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Huh. Seems that even a Cubs guy thought they were after Kolek all along. It seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Marlins were going to draft Tyler Kolek just a few weeks ago but I was just told that the Marlins have been leaning heavily now toward OF'er Alex Jackson. http://www.chicagonow.com/cubs-den/2014/05/mlb-draft-notes-marlins-ramping-up-scouting-efforts-on-alex-jackson-and-could-sox-pick-nick-gordon/ That piece was written 3 weeks ago by a neutral observer (of us) in Chicago, so Arguello was onto something 5-6 weeks ago, even though he doubted his original information, which turned out to be right. The Marlins went after Kolek -- they spent a small fortune traipsing back and forth to Texas and staying there to watch and talk to Kolek, as they've said. They obviously didn't think that Rodon was either the BPA or BAA. There's plenty of evidence that they liked Kolek "all along" over Rodon, never mind the huge possible cost-of-signing problems and penalties associated with Rodon and it's not reasonable at all to assume that cheapness played any part in it. That's just more of the usual Loria-bashing.

I don't recall ever reading that Rodon wanted number 1 ($8 million) money. Here's one example -- Carlos Rodon, LHP, North Carolina State: The overwhelming favorite to go No. 1 overall before the season began struggled at times. Though a number of people in Houston's front office adore Rodon, he wants every bit of the near-$8 million, and the Astros' strategy as seen in their previous two years picking 1-1 is not to pay slot. https://sports.yahoo.com/news/mlb-draft-chaos-is-upon-us-143611758.html I've also seen the 8 mill number mentioned elsewhere. Boras seems to think he's worth 8, #1 or not. Who needs that aggravation? Boras is Boras and if you want Rodon you have to deal with him. Not that Rodon has any leverage, he can't say "I want to go to college again," but if you really wanted Kolek all along -- and they certainly seem to have -- why even bother with the possibilities of all of the downsides of Rodon? Downsides being both the draft-money limit problems and his possible physical problems due to innings. So they didn't. I think it's kind of funny that both HOU and the Marlins passed on him.

I cling to the hope that Gregg will continue to blow up in the minors and that we never again see him here, other than in someone elses uniform. I want to maintain that wonderful feeling I had when he and his 9 blown saves were traded to the Cubs.

Defense of Loria ridiculous? Not at all. Here's what the FO faced. The slot value for the #2 pick is 6.8 mill. The Marlins had the largest budget cap of all 30 teams at 14.2 mill until they traded 1.46 mill off to PIT, leaving a 12.74 mill cap. HOU was then 1st at 13.4 mill. By comparison, BOS (ignoring compensatory, etc. picks) has a total cap of about 5 mill. 12.74 mill? Doesn't sound like Loria or anyone else is being "cheap." The Marlins can sign Kolek for more or less than 6.8 mill -- if more, it comes out of the hides of the picks in the next 9 rounds, unless the Marlins want to pay a penalty of 75% of any overage betwixt and between all of picks in the 1st 10 rounds. And you can't just refuse to sign anyone to avoid going over your cap. If we had taken Rodon as the #2, he still wanted 8 mill (7.9 mill is the #1 slot money) -- Boras is his agent. That's a potential 1.2 mill overage with a 75% penalty on any (total for all 10 rounds) overage -- could be up to 900K. And what's the penalty for ANY overage above 637K (5%)? LOSS OF NEXT YEAR'S 1ST ROUND PICK. Go 10% over (1.274 mill)? Lose next year's 1st AND 2nd round picks. No MLB team has ever done either. Can you imagine the outcry and gnashing of teeth, and perhaps calls for Loria's head on a platter if the Marlins were forced into doing that? The FO obviously liked Kolek. A LOT. Every senior FO guy actually went to TX to watch him play and talk to him. So, what would you rather do? Draft a guy who can probably be signed for slot money or maybe less (HOU signed their last two #1s for over 1 mill less than slot) or sign a guy who you ALREADY KNOW will cost you 1.2 mill MORE than slot and may screw up your ability to sign the rest of your picks (leaving only 4.7 mill instead of 5.9 mill for all of them) and possibly ALSO cost you a future pick or two? This was NOT just about a lousy 1.2 mill or even 1.2 mill plus a .9 mill penalty (which nobody whining about Loria above even knew about, never mind the potential loss of future picks.) This was just nothing but the usual supposition and conclusion-jumping about Loria. As it turns out, the fact that the FO was MUCH more interested in Kolek than Rodon all along (nobody knew the travel schedules of the FO guys until now -- as they said "We spent a lot of hours on him. We helped the economy in Shepherd, Texas") and the very serious implications of what Rodon/Boras was demanding on the rest of the draft and possibly next year's draft almost certainly had everything to do with our choice.

Inexcusable? It's all speculation. They do what they do for reasons that we don't know. May or may not have been a mistake, but it's certainly excusable.

