MLB Hot Stove: The malaise before and even with movement

The End of the Month

The MLB hot stove season also involves trades, which sometimes sneak by while everyone stands around hand-wringing over big free agents. One such deal occurred around dinnertime in the East on Nov. 28 when the Yankees sent infielder Ronald Torreyes to the Cubs for cash or a player to be named later. Torreyes is a versatile defensive player who’s hit .281 over a short career; he’s averaged 202.3 plate appearances for the last three seasons. Undersized, his definition would be “part-time, useful piece.”

If he were a free agent, Torreyes would not be ranked by ESPN.

MLB.com’s list of available articles on their front webpage at 9 a.m., Nov. 29 involved speculation about or evaluation of seventeen free agents, including all the big names, and the report of one meeting – Corbin with the Nationals.

More from Call to the Pen

• Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
• Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
• Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
• Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
• 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals

In the mid-morning lull, “Connections” Rosenthal delivered his current opinion about Phillies in The Athletic – despite the early point in the MLB hot stove season, “[e]very day of inactivity represents lost opportunity.” He suggested more than half a dozen moves the team should have made the previous day or the day before that, and damned their 14-game improvement in ’18 as an “illusion” presented by team of “ill-fitting parts.”

Multiple sources then came together to indicate a trade between the Mariners and Mets, which would send Robinson Cano and Edwin Diaz to New York, was “gain[ing] traction.” Or not – somebody told somebody else the trade wasn’t “imminent,” but was “viable possibility.” In other words, nothing firm happened.

No further free agent movement or trades occurred that day by end-of-business in the East. Does business ever end in MLB hot stove season, though? (Yes. They go get nachos and beer like everybody else, even if they come back to the office a little drunk.)

The paper on the porch on the last day of the month brought a form of the debate about Patrick Corbin surely taking place in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, all cities Corbin visited in the past week. (He’s had only one great year, and he may have peaked already at 28, but his last pitching coach says he now, finally, has an effective “change-up,” his curve, but $126 million….)

It feels as though we’ve gone over all this for a month because we have.

The free agent chart on MLB.com stared back at me, defiant and unchanged in two days. The chart at on ESPN’s website did likewi – no, the Padres had signed unranked starter Garrett Richards for two years. Interestingly, the two charts disagreed about Richards’ age – MLB.com had him at 32; ESPN.com made him 30. Only in America could a man who makes his living in front thousands of people and on TV sign a contract for $15 million and keep his age a secret. (He’s 30, but may not play at all in ’19.)

Also, Philly.com writer Bob Brookover contributed another “chart” of 30 free agents, or just under 20 percent of all those sitting on the MLB hot stove, depending on who’s doing the counting. This chart involved brief evaluations of the players the writer considered worth comment – three “grand prizes” (Harper, Machado and Corbin), nine booby prizes (e.g., Jose Iglasias – “Freddy Galvis with less pop”), and the rest worth consideration (e.g., Adam Ottavino – “Might be the best of the free-agent relievers”).

The 6-foot-5, 220-pound Ottavino actually is intriguing. He posted a 2.43 ERA and a 0.99 WHIP in ’18 for the Rockies, who obviously play half their games in a hitter-friendly park.

Then, nothing else firm or earth-moving happened by 5 p.m., Nov. 30, except the Reds allowing struggling Billy Hamilton to become a free agent, and that qualifies only as firm. Well, MLB.com had also posted another article on Diaz, and my friend, Mike the Marine and Mets Fan, is surely worried about whether or not his club would, in fact, get a leg up on greatness again. News could come before the weekend ends.

Adrian Beltre did hold a retirement news conference, though, so strike him from your list.

The good news for MLB hot stove enthusiasts, however, is they can all still dream Harper, Machado, Corbin, Greinke, Whitfield, Realmuto, Kluber, