00:00:11
Speaker 1: Welcome to the official show on the Fist Stripes podcast. It's a solo episode with me Eli Susman, first time in a while that I've done one of these all by myself. Recording on December seconds, just a couple hours after the passing of the MLB non tender deadline, and there was a lot of consequences of this deadline passing, specifically for the Marlins, but also across all of Major League Baseball that I think is going to have a very interesting impact on how the heart of this MLB off season goes. The offseason itself is moving at a pretty glacial pace for an expected reason, because we're coming off a year that was so dramatically altered by the COVID nineteen pandemic. Revenue who across the sport were plummeted based on what they were originally expected to be, and there's still some uncertainty about what the twenty twenty one season is going to look like. They have a schedule in place, everybody's hopeful about getting the whole thing in. I'm sure if you're not living under a rock, you're aware of the progress that's been made in the United States on the availability of a vaccine for COVID nineteen, but the distribution plans for that vaccine are still very much unsettled, so there are still a lot of questions about what the revenues of the sport are going to look like and how much these owners are going to be willing to spend on their product. Given that uncertainty, I was prepared for this to be somewhat of a disappointing night. This is one of the first big tests for the front office with Kim eng Now as general manager, and of course for Marlin's ownership as well, knowing that they're coming off a rough year for themselves and seeing how committed they are to actually continuing to take a step forward at the major league level heading into twenty twenty one, and all things considered, I felt this was a good night to be a Marlins fan, to feel confident in the leadership that they have to make the pretty obvious moves and some not so obvious moves that I think are very well reasoned. They had eight players that were potentially arbitration eligible, and just to give you a quick primer on what that means in case you're not totally familiar, players within between three and six years of major league service time are eligible for arbitration. Means that they haven't quite reached unrestricted free agency, but they have reached a point in their careers where a third party panel will be rewarding them based on their actual production that they've had during major league games, a lot of it compared to previous players at their respective position and with their same kind of age and service time. In almost all cases, the team and the player will reach an agreement before it actually has to go to an arbitration hearing, but in some cases it goes all the way to that level, and that helps guide exactly what these players are worth. What made this year kind of unique a couple reasons. Well, one, there was this concern that because of the depressed revenues across the sport, that we would see a record number of players getting non tendered, of teams being unwilling to meet what these players would have earned through the arbitration process and cutting ties with them right here and now without owing them a cent for the twenty twenty one season. It wasn't quite the doomsday scenario that some of the National reporters had been hinting. At fifty nine non tenders prior to this deadline. That's up slightly from fifty six last year, but there were also a record number of of pre tender agreements. This is usually the night where if you're not non tendered, then what the team does is ay begin a negotiation with you on your contract for twenty twenty one, and after some back and forth, that stuff usually gets ironed out between now and the middle of January. But in this particular night, and maybe some of it was these players accepting low ball offers to avoid being non tendered, there were fifty nine pre tender agreements, which is about doubled what were at this time a year ago. And that includes two guys on the Marlins that you're very familiar with, Hasius Aguilar acgring to a one year four point three to five million dollar deal, Garrett Cooper agreeing to a one year, one point eight million dollar deal. And so that's good for them because in both cases it is far more money than they've ever made in a single year playing professional baseball, with Aguilar obviously well deserved, one of the most valuable players all the Marlins in twenty twenty, and that wasn't always such an obvious expectation for him, considering at this time a year ago the Tampa Bay Rays put him on waivers. They weren't willing to give him what was his arbitration price his first year going through that process, and that ended up being two point six million dollars at The Marlins committed to him in twenty twenty, and that salary was pro rated because of the shortened season. Either way, was a huge bargain for the team. He was the leader on the team in hits and run, scored in unintentional walks, and he was great in clutch situations. He was more than they could have hoped in the clubhouse, and as someone who bought into their culture and preached all these positive habits. He admittedly, by his own admission, he was overweight at the end of his raised tenure, and he took it upon himself to get in much better shape. He is still one of the heaviest players in Major League Baseball. He's not going to be a swimsuit model at any time in the near future, but he drops between fifteen and twenty pounds a bad weight. Heading into twenty twenty, he kept it off and it seemed to really help his performance. Both offensively and even defensively. Him and Cooper pretty much went back and forth between the first base and the DH spot when they were both healthy. Aguilar missed a tiny bit of time with a back issue, but didn't need to go on the injury list. He still played in fifty two of the sixty games and in every postseason game. Garrett Cooper, which is somewhat of a theme of his career, had a really rough luck getting caught up in the COVID nineteen outbreak that affected the Marlins early in the season. He ended up missing almost half of the shortened regular season after catching COVID in the process of working himself back into shape. But when he was on the active roster, he was at bat pret bat, really one of the most hitters in their lineup, if not the most dangerous hitter that they had. A couple of their longest home runs of the season came off of the bat of Cooper, and their most important home run i'd say the entire year during the wild Card Series against the Cubs in that clinching game.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: Darbish Ready here comes the two two uh oh that one hammered to left Darvish with Schwarber back there looking and that one is gone. Garret Cooper will touch them all.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: With performance bonuses. He could actually end up north of two million dollars in twenty twenty one, so that's great news for him, coming just a few days after he announced that he got engaged to his longtime girlfriends Erica. Congrats to both of them. So this is going pretty well. And I would say in both cases, especially though in Aguilar's case, that there was real concern about him being a non tender candidate because well, for a couple of reasons. I'd say the biggest motivating factor is was the presence of Cooper as well as first basement in waiting Leywin Diaz. Diaz is one of their very top prospects at any position, someone that has great offensive potential and who has already shown in very limited major league action more defensive aptitude at first base than either Cooper or Agiler had Last year. All three of them were up at the majors at some point, but Leywin struggled offensively in his very limited debut and got sent back down, So that helped clear the logjam a little bit, but so did the fact that there was a universal DH in twenty twenty. Remember that was not the plan when they set out on the twenty twenty season. It was added kind of impromptly by Commissioner Rob Manfred. He had the power to unilaterally establish some rules for that shortened season once the players and MLB weren't able to come to a compromise what exactly that shortened season would look like. It was ultimately Manfred's decision to go with sixty games in the regular season, to expand the playoffs to sixteen teams, to make the DH universal, the extra ending rule, etc. So those were things that the Marlins did not plan on that they couldn't have possibly planned on entering the year before. We knew, of course, what the consequences of the pandemic would be, and ultimately it ended up being a big positive for the team and unintentional positive because they're able to have both Cooper and Aguilar in the lineup at the same time. Both were productive at the same time, and the offense for the Marlins was generally a weakness for much of that shortened season, but with having both of those guys, they helped boost it just enough up to respectability that they were able to eke out a lot of one run wins that ended up making the difference between themselves and the other while card contenders in the National League and the other contenders for second place in the National League Geese. I don't think anybody would have expected them to finish ahead of the Phillies and the Mets and the Nationals, and they did to earn that automatic berth into the expanded postseason. The issue is that the rules for the twenty twenty one season are not set in stone yet, and it's kind of inexplicable because this offseason. There hasn't been much going on during this MLB offseason for understandable reasons. Owners are reluctant to spends until they know exactly what kind of revenue they're going to be able to get out of it next year. But during that downtime, you'd expect MLB in the Players Association to hammer out the details of whether or not there will be a universal DH next year, because it is not written in the standard Collective Bargaining Agreement and that agreement is not eligible to be changed until a year from now, so this would have to be a separate negotiation to amend that for the season. The DH seems to be something that everybody is on board with the owners and Major League Baseball. They want to see more offense in baseball, and they don't want their pitchers