mtutiger

The fact that the reality may be more complicated than what came out of the initial reaction to this happening by Tigers fans does not inherently make it suspicious, no. And Gene Mato's statement last night, at least in my view, would suggest that Rosenthal's reporting isn't that far off what actually happened (if at all)

LOL at the social media comments about ERod being a winner because he got to use the clause. Using the clause he negotiated is one thing.... not being a good faith actor is another completely. He crossed the line into the latter, from all indication.

In retrospect, the fact that Gene Mato released a statement on Twitter last night was perhaps PR to get ahead of this story getting out.

Those comments from the other GMs are sour grapes.... if even just one team is willing to pay the price, that validates the price IMO

Rosenthal's write up was pretty fair, and with the discussion of possible three-team trade discussion, it kinda blows a hole into the hole "tunnel-vision" plot line. I do take issue with his comment about the criticism for just selling him for a lower price being less than Seidel's blistering criticism; I absolutely could see him being taken to the woodshed by the writers/fan base if he wasn't perceived as returning the kind of value that they believed ERod was worth.

In terms of stature and payroll, the Dodgers are in a different category than some of the other clubs that were linked to ERod. It is possible they were uniquely suited and more willing to take on the contract and whatever risk came with it than Baltimore or Cincinnati were.

Possibly, but it depends on what other teams were offering for his services. I dont have that information

I would imagine that Harris may have a philosophy of not accepting pennies on the dollar in a trade as well

I dont think he didn't trade ERod because of what teams think about him. I dont think that enters his mind at all. But I do think that teams shouldn't just trade their pieces for pennies on the dollar just for the sake of trading either. And with what we know and has been reported, that is potentially what they were looking at, although we will likely never know for sure.

Maybe, but the two teams most commonly connected to ERod behind the Dodgers (BAL, CIN, neither one known for carrying large payrolls) are both teams who may be less interested in assuming the risks of taking on that contract. Which undoubtedly would have an impact on the return

I mean, it depends on if we are talking a little less or a lot less, doesn't it?

This argument could have been used to justify the JD Martinez trade, fwiw.

If we're being honest, Seidel is just giving the people what they want.

One imagines that there are few decisions that a baseball executive makes that dont come with some level of risk.

IDK, Lynn Henning literally invented the AJ Hinch opt-out of thin-air.... knowing that information, it boggles my mind that any fan would "engage" there, yet many still do.

Why is setting a high price for Eduardo's services a mistake? Like, I don't know that we want the new PBO going out there and signaling to the rest of the league that he can be rolled into accepting a Dawel Lugo-esque return either.

To put it another way, the target audience should make them wear it, in terms of future engagement, when they report stuff that isn't accurate. I know it isn't their responsibility to worry about the teams or discussions smooth or whatever.... but as a fan, it stands to reason that reporters reporting stuff that isn't accurate, or engaging in innuendo, should probably lead to criticism of said reporters. Or maybe questioning their wisdom in the future when they report or tweet.

Yep. And I suspect the relative antipathy that Harris has already generated among some of the beat writers locally during his short tenure has something to do with the fact that the Tigers don't exactly give out a ton of information. Which may be good from a trade secret perspective but not great from a content generation perspective.

They are getting absolutely zero heat for it, but I think the beat writers and national media kinda should wear this too because they were instrumental in expectation setting. Things like JP Morosi tweeting over and over again about how many teams were interested in ERod (which appears to not have been the case at all), or Boob Nightengale talking about how both Lorenzen and ERod were definitely being traded, etc. Or even just the weeks and weeks of speculation by the local beat writers. Which kinda gets to one of the takeaways I have after a year of watching this front office: just because a writer (locally or nationally) speculates something or spreads a rumor about the Tigers, that doesn't mean they know what the hell they are talking about. In fact, I'm not really sure I can recall a transaction made under Harris where rumors and innuendo preceded the move. If fans don't want to end up surprised or shocked, maybe they should stop giving deference to the writers who throw out scenarios because I'm not sure they know anymore than we do, at least about possible trades or free agent moves.

I'm not sure I understand why giving a little bit of deference to the team-side explanation of what went down here is a bad thing. Or is seen as some sort of personality flaw by some fans. The existence of Bob Quinn or other bad GMs doesn't really change that for me.

This seems better directed at the fans who have already set the narrative on what happened and, subsequently, are calling Harris the next Bob Quinn.

Which gets to the fact that "other options" aren't contractually obligated to remain "other options" and are free to pivot to different trade pieces as well. In the Tigers case, I think the market for JV may have been a factor too... his deal was a major logjam to getting something done, but it took a lot of time (almost 24 hours, I believe) to get that resolved. Once it did and the Dodgers were lined up, there wasn't a lot of room for error for getting it done from a time perspective.

As far as Cisnero and Shreve are concerned, yeah, it would have been nice to have seen them traded but, particularly with Shreve who hasn't been all that good this year, I'm not sure that the return would have been that great. With Eddie, the contract situation plus what happened last year could have limited his market, that seems reasonable to me. Or maybe took what Baltimore or Cincy or other possibilities and made what they would offer come in below expectations. And if that is the case, and he completed a subpar deal, I just don't think the fans would be happy there either. But we don't have the inside info and the tendency is to just blame Scott Harris for not meeting the expectations set by the beat writers leading up to the deadline, so here we are.

If there were deals lined up but the return was below what they felt he should fetch, should they have completed it? I can tell you that I could see a world where Harris trades ERod to one of the backup plan teams and, because the other options placed a different valuation than the Dodgers, the fanbase is blaming Harris for not getting enough back for Rodriguez. Which gets to the idea that had been discussed a couple of times yesterday... holding the line and not just selling for pennies on the dollar, ala JD Martinez

I'm not sure how double or triple checking makes it impossible for a party to a contract to change their mind at the last minute, or unexpectedly.