Talkin' Baseball!

Let’s go around the horn and talk some baseball! Quick reminder, if you buy a gift subscription or donate a subscription to a JoeBlogs reader in need, you will get a special little gift in your inbox on Christmas this year: A sneak preview of my upcoming book, WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL.

Texas Signs deGrom!

OK, the Texas Rangers will spend $675 million — that’s not a misprint, it’s $675 million — on three players: Corey Seager, Marcus Semien and freshly signed Jacob deGrom.

So let’s ask the hard question: Will that help this team actually win?

The answer is: I don’t know, but it sure doesn’t seem like the best plan to me.

I saw deGrom as the sort of gamble that made sense for a team SUPER close to contending. He’s closing in on 35 years old, and he’s pitched 156 innings COMBINED the last two seasons. If you’re a team that legitimately feels just one superstar pitcher away from glory — the Yankees come to mind, or the Cardinals, or maybe the Blue Jays or Giants or White Sox — OK, maybe you take the plunge. You can justify it by saying: Look, if he can stay healthy, we just signed the best pitcher on earth, and we are World Series contenders. And if he can’t stay healthy, OK, better to die on your feet than on your knees, right?

But the Rangers … they can’t honestly feel like they’re one superstar pitcher away. They lost 102 games in 2021, made the splashy Seager and Semien signings, and then predictably lost 94 games in 2022. And that was even after Martin Perez, completely out of nowhere, became one of the best pitchers in the American League.

I’ve talked to some people around the game, and none of them thinks this is a particularly good fit for either deGrom or the Rangers As one asked me, “Are you willing to bet that he throws 100 innings?”

I told him I don’t bet.

But there is another side to this: The Rangers do have, by most accounts, one of the better farm systems in baseball, so maybe this is a genius move. Maybe a healthy deGrom comes in just as prospects like Josh Lung, Jack Leiter and Owen White all come up and change the entire feeling of this team.

Like I say: You never know. When I want to be hopeful, I think back not to a baseball move but to a football one — in 1999, the Rams picked up superstar running back Marshall Faulk. It seemed like such a waste — the Rams were terrible and had been ever since they got to St. Louis. But then Faulk got there, and through a series of mishaps, Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner emerged, and suddenly you looked around and found that this team was actually super-loaded with talent — Hall of Fame left tackle Orlando Pace, two dominant wide receivers in Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt, sack machine Kevin Carter, and so on.

It got to the point where you were like: Wow, when did they get all these guys?

Something like that COULD happen for the Rangers. A couple of young players break through, and they already have Seager and Semien, who have been MVP candidates, and first baseman Nathaniel Lowe emerged as a good hitter last year, and a suddenly healthy Jacob deGrom is blowing 103-mph fastballs past the world. It’s not impossible.

It’s also not likely.

But December is not the time to talk about likely. It’s the time to talk about possibilities.

deGrom moves from a team that won 101 games to one that lost 94. (Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

Scherzer and Verlander Reunited!

When we last saw them together, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, it was 2014, it was Detroit, and they made $35 million. Combined. Scherzer won 18 games and set himself up for a nice free-agent paycheck. Verlander had probably his worst season in the big leagues and left people wondering if the end was near.

And here we are, nine years later, they signed the two richest average-annual-value contracts in baseball history — each of them will make a record $43,333,333 the next two seasons — and they are the stars of every New York Mets fan’s dreams.

Of course, there’s risk when you take chances on older pitchers. Verlander will be 40 on Opening Day. Scherzer will turn 39 in July. Verlander is coming off an incredible Cy Young season, but he did miss pretty much all of 2020 and 2021. Scherzer has pitched great the last couple of years, but he has faded at season’s end as his arm deadened.

I suspect Mets manager Buck Showalter will give them plenty of rest — maybe he’ll have a six- or even seven-man rotation going, as the main goal will be having the two of them healthy and relatively fresh come October.

But if it works … it works. I don’t think anyone will want to face a Mets team featuring Verlander and Scherzer in the playoffs

Turner and Harper Reunited!

Wow, the amount talent that came through Washington in the late 2010s is really quite astounding. Trea Turner! Bryce Harper! Juan Soto! Anthony Rendon! Stephen Strasburg! Max Scherzer! Now, they’re all scattered to the wind and the Nationals are the worst team in baseball. Wacky.

Turner signed an 11-year, $300 million deal with Philadelphia — that’s not significantly different from Harper’s 13-year, $330 million deal — and this is such a Dave Dombrowski move. What does Dombrowski do? He wins, dammit, that’s what he does. He comes in, builds teams that can win the World Series RIGHT NOW and he never allows the demands of tomorrow to interfere with the pleasures and excitements of today.

That’s what he did in Florida, building a World Series winner (and then being forced to tear it down). That’s what he did in Detroit, when he put together one of the most talented teams in the last 50 years. That’s what he did in Boston, which lead to their charmed 2018 World Series season. And that’s what he’s doing in Philadelphia.

So the question for Dombrowski is not, “What will this deal look like in 10 years when Turner’s 39, his speed is probably gone, he can no longer play shortstop, and he’s pulling in $27 million a year?” The question is: Does Trea Turner make us even more of a threat to win the World Series in 2023?

Absolutely he does. This was a team that had Kyle Schwarber leading off and Rhys Hoskins batting second. Move those guys down a spot, put Trea Turner in front of them, um, yeah, sign me up for that. Dave Dombrowski can run my team any time.

Aaron Judge Will Sign with …

… I have absolutely no idea. It looks at the moment like it’s a two-team race between the Yankees and the Giants, but with the crazy way free agency is going, I would not be at all surprised to see other teams dive in and try to pull the last-minute takeaway.

In the end, though, I suspect it will come down to a simple Aaron Judge calculation — just how interested is he in staying with the Yankees? Because I think the Giants are going to offer a lot more money. I think the math is easy in San Francisco — they are currently being outgunned by both the Dodgers and the Padres, and if they want to play in this sandbox, they need to bring a big shovel and pail.

One rumor had the Yankees offering an eight-year, $300 million deal — that’s $37.5 million per year. The latest rumor has the Yankees bumping it up to a nine-year deal, so let’s say nine years, $335 million or something like that.

I could totally see the Giants offering nine years, $400 million.

I mean, why not? Judge would be a huge star in Northern California, where he’s from. He’d help make the Giants cool again, something the team has lost a bit in the last few years. And he’d bring some power to a lineup that desperately needs it. Could that contract potentially backfire if Judge ages poorly? Of course. But, the Giants need to engage their inner Dombrowski. The chance to sign an icon doesn’t come along often.

And as for the Yankees: They really only have themselves to blame for it getting this far. They’ve known for years now that Aaron Judge was the one guy they HAD to sign, and they messed around with their stupid lowball offer last year and now they really might lose the guy.

This is rare air for the Yankees. I don’t think in their long history they’ve ever had their best player just taken away from them. Yes, they did lose Robinson Cano back in 2013, but, in retrospect, the Yankees didn’t put up much of a fight to keep him. “I didn’t get respect from them, and I didn’t see any effort,” Cano said.

This time, the Yankees definitely want to keep Judge. You would think they’d go as far as they have to go to make sure that happens. But more and more we’re coming to realize that these are not your father’s Yankees. And Aaron Judge really might go.