It’s been a total drag of a hot stove season, with few teams doing all that much to improve themselves and none, really, doing anything bold. We have four of the top free agents, and over 100 in all, still looking for work. We have so much front office cloudspeak circulating that it’s numbing my brain.
It’s getting so bad that I’m starting to imagine what life would be like if major league baseball operations executives ran the world if a disaster hit.
Like, say, Thanos appears and begins to wreak havoc. The Earth is in ruins. Evil forces are running amok. Our only hope is for a team superheroes to save us. In walks, Gleek the monkey from “The Superfriends,” John C. Reilly’s character from “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and, like, Dollar Bill from “Watchmen,” at which point some general manager says, “I like our team. I’m comfortable with how we look. Would we like to have Iron Man and The Hulk? Sure, who wouldn’t? But we have to make sure what we do fits with our model.”
Against that backdrop appeared the most depressing rumor of the hot stove season:
As SF has canvassed the market for OF help, they've talked about Jacoby Ellsbury, probably would be open to a bad contract swap. For example, speculation: Cueto owed $68m, coming back from TJ surgery; NYY could recoup insurance in '19. Ellsbury owed $48m. $ would have to even out
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 4, 2019
NYY, SF could benefit from an Ellsbury-Cueto swap.
— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) February 4, 2019
SF could swap a player who won't help them in '19 for somebody who can play OF role, with CF experience. NYY, overloaded with OF, could move Ellsbury off roster and get insurance relief on Cueto. Again, $ would have to work.
I’m not sure what’s more depressing: two of the richest teams in baseball thinking about how to mitigate bad money concerns or the notion that the Giants might actually feature Jacoby Ellsbury in center field at some point. Thirty-five combined World Series titles and sixty-three combined pennants between them and the most interesting rumor about them this week is that they’re considering a garbage swap. The mind reels.
Anyway, pitchers and catchers report in like a week. Are you pumped? I’m totally pumped.