putting themselves in risky positions where they're not comfortable swinging the stick. For a lot of these pitchers, if you ask them, honestly, they'd prefer not to put themselves in these awkward positions as a hitter when they know that they're going to be an automatic out. They'd rather have their teammates swinging the bat for them. And these players obviously want that extra job. Essentially that in the National League where half the teams will now have these built in play appearances in their lineup every single game, and that encourages owners to actually bring in somebody with real experience and skill to fill out that roster and to occupy that spawn the lineup on a regular base. So it seems to favor everybody, but from MLB's perspective, they probably see it more as a player perk, and my speculation, this isn't my own reporting, is that Major League Baseball is going to drag its feet on this situation until the players' union agrees to some sort of concession that would favor the owners down the road. If there is for some reason no DH, then that would put Aguilar and Cooper in a very challenging position because with the expectation that Lewin Diaz is fairly close to being ready to be a major league regular, that him and Aguilar and Cooper are not really going to be able to coexist all at the same time at the major league level, which creates the possibility that either one of those veterans could be a trade candidate for the Marlins to clear a little bit of salary and for them to address other needs or their minor league depth in the process of trading them. Because in deciding to tender contracts both Cooper and Aguilar, they came to a determination that both of them have positive trade value at this moment that you would be able to get something of significance in return, whether it's simple financial relief or whether it's an actual young talent to help put them down the road. That they made this determination that bring them back that committing to give them a twenty to twenty one contract would be beneficial one way or another, directly or indirectly for them moving forward. So we'll have to see how that plays out. But it's been in my opinion that assuming there is a DH in the National League, that this offense has enough concerns in it that you really need all those guys available. You need to keep Leywin in the organization. Obviously, even if he's not ready for opening Day. He's hugely important to have as depth, and he's a guy that I could see during the course of the season establishing himself as a legitimate middle of the order type of guy that Cooper earlier in his career. Even the first base is his primary position right now. He does have experience in his career in both left field and right field, so there's a scenario where HEYESUS and Cooper can be in the lineup at the same time DH or not. But especially if there is a DH, then it's super cut and dry getting them in the middle of the order at the same time. And based on what they showed last year, I would say that Aguilar is the one I'm a little bit more concerned about. Both of them are about thirty years old, more or less in the prime of their careers physically and based on what we know about aging curves, but with Aguilar there are some red flags based on his recent history, because even though his twenty twenty was inarguably a big success, if you expand that sample size to include twenty nineteen, then he's been precisely a league average hitter, a one hundred weighted runs CRADD plus, and that goes along with his lack of defensive versatility. Whereas Cooper, it least has a little bit of that, Aguilar isn't going to do anything aside from sheer emergency situations where he's going to move off of first base, and he's also one of the slowest space runners in Major League Baseball as well, So that certainly adds up for a guy that was one of the premier home run hitters in baseball in twenty eighteen, but in both twenty nineteen and even in twenty twenty when he was valuable to the team overall, he wasn't doing it by hitting it over the fence all that often. So that lack of over defence power means that even when he's doing something positive, that he's going to have to be on the bases where he'll be moving from station to station and very reliant on his teammates to get him around in those situations, I think it's anthing guaranteed that he has solved everything or that he has truly revitalized himself. There's still some question marks about him. And ultimately for one year and for four point three five million dollars and for a contract that I should know it is not totally guaranteed in these situations that for these players heading into spring training, if you choose to release a player on a standard arbitration deal, you only owe them one sixth approximately of their salary, And even if you bring them all the way up to opening day and then decide to cut ties, then the team is only on the hook for about a quarter of their salary. You'll remember this was the case with Dan Strayley a couple of years ago, where it seemed throughout the process that he was poised to fill out their rotation in year two of a rebuild. He didn't look all that great in spring training, and the Marlins were very pleased with the progress that their other young arms were making during camp, so they caught everybody off guard and they released Strali right before twenty nineteen opening day, and they ended up saving close to four million of the five million dollars that Australi was originally owed. So with the Marlins. Even though these numbers are significant raises compared to what these players made the previous year, it is not at all a overwhelming commitment for them, especially considering that there are so few other contracts that this team has on the books right now. To get to the rest of the arbitration class, the team had eight total players that were eligible heading into this night, and seven of those eight were tendered contracts in some form. As we just said, we have specific pre tender deals ironed out with Cooper and with Aguilar, with Brian Anderson, with Jorge Alfarrow, with Richard Bleier, with new guy Adam Simber, and who's the last guy I'm missing here, gimme Garcia. With those five guys, they've all been tendered contracts, meaning that the negotiations for their twenty twenty one contracts have officially begun. There's still some time for that to go back and forth between now and usually the middle of January, and then after which point you begin to schedule actual arbitration hearings. If the player in the club are totally unable to find common grounds on that price, then it goes to a third party panel of arbiters to look at past president president and come to a decision on what that player will make before moving forward to things. Number eight. The eighth and final guy that would have been eligible is the one that is for this moment no longer with the Marlins organization. That is right hander Ryan Stanek, who was part of that pretty big trade at the twenty nineteen trade deadline with the Rays. Acquired along with outfielder Jesu Sanchez and heading to Tampa Bay was Nick Anderson and Trevor Richards. The early returns from that trade at the end of swayne nineteen were pretty mortifying, where Nick Anderson totally ascended into being perhaps the elite reliever in all Major League Baseball. He was untouchable down the stretch in twenty nineteen for that Tampa Bay Rays team, and it was a little embarrassing to see the way that he took off immediately after being dealt, whereas Stanic was immediately plugged into high leverage opportunities in the Marlins bullpen and he cratered in a few situations on the stretch. Granted that team was not in contention there wasn't very much on the line, even though it was quote unquote high leverage, but he did not take well to that role. He was coming off a minor back injury and simply didn't look quite right for the rest of that season. Now the problem is heading into twenty twenty, he had a long offseason to bounce back and to figure things out, and he didn't do it. He really struggled in his limited action in twenty twenty, just like Cooper and just like what about eighteen players. Early in the season he tested positive for COVID and it ended up keeping him sidelined for close to a month, and so the sample on him in twenty twenty is really almost irrelevant. But in that small sample size, he did nothing to install confidence in his team that he could actually get the job done. They even moved him out of those high leverage situations. He was more of a mop up guy, certainly behind blier In, behind Jimmy, behind Brandon Kinseler, behind James Hoyt in the pecking order. He was not under all that much pressure, even for a team that was in the postseason hunt throughout the summer, and yet he really struggled to He was not missing bats the way you thought he could. He was. He didn't have the same command that you were hoping for. And one thing in particular that jumped out to me was his His splitter was perhaps his signature pitch, even for a guy that throws high nineties. The splitter was one of his main putaway pitches, one that opposing batters historically were really struggling to make quality contact against. But in twenty twenty limited sample, again, I'll remind you, the spin rate on that pitch was totally off. The movement on it was not the same, and as a result, hitters were able to collaborate and did a lot of damage in very small sample against that pitch. And it's enough doubt that I can understand the decision. I was frankly petitioning for him not to be involved during the postseason because I didn't feel he could be be trusted based on what he had showed during the regular season, and now heading into what would have been what fourth year in Major League baseball, he had enough service time to be eligible for arbitration. It was to a pretty modest raised from the league minimum to about eight hundred thousand dollars, only a couple hundred thousand dollars difference over the course of the year. But just as much as it was a money thing, this was more about simply turning the page and clearing a spot on the roster for a younger pitcher to step up into that situation because Stanik was not the same guy who was advertised when the Marlins acquired him from the Rais, So there was a number of factors contributing to that. Craig Mish, for one, has always