Chapters.
The Dallas Pelicans won the FBSA 11U fall league championship yesterday, finishing the fall season on 15-game win streak. The kids lost the first game of the season, 4-2, and didn’t lose a league or tournament game the rest of the way.
Chapter.
Meanwhile, the GM Meetings get underway this morning in Boca Raton.
Chapter.
There is progress made at that four-day gathering every year, even if it’s not there for us all to see. There are conversations between teams and agents, and between teams and teams, as white-boarded ideas get put into motion. This is groundwork week.
The Rangers were reportedly not the team to submit the prevailing $12.85 million negotiation bid on Korean first baseman Byung-ho Park on Friday, and with every paragraph I type, another team is ruled out. Presumably we’ll know at some point today which team is on the 30-day clock to strike a deal with the player. It won’t be Texas.
(It looks like it might be the Twins.)
Yovani Gallardo has four more days to decide whether to decline the Rangers’ tender of one year and $15.8 million or become the first big leaguer in the four-year existence of the Qualifying Offer rule to accept it.
One of the interesting things about this winter’s QO class is that there are 20 such free agents (after an average of 11 the last three winters). Most if not all of them will decline the offers. And many of them will sign with new teams, which means a whole lot of draft picks slotted at 11 through 30 are going to disappear. The Rangers draft at 23, and if they don’t sign a QO free agent, that pick could end up in the teens.
And if Gallardo declines the QO by this Friday, and ends up somewhere else — Keith Law (ESPN) thinks he could be in line for “something like four years and $56 million, if not more” — the supplemental first the Rangers recoup will probably end up higher than the mid-50s.
Park and Gallardo are looking at new chapters.
As is a hungry Jurickson Profar, who singled twice (once from each side of the plate), drew two walks, and stole two bases in Saturday’s Arizona Fall League “Fall-Stars Game.”
Ken Rosenthal (Fox Sports) reports that the Rangers “seemingly have no place for [Profar] in their middle infield; other teams want him.”
Joel Sherman (New York Post) thinks the Mets should trade for Profar, or Cubs shortstop Javier Baez.
Interesting, but Texas isn’t going to close its Profar chapter by selling low.
T.R. Sullivan (MLB.com) writes that Derek Holland and Leonys Martin could be trade chips for Texas this winter. Holland has significant value because of his reasonably contracted club control, but that also means there’s no chance the Rangers move him unless they get a tremendous trade offer.
Martin would seem to more likely to open up a new chapter in 2016.
Oakland GM Billy Beane is telling reporters he “has no plans to trade Sonny Gray.”
Which is not the same thing as saying he won’t trade Sonny Gray.
Billy Beane’s chapters are routinely about two pages long.
Nick Cafardo (Boston Globe) suggests that Mike Napoli’s late-season run with Texas built his market value back up a bit, and “[t]here’s also some talk about adding catcher back to his tool box.”
Not sure there’s a new chapter there, but that’s interesting.
Napoli’s 2011-12 Rangers teammate and 2015 Red Sox teammate Alexi Ogando: waived, unclaimed, outrighted, free agent.
Washington did not tender a qualifying offer to righthander Doug Fister, and that’s going to make him a popular free agent.
New chapter for that guy, who would fit here at the right price, but give the lack of a QO, he’s probably not going to be nearly as good a deal as Colby Lewis, who could be a better fit anyway.
Jon Daniels reminds us that the Rangers did lots of their “heavy lifting” for 2016 and beyond in July, when they added Cole Hamels, Jake Diekman, and Sam Dyson (and possibly Napoli), but that doesn’t mean the club will be sitting still.
It never does.
Dave Cameron (FanGraphs) speculates that Texas could give Yoenis Cespedes seven years and $150 million. Doubt it, but a right-handed bat in left field does appear to be a priority.
Two years ago, Miami outfielder Giancarlo Stanton said about new Rangers hitting coach Anthony Iapoce, who spent four years as a hitting coach in the Marlins’ minor league system, including two months with Stanton in Jupiter, Florida in 2009: “Anthony has impacted the way I approach playing the game. I love the way he teaches hitting. He covers the swing and shows how important the mental game is.”
Stanton said that in November 2013, 117 home runs into his big league career and four-and-a-half years after he and Iapoce spent just a third of one Class A season together.
Cubs President Theo Epstein said about Iapoce, who spent the last three seasons as Special Assistant to the GM with Chicago and oversaw the Cubs’ minor league hitting program: “From mechanics to approach to plate discipline, Anthony is as knowledgeable about hitting as anyone I’ve been around. He really connects with young hitters, taking the time to get to know them and making work fun and progress attainable. He is a real difference maker who simply makes hitters better.”
Now, the Stanton-Iapoce connection is roughly meaningless in terms of my placement of that quote right after the Cespedes note. Stanton’s current contract extends through 2028, when my 11U-level son will be out of college.
But Stanton can opt out after 2020.
And I bet that means the Marlins trade him in 2019.
That’s still a whole lot of chapters away, though.
In the meantime, a new one opens this morning in South Florida, though for now most likely not for publication.
Not yet, at least.