Saturday, December 10, 2016

My Thoughts Following the Winter Meetings


The Winter Meetings are over and so is the Rule 5 Draft, more on the draft later as I wanted to focus on that in its own blog post today, so as I play catch up I want to leave you with my thoughts on the winter meetings as a whole. I have made it quite clear what I think about the pair of Yankees signings, although technically Matt Holliday was signed the night before the meetings kicked off but whatever, and the joy it brings my heart as a fan so this morning I will hit the high points and discuss the rest of the league and the signings that went down. Enjoy.

I find it shocking that Mark Trumbo, the Major League home run leader from 2016, Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista are still free agents while players like Dexter Fowler and Ian Desmond have come off the board for big money. I do not find it shocking that Kenley Jansen is still on the board as once again teams are reluctant to give up draft picks due to qualifying offers for pitchers who are only going to give you 50-70 innings a season. And I don’t blame them.

The Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox trade was huge. Huge for Boston, huge for the rest of the teams in the American League East and huge for the entire American League as a whole. The Boston Red Sox are all-in while the White Sox have to presumably be in full sell mode now. Sale was the first, yet the biggest, domino to fall. Adam Eaton is already gone and Jose Quintana, David Robertson and Todd Frazier aren’t likely far behind him. Just hopefully not to Boston.

I’m shocked to see that Andrew McCutchen is still a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I all but expected him to be traded last week. I guess Pittsburgh wanted him to make an appearance at PirateFest to boost sales and such first. And that was not a tongue-in-cheek type message, the Pirates are frugal like that.

Regardless of what anyone says, I’ve seen writers suggest the Cleveland Indians somehow won the Winter Meetings just by doing nothing at all, the Boston Red Sox won the meetings. Hands down. Yoan Moncada and a bunch of A-Ball players for one of the best pitchers in the American League? You do that ten times out of ten, no questions asked.


The Yankees? They did okay too. They improved for 2017 and beyond without mortgaging the future. Just what they said they were going to do. 

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Sorry for the Capatcha... Blame the Russians :)