WestEddy

There was a guy who wrote for FutureSox about 10 years ago. He wrote a scathing column about how there's just too much information available to the average fan, and they don't know how to process it. Minor league free agency, low level depth trades, Rule 5 protection, once this information became widely available in the internet, people would start screaming over every move. Not protecting Jordan Guerrero from a Rule 5 draft (he was never drafted) or sending Jake Peter to the Dodgers in a 3-way for Joachim Soria caused "is this a sauce or condiment" level melees on forums. Guys who never did or would do anything suddenly became very important depth pieces that never should have been moved. I think this carries on today. Every single quote gets parsed, and we all must feel embarrassed by it. That's some malarkey.

Maybe because entertaining a trade of Robert isn't about the money? If they didn't want to pay him, they could have just let him walk. They have no better options for CF right now, either in AA/AAA or even on the free agent market. It seems like he's their 2026 CF until he isn't. The Reds are in their competitive window. If they want to piddle around over a post-hype prospect and two TJS dudes, then they can enjoy another first round sweep, if they even make the playoffs again.

To be fair, I'd wait for Getz to utter Hahn's nonsense before attributing it to him. Getz seems to have his own, personal form of gibberish that doesn't exhibit a fondness for just being in the room.

Nothing to this, just posting for the spectacle of random trade ... I won't even call them rumors. Brain worms.

Don't know. I thought that was presented as the level of what the Reds were offering, and that Getz was trying to get another player added.

Oh wait, that's the one of 3 rehabbing arms, right?

It's probably the most tantalizing off-season trade rumor, so everybody keeps publishing teaser articles about teams kicking the tires on him. I'm settling on "Getz really saw Robert as the strongest ceiling of the CF options out there, so kept him for $20M. If somebody wants to suffocate him with prospects, he's all for it, but otherwise, he's got other targets."

I must have missed that. How bad?

Which means, "If Getz gets himself into meth rehab and comes down off his lofty asking price, the Reds could take Robert and $15M off his hands in exchange for an A-ball arm who's already passed his real estate licensing exam."

Yeah, comparing similar levels, Meidroth has always walked more. They only disparity is comparing Antonacci's 13.3% walk rate across 3 levels (low A to AA) to Meidroth's major league rate of 8.9%. Apples and oranges.

Why are we releasing him? He put up positive production this last season, and he's relatively cheap.

Not that somebody leaked that info to him, but that Getz was asking for a player beyond Petty (which Wittenmeyer has already told us) AND the Comp pick, which we know Getz wants to get his hands on.

Well, if the Bartolo Colonoscopy tweet has any veracity, they'd get a starting pitcher they could work on this season, a CF who hasn't made the transition to AAA yet, and a Comp pick that pads out the 2026 draft even further. While that is certainly not the Crochet return, this would definitely be workable for $10 and Robert.

I think that's where we are. The league sees Robert as what he's produced in the last 2 seasons, and Getz sees him as the post ASB guy, which means he won't be dealt unless it's for a price that nobody really wants to pay. Which is fine. I look forward to the old Robert awakening and making the league rue their miserly off-season ways.

I agree and disagree. I'm still in the trade him camp, although the Reds looked like the best trade partner. I don't know if they match up with the Pirates or Mariners for their Comp pick. I think the Sox could get 2 WAR in CF some way, and Robert being out of the picture forces them to get creative. That said, Robert does fill a huge hole out there, and if he does break through in the manner he's being marketed, hoo-boy, get outta his way.

Stretching for the sake of argument. He plays at the rate of an average major league player, even if it's just for 2/3 of a season.

Robert hasn't been BAD. He's put up around 1.4 bWAR in about 100 games in each of the last two seasons, when stretched over 162 games is about 2 WAR, which is an average major leaguer. And he does have the ceiling of a 4-5 WAR player, if somebody can get him to tap into it again. I don't think it's unreasonable to think he could replicate what he did for a month's worth of games just this last year. If he worked through a hitch in his swing, or started reacting different to the way he's pitched, he doesn't decide in each at-bat he is the guy who OPSed .540 in August of 2024.

That doesn't really bother me. I guess I argue against the "if only we would do all this stuff to create the perfect environment for Robert to not be ho-hum" people. He should be the guy who is the stuff that engenders excellence from his teammates, not the other way around. He does have value as our CF for the first 4 months of 2026. Unless he turns into Superman, he's not getting anything different out of trade partners in July. I think the league is wise to him.

Wondering if the Gordon Wittenmeyer leak was more the Reds trying to get Bleday's people and the Marlins to s%*# or get off the pot.

Unless Getz has announced that he's got a keeper and everybody ought to pony up their best and last offer. f

Caulfield changed this from a general MLB FA thread to "White Sox" thread. I was putting the Sox signings in the MLBTR offseason outlook thread. But here's a non-Sox signing that is interesting in that some at the Sox Machine fan/roster threads yearned for Harvey.

2 things. I did think Crochet could stay healthy. The cause of one of my first wildings, here. Crochet has issues that resulted in TJS and looked healthy. Robert is just chronically injured. Every season, he pulls something doing normal baseball things. Also, when you talk about Robert putting up 3 WAR by the end of June, you're talking about a rate of production he's never attained in his career. That's not even "odds against him" territory. I agree that he'd have to become a completely different player in order to change the conversation at the TDL to a player teams vied for. But that's like betting on the dealer mistakenly leaving the instruction card in a deck of cards, and you getting a pair of them on the draw. All in order to get a slightly better return.

Lineup construction is a different argument from Robert's abilities and ceiling. People feel compelled to shift focus from Robert to lineup, roster and culture issues because for the last 2 seasons, Robert has OPSed 15% below average. I agree with you that Robert seems to be coming around, offensively. There are positives to be gleaned from keeping him just as there are to trading him for an interesting return. I vote for trading him, more based on the fact that he's not part of the future, could offer opportunity to blocked or challenged post-hype dudes, and boredom. My main argument is that any TDL return isn't going to be better than now. Robert covering CF is value that we're mostly discounting.