been a big advocate for Stanek, and I believe he correctly points out that if he was totally healthy for an extended period of time, that you would see much better results out of him. But one of the big red flags for me was that splitter and the fact that the pitch was not the same and he needs to go back to the workshop moving forward, even his fastball veloscity was down, and for a guy that he doesn't have a ton of major league experience, but he's ready in his late twenty that for a lot of pitchers of that age, your fastball velocity begins to steadily decline, even if you're only pitching in very limited samples one ending at a time out of the bullpen. I support the decision to just cut ties with him. I hope they left the door open to maybe negotiate a minor league deal where they can invite him to spring training, just get a look and see what more he's doing, because the bullpen continues to be a very big concern moving forward for this team. Meanwhile, around the majors, there were a lot of prominent names that were let go for these financially motivated reasons. The Cubs, in particular, were a team that was in the middle of the action as they start what could be a quasi rebuild at the end of the theo Epstein era. At the end of last year, they had Jose Martinez on their team, and he slumped towards the end of the year. He's someone that is had his glory years with the Saint Louis Cardinals, as I'm sure you remember only a couple of years ago, one of the more dangerous bats against left handed pitching. He got non tendered by the Cubs, as did Kyle Schwarber, who was the World Series Hero back in twenty sixteen. Former early first round pick, and even now I think it's hard to argue that he has some of the best raw power in all the majors. He's not someone that really sticks out to me as a great fit for the Marlins, given that he was kind of mediocre last year Defensively. The only position that he's somewhat competent at is left field, and the Marlins have Corey Dickerson more or less entrenched in that spot for one more year. But still someone that I'm sure is going to command a lot of attention for good reason, and someone who has been marketable along the way. I mean, no doubt, somebody that is a good ambassador for the game, but someone who never quite fulfilled his huge potential that he had when he was first breaking into the majors. Left Hander Chasen Shreve was non tendered by the Mets, and Shreve is someone that is on my radar a little bit because he had a couple really solid years early in his career with the Yankees at the same time when Gary Denbow and Dan Greenley and others were part of the Yankees organization, and as we've seen, those connections can go a long way in terms of who the Marlins pursue. So I would just keep that name in mind Chasen Shreve for a Marlins team that still has room to improve in the bullpen. He did strike out about one third of all the batters he faced last year, even though his bottom line stats were more or less right around the league average. But given his fairly long track record in the fact that he does miss bats, I would just keep him in mind. No, mar Mazara was a name that we heard at this time a year ago that, if I remember correctly, Craig Mish was reporting that there were actual trade talks involving the Marlins. He ultimately went from the Rangers to the White Sox, then had a disappointing year, somewhat in the same vein as Kyle Schwarber, where his raw power is immense and he has great prospect pedigree. He's even younger than Schworber, I think, only twenty six years old, and his raw stats earlier in his career were pretty solid with the Rangers. But then you have to count for the fact that they were compiled over the course of a long season and that he was playing his home games in a very hitter friendly environment. That once you actually get things adjusted, then all of a sudden, he's not exactly a very impactful hitter at at all. Is someone that is not even league average once you take everything into consideration, and simply not quite as athletic as he looks and not as impactful as he looks. So I'm sure that he's another name that will come up being linked to them, to the Marlins because of those negotiations that happened to year ago, and that his is like cost will be pretty low. I imagine he'll get a major league deal, but not a substantial one coming off the kind of year that he had in Chicago, but not someone that I feel is a particularly good fit with the Orioles. They cut costs tonight trading their shortstop Hoose Gilesias and non tendering infielder hanser Alberto, who has nice bats ball skills. Another name to keep in mind for a Marlins team that still has some question marks at second base, in particular with Jazz Chisholm and Is Diez in the mix, but neither of whom have much of a major league track record at all, and they'd probably like to fill that second base position with some sort of everyday caliber player of some kinds, whether it's they put their trust in those young guys, or they go out and acquire a veteran that would free up John Birdie to move into a super utility role instead of holding down second base, which he did for a good portion of last season. Outfielder Brian Goodwin got non tendered. He does a little bit of everything in terms of having decent pop, decent plate discipline, outfield defense. He's played all three outfield spots. Probably profiles best in a corner spot, but can give you that versatility a little bit. Adam Duvall someone that we got painfully familiar with in twenty twenty playing against the Braves. He hit more home runs against the Marlins last year than any other player during that shortened season, including three home runs during that epic twenty nine to nine blowout loss. He is a little older than these other players, thirty two years old, and someone that even though the power has been extremely impressive, especially since he joined the Braves organization, that his on base skills have been severely lacking, and before he arrived with Atlanta he was not a consistent producer of any kind. So someone to keep in mind, but somewhat of an awkward fit given that his primary position is left field, and his age and his kind of struggles to get on base when he's not hitting the ball over the fence. David Dahl, outfielder for the Rockies, former first round draft pick that put up somewhat like Mazare. He just put up really good raw numbers early in his career, and he's one of the younger players that was part of this non tender wave. But simply put, he's coming off a lost year with the Rockies last year, a little bit of time missed to injury, and when he was healthy, he was an automatic out in their lineup, and even early in his career, once you put those stats in context, you look at the home run road splits and you consider the park factors at play in Colorado home games, that his peak performance really wasn't all that much better than your average outfielder. So he's someone to take a flyer on. And with players like Doll and with Mazara, these are ones that have multiple years of arbitration eligibility remaining, and that's something to keep in mind. This is certainly something that came up with the Marlins last year when they signed Jimmy Garcia, who had been non tendered by the Dodgers. He of course had a lights out year in their bullpen, almost perfect during the regular season, and the reason why he's still in the Fold for twenty twenty one one is because he had that extra year of arbitration eligibility remaining. It's like having a club option on a player that if they do well, then all of a sudden, you really reap the benefits of keeping them in the Fold the following year. So if someone like Mazara or Dall really puts it together and lives up to their potential in twenty twenty one, whatever team has them automatically has this flexibility to renew them for the following year. And with Doll, I mean, he's a really exceptional case where he actually has three total years of control coming up on him, so you can actually have him under control for twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, and twenty twenty three if his production merits that. Getting back though, to the three players of these non tenders that I feel are an especially good fit for the Marlins, one that I'm sure you've seen discussed on our website fishtrips dot com. We had an article from Hector Rodriguez about it, and even more loud conversation on social media is former Twins outfielder Eddie Rosario. Rosario has been a really good power hitter for the Twins the last four seasons or so, and the three of those seasons came under the tutelage of hitting coach James Rawson. James Rawson, who has since been hired as the Marlins bench coach and offensive coordinator, reportedly their personal relationship is a very close one as well aside from working well on the field together. So the fact that the Twins are parting ways with Rosario that has sparked some expectation that he could be a target for the Marlins. Though over the fence, power is a pretty safe bet, the arm is strong, the tools are there. Someone that is not as disciplined at the plate as you would hope for, and despite his athleticism, his defensive instincts have been somewhat lacking. He's not a perfect player, and I don't find the upside to be all that amazing, but it's the Marlins are at a stage where if there's someone out there that they can get on a short term deal who is in the prime of their careers, and who is a clear upgrade over their existing in house options. They need to seriously consider it. I mean, that's it's the best of all worlds to have somebody like that, and Rosario is potentially a very good fit for them. He was due to make somewhere in the neighborhood of nine to ten million dollars had he gone all the way to arbitration this year. And I'll be curious to see what exactly he's seeking in free agency, because he's young enough and he has that recent track record that's good enough that I think he would be able to get a two year contract in free agency. It's just that the average annual value would be significantly low than that nine to ten million dollar range. So is he looking for this nice one year pillow contract to really establish himself as a star outfielder, or is he maximizing his total earnings with a two year deal. Let's say a two year, thirteen two year, fourteen million dollar deal.
