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THE HOT CORNER
Game theory, maybe not what you want to hear.
Since the Yankees are going all in on Gerrit Cole...and the Yankees have the financial ability to overwhelm all senses...and they have enormous pressure from their fan base to make Cole happen...and we already saw how this episode ends when their is a Free Agent pitcher coveted by the Angels and some other team will to behave as though theirs is an unlimited well of capital...maybe there is a successful Plan B that is NOT reactionary, but strategic?
The Yankees are setting aside their massive wallet and dedicating all thoughts and efforts towards Cole. So stay in the bidding and keep the Yankees distracted, AND their wallet distracted, AND keep pushing them to dig deeper and deeper into that wallet and drain dollar after dollar away from other Free Agent opportunities.
Meanwhile, immediately flip and start working hard on a Madison Bumgarner/Dallas Keuchel combo and do that on the total down low, as down low as you can go. (Stephen Strasburg and/or Hyun-Jin Ryu on the down low for any combo might be an idiotic premise, since Strasburg & Ryu are also Boras clients and that’s not how Boras plays.)
Worse case outcome = winning the Gerrit Cole bidding war, and that kind of “worse” is what wins everything.
Best case outcome = adding Bumgarer/Keuchel and handcuffing the Yankees from getting any other help for their rotation this winter, and maybe for several winters to come.
And every other case in between is handcuffing the Yankees and still being able to take runs at Strasburg and Ryu.
Just spit balling. Nothing serious.
ANGELS
Noe Ramirez has joined the Change Agent Game.............
HOT STOVE ACTION AND OTHER RUMORS
Time to start paying the piper.............Supposedly, the Yankees are sitting at 7 x $245 million for Cole already.............And it might need to go another $35MM, to $280MM..............
Howie Kendrick is staying in DC and basking in the glow for at least one more season...........After all, he had a pretty good 2019 and the fans there now love him............
Scott Boras lives by the theory that if an owner can speak up in public about how much money that owner can afford to spend on player payroll, Scott Boras can also speak up in public about how much money that owner can afford to spend on player payroll. The problem with this kind of stuff is that one party has every reason to lie, and the other party had no real knowledge of that owners true finances, at all..............
Oh, look what I found! An article focusing on plight of baseball Free Agency again. So soon, too. Because it’s going to be totally evident of ownership collusion and Front Office myopia when Chris Iannetta and Fernando Rodney fail to land multi-year deals.............Or, we could pull out our calculators and analyze these first 6 weeks of the offseason and figure out if Free Agency is dead or alive............
The Cubs are thinking about closing their own window and cycling again? Already?............
ASSTROS NUTZ
($$) - Asstros cheating collateral damage. Real people and real careers might have been pissed on without care or consideration............
Pete Rose is a Master of Denial. Not just of his own situation but that of the Asstros, too...........
Asstros employees and Asstros fans can think of Mike Fiers as a snitch all they want. But the rest of Baseball needs to see him as a hero...........
BASEBALL THINGS IN GENERAL
The MLB HOF Committee of Ignorant Outcomes has struck again. The good news: they finally got Marvin Miller into the Hall of Fame. The bad news: they only got one player into the Hall of Fame, and that player was nowhere close to being Lou Whitaker. Ted Simmons, a marginal candidate worth reconsideration who failed to get even 5% of the BBWAA in his one and only one appearance on the annual HoF ballot, is the sole player getting rescued. A candidate needed 12 votes to get in, and Whitaker only received 6. At least Dwight Evans got 8 votes............
We are doing Winter Meetings now. As in, right now. Back in the day this is when huge amounts of things, and huge things, happened. That ain’t the case anymore, but it’s still a launching pad for the deals that will shape baseball between now and February............One thing we can look forward to, though, would be The Scott Boras Show............
Jeff Mathis, Master of The Mysterious.............
Your MiLB franchise may be on the targets list of 42 from MLB, but that is no reason to stop trying to have fun and make fresh bucks.............
The coming 26-man roster has some interesting chain-reaction effects to be considered. One is with the Rule 5 Draft and how teams could decide which guys might be protected with that extra spot and which guys might not be worth anybody’s extra slot. It’s a risky decision, because the Rule 5 guys can be real misses.............
STUFF
Some cool old-timey film of the 1917 World Series.............The Dodgers, cheap? Hahahahaha............