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Somewhere, Balta is in shambles.

The Dodgers just spent $375M on a pitcher who has never thrown in MLB. $125M (and prospect capital) on a glass pitcher who can't sniff Cease's durability. If Dylan Cease's 2022 doesn't count, I'm not sure why Aaron Nola - who again, is 3 years older - gets to count his 2022. And just got $175M. Snell is an up and down pitcher with two ridiculous seasons under his belt. He's gonna get paid. In fact, the only two years he's thrown 180+ innings were his Cy Young seasons. Otherwise, it's minus 130, with ERAs ranging from 3.30 to 4+. Montgomery is gonna get paid off of one postseason run. I fail to see the argument for why Dylan Cease's market would be anything but a haul.

This isn’t true at all. I’d bet the majority of the return reaches the majors in 2024

If a pitching prospect is one of the headliners of a Cease trade, then that player better have legit TOR potential. That’s where the Braves do make some sense as AJSS actually fits the billing and is major league ready to boot. But I’d hate to use Cease to acquire more guys with MOR ceilings. We have tons of those guys already in the system and while you can never have enough pitching, the lack of quality positional prospects is terrifying.

They have been so brainwashed by Elias’ prospect hugging that they don’t want to give up anyone of significance and think they can obtain Cease for their scraps. Those people are not rational.

Orioles fans on the Orioles forum say we are being delusional by expecting a haul for Cease. Hope they read this and realize that Joey Ortiz being the headliner of their proposals is laughable.

I hope Balta cries when we ultimately receive all these stud prospects for Cease

Yamamoto hasn't had an MLB season like Dylan Cease and just got the richest deal for a pitcher in major league history. Shohei just had his second TJ and is way less durable and got $700M. I think the deal is worth it for his sheer star power. You like to knock Cease hard for 2023, where he was 18th in fWAR ahead of Corbin Burnes. He was 0.2 behind Nola, who just got $175M and is 3 years older. This is of course with the s%*# defense behind him. This video is kind of the perfect encapsulation of how the team failed him. Cease is gonna cost a team a lot in terms of prospects. Probably not as much as most people here are dreaming, but it's not going to be Clint Frazier and Miguel Andujar.

Just throwing out there that there is a strong possibility writers will say the white sox got a haul, and many on this board will say it was not a haul, and they will both be right and wrong in different ways, with none of it really mattering unless the players pan out.

I tried to get the word filter to swap Tatis for Voldermort, so don't get your hopes up.

f*** NO

Arguing with him is futile. Cease had a down season and therefore is broken forever and will never rebound. Almighty Balta has spoken. Emojis and reaction .GIFs are all his Cease diatribes deserve.

Patino claimed by the Padres. Dumb move.

I don't understand why everyone thinks Elias is under any pressure whatsoever to make this move. I don't see their ownership sitting their demanding excellence in terms of world series. Elias obviously cares about it - but I don't see any gun to his head to go out and act. This is a guy leading a franchise that has poor ownership and which really hasn't made any major buy trade going back the last decade (unless I'm forgetting something). Quite frankly - Elias giving up the farm for Cease would be so foolish. Unless they plan on using him for a year and than spinning him off a year later. He needs to build within his farm and operate as if he were the Rays. This is ultiamtely how the Sox should have managed their post-rebuild era as well. If Elias gives up a bunch of chips for Cease - his ability to refill his cupboard is going to be limited, given fact ownership is NOT going to give him upper tier payrolls and enable him to sign a bunch of free agents and others. Hahn should have operated this way too - he should have been constantly churning his roster to maximize talent, buy low, sell high, and leverage FA to fill holes (in modest way) vs. having any delusion(s) his owner was going to buck his long-term history and let him sign the Bryce Harpers, Machado(s) of the world. Instead Hahn signed a bunch of over the hill free agents and / or relievers to big money deals, handed out contracts to guys who lost hunger after getting paid at young ages, and did nothing to churn the actual roster and proactively manage and churn things. So yeah - if Elias wants to do it - great - but if I were him, I wouldn't be doing so. If anything - I would use my chips to go get top pitching prospects if that is where I thought I had a void to ensure I maintain control.

This - I think for anyone who wants him and doesn't want to see their budget or luxury tax explode - the price for Cease went up given how much money has been handed out. It just take(s) one team and you never know - once one team decides it will pay up - if the fit of prospects doesn't work for us - a 3rd team could always interject and better align. I'm in the camp of get talent - I don't care of it is pitching or positional. Just maximize talent.

He's really dying on the hill.

Oh, and to take it a step further, how many top 20 pitchers in mlb will make less money than Cease over the next two years and how many of that group are available via trade?

I hope Mike Elias cries when he ultimately gives up all these stud prospects for Cease.

Blame the owners. 28 owners are ruining baseball. Cohen and the Dodgers group are the only ones doing it the right way.

If I’m the dodgers I absolutely trade for Cease…. I’ll be surprised if they do though now.