00:34:22
Speaker 3: Oh my high fly right field. Going back as gamble, there's another one for Rosario. His third of the series, a two run home run at it's four to one.
00:34:34
Speaker 4: That's why I always say Eddie Rozari is just a tough guy to pitch too. You saw him swinging a pitch in that at bat at his neck neck high, and so you think, Okay, he's not ever going to get to it. He throws another one up on the zone and Eddie just hammers this thing.
00:34:49
Speaker 1: Reliever Archie Bradley highly regarded prospect when he first broke through to the majors. Previously was regarded as a starting pitcher, but they made the decision pretty early on to actually convert him to a reliever, and he took off as a premier setup man for the Dim way back in twenty seventeen. He's been staple in their bullpen ever since, and his production hasn't quite matched that twenty seventeen level ever since. He doesn't miss as many bats as you'd want from like a true lights out reliever. But I see some similarities to like a Yimmy Garcia for sure, someone that it's fairly reliable at pounding the strike zone, and that was especially true last year, only walking one and a half batters per nine innings and keeping the ball in the ballpark too, So I guess that's one key difference from Yummi where that was red flag on La Marlins signs Garcia last year, but with Archie Bradley, he's been pretty consistent year to year at preventing home runs and we know how that is increasingly becoming such a critical part of how Major league teams score run that if they're not hitting the ball over the wall, that you can as a pitcher, you can dance around putting on free base runners or balls in play, because as long as the ball is not getting over the wall, you're not going to give up a crooked number. So he's coming off a season in twenty twenty where he had a two nine to five ERA. He was traded mid season. Excuse me, he was traded mid season from the Diamondbacks to the Cincinnati Reds. That's where he finished the year because the Diamondbacks were out of contention, But prior to that, he had spent his whole career in the d Backs organization. If the Marlins signed him, all else being the same, it's pretty clear that he would be their closer. With him, It's a similar situation with Rosario where I feel like there will be opportunities for him to get a two year deal, and in this case, I feel the Marlins would be more receptive to offering a multi year deal for him. There is no super obvious Marlins connection with him personally to this organization that would necessarily show that the Marlins are a favorite for him or that he has a preference for them, But it seems to be a pretty good match between them. And then there's left hander Carlos Rodon, formerly of the Chicago White Sox. If you've been a Marlins fan for a while, then you may remember the expectation that he would be their top draft pick way back in twenty fourteen with the number two overall pick. The Marlins stuns pretty much everybody by reaching to get Tyler Colek with that pick. Colek, who recently became a minor league free agent and is officially out of the organization finally, but during which time Rodon with the White Sox, he had an up and down career with them. At least he made it to the majors, which is something that you obviously can't say for Colek, appearing in parts of six seasons with them, missing a significant amount of time with injury, especially in twenty seventeen and in twenty nineteen. He barely pitched at all this past season in twenty twenty, just seven and two thirds endings, including two games out of the bullpen. Rodin has that standout slider dating all the way back to his amateur baseball days. The thing is, his control has been kind of inconsistent. His fastball velocity has been waning, no doubt, with the injuries playing a role in that, and you're certainly buying low off of him just because he pitched so little in twenty twenty and in twenty nineteen when he did pitch, he struggled. For his whole major league career. Overall, he is a four to fourteen ERA, a four to twenty six FIP that's solid for at starting pitcher, and especially if you believe that limiting him to a bullpen roll will be able to even accentuate his strengths and get better results. I think that's the most likely route that his career takes at this point. In order to minimize his workload and focus more on that slider, that you put him in a relief role where he gets to focus on what he does best. Again, for those previously mentioned reasons, the Marlins still have opportunities available in their pen, and Radon is somebody that has that kind of upside, even more swing and mispotential than Archie Bradley does. It's just that he has less familiarity with bullpen. The other angle to look at it is as somebody to partially fill out the starting rotation with the Marlins dfaing Jose Urania. I mean, the gray beard on their rotation as it currently stands, would be Sandy al Contra, someone that is just twenty five years old and perhaps not even in the prime of his career yet. It's exciting that the Marlins have so many options, both on their major league roster and at the high levels of their minors that you think still have the potential to develop into top the rotation kind of arms. But that lack of track record outside of Sandy and Pablo is kind of frightening, and it leaves open the possibility that things really fall apart for them if they have some bad luck with injuries, or those players face adversity early in the year and don't have a veteran to go to. So Rodon is somebody that has more experience than those other guys and at various points in his career, he has been really solid in the rotation. Rodon I think even more so than Bradley or Rosario. You're getting this guy as a flyer. I think he's somebody that'd be able to ink for no more than two to three million dollars guaranteed, with a lot of performance bonuses stacked on top of that if he actually stays healthy. As mentioned in an article that I put up here on Wednesday night on fish strips dot com, the latest payroll projection for the Marlins in twenty twenty one is fifty eight point five million dollars. For contexts, they were heading into twenty twenty spring training with about low seventies million dollars in commitments. Entering twenty nineteen, they were in the mid seventies. The first year of the rebuilds, they were closer to one hundred million dollars, although that was weighed down by some very undesirable contracts. This is poised to be the lowest payroll that they've had for a team since twenty fourteen. And you know, that's hard to imagine considering that the expectations for this team are going to be much higher for twenty twenty one than we've seen ever since new ownership took over. You could justify it for some of the reasons I mentioned earlier, with the pandemic limiting revenues and all the uncertainty about what those revenues are going to look like moving forward, that the majority of teams around baseball be spending less on players than they did the previous year. That being said, if they want this fan base to truly support them and believe in the vision that this organization has, it takes some actual It takes some moves that show your true commitment to winning. You can't look at this team honestly and feel confident in them replicating what they did in twenty twenty over the course of a full length season and keeping pace in a highly competitive National League East Division unless they do a little bit more. So, I would hope that we see them really seriously pursue one of the couple hundred players that are available in free agency. It doesn't have to only be limited to these recent nontenders, but all the guys that were out there to begin with who already had their contract expiring earlier in the off season. Those three that I went to detail about Eddie Rosario, Archie Bradley, Carlos Rodon. I would say it's more likely than not that they get one of those players before this offseason is through, at least if they're listening to this podcast and taking my opinion for what it's worth, I see potential fit for those guys in this situation. It's gonna be a tricky balancing act. You gotta give them credit that we're at this point with a forty man roster that only has one vacancy. Thirty nine players on forty men at this moment. So if you're to add multiple players of this caliber, and if they're gonna really shock us and make a big splash, Marlins don't have a lot of fat left to trim. A good problem to have that all these are gonna be tough decisions. So we have the Virtual Winter Meetings only a few days away, and I'm gonna have coverage throughout it on fish stripes dot com. I'm sure we're going to be recording some podcasts next week with either Fish Stripe staffers or maybe even some special guests from outside the website, so stay tuned for that. I always eager to answer your questions either here on the pod or on the website, or on social media at fish Stripes on Twitter and on Instagram and on Facebook. You can find me personally on Twitter at real Eli e l Y. So excited to recording consistent pods for you the rest of this offseason one. You know, there's hopefully actual material to discuss. So we had some good topics coming out of this non tender deadline, and it should be even more compelling rumors and possibilities for us to explore next week as well. Stay tuned, Please subscribe if you don't already, if you have the time, rate and review the pod as well. We appreciate all of that. Go Fish
