes, you get it easily, sometimes they negotiate, and sometimes they tell you to take it or leave it. To answer a couple questions. Yes, it's good for the Brewers to have Lucroy make up his mind quickly, so they know. If he declines, they may want to offer him up again, as they did Gomez last year, and could even end up with a better deal, as they did with Carlos. They can move on to other trades, other priorities. Lucroy is the most valuable, so he is the proverbial 1000 pound gorilla in the room. The one thing I keep thinking is, how bad Jon would look if he says "all I want to do is win" and then fails to live up to the contract he signed. It's not like if he says no, he comes back to the Brewers with a raise. Would he rather play for $X in CLE for a contender or $X in MIL for a rebuilding club? But, even if he knows in the back of his mind he'll accept regardless, it's not in his best interest to make that public. We are at a crossroads in baseball...a few years ago, closers were vastly overrated...you could slap a "proven closer" label on Joe Career Middle Relief Guy because of a couple 30 save campaigns for a 65 win team, and suddenly he was worth far more. Numbers oriented GM's ripped off older, "he's got a lot of grit and heart" GM's so much that the value of closers, salary wise and trade market wise, has fallen immensely. But, because teams know that most closers are just relievers pitching the 9th instead of the 6th or 7th, we have created something known as the "elite closer"...a guy who is dominant, and whose stuff is electric. Chpman and Miller are probably both in the top 3 in MLB, and as proof of how valuable that is, the Yankees have been outscored by 30 runs and are now sellers. See what I did there? 7/31/2016 09:33:00 AM |
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