I'm OK with Kolek, but your point on Loria seems an odd one after what just happened over the last week. Yeah, maybe odd, except for the fact that exactly nobody here knows that Loria had anything to do with the #39 draft-pick trade/Gregg signing. I think at this point you have to believe either that Loria controls every decision or none of them. Either the FO of Jennings/Hill has the authorization to make decisions or they don't. To me, it appears that Loria has set down player-payroll/drafting spending numbers and, as long as they stay within them, the FO can do whatever they think is best. Even if some of their machinations may appear to be at the behest of Loria. The Loria spending parameters aren't Dodgers or Yankee-type spending parameters. If they need more money, they'll have to ask for it if they can't find a work-around. So, they find them. My opinion, which has the same total lack of basis in fact that every other opinion here has is that responsibility for decisions this year falls on Jennings/Hill, not Loria.

I wonder if Gregg is such a mess that he never gets called up. And the whole idea dies on the vine with Gregg being paid about 10K of minor league salary for failure. We can hope.

Villone had his good moments. He was a Trader Jack favorite. Because he was "tough" and a "warrior" -- which he was, but just not good enough. Age exacts a high toll on MLB players.

I mean, think about it. A couple-three years from now, a 1/2/3 of Fernandez, Kolek and Eovaldi -- all of whom can throw 100? With a 4/5 of Alvarez (who hits 96)/Heaney (mid-90s)? Holy crap, that's pretty good. They should change their name to the Miami Fire-ballers. Stanton-Yelich-Ozuna-Marisnik? Between them, that's an amazing OF. All they need is a long-term infield and catcher and they're gonna be dangerous for years.

Now that I've been variously claimed to be Samson, Loria and Beinfest, today I'll be, uh, let's see, how about Jennings? Just for one post. The bitching about Loria on this thread has been nothing short of ridiculous. Nobody here has ANY idea if Loria had anything to say about the #2 pick or any other pick. Rodon was rumored to be his preference. Nobody here knows if that was true or, if true, if it mattered. For all we know, upon the Beinfest firing, the new, incoming, reconfigured FO demanded and got total autonomy on drafting and probably many other things. Rodon was supposed to cost 8 mill, but the slot money for Kolek is 6.8 mill and that's supposed to make the difference? Please. People constantly seem to forget that any and every MLB operation costs 300+ mill/year to run. A mill here or there is certainly not peanuts, but in the context of 300+ mill is rarely determinative of much at all. I like Kolek. A lot. I think that Nolan Ryan is probably right -- he'll get here faster than the conventional wisdom would predict. Hopefully, he turns into a monster like Jose.

Trading away that pick DID free up that money. But they could have signed Gregg, regardless. And probably would have. However, this is the Marlins and we wanted chocolate cake and ice cream. We got spoiled milk and a stale cookie.

If you don't have any given pick, you don't have to spend any money on it. The money would have come from the team owner's pocket. If you have that pick. We don't, so it won't. Kevin Gregg is very happy as he thinks we'll be paying him the 1.4 mill for 4 months. More likely we'll pay him a small part of that, considering that he will likely fail within a month, which would cost about 350K. Cheap at twice the price. Probably better that they never signed him. Then again, at age 36 Gregg may turn out to be the greatest set-up guy ever. Or not.

But why would ... miss a chance to write an essay? Wait, what I wrote was an "essay"? Where were you when I was trying to convince a teacher that 17 sentences constituted an essay? I responded to the claim that "this TJ sh!t is well beyond ridiculous." I asked a question and threw in some history and miscellaneous speculation. Canada-marlins24 hasn't answered my question and nobody else has offered any support for the "well beyond ridiculous" idea. Apparently it's not. Oh, sh!t, 6 sentences. Now I've gone and written another "essay." :lol

Wait a minute. Nobody knows that Loria had anything to do with any of this. He may have said "fix the BP" or he may have said nothing. It's not like Jennings and Hill are unaware of the problem. And, what's so bad about it? They got an MLB average-type reliever for a draft pick. Which pick may turn out to be anything from nothing to fabulous, but that wouldn't be known for years. They need BP help NOW, not 3 or 4 years from now. They save a mill, which can be spent on the next guy. As for Gregg, he's over the hill, but he's on a minor league contract. Even if he fails when they bring him up he costs almost nothing.

7 years ago, Gregg touted himself to whoever the pitching coach was at the time with something along the lines of "Saving games? I can do that." And so he did. 32 saves. 4 blown. '07 was actually his best year, such as it was. Blew 9 saves in '08. Bye, bye. All downhill since. If all they can scare up is Morris and Gregg -- 7 years past his prime, forget it.

Ah, yes, it was obvious Realmuto's coming up. The question was is Salty really injured as some around here seem to think that injuries are routinely faked.

