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What awesome comments this a.m. Actually not comments; they are followup posts in the CMS threads. Won't have time to reply for a few hours, but had to get this quickie post up.
(1) Was thrilled to see that Billy Zoom regards Ohtani a Mariner until proven otherwise:
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One national media person actually had the pepto-bismo ready when he announced the Yankees and Mariners would be the two finalists. I don't know if there are Vegas odds on a prop bet on this matter, but, if you can get down on the M's at a defent return, grab it.
This will greatly elevate DePoet's stature.
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(2) Agreed with Zoom that Ohtani's "essay questions" Blue Book final was --- > wayyyy unique in all baseball history. Giancarlo Stanton would draw gasps if he tried that as a free agent. As Billy put it:
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The gall that the player showed in requesting teams to provide answers to a specific list of questions regarding his role with his new team has got to be serious acid dumped into these organizations.
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If only we had a drone mosquito microphone in the halls, to listen to the Moneyball scouts when they heard that one!! HEH group of 7 grizzled scouts, GM informs them, two pitch over backwards in vaporlock, one runs screaming into the night ...
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I believe that Jerry Dipoto is wise and centered enough to realize something here. That being HE IS SAVING $200 MILLION DOLLARS. This player is offering to accept the currency of RESPECT in exchange for currency of wire transfers. Is that so bad?
So let's hope that Dipoto does things like this:
(A) Brings people like Robinson Cano and Kyle Seager, CLUBHOUSE people, to the recruiting. To let Ohtani know that he's already accepted as a friend. Maybe not doable, because he may BE rejected in the clubhouse Ichiro-style. But this would be SO huge.
(B) Stealing bases: "With greatest respect, we ask that you are too important to run the bases aggressively. However this decision is to be agreed as a condition of your contract signing and if you stipulate normal baserunning we will accept this." I mean, it IS his career, right? Same with DH. We ask that you do nothing else, but please inform us at contract signing of your condition.
(C) etc.
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Ohtani thinks very highly of his baseball abilities. Highly enough that he realizes he is to be "partner" with his baseball club and not "employee." As you know, NBA players go wayyyyy past this with the "partner" shtick.
The one thing that Americans will have to get used to, is that Japanese respect can come off as aloof and arrogant. The M's will be adapted to this but most other teams may not.
Look, Shohei Ohtani takes baseball TOO seriously, as Bobby Fischer took chess too seriously. Focus is one thing, greed for success another. This man is an obsessive. That's to your benefit in the W/L column, but you'll have to realize what you're dealing with going in. Ohtani appears to have a personality disorder, a very pleasant one. The M's adapt to it, or they don't.
Enjoy,
Dr D
His people just told a dozen clubs to get lost, including most of the teams that had IFA money to spend, and everyone on the eaat coast. He's letting people know he wants a small market, west coast team.
Giants and mariners get meetings.so far
Via NBCSportsTalk/HardballTalk:
The Yankees will not be signing Shohei Ohtani, MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch reports. Ohtani’s representatives informed the Yankees that they will not be invited to make an in-person presentation. GM Brian Cashman said the news was “disappointing.”
Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports reports that the Giants and Mariners are two teams still in the running for Ohtani. And according to Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports, Ohtani apparently prefers a smaller market on the West coast. The Mariners are believed to be the favorite. Cashman said he’d be excited if he were the GM of a West coast team in a smaller market.
Prior to Sunday, the Yankees were believed to be the favorites to land Ohtani as they had the second-largest amount of international spending money ($3.5 million) behind the Rangers ($3.55 million).
Other teams eliminated from the Ohtani sweepstakes: Red Sox, Pirates, Brewers, Blue Jays, Athletics, Twins, Diamondbacks, Mets, White Sox, Cardinals, Rays, Braves.
...but it's not working. If this happens I'll dance the futterwacken for a week straight! Go DiPoto!
I am going to come out and say I'm expecting a Godzilla landing than an Ichiro.
The general consensus in Japan seems to be that Ohtani is a more advanced hitter than pitcher.
He can throw 100 MPH, but many of my baseball watching friends seem to pan his pitchability compared to his HIT skillz.
In any case, even with an Ohtani signing, I wouldn't bet the farm on the Mariners yet.
Ohtani is a coup for budget reasons, but you gotta be able to add a few players on Cruz-esque contracts to round out the rotation.
and ~average DH performance would be foolish--as in 'banking' on him to do better than that in either case would be ridiculously stupid by the acquiring team. And for what it's worth, I think your friends are onto something regarding his advanced hitting abilities. Doc said it better a few days ago: you'd have to put the FLOOR for Ohtani's hitting career significantly higher than the FLOOR for his pitching career in the big leagues. But the ceiling...hard to argue with a TOR arm cranking out 5+ WAR year-in, year-out as the most valuable single contributor to a baseball team.