If the Dodgers decide to go for Cease after Shohei, Yamamoto and Glasnow, I cannot wait to hear the rest of baseball attempt to cry foul.

Kjerstad, Ortiz, Povich and Beavers is my ask and I am not budging.

That isn't a haul. Sox will almost certainly get two top 100 prospects, plus another solid piece (back end top 10 of a solid system), and lottery ticket.

The Dodgers have made the playoffs 11 years in a row and won the division 10 of 11 years. The year they finished second they won 106 games. They've gotten to the NLCS or later 6 of those years. Are people just blind to the reality? It's like people arguing the Yankees couldn't buy titles. The Yankees have missed the playoffs 5 times since 1994. They havent had a LOSING season since 1992. The Sox have made the playoffs 5 times since 94 lol. The problem is the gap is getting worse too. People are too busy pointing out the rays as this reason you don't have to spend, yet the rays haven't won a world series ever.

If you’re not a contender to sign top FA arms like the Sox, you need 8-10 legit starting pitching prospects to maybe turn into 2 or 3 high quality mlb starters. Sox aren’t even close. In 2018 the Sox had Giolito, Dunning, López, Kopech, Cease, and others all as prospects and it still wasn’t enough to fill out a quality rotation for more than 1.5 seasons.

The salaries are not ridiculous. Ohtani was worth 10 WAR (approx 70-80m) last year plus worth tens of millions in addition in advertising to the Angels yet was paid only 30m. He was severely underpaid. There's NOTHING ridiculous about player salaries. Nothing. You are worth what you produce. Pro sports are a cash cow because people are willing to watch, stream, purchase merchandise and go to games and there's mega consumer demand from all of us who see sports as a wonderful, magical escape from the harsh realities of our lives and we're more than happy to send our dollars their way just to get some enjoyment from that. If the sport is bringing in say 2B a year why shouldn't the players have at least half that? The ballplayers produce that.

Meanwhile those Midwest states have 5 World Series titles the last 20 years against the Mets, Dodgers and Yankees 2. Or 2 to 1 in the last 10 (that 1 being a fake asterisk title on top of it). I have a hard time believing this is some grand analogy or even that it's going to break baseball.

This whole argument reminds me of Matthew Berry’s fantasy football draft manifesto every year where he talks about how you can take stats and make any single player look good or bad. In the end, all that matters is what your gut is telling you about how the player will do this upcoming season. Or in this case, how do other GMs think Cease will perform over the next couple of years? Balta, out of curiosity, how do you think Cease will do over the course of the next two seasons?

Would be fun to take Kyle Harrison + the giants 2023 draft imo. As we know after I hallucinated Paul DeJong's height, I'm extremely intrigued at how tall of a team we could put together in a few years. I don't know if it makes us better, but there is no doubt that we would be taller. Bryce Eldridge would help a lot. Kyle Harrison? The good news, because I also thought he was 6'5 but just checked so I didn't do it again, is he is the same height as Dylan Cease so we are not getting shorter per se. And I just like Walker Martin ❤️

because it fits his weak narrative.

rWAR as in Baseball Reference’s WAR? If so, they don’t account for the s%*# defense that Cease played behind last year, so not sure why you’d use that version of the stat.

KC has had 4 winning seasons over the last 35 and finished in the bottom half of attendance all but 2 of those years, despite winning a world series. I added them for a reason. The league is broken.

Operating in small windows is how things are supposed to go! You get a 3 to 4 year run where you make the playoffs several times, then your guys start getting expensive and leaving. That's how the NFL goes! Take a look at the Buffalo Bills right now for a great example, they had a multi-year run, they were able to add a Von Miller to push everything in on 2022, and now they're struggling a bit because they can't keep all their defenders around and they don't have young guys to replace guys who are getting injured more (the Bears signed a LB from them last offseason). Take a look at the LA Rams - they dumped everything they had on winning a title, took advantage of Kupp and Donald, won their title, and finished 5-12 last year because they hit the salary cap. The Eagles and the 49ers are in a peak right now, but the Eagles lost a LB to the Bears last year and right now they're struggling to stop the run the last 3 games because their LB corps is a bit weak. This is totally normal!!! You can look at basically every Super Bowl qualifying team other than 2 exceptions and you'll find the same pattern. The only teams in the NFL that are exceptions to this are the ones that have the truly elite coach-QB combos (New England, KC). Pittsburgh is a totally different problem. Their ownership also flat out sucks. Even with that, they're able to make the playoffs occasionally, but they have been really bad at developing talent (Go check out Gerrit Cole's story here). Kansas City had a strong multi-year run, made the World Series twice, then had to rebuild afterwards - and their problem has been that their rebuild has gone poorly. They've gone back to being dumb, possibly because their GM had other priorities than finding the best players once they won their title. Baltimore hasn't made the playoffs in years, but now they built up a load of talent and suddenly are looking at being a top team for the next however many years as long as they don't squander their young talent. They're in a division with the Red Sox, Yankees, and Rays, and they led the AL in wins last year. The Dodgers have spent a ton of money this offseason, they make the playoffs every year, but they're also on top because their organization is whip-smart. They are able to make trades for Trea Turner and Max Scherzer because in addition to spending money, they also develop talent like mad. They turned guys like Max Muncy, Justin Turner into studs when other teams gave up on them. They aren't getting high draft picks, but they are still churning out prospects that people want to trade for, because they're bloody well run and smart. They've short-circuited the normal cycle by being...really really smart.

