Hot stove season on ice
With spring training barely a month away, baseball’s hot stove season hasn’t warmed up
No one in baseball has any use for Marwin Gonzalez?
No MLB team wants Dallas Keuchel as its crafty, highly competitive lefthander?
And, obviously, no one needs Bryce Harper.
And there’s just no room on any of MLB’s 30 rosters for Manny Machado. Hot stove? Baseball’s annual free agency fire? Please. MLB’s open market is clearly broken. And if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear that baseball is heading for another labor war when the current Collective Bargaining Agreement expires in 2021.
As of Saturday evening — mid-January, with the start of Astros spring training just a month away — baseball’s hot stove still hadn’t warmed up.
Evan Gattis, Keuchel and Gonzalez were still there for the taking. The same for two of MLB’s biggest young names (Harper, Machado) and everyone from Craig Kimbrel and A.J. Pollock to Mike Moustakas, Adam Jones and Carlos Gonzalez.
You want Martin Maldonado — whom the Astros very much wanted toward the end of their franchise-record 103-win season in 2018 — well, you can have him.
The same for Matt Wieters, Wilmer Flores, Asdrubal Cabrera, Denard Span, Gio Gonzalez, Derek Holland, Clay Buchholz, Wade Miley, Jeremy Hellickson and Sergio Romo.
Remember Bud Norris? Recall all those essential innings Tony Sipp threw for the Astros from 2014-18? They’re still waiting for a real call, too.
I devoted a column last year to MLB’s free-agent problem. New season, more trouble. Sunday marks the one-year anniversary of the Astros taking advantage of Pittsburgh’s fire sale, which saw baseball’s then-reigning champs acquire No. 2 starter Gerrit Cole for four players. That currently lopsided deal is a reminder that the best could still be to come for the 2019 Astros when it comes to season-changing roster additions. A still-thawing market plays in Jeff Luhnow’s favor.
Harper in holding pattern
But for the rest of baseball? For the state of the game, the short-term future of the sport and lesser clubs that badly need revamped rosters to, you know, actually be competitive. Yuck. Ask yourself this: How in the world is Harper still on the open market?
Just as importantly: Why is a franchise-changing, 26-year-old slugger — MVP, six-time All-Star, Rookie of the Year — still available almost 2½ months after free agency began?
Smart readers and dedicated Astros fans will blame superagent Scott Boras. It’s always fun to blame Boras.
Yet even though the young man — 184 career home runs, 922 hits, 610 runs, 521 RBIs and a .900 OPS before his eighth pro season — will surely still get paid in a way that we can barely even imagine, there is something very, very off about this boring charade.
Harper would have been snapped up in weeks, not months, during the previous era, and you could easily argue that it would have been days. Now? There is no buzz. Boras’ selfproclaimed Harper’s Bazaar has been a bad joke. And baseball clearly feels like the No. 3 sport in the country.
Starting pitching has been increasingly de-emphasized. Bullpenning is a serious thing (and sometimes makes sense). And if you know your modern MLB, you know very well why this is happening: Smart teams are no longer paying hundreds of millions for past performance.
That’s hip and intelligent. Until the market is flooded and all these proven names are sitting around at the same time, just hoping to get paid and sign with some new team.
When the evidence keeps mounting, it isn’t a random trend. Last season, there was talk of the players union pursuing a collusion claim against MLB. Last February, the MLB Players Association filed a grievance that said four teams (Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh, Oakland, Miami) hadn’t spent revenuesharing money in the way the CBA intended.
“(Players) are outraged,” super-agent Brodie Van Wagenen wrote last year. “Players in the midst of long-term contracts are as frustrated as those still seeking employment. Their voices are getting louder and they are uniting in a way not seen since 1994. … A fight is brewing. And it may begin with one, maybe two, and perhaps 1,200 willing to follow. A boycott of spring training may be a starting point if behavior does not start to change.”
Outsmarting themselves
A veterans camp was held but the boycott never came.
Van Wagenen is now the general manager of the New York Mets, which only complicates MLB’s growing mess.
Machado is just 26 and already has 175 home runs. He still has time to learn the importance of hustling between the lines before his career is over. Just a couple years ago, he was a dream free agent and one of baseball’s brightest young stars.
The Astros used Gonzalez, a fan favorite, at about 10 different positions the last few years. In mid-January, he’s still up for grabs on MLB’s cold market.
Keuchel may have overvalued himself. But no one in baseball needs a Cy Young-winning lefty who can win in any stadium in the game?
All 30 teams would privately love to have Harper in uniform. The Astros reportedly tried to trade for him last season.
Baseball doesn’t have a money problem.
Baseball has just become too smart for its own good. And when the sport actually creates a couple new, young stars, no one wants them.