Ok, so I went a little nuts on the whole Manny Machado idea. Mea culpa. Let's try something a *little* more realistic this go-round, shall we?
Everyone in the PNW knows by now that Jacoby Ellsbury's got ties to the region--the east coast media made sure that we knew that as soon as Ellsbury looked like an upside-down contract on the Yankees' payroll. Born in Oregon, he played college ball for Oregon State University, so there's *probably* some appeal to the notion of playing for the 'home-town' Mariners here, near the end of his career.
There are a few obstacles...three of them, actually:
1) Ellsbury wants to play for a contender
2) Ellsbury has a no trade clause.
3) Ellsbury is owed $68mil over the next three years, while he projects to be worth only a teeny, tiny fraction of that.
But, assuming you can overcome the first two obstacles, there's the possibility for the M's to gain both short- and long-term from an acquisition centered on Ellsbury.
First, everyone in baseball knows he's not worth his contract. Pretty much everyone in baseball has known that would be the case for a couple of years now, and the Yankees (as legitimate contenders) are more interested in freeing up roster and cap space at this point than they are in waiting for Ellsbury to rebound to 3 WAR (unlikely in the extreme) so they can trade him for that level of value. They need the roster and cap space more than they need a redundant player of less-than-high-caliber quality (at this particular stage in his career). And they need that cap space, so they know they're going to have to package talent with him in order to ship him off.
Which makes this a reasonable opportunity for the M's to profit from their GM's wheelin'-and-dealin' ways.
Fangraphs has an article up about the prospect of moving Ellsbury off, and what it might take in terms of packaged talent for the Yankees to rid themselves of his contract. The focus of the article's hypothetical is an east coast team because, well, of course it is, but the principle holds for a team like the M's just as well as it does for the Phillies, and it is simple: the Yankees have two prospects, Clint Frazier and Justus Sheffield, who have sufficient projectable value to consider reasonable additions to an Ellsbury trade for a deal to get done. Frazier's value is considered to be about $40mil in surplus performance during his club-control years, whereas Sheffield's is about half that. Frazier, you probably know, is the all-power COF whose calling card is...well, power. Sheffield, on the other hand, is a 21 year old lefty who projects (to my untrained eye) like a quality #4 more than anything.
Both are former 1st round picks (Frazier 2013, R1-#5; Sheffield 2014, R1-#31) and both have been repeatedly linked to trade talks involving the Yankees this offseason. Honestly, either one would be a welcome addition to the M's depleted farm system, but if I was in charge I'd probably be aiming for Frazier rather than Sheffield. Sheffield's surplus value (and projectability for upside) isn't enough to make the deal happen without the Yankees absorbing a third or so of Ellsbury's contract, and frankly at this point I think they need to acquire talent more than they need to acquire affordable contracts.
So I'd be aiming for Frazier, who could potentially become a cross-OF mate with Haniger for years to come, and would help soften the loss of Cruz (either to FA or age-related decline) from the offense in the near future. He certainly doesn't look like a lock for the MOTO, but he *does* look like a pretty safe bet to be an ML regular at a bat-first position. But to acquire him, the M's would need to absorb most, if not all, of Ellsbury's contract.
And make no mistake: Ellsbury's not dead weight. He hit a wRC+ of 102 last season while generating 4.7 runs with his legs. His speed remains excellent, if not elite like it was as recently as 2014, and his glove plays at any OF position. So he's pretty much the ideal 4th OF (forgetting the contract, obvously). If there's an injury to the OF corps, Ellsbury would be able to step in and provide rock-solid performance anywhere on the grass--and, perhaps even more importantly, anywhere in the lineup.
If the M's are committed to NOT picking up Yu Darvish, then to my mind they're pretty much committed to NOT competing this year. That's ok--I'm actually more than ok with that, so long as they work toward the future. Acquiring Frazier would do that, and acquiring Ellsbury would give them a legitimate bounce-back candidate to join the rest of the team's outfielders.
Ok, so it's still not a GREAT idea, but it's at least better than 'trade for one year of Manny Machado so we can ship Kyle Seager off for some mid-rotation scrub,' right? ;-)
Frazier is interesting: he has never hit .300, never hit more than 16 homes in a season, K’s at at rate above 25%, has only twice ISOed above .200 (barely), but remains a hot prospect. He walks 80 points, that is true, but most of his projected value is based on the fact that he has always played several years above his age. He’s likely worth having, the question is whether he’s worth paying $63 million to get?
that's for sure. But I *might* pay $40mil for Frazier. Probably would, in fact, since his calling card (PWR) is something the organization doesn't exactly have in spades. You get past Cruz (and you're going to get past him, soon, one way or another) and you've got two guys in Seager and Cano who've got legit + power, but not ++ power. Zunino's got to have a full season like his second half in 2017 to be considered a legit + bat overall, otherwise he's an interesting C with good defense and the funky low-average-plus-gobs-of-raw-power offensive profile.
So yeah, I'm not SOLD on Frazier as a savior. But you'd also be getting Ellsbury, who at least would fill the Dyson role admirably in the coming year(s) and at best bounces back to be a 3+ win contributor for a season or two. That's worth, what, $20mil on the FA market these days?