Speaker 1: Welcome to the official show on the Fist Stripes podcast. It's a solo episode with me Eli Susman, first time in a while that I've done one of these all by myself. Recording on December seconds, just a couple hours after the passing of the MLB non tender deadline, and there was a lot of consequences of this deadline passing, specifically for the Marlins, but also across all of Major League Baseball that I think is going to have a very interesting impact on how the heart of this MLB off season goes. The offseason itself is moving at a pretty glacial pace for an expected reason, because we're coming off a year that was so dramatically altered by the COVID nineteen pandemic. Revenue who across the sport were plummeted based on what they were originally expected to be, and there's still some uncertainty about what the twenty twenty one season is going to look like. They have a schedule in place, everybody's hopeful about getting the whole thing in. I'm sure if you're not living under a rock, you're aware of the progress that's been made in the United States on the availability of a vaccine for COVID nineteen, but the distribution plans for that vaccine are still very much unsettled, so there are still a lot of questions about what the revenues of the sport are going to look like and how much these owners are going to be willing to spend on their product. Given that uncertainty, I was prepared for this to be somewhat of a disappointing night. This is one of the first big tests for the front office with Kim eng Now as general manager, and of course for Marlin's ownership as well, knowing that they're coming off a rough year for themselves and seeing how committed they are to actually continuing to take a step forward at the major league level heading into twenty twenty one, and all things considered, I felt this was a good night to be a Marlins fan, to feel confident in the leadership that they have to make the pretty obvious moves and some not so obvious moves that I think are very well reasoned. They had eight players that were potentially arbitration eligible, and just to give you a quick primer on what that means in case you're not totally familiar, players within between three and six years of major league service time are eligible for arbitration. Means that they haven't quite reached unrestricted free agency, but they have reached a point in their careers where a third party panel will be rewarding them based on their actual production that they've had during major league games, a lot of it compared to previous players at their respective position and with their same kind of age and service time. In almost all cases, the team and the player will reach an agreement before it actually has to go to an arbitration hearing, but in some cases it goes all the way to that level, and that helps guide exactly what these players are worth. What made this year kind of unique a couple reasons. Well, one, there was this concern that because of the depressed revenues across the sport, that we would see a record number of players getting non tendered, of teams being unwilling to meet what these players would have earned through the arbitration process and cutting ties with them right here and now without owing them a cent for the twenty twenty one season. It wasn't quite the doomsday scenario that some of the National reporters had been hinting. At fifty nine non tenders prior to this deadline. That's up slightly from fifty six last year, but there were also a record number of of pre tender agreements. This is usually the night where if you're not non tendered, then what the team does is ay begin a negotiation with you on your contract for twenty twenty one, and after some back and forth, that stuff usually gets ironed out between now and the middle of January. But in this particular night, and maybe some of it was these players accepting low ball offers to avoid being non tendered, there were fifty nine pre tender agreements, which is about doubled what were at this time a year ago. And that includes two guys on the Marlins that you're very familiar with, Hasius Aguilar acgring to a one year four point three to five million dollar deal, Garrett Cooper agreeing to a one year, one point eight million dollar deal. And so that's good for them because in both cases it is far more money than they've ever made in a single year playing professional baseball, with Aguilar obviously well deserved, one of the most valuable players all the Marlins in twenty twenty, and that wasn't always such an obvious expectation for him, considering at this time a year ago the Tampa Bay Rays put him on waivers. They weren't willing to give him what was his arbitration price his first year going through that process, and that ended up being two point six million dollars at The Marlins committed to him in twenty twenty, and that salary was pro rated because of the shortened season. Either way, was a huge bargain for the team. He was the leader on the team in hits and run, scored in unintentional walks, and he was great in clutch situations. He was more than they could have hoped in the clubhouse, and as someone who bought into their culture and preached all these positive habits. He admittedly, by his own admission, he was overweight at the end of his raised tenure, and he took it upon himself to get in much better shape. He is still one of the heaviest players in Major League Baseball. He's not going to be a swimsuit model at any time in the near future, but he drops between fifteen and twenty pounds a bad weight. Heading into twenty twenty, he kept it off and it seemed to really help his performance. Both offensively and even defensively. Him and Cooper pretty much went back and forth between the first base and the DH spot when they were both healthy. Aguilar missed a tiny bit of time with a back issue, but didn't need to go on the injury list. He still played in fifty two of the sixty games and in every postseason game. Garrett Cooper, which is somewhat of a theme of his career, had a really rough luck getting caught up in the COVID nineteen outbreak that affected the Marlins early in the season. He ended up missing almost half of the shortened regular season after catching COVID in the process of working himself back into shape. But when he was on the active roster, he was at bat pret bat, really one of the most hitters in their lineup, if not the most dangerous hitter that they had. A couple of their longest home runs of the season came off of the bat of Cooper, and their most important home run i'd say the entire year during the wild Card Series against the Cubs in that clinching game.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: Darbish Ready here comes the two two uh oh that one hammered to left Darvish with Schwarber back there looking and that one is gone. Garret Cooper will touch them all.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: With performance bonuses. He could actually end up north of two million dollars in twenty twenty one, so that's great news for him, coming just a few days after he announced that he got engaged to his longtime girlfriends Erica. Congrats to both of them. So this is going pretty well. And I would say in both cases, especially though in Aguilar's case, that there was real concern about him being a non tender candidate because well, for a couple of reasons. I'd say the biggest motivating factor is was the presence of Cooper as well as first basement in waiting Leywin Diaz. Diaz is one of their very top prospects at any position, someone that has great offensive potential and who has already shown in very limited major league action more defensive aptitude at first base than either Cooper or Agiler had Last year. All three of them were up at the majors at some point, but Leywin struggled offensively in his very limited debut and got sent back down, So that helped clear the logjam a little bit, but so did the fact that there was a universal DH in twenty twenty. Remember that was not the plan when they set out on the twenty twenty season. It was added kind of impromptly by Commissioner Rob Manfred. He had the power to unilaterally establish some rules for that shortened season once the players and MLB weren't able to come to a compromise what exactly that shortened season would look like. It was ultimately Manfred's decision to go with sixty games in the regular season, to expand the playoffs to sixteen teams, to make the DH universal, the extra ending rule, etc. So those were things that the Marlins did not plan on that they couldn't have possibly planned on entering the year before. We knew, of course, what the consequences of the pandemic would be, and ultimately it ended up being a big positive for the team and unintentional positive because they're able to have both Cooper and Aguilar in the lineup at the same time. Both were productive at the same time, and the offense for the Marlins was generally a weakness for much of that shortened season, but with having both of those guys, they helped boost it just enough up to respectability that they were able to eke out a lot of one run wins that ended up making the difference between themselves and the other while card contenders in the National League and the other contenders for second place in the National League Geese. I don't think anybody would have expected them to finish ahead of the Phillies and the Mets and the Nationals, and they did to earn that automatic berth into the expanded postseason. The issue is that the rules for the twenty twenty one season are not set in stone yet, and it's kind of inexplicable because this offseason. There hasn't been much going on during this MLB offseason for understandable reasons. Owners are reluctant to spends until they know exactly what kind of revenue they're going to be able to get out of it next year. But during that downtime, you'd expect MLB in the Players Association to hammer out the details of whether or not there will be a universal DH next year, because it is not written in the standard Collective Bargaining Agreement and that agreement is not eligible to be changed until a year from now, so this would have to be a separate negotiation to amend that for the season. The DH seems to be something that everybody is on board with the owners and Major League Baseball. They want to see more offense in baseball, and they don't want their pitchers putting themselves in risky positions where they're not comfortable swinging the stick. For a lot of these pitchers, if you ask them, honestly, they'd prefer not to put themselves in these awkward positions as a hitter when they know that they're going to be an automatic out. They'd rather have their teammates swinging the bat for them. And these players obviously want that extra job. Essentially that in the National League where half the