MLB OFF-SEASON HOT STOVE THREAD

--10-30-18: www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/matthews-sorry-yankees-fans-%e2%80%94-bronx-bombers-are-a-long-way-from-matching-red-sox/ar-BBP6iPV?ocid=U147DHP  I AGREE with most of what is said here... 
But the real end of the Yankees season came a lot earlier than anyone could have known. That was on Dec. 11, 2017, the day they decided to swallow the bait, trading Starlin Castro and a couple of minor-leaguers for Giancarlo Stanton and his $325 million contract, reduced just enough by the Miami Marlins’ contribution to keep them under the luxury tax threshold.

That move took them out of the running for J.D. Martinez, who two months later became a member of the Boston Red Sox.

Now, it is possible that he and his teammate, Mookie Betts, could finish in a dead heat for the AL MVP Award, while Stanton gets to spend his winter trying to figure out what went wrong in his first season, and postseason, in New York, and if he can ever recover from it.

Stanton will have plenty of time to figure it out, because the Yankees are stuck with him until 2027, unless he chooses to exercise the opt-out clause in his contract after 2020. But the chances of that are remote, since the remaining years of his contract after 2020 call for an average of $29.5 million a year. Losta luck getting a raise from that.

In the meantime, Martinez – whose .330 batting average, 43 home runs, 130 RBI and 1.031 OPS in 2018 dwarfed Stanton’s .266/38/100 and .852, and we haven’t even gotten into the postseason numbers – is being paid a relative pittance ($23.75 million for the next two years) and can opt-out of his deal as early as next winter.

Clearly, not only did the Red Sox trounce the Yankees in the regular season, but in the offseason as well.

Stanton’s strikeout in the ninth inning of Game 4, with two runners on, will follow him into next season, and perhaps beyond, depending on how he performs in subsequent postseasons. It took Alex Rodriguez, a far better all-around player, five full seasons as a Yankee to shake his reputation as an October bust.

The way Stanton rebounds from that will go a long way to determining just how colossal a blunder the Yankees made by committing to him for a decade last winter.

Stanton, of course, is not the sole reason the Yankees made yet another early postseason exit, and are about to enter their 10th season without a World Series appearance.

Round up the usual suspects: Unreliable starting pitching, poor situational hitting, questionable managerial decisions in the postseason, untimely injuries to key players all shared some of the blame.

But the different ways in which they and the Red Sox approached their offseason needs are indicative of their respective approaches to the business of baseball these days, and it was reflected in where each team ended up.

Last winter, the Yankees’ priority was staying under the threshold and avoiding, as GM Brian Cashman said in his season post-mortem a couple of weeks ago, “subsidizing’’ other teams.

The Red Sox’s priority was building a winning team.

Both succeeded in achieving their goals. But only one of them is truly happy about it.

And while Yankee fans can try to console themselves with the knowledge that two of their three ALDS losses to Boston were by a single run, the truth is the Yankees have a long way to go to catch up with Boston.

In this case, objects in the rear-view mirror are not as close as they appear. Even though they won 100 games this year, the Yankees are a lot further behind Boston than they or you would care to admit.

The Yankees still need a stud starting pitcher, but now, with the devastating injury to Didi Gregorius, will need a top-flight shortstop, as well.

There’s no telling if Stanton will ever live up to his 2017 numbers, or the numbers on his paycheck, or if his personality is really suited to playing in an environment like New York, where his every move is sure to be dissected, analyzed, and displayed for all to see.

Although they have a solid nucleus of young players, the Yankees have nine players who became free agents officially on Saturday, and some of them – David Robertson, J.A. Happ, Zach Britton, Brett Gardner, Andrew McCutchen and CC Sabathia – might be tough calls.

Another tough call will be whether to pursue Manny Machado, an enormously talented player who is also a headache and, by his own admission, a bit of a dog, or to perhaps go after a safer, less spectacular option for the infield, like Mike Moustakas.

They will no doubt be tempted by Bryce Harper, who has a very good chance to become another Stanton in the Bronx.

And they still have to wonder what is up with Luis Severino, who looks like Tom Seaver one day and Tom Thumb the next.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox seem set for the next couple of years, which is terrible news for the Yankees. Steve Pearce, the surprise World Series MVP, is a free agent but Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr., Andrew Benintendi, Rafael Devers, Rick Porcello and yes, David Price, are under team control.

There’s a $13.5 million club option on Chris Sale which they would be nuts not to pick up. Craig Kimbrel, Joe Kelly and Nathan Eovaldi are free agents.

They may have run 1 and 2 in 2018, but never has the gap between first and second seemed so wide, nor so unlikely to narrow. READ MORE…