Eye Black

This is all in this thread starting at Page 3 and continuing throughout. Also, the part about “same who hit on Lucroy to Indians” is HighHeat19 who is posting here. The Ellsbury rumors are from someone else.

One negative is the Brewers were presumably the one team operating in the shadows for Darvish. I am sure this Darvish news will pique the Cubs interest. If the report had first come from a US news source I would think maybe they are trying to drive up the price for the Cubs, but it seems like they probably weren’t anticipating a Japanese outlet making this public. I guess the essence of free agency is they were going to have to pony up the best offer either way, but this puts the Cubs and Twins on notice. The other negative is that I have now gotten my hopes up.

Jon Heyman adding his take via this Tweet...

FYI, I moved the Yu Darvish specific posts to the Yu Darvish specific thread started by Invader3K... LINK

Who's in that crop? Dallas Keuchel, possibly Clayton Kershaw, Gio Gonzalez, Drew Pomeranz, Patrick Corbin. Probably forgetting a couple. Also, top relievers available are Andrew Miller and Craig Kimbrel.

Beat me to the punch by mere seconds. Haha, well we are all on high alert currently!

From Ken Rosenthal...

My Darvish guess whether with the Brewers or elsewhere would be something like 5 years for $135 million. Have also heard some speculation that Darvish may consider a contract that includes a player opt out after a couple of years.

I had really been hoping for a quiet Sunday night here on BF.net. Better get your Fanfest tickets now, folks!

He does that to a lot of articles posted about him. I thought that emoji was more often used when it was something maybe not so accurate, but I can’t remember. He has included that emoji in a few other tweets. In the case of his famous Yankees Tweet he used that emoji, but also specifically said they didn’t give him an offer. I guess it could mean it’s not true or it could mean something along the lines of an interesting twist since he had previously confirmed one unnamed team had offered him a contract.

That Yahoo Article (via translation) talks about the Brewers meeting with Darvish and confirms they offered a contract. It speculates it to be a 5 or 6 year contract. To a 31 year old pitcher???? Here is the paragraph that seemed most relevant via translation. Not sure if this means they meet with him in-person, but it says they made an offer:

That Yahoo Article (via translation) talks about the Brewers meeting with Darvish and confirms they offered a contract. It speculates it to be a 5 or 6 year contract.

I will be ecstatic if the Brewers sign Darvish.

Yu Darvish weighs in with this Tweet. The headline says the Brewers are interested in Darvish.

The motivation for the Yankees to move Ellsbury is high. I said this earlier, but they are trying to assemble their World Series roster this year. If they move Ellsbury, they will be the favorites in the Yu Darvish sweepstakes.

Could be just baseless speculation, but it’s being circulated... if this Tweet were true the Brewers better be getting a lot back from the Yankees to compensate for taking on an albatross contract.

He followed up with this Tweet... Interesting, would the White Sox be willing to trade any of their young talent?

Nothing groundbreaking, but some frustration expressed from Alex Cobb on the slowly developing free agent market in this Tampa Bay Times Article. Brewers mentioned among the many teams in contact with Cobb.

They do, they get paid for giving the Korean team the rights. I think you need to understand for a Korean player to interest the Brewers that player would be MVP material in their league(Thames). That doesn’t make any sense for the Korean teams. We just traded someone we didn’t even want for some money. Not like we just traded Lewis Brinson This reminded me that in a couple of instances teams have worked out partnerships where they share strategic information with a specific foreign team. One benefit of this partnership can be sharing internal player data. The Rangers recently announced such a partnership with NPB’s Nippon-Ham Fighters and the Red Sox have had an agreement with KBO’s Nexen Heroes. With the development and importance placed on analytical data gathered on players, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more teams enter into similar partnerships with NPB and KBO teams.

Jeff Levering is a finalist to become the Miami Marlins play-by-play announcer for their regional Fox Sports TV network. It sounds like he has already done his in-person audition for the gig. Other finalists are Scott Braun, Paul Severino, Jose Mota, and Craig Minervini.

... some GM’s host their own Podcast. This is stating the obvious at this point, but I think it’s clear the Brewers have been very active understanding all corners of the market both for free agency as well as trade options. I would assume something will come to fruition because there are too many transactional dominoes yet to fall before Spring Training for something not to break the Brewers way. The most interesting thing to me about the quote was the acknowledgment that there were possibilities that haven’t been reported thus far. Just speculation on my part, but I think there is a good chance they are monitoring the Darvish market closely even though they haven’t really been connected to him publically. I have a sense that the Twins are the favorites to land Darvish at this point, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the Brewers make him an strong offer before all is said and done. I do still think it is more likely that they end up with Cobb or Arrieta than Darvish, however. As far as possible trade options not currently being reported, there are too many possibilities to even guess (but that won’t stop me from taking a stab in the dark). One possibility is a trade with Arizona which could involve major league pieces on both sides. I also think while very unlikely there is at least a non-zero percent chance the Brewers have explored taking on a portion of Grienke’s contract if the Diamondbacks are motivated to move him. Again, obviously very unlikely. Among position player possibilities I still think they may be monitoring options on the catching market. It is a position that is currently weak across MLB, so finding their catcher of the future may very well be on the radar with JT Realmuto being the most obvious possibility.

Is it really positional flexibility if he's only not terrible in the corner outfield? Núñez offers a lot of positional flexibility can stand in different positions around the diamond and sometimes even on the grass. He is less terrible at some spots than others. Fixed my original statement.

It makes sense they would be interested in him. Núñez offers a lot of positional flexibility, just last year alone he played 2B, SS, 3B, RF, LF.

The most recent Effectively Wild podcast is joined by Jeff Passan discussing this very subject. For those interested I would highly recommend listening: Effectively Wild Episode 1165: Jeff Passan Diagnoses Baseballs Broken Market

Also, as noted back in November, it appears Wichita is very close to announcing something minor league baseball related (they are bring an affiliated minor league team to Wichita and planning a new ballpark): New details in Wichita baseball push