There is a nice way to say this, Brian.

There is a nice way to say it but saying it bluntly might help Stanton re-evaluate his approach. It's ridiculous how much he has been down. What's the downside of calling him soft ?

What's the downside of calling him soft ?

Joel Wolfe, his agent, is representing Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

The Marlins had to pay $30m to get rid of Stanton, right after he led the league with 59 HR and won the MVP award. And it still looks like the Yankees are going to get burned. If I was a GM, I think that I would never ever sign a free agent. That probably means never being in the running, but so be it.

Too many tokes on the objective pipe.

Unfortunately the performance of the last two years in a reasonable 850+ PAs suggests all those injuries have finally taken a toll on his bat. He's still got solid power but the BABIP has cratered. Just 219 in that time ... while the EV and the HH% have remained good. I can't explain it but that would be an awful lot of bad luck.

Wonder if Cashman doesn't want to sign any free agents this winter and this was his way of avoiding the pressure of it - if they don't want to sign with you then you don't need to feel the pressure. Would be a bit bizarre imo, but otherwise this doesn't make sense. Cashman is very smart and knows how his words would be taken. I'm guessing he wants to pressure Stanton to get fitter for 2024 and feels going public like this is the best way to do that.

Joel Wolfe, his agent, is representing Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

Not many players have refused to sign with the team offering the best deal because of what the GM said about another player who isn’t even a teammate (yet). To the extent there is any controversy about Cashman’s remarks, perhaps it will actually increase the pressure, FWIW, on Cashman to sign Yamamoto, which may have been what prompted Wolfe’s reply.

4-Dimensional Chess Theory:

Cashman knows that he won't sign this Japanese pitcher, but he doesn't want the Mets to sign him, either.

"I read the context of the entire interview," Wolfe said. "I think it's a good reminder for all free agents considering signing in New York both foreign and domestic that to play for that team you've got to be made of Teflon, both mentally and physically because you can never let your guard down even in the offseason."

"Team" - or "Teams" ?

(Yes, I'm just kidding.)

Pretty sure Stanton is the opposite of Teflon physically, Joel. That’s kind of the whole point.

Stanton should give Cashman an atomic wedgie the next time he sees him and there are some cameras nearby.

#5. I don't know if it was different earlier in Stanton's career but fastball in or high, slider away is such a reliable way to get Stanton out it's kind of startling. When the Red Sox played the yankees in the 2018 postseason it seemed silly to worry about Stanton. And that was kind of amazing when talking about a guy who'd hit 59 homers. But fastball up . . slider away and bring on the next guy.

#5. I don't know if it was different earlier in Stanton's career but fastball in or high, slider away is such a reliable way to get Stanton out it's kind of startling. When the Red Sox played the yankees in the 2018 postseason it seemed silly to worry about Stanton. And that was kind of amazing when talking about a guy who'd hit 59 homers. But fastball up . . slider away and bring on the next guy.

While this is true, fastballs up and sliders away seem to work against 90% of today's hitters not named Luis Arraez.

90% of all hitters not named Luis Arraez is 89.9% of all hitters (at least one PA in 2023).

If my boss said, "Erik calls in sick too much" in public, even if it's true, I'd be absolutely furious. It's a Mickey Mouse move, and it's gonna crater my value to any other job. And my coworkers can see, and react. That's no way to treat someone who gets hurt PLAYING AS HARD AS HE CAN FOR YOU.

Is Cashman trying to get fired? He seems to have gone way off the ranch this winter.

Brian Cashman is what would happen if somebody decided to do a hybrid remake of "Moneyball" and "Falling Down".

You have to take one of the following two contracts, and you're not Steve Cohen or something where payroll literally doesn't matter to you. Which contract do you take:

Stanton (ages 34-38 seasons):
2024: $32m
2025: $32m
2026: $29m, but $10m of it is paid by Miami
2027: $29m, but $10m of it is paid by Miami
2028: $25m team option, $10m buyout, but that $10m will be paid by Miami
Total: 4 years, $102 million, plus another $15m if you pick up his 2028 option

Trout (ages 32-38 seasons):
2024-2030 seasons: $37,116,667 each season
Total: 7 years, $259,816,669

It is obviously Stanton, right? So if the Yankees called the Angels and said, "we'll trade you Stanton for Trout, straight up," would the Angels immediately hang up? What would the Yankees have to throw in, if anything, to get the Angels interested?

Trout has played in 53% of the possible games the last four years. If anything, that is overstating his availability, because he played 53 out of 60 games in the COVID-shortened season, and the odds he would have been able to play a similar percentage of 162 games that season is extremely low. He is much better than Stanton now, but he is clearly in the early stages of performance decline, and he has a degenerative back problem. If you can get $157m off your books in one deal, and maybe get the Yankees to throw in a little money or a prospect in the deal...you've got think about it, right?

it's gonna crater my value to any other job

Pretty sure the other teams are well aware of Stanton's fragility, and his contract has no value to them to begin with.

EDIT: (Except under certain unusual circumstances as described by SBPT above.)

If my boss said, "Erik calls in sick too much" in public, even if it's true, I'd be absolutely furious. It's a Mickey Mouse move, and it's gonna crater my value to any other job. And my coworkers can see, and react.

This is one of the dumbest takes I've ever read on this site.

Do you think other teams are *unaware* of how much time Stanton has missed due to injury? Cashman isn't sharing internal gossip

The problem with a Trout-for-Stanton deal from LAA perspective is that Trout, at this point, IS the Angels franchise. Imagine the Yankees saying "we could save some money by trading Jeter," except give Jeter three MVP awards and imagine that the Yankees didn't have a history of success to build their franchise identity around.

