I'd much rather play the wildcard team that had to burn its ace than a rested Cleveland or Boston team. Plus, MMP is a definite homefield advantage. Sure, ANYTHING can happen. But those two are, I think, significant advantages.
I agree Detroit still tries to negotiate a trade - but in that scenario, they can't negotiate with the Cubs or anyone else. It's either the Astros or no one, so we have a bit more leverage. If we *were* willing to take on his salary in exchange for keeping all the prospects, I'm surprised we didn't claim him and at least eliminate the competition. Even more surprised that LA or Cubs didn't do it, given that they have less financial constraints.
Seems like it would just be this year's salary though, and the Dodgers have the revenue stream to eat any costs without much problem. They can make other moves or just trade him again in the offseason if they wanted, to get back under the cap. I assume the Dodgers, at least, were never too interested. Cubs might have more of a budget than I assumed.
While I agree in concept, it's come out today that the Dodgers had no interest, and the Cubs had no prospects to offer even if they took on the entire contract. The Astros weren't negotiating against anyone--only the Tigers willingness to wait until the offseason. That would always be on the table, regardless of who else is at the table.
I thought the deal was a steal for the Astros. Losing Perez hurts but we still have Whitley. What's the ceiling for Cameron and how likely is he to reach it? Not convinced Rogers will hit enough so I though the Stros did fine.
Good question. I think it was clear that Verlander is about winning now (based on everything we already knew publicly before this it seemed) and wasn't interested in waiving his NTC to go to a non-elite contender. Aside from that, I have to think the Astros have good sources around the league to understand who's in and who's out, at least at a high level. Putting those two pieces of information together, I'd suspect it was clear that it was down to them and maybe one other? But now I'm totally hypothesizing.
Um...all three made big trades this year. Rick Smith trade of Brock was GENIUS. He got someone to take a mistake after one year. That is HARD to do.
Bro... the internet was a thing in 1998. In fact, ClutchCuty.net (now ClutchFans) was a thing. It was certainly pre-BBS. I'm fairly certain that both Yahoo! and AOL.com had the Johnson story in '98. I read both of them daily via my company's blazing fast T1 service.
The internet wasn't breaking stories back then though. That was still TV and radio-centric, and then local news media would write the story, Baseball tonight (ESPN) broke the RJ trade, with KTRH reporting it locally. Twitter really helped adapt the MSM to the internet world... but prior to that, tv still had breaking news that mattered.