So yeah, they need to add another TOR pitcher to become serious playoff contenders. Darvish obviously fits the bill. And they need to figure out their 1B problem, and *probably* need to secure some COF hitting ability to replace Cruz when he's finally done doing his Superman routine in the batter's box. But Ohtani is such a HUGE move that it would change the competitive landscape for the team in a way that literally no other addition could possibly do--aside from catching the next Mike Trout or something...which Ohtani just might actually be ;-)
Ohtani is both less polished than any star NPB hitter or pitcher that has transitioned over, with more upside than any of them as a hitter OR a pitcher.
I don't want to get ahead of myself here, as I honestly don't know what he is thinking. If it were to happen it is potentially franchise changing. You acquire a highly unique talent that won't cost anything to acquire. It's almost unfair.
It's about comfort.
Ohtani comes across more like Iwakuma than Kuroda or Darvish.
Straight laced, baseball kid, that sort of thing.
It's one thing to being forced to grind, it's another being forced to grind it out in NY.
Ask Igawa.
With that in mind...
The Mariners - Who wouldn't want to wear the same uniform as the Hero of Japan, Ichiro?
The Giants - Willie Mays. That Shinjo guy. Barry Bonds. Honestly was quite surprised by how much Japanese people admire Bonds. Yeah, roids. But dat swing tho.
The Dodgers - Nomo. Ishii. Kuroda. Maeda. Litany of legends here.
The Padres - Uh. I dunno. The beer in San Diego?
I honestly only think it's Giants/Mariners, tbh.
But if the Giants are going after Stanton, then it's hard to find Ohtani a position too.
is either incredibly foolish or incredibly self-aware. If he is legitimately convinced of his own greatness--and not in a macho, appendage-measuring sort of way, but in a cool, logical self-appraisal of his own strengths and weaknesses--then 'landing' somewhere like Seattle (forgiving park dimensions which happen to favor lefty power hitters, Japanese acculturation channels well-established, small market with less media pressure, etc..) is the ultimate first step en route to the Hall of Fame.
Appears to be:
Mariners, Angels, Rangers, Cubs, Dodgers, Giants, Padres
Every west coast team except Oakland (ouch...painful snub, that) and the two other clubs he found interesting
To me the most likely alternate options seem to be division rivals. Thanks for nixing Houston though.
Does he prefer the idea of not having DH option or is it not that big of a deal? I guess the other side of the coin is being able to hit in his Pitching starts without it being strange. I'd let my pitchers hit on his days and be mindful that a long reliever who can hit a little might be a useful pairing. If AL teams are largely not willing to do that I could see more NL appeal. Otherwise the DH fallback option seems ideal to me. Play the field when you can, DH or Pitch most other days.
I really do wonder as to teams answer how they'd assimilate him. I'm assuming that's touching upon playing time and potential positions of play when not pitching and if AL whether they'd opt out of DH on his Pitching days. I want to know what teams actually think.
For a guy who isn’t supposed to like the limelight and attention, this is sure playing out like he REALLY likes the limelight and attention.
Truthfully, I find it bothersome. It smacks too much like college football recruiting. I mean, does his “team” really expect Seattle or San Francisco to come in and tell him the franchise and city mostly stinks?
Just make a choice already!
I will say that the stupid Willie Taggart situation in Eugene ticks me off more. He won’t commit to Uncle Pbil’s $20M, playing it way too coy. I hope he walks at this point, except it was a heck of a recruiting class. I hope he walks, all the same. Man, the U of O brought him into the big time and the fact that he would even consider leaving after one year drives me nuts.
Rant over.
And can we go get Grichuk as soon as Stanton decides St. Louis is his destination? Grichuk is younger and better than Heredia....and very gettable.
The college recruiting atmosphere is what I love about it. The theatre is absolutely entertaining. How could one not savor the Yankee angst last night? I was positively giddy. (seriously. Yankee Twitter was HILARIOUS.)
My theory, though, is that most all of this isn't his idea anyway. I suspect he had a real short list to begin with, "Where should I go, Seattle or Texas?" CAA said, "let's be smart about this" (aka "Let's let the Yankees talk you into them because they make us rich"). He went along and still said no. I'm fairly confident he would have much preferred this all play out on the downlow.
Sesame Street had that song 'One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others...' and that's precisely how this theater strikes me when contrasted with the rest of Ohtani's public persona and statements made prior to hiring his new States-side representation.
I'm guessing he had it down to maybe two teams, as well (could well be Seattle & Texas) and his reps talked him into including all the Big Market west coast teams. Truthfully, that's their job: to mine every possibility in the hope of finding the best fit for their client. If they WEREN'T doing the full court press on his behalf, why on Earth should he surrender a chunk of his future earnings to them?
