gehringer_2

I go back the fact that Harris wasn't here during the ERod saga last year - maybe if he had been he would have been more circumspect in dealing with ERod's camp and thus would have limited his negotiations to teams that ERod couldn't veto. Sacrifice a little return for certainty your deal goes through. He put himself into the hands of people he trusted but should not have. I can accept a rookie getting burned once. It should never happen again.

The book isn't closed on ERod until this season ends. Harris can still salvage ERod's roster value if he gets him to opt in even it that mean offerring some kind of extension, as long as that extension doesn't leave him untradeable, in which case you either get his performance or trade a now controlled player for a good return. If ERod walks, then Harris rightfully should be hammered for getting nothing.

LOL - Correct read: "Family is important but not so important that it would not have taken second place if there had been time to get the Dodgers to kick in more $$" OK - more charitably "more time" could have be read to mean more time to arrange a 3-way that would would have sent ERod East and some other player West, but I'm not that charitable.

I think a conference will be reluctant to go that route because it raises a host of governance issues. Whether they apportion voting rights in accordance with $$ participation of not, either way you're going to have a lot of strain. IIRC hasn't B1G brought in teams without full $$ rights initially but reduced rights were temporary? (Maryland and Rutgers?). Still, hard to see the 2nd tier B1G and Pac12/10/8 teams not being willing to give up almost anything not to fall out the P5 completely.

Good Lord - if they had traded Rogers and the catcher coming back was slotted for Toledo that would have meant Haase full time? Fan agony. Talk about the best deals being the ones never made.....

I don't extend him to keep him. If he goes, he goes. If he stays 3 yrs is enough. If he's good, I trade him next yr or the year after once the remainder on his contract turns into an asset for a trade - i.e one to two years out.

How do you change ND's incentives? As it stands any conference they join reduces their take.

I think the story will be to what degree other teams only see this last episode as more evidence that ERod is a problem child, because if that sentiment has currency around the league and he or his agent can read that - he may decide not to test the FA waters. I have no idea but I believe it's a likely factor. Along the same line, I would think that if he is thinking about opting out, signing up with a new agent that is highly regarded by team managements would be step one toward giving teams more confidence it was safe to deal with him.

they're spending a bazillion $ for Rapid Transit to the terminals. It will be interesting to see if that cuts down congestions or not.

Have any family on the Left coast? For me it's not the travel - it's the time zone difference. It's never convenient on both sides to talk. Texting solves some of that, but some people prefer live contact.

As noted by KDog in the Tiger's cub thread, the Tigers cleared space at AAA for one position player and one pitcher by temporarily sending Faedo and Sands to Eries. Not a bad guess the return from the Dodgers would have been AAA guy(s).

I'll have to "Like" this post in text as I have run out of 'likes' today. (Getting soft I guess - First time that has ever happened 😱) OTOH, the Lorenzen deal looks pretty typical. I suppose we should remember Harris was not here through the ERod saga last season - maybe if he had he would be been more suitably skeptical of his camp and had the foresight not to depend on him agreeing to a waiver. Lesson learned hopefully.

Post better. "paste as plain text" is your friend.

I think this is one strategy. You accept that you are trademarking in a narrow piece of a market in return for protection that is harder to attack.

also depends on where you evaluate the state of your MiLB system. You only have so many slots. And if you are only getting back lotto tickets? So if I have a lot of MiLB deadwood I'd just as soon clear out and look at some fresh faces, maybe anything is good enough to get back instead of having a guy walk. OTOH - if I've just come off the draft, signed all my guys, like where my system is going, the value of one more lotto ticket might be pretty close to nil.

Helping Erie to win the league 2nd half?

yup. To me, Lorenzen was the more valuable piece and we got one high A player for him. Have to assume what was on the table for ERod was a step down from that.

Justice system in the US can't seem to do anything at a reasonable speed. I guess there is too much money to be made in a system that can burn legal billable hours the way this one does. And since legislators are lawyers, they will never reform the system to end the gravy train.

of course. But I tend to believe most teams are negotiating from value models that end up looking fairly similar. And to pick up on the general idea - maybe if we knew what LA had offered we'd be underwhelmed enough not to care that the deal fell through! As catalogued in this thread, there are reasons to suspect ERod's (and his contract's) value perception around the league was not as high as we might have hoped.

True. Maybe the lesson for Harris is don't get too greedy? If he could have made a deal for a little less return with a team that wasn't on ERod's NT list, and didn't - the lession would be to give enough weight to the value of being in control of the situation instead leaving yourself at risk to factors you don't control.

He season numbers looks very good to us because he was lights out for a run of six starts in April/May. But in his last 7 starts his has given up 4 or more four times. IOW, if you are looking for a guy who is hot right now for your stretch run, ERod is maybe not so much.

The comments on the Dodger's side sounded real to me - they felt burned. The leads me to think this was not just the outline of a deal which might have been part of a leverage negotiation that didn't go anywhere because Baltimore or whoever the real target was didn't bite; but rather they had a done deal and ERod backed out at the very last minute leaving both teams with nowhere to go as the clock ran out. What we don't know is how the 'fault' lies between Harris' office, the Dodger FO, ERod's agent, and ERod himself. The Dodgers said they had been talking with the agent. That fact probably absolves Harris to at least some degree. He has no reason to think he'd be hearing anything different from ERod's camp if he had a second line of communication open - and in fact maybe he was in the loop and hearing all the same things the Dodgers were - that is - "we have a deal." It's also possible the Dodgers were assuming more in what the agent said than he intended i.e. - they misled themselves in some part- possible, but that's seems less likely. Most likely either the agent was blowing smoke assuming he knew what his client wanted when he didn't, or ERod crossed the agent up as well. Either way, from management's perspective you have player who has burned some bridges in terms of teams being interesting in dealing with him in the future. I'd expect ERod to have a new agent before opt out time - either because the agent isn't interested in retaining the client and/or because the client knows he needs to rehabilitate his credibility.

Since Mid-May his OPS against is 738 and his WHIP is 1.35. Not great, and I expect both to rise as the Tigers start to crater - both play sloppier as a team and probably do more position experiments with guys that can't field which will drive up the length of innings and pitcher stress and push up everyone's runs against. On the plus side, since they didn't move any relievers, at least there won't be additional pressure to leave starters in the game to higher run totals. In any case - I don't expect ERod to finish the year with performance numbers anywhere near as gaudy as those he began the season with, the net result of that plus last year plus what just happened today being that quite possibly he will not find the world beathing a path to his door for more than $16M/yr. Long story short, I think the odds are good he is our problem until this contract runs it's course.

OK - lets say it's "Eduardo - are you certain that there is nothing that hasn't been considered that might prevent you being comfortable (seems to be the term of art here) with a move to LA?"

Manning not sharp, but little matter as the offense was AWOL again.