I keep stressing this for a reason - convince me that baseball has a competition parity problem. They have a salary parity problem, a resource parity problem, but they seem pretty far from a competition parity problem. It has been almost 25 years since a team repeated as World Series champions. No team has more than 3 titles in the last 25 years. In the last 10 years the Royals have a title, the Astros have 2 titles after doing a complete rebuild, the Cubs have a title after doing a complete rebuild, the Nationals won a title and had to do a complete rebuild shortly afterwards. In the last 10 years, we have had the teams from Cleveland, Arizona, and Tampa Bay make the World Series as small market teams. The Teams like the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees may spend a ton of money, but it doesn't guarantee them titles, or even World Series appearances. Hell, the Mets and Yankees both missed the playoffs last year, despite all the money the Mets spent they had to sell off at the trade deadline. Baseball has some moribund franchises, but a lot of that is internal. The Pirates and As and a few others have decided that they prefer to rake in as much money as possible. There are clearly some issues with the regional sports networks this year that have to be ironed out. What the Dodgers did with Ohtani's deal may in the future appear to be a big problem that has to be dealt with. However, if your team wants to win and is smart about doing so, there is no reason why you can't have a run of several playoff appearances in a row with a legit chance at a title and probably a World Series appearance. The teams that don't do this - the Rockies, the White Sox, etc., aren't uncompetitive because they're being outspent so badly they can't compete, they're uncompetitive because they're dumb. What the Dodgers did with Ohtani might change things and give them an extra advantage, but as of now I only see one cheat code to winning World Series titles in baseball, and it isn't money, it's Bruce Bochy.

Look at the names they retain to supplement their big league team. Like, goddamn O's, do you actually want to win? You're getting a cost controlled Cy Young caliber starter in return to go with the best young stars in the game, already at the big league level who have only scratched the surface. Cease only costs you prospect capital, of which you have an abundance, unlike the $300M deals for starters, which we know the owner doesn't want to hand out. It's a perfect opportunity if they would or could get serious about their offer.

Right!? They keep Holliday, Cowser, Mayo, Basallo, Norby and their entire MLB roster intact. Its a big ask - to be fair - but you gotta give to get, and at some point the O's have to trade some of these dudes before the 40 man crunch. That is why I am not moving Cease to any other team until the O's blink or another team vastly overpays.

I agree with all the comments. They need the best package. My comments were more for the ones saying they need to focus on hitting.

If Baltimore isn't willing to part with this level of package, then they just aren't serious about completing beyond the AL East. But until it is confirmed to have a similar serious offer on the table, I just can't let myself hope. Last deadline was disappointing enough.

Schrodinger's trade

Heyman didn't mention the Braves which I thought was interesting. Also shot down any Robert trade rumors FYI.

Great post. The Dodgers are able to do this because they’re the best development org in baseball. They draft, sign and develop talent consistently while picking in the back of the first round every year. They have lots of cheap players which allows them to flex their muscles. Theres parity. It’s baseball. If I gave you the Dodgers or the field to win the 2024 title, who are you taking?

Meh.....Id rather have Chuckie Robinson.....

The playoffs is a crap shoot. It doesn't change that one playoff spot is locked up every single year and 70% of the league has zero chance of keeping their super star talents in FA.

I think the difference here is that Friedman has been planning for this offseason, letting All-Stars to superstars walk from their team — Machado, Seager, Turner, Scherzer, Darvish, Bellinger, Joc — while building a sustainable farm. They still somehow won 100 games in their down year. Obviously the big knock is that postseason pitching has bee We mourn the infield that never was (in Chicago) of Tatis/Machado. If Friedman spent like Preller (with seemingly no foresight), he could have had Machado-Seager-Turner, but probably doesn't have the purse ready to go this offseason, when the Dodgers are still projected third in payroll and the Padres have to slash.

The Dodgers have spent more money on four players (Freddie, Mookie, Ohtani and yamamoto) in the past two years than 19 teams have spent on their total payrolls since 2009.

My point is every fan base and media outlet in baseball were saying that about them in regards to all the moves they made the past couple of years and all the talent they brought in through trades and signings on that team. They didn't win a damn thing. Forgive me if I'm not giving the Dodgers their championship flowers just yet.

San Diego Padres were suppose to be the "super team" until they weren't...

Whoever told me it wouldn’t be the Dodgers because he wanted his own spotlight… time to own up. ?

1 billion dollars on two athletes' salaries. Sickening. 75,000 people are homeless in LA County. Who cares about baseball, this just reflects poorly on society and our so-called values.