Mike Leake First Reactions Thread
.
POTD up shortly. Meantimes, here's a clean sheet for first reactions. Here are two from Gordon, the SSI fear-nothing juggernaut on MiLB-for-MLB maneuverings
.
G-MONEYBALL 1
Whenever you can pay a #4 guy $16 million a season I guess you have to do it, especially on this team. We'll see how much money STL is kicking in, and losing Rayder is fine.
That severely curtails next year's spending though. Leake is next year's big free agent acquisition - which just puts more pressure on Seattle's young players to pick up the slack. Fingers crossed that Moore or Marco can do that.
Sonny Gray still has 2 more years of arb eligibility, btw, and hasn't given up more than 2 ER in any game since joining the NYY. Seattle's choices are like Game of Thrones romances.
.
G-MONEYBALL 2
The $ that STL is sending in the Mike Leake trade turns him into about a 3-year, $36m investment for SEA. A fair price, in current market.
--------
Dipoto wouldn't confirm money involved, but said it made Leake a reasonable priced free agent if he'd been hitting market next year.
--------------------------------
So yeah, Leake is next year's FA who might pitch a little this year and hopefully help. For the price it's not bad. With Paxton and Felix both back for next year that means Moore, Marco, and the thousands of #6 pitchers used by Seattle this season are competing for maybe 2 spots - maybe one.
Over the last decade+ it's been fun to look at what Seattle GMs have done and wonder if the team would have been better with no GM at all - whether only having a farm director would have benefitted Seattle in the Bavasi or Zduriencik eras. I'd prefer it if Dipoto didn't add his name to that list.
...
EXEC SUM - Capturing the first handful of Denizen and Super-Denizen reactions to one Mike Leake NL(TM):
1) The M's essentially find their next FA starting rotation Civic, at about 3x$12M. They get him for a month of this year. They throw in an okay prospecl.
2) This means the M's glut of tweener Rainier/#5Mariner SP's will have to squeeze through a smaller bottleneck in the I-5 on ramp. If you're looking for Stars & Scrubs don't look for it here, boys.
3) Deal looks kind of funky.
4) (Cool Papa) Shed Hisashi Iwakuma and you cancel the fractions on Leake's first year.
5) (BPJ) the M's save $30M by offloading Smyly, Gallardo (and WBC-san) which pretty well pays for Leake all the way through.
6) (Jonez) I bet they find some way to keep Drew Smyly for the long term.
7) Dipoto did good because he got 3 years of a rock-solid 2-WAR starter who slots in at #4, and got back some int'l slot money. Jonez' comp: Doug Fister.
8) It's not at all easy to aqcuire a "stoploss" back-of-rotation starter who will give you 30 starts a year.
BABVA,
Dr D
Mike Leake, huh?