teams will now have these built in play appearances in their lineup every single game, and that encourages owners to actually bring in somebody with real experience and skill to fill out that roster and to occupy that spawn the lineup on a regular base. So it seems to favor everybody, but from MLB's perspective, they probably see it more as a player perk, and my speculation, this isn't my own reporting, is that Major League Baseball is going to drag its feet on this situation until the players' union agrees to some sort of concession that would favor the owners down the road. If there is for some reason no DH, then that would put Aguilar and Cooper in a very challenging position because with the expectation that Lewin Diaz is fairly close to being ready to be a major league regular, that him and Aguilar and Cooper are not really going to be able to coexist all at the same time at the major league level, which creates the possibility that either one of those veterans could be a trade candidate for the Marlins to clear a little bit of salary and for them to address other needs or their minor league depth in the process of trading them. Because in deciding to tender contracts both Cooper and Aguilar, they came to a determination that both of them have positive trade value at this moment that you would be able to get something of significance in return, whether it's simple financial relief or whether it's an actual young talent to help put them down the road. That they made this determination that bring them back that committing to give them a twenty to twenty one contract would be beneficial one way or another, directly or indirectly for them moving forward. So we'll have to see how that plays out. But it's been in my opinion that assuming there is a DH in the National League, that this offense has enough concerns in it that you really need all those guys available. You need to keep Leywin in the organization. Obviously, even if he's not ready for opening Day. He's hugely important to have as depth, and he's a guy that I could see during the course of the season establishing himself as a legitimate middle of the order type of guy that Cooper earlier in his career. Even the first base is his primary position right now. He does have experience in his career in both left field and right field, so there's a scenario where HEYESUS and Cooper can be in the lineup at the same time DH or not. But especially if there is a DH, then it's super cut and dry getting them in the middle of the order at the same time. And based on what they showed last year, I would say that Aguilar is the one I'm a little bit more concerned about. Both of them are about thirty years old, more or less in the prime of their careers physically and based on what we know about aging curves, but with Aguilar there are some red flags based on his recent history, because even though his twenty twenty was inarguably a big success, if you expand that sample size to include twenty nineteen, then he's been precisely a league average hitter, a one hundred weighted runs CRADD plus, and that goes along with his lack of defensive versatility. Whereas Cooper, it least has a little bit of that, Aguilar isn't going to do anything aside from sheer emergency situations where he's going to move off of first base, and he's also one of the slowest space runners in Major League Baseball as well, So that certainly adds up for a guy that was one of the premier home run hitters in baseball in twenty eighteen, but in both twenty nineteen and even in twenty twenty when he was valuable to the team overall, he wasn't doing it by hitting it over the fence all that often. So that lack of over defence power means that even when he's doing something positive, that he's going to have to be on the bases where he'll be moving from station to station and very reliant on his teammates to get him around in those situations, I think it's anthing guaranteed that he has solved everything or that he has truly revitalized himself. There's still some question marks about him. And ultimately for one year and for four point three five million dollars and for a contract that I should know it is not totally guaranteed in these situations that for these players heading into spring training, if you choose to release a player on a standard arbitration deal, you only owe them one sixth approximately of their salary, And even if you bring them all the way up to opening day and then decide to cut ties, then the team is only on the hook for about a quarter of their salary. You'll remember this was the case with Dan Strayley a couple of years ago, where it seemed throughout the process that he was poised to fill out their rotation in year two of a rebuild. He didn't look all that great in spring training, and the Marlins were very pleased with the progress that their other young arms were making during camp, so they caught everybody off guard and they released Strali right before twenty nineteen opening day, and they ended up saving close to four million of the five million dollars that Australi was originally owed. So with the Marlins. Even though these numbers are significant raises compared to what these players made the previous year, it is not at all a overwhelming commitment for them, especially considering that there are so few other contracts that this team has on the books right now. To get to the rest of the arbitration class, the team had eight total players that were eligible heading into this night, and seven of those eight were tendered contracts in some form. As we just said, we have specific pre tender deals ironed out with Cooper and with Aguilar, with Brian Anderson, with Jorge Alfarrow, with Richard Bleier, with new guy Adam Simber, and who's the last guy I'm missing here, gimme Garcia. With those five guys, they've all been tendered contracts, meaning that the negotiations for their twenty twenty one contracts have officially begun. There's still some time for that to go back and forth between now and usually the middle of January, and then after which point you begin to schedule actual arbitration hearings. If the player in the club are totally unable to find common grounds on that price, then it goes to a third party panel of arbiters to look at past president president and come to a decision on what that player will make before moving forward to things. Number eight. The eighth and final guy that would have been eligible is the one that is for this moment no longer with the Marlins organization. That is right hander Ryan Stanek, who was part of that pretty big trade at the twenty nineteen trade deadline with the Rays. Acquired along with outfielder Jesu Sanchez and heading to Tampa Bay was Nick Anderson and Trevor Richards. The early returns from that trade at the end of swayne nineteen were pretty mortifying, where Nick Anderson totally ascended into being perhaps the elite reliever in all Major League Baseball. He was untouchable down the stretch in twenty nineteen for that Tampa Bay Rays team, and it was a little embarrassing to see the way that he took off immediately after being dealt, whereas Stanic was immediately plugged into high leverage opportunities in the Marlins bullpen and he cratered in a few situations on the stretch. Granted that team was not in contention there wasn't very much on the line, even though it was quote unquote high leverage, but he did not take well to that role. He was coming off a minor back injury and simply didn't look quite right for the rest of that season. Now the problem is heading into twenty twenty, he had a long offseason to bounce back and to figure things out, and he didn't do it. He really struggled in his limited action in twenty twenty, just like Cooper and just like what about eighteen players. Early in the season he tested positive for COVID and it ended up keeping him sidelined for close to a month, and so the sample on him in twenty twenty is really almost irrelevant. But in that small sample size, he did nothing to install confidence in his team that he could actually get the job done. They even moved him out of those high leverage situations. He was more of a mop up guy, certainly behind blier In, behind Jimmy, behind Brandon Kinseler, behind James Hoyt in the pecking order. He was not under all that much pressure, even for a team that was in the postseason hunt throughout the summer, and yet he really struggled to He was not missing bats the way you thought he could. He was. He didn't have the same command that you were hoping for. And one thing in particular that jumped out to me was his His splitter was perhaps his signature pitch, even for a guy that throws high nineties. The splitter was one of his main putaway pitches, one that opposing batters historically were really struggling to make quality contact against. But in twenty twenty limited sample, again, I'll remind you, the spin rate on that pitch was totally off. The movement on it was not the same, and as a result, hitters were able to collaborate and did a lot of damage in very small sample against that pitch. And it's enough doubt that I can understand the decision. I was frankly petitioning for him not to be involved during the postseason because I didn't feel he could be be trusted based on what he had showed during the regular season, and now heading into what would have been what fourth year in Major League baseball, he had enough service time to be eligible for arbitration. It was to a pretty modest raised from the league minimum to about eight hundred thousand dollars, only a couple hundred thousand dollars difference over the course of the year. But just as much as it was a money thing, this was more about simply turning the page and clearing a spot on the roster for a younger pitcher to step up into that situation because Stanik was not the same guy who was advertised when the Marlins acquired him from the Rais, So there was a number of factors contributing to that. Craig Mish, for one, has always been a big advocate for Stanek, and I believe he correctly points out that if he was totally healthy for an extended period of time, that you would see much better results out of him. But one of the big red flags for me