chasfh

Well, that puts the exclamation point on why nobody was inquiring after Alex Lange.

I've decided that I am rooting for Eduardo to opt in for the final three years, so when we sell him at next year's deadline, there is cost certainty for the acquiring team. I would also be OK accepting less than blue chip prospects in return for him, assuming he's not having an All-Star season.

is there another pitcher with a situation analogous to Eduardo's that did get moved for decent return? I don't know, I'm asking. If there is, then yes, I am on board with assigning some blame to Harris here. If not—if Eduardo's situation is unique in terms of his contract details regarding opt-outs and team's skittishness to absorb it, even setting aside flaky behavior—then I'm loathe to hammer Harris for not being able to trade him for a solid return. I think Harris has showed that when he is dealing with a standard situation, such as a straight rental for a good player, he's able to convert it acceptably in a way the prior guy simply couldn't.

BTW, has anyway reserved motownbull****speculation.com yet?

That said, Eduardo's underlying metrics in his four July starts were pretty decent considering the 5.66 ERA (i.e., 10.5 K/9, 2.2 BB/9, 3.23 FIP, 77 FIP-). If he keeps that up for the rest of the year, especially if he turns around his bad luck (.321 BABIP, 58% LOB), there is a good chance he opts out, and honestly, if that happens, I'm rooting for him to go, because I don't want to see the Tigers give him another five or six years guaranteed mainly to justify not being able to move him. Then Jeff Seidel can filet Harris for that.

Her’s one media guy who’s making Harris wear it.

It would not surprise me at all to see Eduardo opt out and sign a 4/70 or even a 3/50 with the Marlins, which would make him as close to his family as possible.

Do you mean mid-level prospects like Dawel Lugo (ranked #4 in the Diamondbacks system) and Sergio Alcanatara (ranked #15)?

Yes, totally fair. It would have to be zeitgeist reaction on our part, though, since we are not unionized as media consumers and can’t bring it up at the next meeting. 😁

If Eduardo’s agent was leading everyone along that a deal could be completed with LA all the way up to the last minute, before his client pulled out the rug at the last minute—which we can already reasonably assume—and Harris was getting garbage offers from everyone else—which seems fairly likely—then I would find it hard to blame Harris for anything here. After all, he had to trust that Mato knew what he was doing, and that Mato was dealing with the full faith that Eduardo was on board to go to LA during the process.

Why should they wear anything? The media have no responsibility to help keep the avenues of trade discussion among teams smooth by being circumspect about how they report on it. They are doing exactly what they are being paid to do: drive engagement and ultimately revenue for their employers, the media vehicles, by writing things that interest people. This is one of those circumstances in which it is up to us, the target audience, to filter through the media noise, pick up on what seems reasonable, and ignore or discard the rest.

We are talking about it now, though, and isn’t this fun? We’re having a good time, aren’t we? Are we not entertained? I’m being serious here.

There’s the key word. Outside of the Dodgers, I can envision Harris getting nothing but lowball offers for Eduardo because of any combination of the uncertainty of what Eduardo’s situation will be after the season, the Tigers’ history of accepting garbage returns for good players, and the softness of Eduardo’s topline July performance (5.66 ERA in July). To your point, we will probably never know what the returns on those other (if any) offers were.

What we don’t know yet was whether Eduardo was on board with going while the deal was being done, until he wasn’t. Dodgers PBO Andrew Friedman had some interested comments on the incident in the Athletic: “We didn’t expect (what happened) at all,” Friedman said. “We hadn’t known one way or the other. We thought with having a lot of his ex-teammates and guys he’s played with, our place in the standings, I thought we would be very desirable. … We never got a chance to talk to Eduardo. But we talked to his agent numerous times. We respect that he had this right and he exercised it. Obviously would’ve loved for him to join what we have going here. But it’s hard for us to argue with family reasons.” There’s a lot to unpack in this paragraph, but my takeaway is that his agent was the lead on the deal—which implies that Eduardo was in on it, since an agent who works against his client’s wishes is malpracticing—and that last minute some family-related reason killed it.

Ironically, if Eduardo stays with the Tigers, his cost certainty might make him easier to deal at next year’s deadline.

Jeimer Candelario went 4-for-5 for the Cubs tonight. 🦆🦆🦆

I wonder whether the deal might have been predicated on the idea that Eduardo would waive his opt-out to stay with the Dodgers for three more years—which, coincidentally, would lead to the optimum haul for us, as well as cost certainty for the Dodgers—and something happened in Eduardo’s world that nixed that. Maybe his wife, like someone said. Or maybe he would have been OK with two months in LA but not three more years. Just another possibility to speculate on. Who knows.

Now THIS is a deadline deal that I heartily approve of! 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽

Racist. 😉

I agree with your timeline, although had it collapsed days ago, I'm pretty sure Harris would not have blabbed that to the media.

Not defending Harris failure to trade Eduardo as being a good thing—it's definitely not—but I think most of us understood that he was always going to be a more difficult trade than Lorenzen was. The deal we signed saddled us with a guy who would be a rental if he pitched well for a new team, and four more years at 60-some million if he either did poorly or went down Tommy John-style. That's a big risk for a buying team. I also wonder what role Eduardo's agent played in this whole drama. It's not as though Harris was dealing directly with Eduardo during the negotiations—he was almost certainly dealing through Eduardo's agent, who might have been on a very different page than he should have been throughout this. He might have been leading Harris to pursue a deal with LA for reasons such as he thought he could sell it through to the pitcher. And as we learned during last year's ghosting incident, the agent, Gene Mato, is not exactly the most high-powered buttoned-down agent in the game.

OK, now I don't know what I want regarding Eduardo Rodriguez. I don't want six years of him. I don't really even want four years of him. I don't want Harris to go overboard Avila-style trying to justify not trading him by overpaying him. I don't want Eduardo to walk away for nothing. In any event, I'm going to get something I don't want here.

It's official. 😞

So-called media professional gets schooled by amateurs.

Looks like Baseball's Best Fans™ are only too glad to see Flaherty go