Why is it beyond ridiculous? In the '50s and '60s, in any case before 1974, if you severely tore or detached a UCL you were generally finished. Done. You "blew out your arm." Maybe 1% of severe tears or detachments would heal naturally, as is true today. Which left 99% of UCL-injured pitchers out of luck. Now, repair via replacement -- TJ -- is routine. It's just an improvement in the technology of both assessment and surgery. And there's a whole lot of guys who have made 5 or 10 or 20 mill (or more) because of it who are very happy. Not to mention fans for whom great pitchers don't suddenly disappear -- they're just out for a year. 20 or 30 years from now, I'll guess that there will be synthetic UCL replacement ligaments that will last for 20 years. No more multiple TJ surgeries (ouch!) No more harvesting one of your own tendons (ouch!) to turn it into a replacement ligament. The average 20 year-old pitcher will have already had his bionic UCL installed and be good to go until he's 40. No matter how hard he throws and no matter how many highly stressful, elbow-wrenching breaking pitches he throws. Of course, then it will also be discovered that something else in the arm or elbow breaks because the UCL is unbreakable. Etc., ad infinitum.

Maybe Salty actually is hurt. Since May 6th, he's 8 for 57. 140/246/281/527. Not his usual self. Since his 4-hit game 2 weeks ago, he's 4-31. His recent throws on runners were first mostly way off to the 1B side, then way off to the 3B side. He's lucky more of them didn't wind up in CF. He's thrown out almost nobody recently, 7 of 42 overall. He threw it into RF on a bunt on Saturday. 8 errors to date. So, who knows? Maybe a pulled lat or something else he really didn't want to mention? You play with a minor problem and it screws up your hitting and throwing and never gets better because you're playing and aggravating it almost every day. It's possible, and in view of his May numbers perhaps even likely. Wouldn't even be surprising considering that Fernandez is out and Capps is down for at least a month and he considers game-calling to be important and an injury doesn't affect that and he doesn't want to add another side-lining injury to the pile. We'll know soon enough.

Easy there, Loria. It will take more than signing 2 players and have them finish their contacts here to turn Loria into a "dem-god." That was "demi-god." Would "semi-god" be better? Or, maybe, the new "all-time-god-of-baseball-ownership." LA Dodgers notwithstanding. I dunno, unfortunately I'm not Loria (or Samson, or any FO denizen, not even a Marlins employee) but I think Loria might redeem himself. 6 years of winning would do great things for his sorry (but largely unjustified) reputation.

But, it was a "professional" AB.

Can you imagine? Loria makes a big 6-7 year offer and it's accepted. It could happen, Loria will have the funding available (thanks national TV contract!) and he might be tired of being trashed for trading his biggest talents, even though it was always done for financial reasons. He may also have decided that waiting and paying a penalty for waiting was worth it to find out if Stanton can stay healthy. (Knocking on wood...) Stanton puts up insane numbers and the whole thing turns out to be an incredible bargain and Loria pays him every dime of it. If he also signs Jose, Loria would slowly become a demi-god instead of a know-nothing goat, worshiped by this board. A team anchored by Stanton and Jose and a supporting cast of guys like Yelich, Ozuna, Dietrich, Alvarez, Eovaldi, Heaney, maybe Rodon (or some similar prospect,) maybe Moran, maybe Marisnick, and FAs like McGehee and Jones and Salty can do some serious damage for years. Then, all they'd need is a SS. Either the one they've got gets a lot better or they find a new one. They can construct their bench and BP year-by-year.

Games like this are why people watch baseball. At the point where Dunn had loaded the bases and had not an out to show for it after throwing about 30 pitches and he and his predecessor relievers had walked 5 guys while getting 6 outs, it looked like this game would be pointed to among the 6 or 7 games they threw away when explaining why they missed the play-offs. Instead, it may be one of a half-dozen games the Natinals can point to if they miss the play-offs. Sorta poetic. Hatcher needs to go. Not down, but away. Far, far away. He's old. He's Marmolish, only worse. Giving up catching was a matter of out of the frying pan and into the fire. He's crispy, but we keep getting burnt. Enough of this guy, already. Maybe CIN wants him and his 7+ "career" ERA.

Well, he did offer a big contract to Pujols. Reyes. Buehrle. Cespedes. He did pay Hanley. So I don't see a reason to go the extreme with the assumptions. And to CJ Wilson. But, he didn't get Pujols, Cespedes or Wilson. And he traded Reyes, Buerhle and Hanley. So, there's that.

I mention Loria's balance sheet looking better because that may make him more comfortable swallowing hard and offering Stanton the huge money it will take to sign him. We can hope.

Opening day payroll (which includes all obligations, not just current players) this year was about 5 mill LESS than last year. See Cot's. I figure Loria was hanging on to it to offset some of the, what was it, 59 mill? lost in '12. He apparently had a small loss last year. In any case, he's in his best financial position in a couple of years, with almost all of the hangover from the '12 mistakes gone. I think it's down to just the 1.5 mill to Ozzie next year. The 4 (or was it 8?) mill to TOR and the 8 mill to AZI (Heath Bar) will be fully paid. So, he's got the future cash from the TV deal to use on Stanton if he wants to blow most or all of it in one place, and his balance sheet looks better because he didn't spend the 24/25 mill this year.