was that splitter and the fact that the pitch was not the same and he needs to go back to the workshop moving forward, even his fastball veloscity was down, and for a guy that he doesn't have a ton of major league experience, but he's ready in his late twenty that for a lot of pitchers of that age, your fastball velocity begins to steadily decline, even if you're only pitching in very limited samples one ending at a time out of the bullpen. I support the decision to just cut ties with him. I hope they left the door open to maybe negotiate a minor league deal where they can invite him to spring training, just get a look and see what more he's doing, because the bullpen continues to be a very big concern moving forward for this team. Meanwhile, around the majors, there were a lot of prominent names that were let go for these financially motivated reasons. The Cubs, in particular, were a team that was in the middle of the action as they start what could be a quasi rebuild at the end of the theo Epstein era. At the end of last year, they had Jose Martinez on their team, and he slumped towards the end of the year. He's someone that is had his glory years with the Saint Louis Cardinals, as I'm sure you remember only a couple of years ago, one of the more dangerous bats against left handed pitching. He got non tendered by the Cubs, as did Kyle Schwarber, who was the World Series Hero back in twenty sixteen. Former early first round pick, and even now I think it's hard to argue that he has some of the best raw power in all the majors. He's not someone that really sticks out to me as a great fit for the Marlins, given that he was kind of mediocre last year Defensively. The only position that he's somewhat competent at is left field, and the Marlins have Corey Dickerson more or less entrenched in that spot for one more year. But still someone that I'm sure is going to command a lot of attention for good reason, and someone who has been marketable along the way. I mean, no doubt, somebody that is a good ambassador for the game, but someone who never quite fulfilled his huge potential that he had when he was first breaking into the majors. Left Hander Chasen Shreve was non tendered by the Mets, and Shreve is someone that is on my radar a little bit because he had a couple really solid years early in his career with the Yankees at the same time when Gary Denbow and Dan Greenley and others were part of the Yankees organization, and as we've seen, those connections can go a long way in terms of who the Marlins pursue. So I would just keep that name in mind Chasen Shreve for a Marlins team that still has room to improve in the bullpen. He did strike out about one third of all the batters he faced last year, even though his bottom line stats were more or less right around the league average. But given his fairly long track record in the fact that he does miss bats, I would just keep him in mind. No, mar Mazara was a name that we heard at this time a year ago that, if I remember correctly, Craig Mish was reporting that there were actual trade talks involving the Marlins. He ultimately went from the Rangers to the White Sox, then had a disappointing year, somewhat in the same vein as Kyle Schwarber, where his raw power is immense and he has great prospect pedigree. He's even younger than Schworber, I think, only twenty six years old, and his raw stats earlier in his career were pretty solid with the Rangers. But then you have to count for the fact that they were compiled over the course of a long season and that he was playing his home games in a very hitter friendly environment. That once you actually get things adjusted, then all of a sudden, he's not exactly a very impactful hitter at at all. Is someone that is not even league average once you take everything into consideration, and simply not quite as athletic as he looks and not as impactful as he looks. So I'm sure that he's another name that will come up being linked to them, to the Marlins because of those negotiations that happened to year ago, and that his is like cost will be pretty low. I imagine he'll get a major league deal, but not a substantial one coming off the kind of year that he had in Chicago, but not someone that I feel is a particularly good fit with the Orioles. They cut costs tonight trading their shortstop Hoose Gilesias and non tendering infielder hanser Alberto, who has nice bats ball skills. Another name to keep in mind for a Marlins team that still has some question marks at second base, in particular with Jazz Chisholm and Is Diez in the mix, but neither of whom have much of a major league track record at all, and they'd probably like to fill that second base position with some sort of everyday caliber player of some kinds, whether it's they put their trust in those young guys, or they go out and acquire a veteran that would free up John Birdie to move into a super utility role instead of holding down second base, which he did for a good portion of last season. Outfielder Brian Goodwin got non tendered. He does a little bit of everything in terms of having decent pop, decent plate discipline, outfield defense. He's played all three outfield spots. Probably profiles best in a corner spot, but can give you that versatility a little bit. Adam Duvall someone that we got painfully familiar with in twenty twenty playing against the Braves. He hit more home runs against the Marlins last year than any other player during that shortened season, including three home runs during that epic twenty nine to nine blowout loss. He is a little older than these other players, thirty two years old, and someone that even though the power has been extremely impressive, especially since he joined the Braves organization, that his on base skills have been severely lacking, and before he arrived with Atlanta he was not a consistent producer of any kind. So someone to keep in mind, but somewhat of an awkward fit given that his primary position is left field, and his age and his kind of struggles to get on base when he's not hitting the ball over the fence. David Dahl, outfielder for the Rockies, former first round draft pick that put up somewhat like Mazare. He just put up really good raw numbers early in his career, and he's one of the younger players that was part of this non tender wave. But simply put, he's coming off a lost year with the Rockies last year, a little bit of time missed to injury, and when he was healthy, he was an automatic out in their lineup, and even early in his career, once you put those stats in context, you look at the home run road splits and you consider the park factors at play in Colorado home games, that his peak performance really wasn't all that much better than your average outfielder. So he's someone to take a flyer on. And with players like Doll and with Mazara, these are ones that have multiple years of arbitration eligibility remaining, and that's something to keep in mind. This is certainly something that came up with the Marlins last year when they signed Jimmy Garcia, who had been non tendered by the Dodgers. He of course had a lights out year in their bullpen, almost perfect during the regular season, and the reason why he's still in the Fold for twenty twenty one one is because he had that extra year of arbitration eligibility remaining. It's like having a club option on a player that if they do well, then all of a sudden, you really reap the benefits of keeping them in the Fold the following year. So if someone like Mazara or Dall really puts it together and lives up to their potential in twenty twenty one, whatever team has them automatically has this flexibility to renew them for the following year. And with Doll, I mean, he's a really exceptional case where he actually has three total years of control coming up on him, so you can actually have him under control for twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, and twenty twenty three if his production merits that. Getting back though, to the three players of these non tenders that I feel are an especially good fit for the Marlins, one that I'm sure you've seen discussed on our website fishtrips dot com. We had an article from Hector Rodriguez about it, and even more loud conversation on social media is former Twins outfielder Eddie Rosario. Rosario has been a really good power hitter for the Twins the last four seasons or so, and the three of those seasons came under the tutelage of hitting coach James Rawson. James Rawson, who has since been hired as the Marlins bench coach and offensive coordinator, reportedly their personal relationship is a very close one as well aside from working well on the field together. So the fact that the Twins are parting ways with Rosario that has sparked some expectation that he could be a target for the Marlins. Though over the fence, power is a pretty safe bet, the arm is strong, the tools are there. Someone that is not as disciplined at the plate as you would hope for, and despite his athleticism, his defensive instincts have been somewhat lacking. He's not a perfect player, and I don't find the upside to be all that amazing, but it's the Marlins are at a stage where if there's someone out there that they can get on a short term deal who is in the prime of their careers, and who is a clear upgrade over their existing in house options. They need to seriously consider it. I mean, that's it's the best of all worlds to have somebody like that, and Rosario is potentially a very good fit for them. He was due to make somewhere in the neighborhood of nine to ten million dollars had he gone all the way to arbitration this year. And I'll be curious to see what exactly he's seeking in free agency, because he's young enough and he has that recent track record that's good enough that I think he would be able to get a two year contract in free agency. It's just that the average annual value would be significantly low than that nine to ten million dollar range. So is he looking for this nice one year pillow contract to really establish himself as a star outfielder, or is he maximizing his total earnings with a two year deal. Let's say a two year, thirteen two year, fourteen million dollar deal.