They're auditioning for him right now since there's really not much in the way of money loading the pipeline headed their way. Agencies make most of their dough on their players' contracts (some from endorsements, sure, which is probably *part* of why they're pushing the bigger markets at him) but they have to understand that they JUST MIGHT be holding onto Rookie Babe Ruth card #1. They're not going to want to go against him at this juncture; they're going to want to impress him to ensure he doesn't switch agencies before signing that monster deal in a few years.
If this were truly Ohtani trying to grab the limelight, this process would drag out the whole offseason, or at least the full posting time period. It'll get done in miraculus time, realitive to virtually any other big name free agent ever. Dont know what to make of the 30 team writing assignment, but would probably say its agent driven and the rest is all media.
Because of the international signing limits, the only thing you can prioritize is your own comfort.
In theory, the team could extend you after you sign, but there's no incentive there for the team to do so.
Another thought... Affiliates.
Seattle's the only one that has its AAA team literally down the road.
Worst case... Demotion and/or seasoning isn't too far away.
Are mostly fairly close and AAA is the closest. From Round Rock to the Park in Arlington is showing just over 2.5 hours at 6:30 pm. Tacoma to Safe is rarely that long but my experience would prefer Texas freeway time where there's always frontage roads and alternate routes. Maybe that has changed in the 15 years since I spent time there. San Antonio is expected to be a AAA park in 2019 and likely replaces Round Rock for the Rangers but that'd add about 1.5 hours to travel (again, checked at 6:30 pm on Monday.)
4 hours still wouldn't be much, but that's assuming they wouldn't just use one of San Antonios 2 airports to fly him to one of DFW areas 6 airports...
Didn't look at Texas.
But Ohtani is from northern Japan and played mostly in Hokkaido.
I wouldn't be surprised if he hated the heat and the launchpad.
A great way to not succeed on that pitching side of things too.
Also, Darvish's Yelp review on the Rangers probably won't sit well with Ohtani.
Extra weight because Dar is Ohtani's sempai from the Fighters.
Safeco is probably the best of both worlds for him to play in. Shorter porch in right for his lefty power but at least somewhat pitcher friendly. The climate seems very similar to what he'd be used to from what I see.
hometown team's perks. All the SoCal blogs go 'THE WEATHER IS DA BOMB DOWN HE-YA!!' and I'm like 'I don't think this guy would agree--he grew up in a latitude more like the PNW than SoCal.'
Still fun to see everyone put their oar in. This guy has invigorated the baseball world in a way I've never seen.
Oh, and the Cardinals signed Mikolas. 2 Years, $7.25mil/year or something like that. Looks like a steal to me.
I documented my thoughts on what I'd do if'n I were in Jerry's shoes. I didn't want to dump the full text onto ya'll and didn't know where to put it so I'll just drop the link here:
https://marinersupdate.blogspot.com/2017/12/nates-2017-offseason-plan.html
Feel free to ravage or ignore at your leisure. I ain't trolling for clicks; this is my first update to that blog in over a year and I have no plans for consistency or brand-building or whatever. It's truly just a place to document thoughts as they occur so feel free to look it over content in the knowledge that you're not being a click-patsy.
The winter meetings start tomorrow.
Even the MLB official site seems to have lost sight of that matter.
Oh, yeah, there have been Giancarlo guesses, but not even much who the top FA's are and who will sign them.
Oh yeah, again, some guy named Ohtani has come from nowhere on the list, to the top of the list.
The national congnescenti (who identifies itself as "real" media) are stumbling all over each other and the china closet has been knocked to th the floor by some Japanese guy.
OH YEAH, REALLY, OHTANI OWNS BASEBALL NEWS ON THE EVE OF THE WINTER MEETINGS.
Supposedly, he will meet with the Giants in his initial interview, but I've already tossed them, along with the Dodgers and Texas where the "smart money" seems to be lingering, along with the M's.
IF San Diego had mountains and a cooler climate and a substantil base of Japanese culture, they would be the "second team" I would suspect to put up the "best offer" what with their organization having several past association footnotes with OH-BabeRuth-san.
In past years, the folks running the winter meet tried to control the calendar for a week before, and during the meetings.
Not this year.
Within one week he will sign with Seattle.
All the experts will have lost in bettin on what they had been sittin on as the M's were not even mentioned 10 days ago by the experts.
SSI is out in front of that big yakking curve.
zoom
Winter meetings start Dec 10 ... not Dec 5.
My error in writing down dates a couple months back.
zoom
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The M's requested some players to be available from Tuesday to Friday.
My thought is that the Mariners will interview last as to give Ohtani the most leverage, but I think it's also a play to make it so he doesn't cancel his gigs midway when he decides Emerald.
I have a feeling this will be wrapped up before the meetings start.
You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this matter
to be really something which I think I would never understand.
It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me.
I am looking forward for your next post, I will try
to get the hang of it!
nothing life threatening but will be out another week. You guys take over?
we def need somebody who gets the 100 MPH template however. Paxton isnt polished either.