Also worth noting is that Frazier's WORST season, relative to his peers, was a 120 wRC+ in A-ball. His second worst was his AAA stint with NY last year, at 123. The guy's a legitimate MOTO bat in the making, and while he's probably not a budding MVP candidate he is a legit offense-first prospect with five+ years of club control.
Also also worth noting is that his 12 AAA HR last year came in 320 AB's. He'd have pretty easily beaten the 20 mark with a full season there, and he'd have *probably* out-hit his season averages had he gotten a full year in AAA rather than spending half the year with the big league club.
shows that Frazier's trends have all been in the right direction throughout his minor league career, suggesting he's still got improvement ahead of him.
All of this said in support of a deal that brings Ellsbury + Frazier to Seattle, I don't think it's unreasonable to swear off ever trading for Yankee 'spects. It just doesn't seem to work out all that well for us, post-Buhner anyway.
I guess Gamel throws that narrative off a bit, but it's not like anyone's projecting him to be a roster anchor for the next decade.
And if you figure you are getting $20M in value from Ellsbury, then you are beginning to get a bit of a potential bargain on Frazier.
He was -0.6 dWAR in LF for the Yanks last year, in about 30 games, so you’re not getting much defensive value, but he will hit homers. I wasn’t intending to say that he will top out at 16, just that in the minors he has never done one batty thing real well.
Here’s a great scouting report on him, which includes a AAA rocket he hit: https://www.pinstripealley.com/2017/2/4/14506592/clint-frazier-home-runs-doubles-yankees-outfield-scouting-report
He’s sort of another draw at the Tyler O’Neill deck. In 557 AAA PAs, Tank has hit 31 homers and Ked 28% of the time. Frazier has had 15 HR’s in 449 PA, K-ing at a 23% rate.
His short Thome-like followthrough is sort of similar to Tank’s, in fact. But he hit major league pitching already. Here’s A July game in NY where he triples and hits a 3-run walkoff jack.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=byK8xS_nf9I
As I said, I like him.
Get the Yankees to eat some Ellsbury cash and let’s talk. Gamel, Haniger, Lewis, Frazier and Filia would give us some young OF bats to mix and match for a few years, wouldn’t they.
But if we buy Frazier/Ellsbury, we will have to be dumping cash elsewhere to be able to afford a FA arm.
if we're writing $23mil checks to Ellsbury. I guess my assumptions are pretty simple (and almost certainly out of touch with reality).
1) The M's want to compete, and therefore need to actively deploy their resources in pursuit of improvements.
2) The salary cap, for contending teams, is viewed as both an upper AND a lower limit--as Doc reiterates: you don't win a prize for being 30% under the cap at the end of the year, you win a prize for WINNING PLAYOFF GAMES
3) They don't seem to want to add any of the top FA pitching available.
With those points as 'givens,' it leaves the paths to contention a little circuitous and/or confusing, but they're still there. You *could* go get Chris Archer, for instance. Or you *could* go get Ellsbury + Frazier and not hurt the club AT ALL for the upcoming season. You *could* try a wild move like bringing Manny Machado in as a rental. There's lots of things the team *could* try, if they're inclined to go for the enemy's throat.
There are times when I wonder if DiPoto's thinking about his pitching staff amounts to wishful thinking. Either he's posturing, or he truly believes our rotation is fine as it is. It's certainly possible it's fine if EVERYTHING breaks our way. But short of that, our rotation needs a major addition to compete with the big boys. And let's face it, the way the AL is going, there's the big boys and everybody else. If you're going to compete, you've got to be a big boy, whether in resources (NYY, Boston) or in organizational abilities (Astros, Indians).
....for the Yankees....just sayin'
the case, but with an ever-hardening salary cap in place they're falling in line like the rest of the league in trying to get under that number.
Unless what you meant was that their misfortune, cap-wise, is to the delight of everyone else...in which case, yeah, totally agree ;-) I'm just trying to see if the home-towners can profit by their misfortune.
All indications are that DiPoto/Servais will go with a 13-man pitching staff. Well, lots of indications point that way. That means we run a 3-man bench, and one of those guys has to be some sort of Marjama. And THAT means you get two other bench guys and they have to/must be positionally flexible. Andrew Romine will certainly be one of those guys and right now Motter is the other. There is really little room for a pure 4th OF, unless you intend to use Healy at 3B occasionally, moving Gamel to 1B. So I have been thinking about how we improve on Motter, assuming Romine is SS enough to back up Segura.
Yangervis Solarte’s name has been tossed about in MLB trade rumors, but he’s now getting decently expensive. In fact, there are lots of decent names in the mix. However, it looks like the Yankees are ahead of the game (again) and are looking at a pretty interesting, who appears to be available: Arizona’s Brandon Drury
Being a Diamondback, he hits better at home than he does on the road, but so do most players. He plays 2B, 3B and both COF’s, and does so with decently glovey chops. I am not saying that we should beat the Yankees to Drury, but considering Chris Taylor is locked up, a Brandon Drury-type of player makes way more sense than Heredia and he’s way better than Taylor Motter.
Edit: Derek Dietrich is the right kind of guy, too.https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/d/dietrde01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=linker-