00:34:22
Speaker 3: Oh my high fly right field. Going back as gamble, there's another one for Rosario. His third of the series, a two run home run at it's four to one.
00:34:34
Speaker 4: That's why I always say Eddie Rozari is just a tough guy to pitch too. You saw him swinging a pitch in that at bat at his neck neck high, and so you think, Okay, he's not ever going to get to it. He throws another one up on the zone and Eddie just hammers this thing.
00:34:49
Speaker 1: Reliever Archie Bradley highly regarded prospect when he first broke through to the majors. Previously was regarded as a starting pitcher, but they made the decision pretty early on to actually convert him to a reliever, and he took off as a premier setup man for the Dim way back in twenty seventeen. He's been staple in their bullpen ever since, and his production hasn't quite matched that twenty seventeen level ever since. He doesn't miss as many bats as you'd want from like a true lights out reliever. But I see some similarities to like a Yimmy Garcia for sure, someone that it's fairly reliable at pounding the strike zone, and that was especially true last year, only walking one and a half batters per nine innings and keeping the ball in the ballpark too, So I guess that's one key difference from Yummi where that was red flag on La Marlins signs Garcia last year, but with Archie Bradley, he's been pretty consistent year to year at preventing home runs and we know how that is increasingly becoming such a critical part of how Major league teams score run that if they're not hitting the ball over the wall, that you can as a pitcher, you can dance around putting on free base runners or balls in play, because as long as the ball is not getting over the wall, you're not going to give up a crooked number. So he's coming off a season in twenty twenty where he had a two nine to five ERA. He was traded mid season. Excuse me, he was traded mid season from the Diamondbacks to the Cincinnati Reds. That's where he finished the year because the Diamondbacks were out of contention, But prior to that, he had spent his whole career in the d Backs organization. If the Marlins signed him, all else being the same, it's pretty clear that he would be their closer. With him, It's a similar situation with Rosario where I feel like there will be opportunities for him to get a two year deal, and in this case, I feel the Marlins would be more receptive to offering a multi year deal for him. There is no super obvious Marlins connection with him personally to this organization that would necessarily show that the Marlins are a favorite for him or that he has a preference for them, But it seems to be a pretty good match between them. And then there's left hander Carlos Rodon, formerly of the Chicago White Sox. If you've been a Marlins fan for a while, then you may remember the expectation that he would be their top draft pick way back in twenty fourteen with the number two overall pick. The Marlins stuns pretty much everybody by reaching to get Tyler Colek with that pick. Colek, who recently became a minor league free agent and is officially out of the organization finally, but during which time Rodon with the White Sox, he had an up and down career with them. At least he made it to the majors, which is something that you obviously can't say for Colek, appearing in parts of six seasons with them, missing a significant amount of time with injury, especially in twenty seventeen and in twenty nineteen. He barely pitched at all this past season in twenty twenty, just seven and two thirds endings, including two games out of the bullpen. Rodin has that standout slider dating all the way back to his amateur baseball days. The thing is, his control has been kind of inconsistent. His fastball velocity has been waning, no doubt, with the injuries playing a role in that, and you're certainly buying low off of him just because he pitched so little in twenty twenty and in twenty nineteen when he did pitch, he struggled. For his whole major league career. Overall, he is a four to fourteen ERA, a four to twenty six FIP that's solid for at starting pitcher, and especially if you believe that limiting him to a bullpen roll will be able to even accentuate his strengths and get better results. I think that's the most likely route that his career takes at this point. In order to minimize his workload and focus more on that slider, that you put him in a relief role where he gets to focus on what he does best. Again, for those previously mentioned reasons, the Marlins still have opportunities available in their pen, and Radon is somebody that has that kind of upside, even more swing and mispotential than Archie Bradley does. It's just that he has less familiarity with bullpen. The other angle to look at it is as somebody to partially fill out the starting rotation with the Marlins dfaing Jose Urania. I mean, the gray beard on their rotation as it currently stands, would be Sandy al Contra, someone that is just twenty five years old and perhaps not even in the prime of his career yet. It's exciting that the Marlins have so many options, both on their major league roster and at the high levels of their minors that you think still have the potential to develop into top the rotation kind of arms. But that lack of track record outside of Sandy and Pablo is kind of frightening, and it leaves open the possibility that things really fall apart for them if they have some bad luck with injuries, or those players face adversity early in the year and don't have a veteran to go to. So Rodon is somebody that has more experience than those other guys and at various points in his career, he has been really solid in the rotation. Rodon I think even more so than Bradley or Rosario. You're getting this guy as a flyer. I think he's somebody that'd be able to ink for no more than two to three million dollars guaranteed, with a lot of performance bonuses stacked on top of that if he actually stays healthy. As mentioned in an article that I put up here on Wednesday night on fish strips dot com, the latest payroll projection for the Marlins in twenty twenty one is fifty eight point five million dollars. For contexts, they were heading into twenty twenty spring training with about low seventies million dollars in commitments. Entering twenty nineteen, they were in the mid seventies. The first year of the rebuilds, they were closer to one hundred million dollars, although that was weighed down by some very undesirable contracts. This is poised to be the lowest payroll that they've had for a team since twenty fourteen. And you know, that's hard to imagine considering that the expectations for this team are going to be much higher for twenty twenty one than we've seen ever since new ownership took over. You could justify it for some of the reasons I mentioned earlier, with the pandemic limiting revenues and all the uncertainty about what those revenues are going to look like moving forward, that the majority of teams around baseball be spending less on players than they did the previous year. That being said, if they want this fan base to truly support them and believe in the vision that this organization has, it takes some actual It takes some moves that show your true commitment to winning. You can't look at this team honestly and feel confident in them replicating what they did in twenty twenty over the course of a full length season and keeping pace in a highly competitive National League East Division unless they do a little bit more. So, I would hope that we see them really seriously pursue one of the couple hundred players that are available in free agency. It doesn't have to only be limited to these recent nontenders, but all the guys that were out there to begin with who already had their contract expiring earlier in the off season. Those three that I went to detail about Eddie Rosario, Archie Bradley, Carlos Rodon. I would say it's more likely than not that they get one of those players before this offseason is through, at least if they're listening to this podcast and taking my opinion for what it's worth, I see potential fit for those guys in this situation. It's gonna be a tricky balancing act. You gotta give them credit that we're at this point with a forty man roster that only has one vacancy. Thirty nine players on forty men at this moment. So if you're to add multiple players of this caliber, and if they're gonna really shock us and make a big splash, Marlins don't have a lot of fat left to trim. A good problem to have that all these are gonna be tough decisions. So we have the Virtual Winter Meetings only a few days away, and I'm gonna have coverage throughout it on fish stripes dot com. I'm sure we're going to be recording some podcasts next week with either Fish Stripe staffers or maybe even some special guests from outside the website, so stay tuned for that. I always eager to answer your questions either here on the pod or on the website, or on social media at fish Stripes on Twitter and on Instagram and on Facebook. You can find me personally on Twitter at real Eli e l Y. So excited to recording consistent pods for you the rest of this offseason one. You know, there's hopefully actual material to discuss. So we had some good topics coming out of this non tender deadline, and it should be even more compelling rumors and possibilities for us to explore next week as well. Stay tuned, Please subscribe if you don't already, if you have the time, rate and review the pod as well. We appreciate all of that. Go Fish