Now, I don't know how much that is worth, in dollar terms. But I think that that's what would get in the way of a Trout trade. Obviously at some point the money is good enough to do it, but it's hard to say how much it is, and I imagine that the fall-out would be catastrophic for the franchise.

Given how a lot of the reaction has focused on the implication that Stanton doesn't try terribly hard to get back on the field - and Cashman has been around long enough to know how saying being on the IL is "part of his game" will be taken even if this wasn't part of a spurt of general testiness - I don't think Erik's that far off the mark in saying this is a pretty crappy thing to do. Of course, in this situation it's probably more dumb than hostile; Stanton isn't being put in a position of wanting to quit but finding his employer has sabotaged his ability to find other work so much as Cashman has made it even harder to trade a player he would probably like to trade and put some bad vibes in the clubhouse.

Seems like he should be able to say "we're a better team when Stanton is on the field and mashing, and we're always looking for ways to better help our players reach their full potential" in his sleep by now.

To Ziggy's point in #19: On some level, for the Yankees to make such a deal, they would need to believe taking on the extra $157 million has a pretty significant return for them on some level.

Part of the value could simply be the subtraction of Stanton, if the relationship with the organization is beyond repair (I don't know where it is, but Cashman is obviously not trying very hard to strengthen it!).

Part of it would be the value of Trout the player, on the field. They would have to believe they could help maximize his availability to play, and that he would be highly productive for most of the remaining life of the contract.

But then part of it is what Ziggy is getting at: There would be some "branding" value to having Trout on the Yankees. Let's face it: For many years, Mike Trout was maybe the closest thing MLB had to Mickey Mantle this side of Ken Griffey Jr., but whereas Griffey was an amazing face of the sport for more than a decade, even through the Steroid Era, Trout has been completely unable (or uninterested) in playing a similar role for baseball. It's not because of the media market. Griffey did all this while in Seattle, while Trout is in...friggin' Los Angeles! Trout is a good-looking guy, and there isn't really a bad thing said about him, right? The inability to make him transcendent as a media star - regardless of whose fault that is - is such a failure for the sport. The fact that my wife knows who Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills is, but doesn't know who Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels is, is crazy.

I think Angels fans would be less irate about Trout being traded than, say, Red Sox fans were about Mookie Betts not being locked into Boston for the next decade. The difference is that Trout just can't stay on the field, and the team isn't going to be very good with a guy making $37m a year but not playing a lot. It is also fair to note that the Angles have gotten the best of Trout - even if he can stay on the field for 140 games in a season going forward, it will increasingly be at DH, and he will almost certainly be less of an offensive force than he was in his 20s. It is entirely possible the Yankees would be the first ones to refuse to entertain this trade.

Do you think other teams are *unaware* of how much time Stanton has missed due to injury? Cashman isn't sharing internal gossip

Jeez, at least read the post directly above yours. ;)

If my boss said, "Erik calls in sick too much" in public, even if it's true, I'd be absolutely furious. It's a Mickey Mouse move, and it's gonna crater my value to any other job. And my coworkers can see, and react. That's no way to treat someone who gets hurt PLAYING AS HARD AS HE CAN FOR YOU.

Good thing you've got that guaranteed 4/$132 M coming your way. :-)

In his Yanks tenure (2018-23, 5.4 seasons), Stanton has played in 549 games, 2317 PA. In those same years, Judge has played 653 games, 2846 PA. Now 104 games and 529 PA ain't nothing but, spread out over 5.4 seasons, it's not exactly Larry Walker vs Cal Ripken. Gleyber is kinda the Yanks' iron man and even he's at just over 3000 PA over 5.4 seasons.

EDIT: And the Stanton-Judge gap even less impressive given Judge is 2 years younger.

The old management dictum "praise in public and criticize in private" has been around forever for good reasons.

In his Yanks tenure (2018-23, 5.4 seasons), Stanton has played in 549 games, 2317 PA. In those same years, Judge has played 653 games, 2846 PA. Now 104 games and 529 PA ain't nothing but, spread out over 5.4 seasons, it's not exactly Larry Walker vs Cal Ripken.

Maybe when Cashman says "part of his game" he's saying that being hurt has made Stanton suck (relatively speaking) when he plays in addition to having him miss games.

"We try to talk about the past as much as we can,” Cashman said at the general manager meetings in Arizona, according to the New York Daily News. “But I’m not gonna tell you we're gonna win a championship next year because we're not. We're going to wind up spending the offseason making excuses again more likely than not because it seems to be part of our game."

The fact that my wife knows who Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills is, but doesn't know who Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels is, is crazy.

Reflects poorly on you, too!

The old management dictum "praise in public and criticize in private" has been around forever for good reasons.

And that dictum last applied to the Yankees in 1919

Maybe when Cashman says "part of his game" he's saying that being hurt has made Stanton suck (relatively speaking) when he plays in addition to having him miss games.

Yeah, but he didn't start maybe saying that until after he maybe read #5.

Terrible and totally unnecessary thing to say. "Unfortunately, Giancarlo hasn't had the best health the last few years". See how easy that was. If you look at the games played per season as a Marlin, from 2011 when he became a regular, they aren't very different from his Yankees numbers except for 2019. So basically one season is out of whack. Did they expect him to get more durable as he aged?

Trout is a good-looking guy, and there isn't really a bad thing said about him, right? The inability to make him transcendent as a media star - regardless of whose fault that is - is such a failure for the sport.

doesnt this cut against the idea that any of these guys are untradeable as the "Face of the Franchise?" Surely Stanton is not the face of the franchise and yet some of the comments seem to suggest that.

Maybe when Cashman says "part of his game" he's saying that being hurt has made Stanton suck (relatively speaking) when he plays in addition to having him miss games.

Yeah, but he didn't start maybe saying that until after he maybe read #5.

Mayhaps

30. So Cashman is right, it's part of his game and always has been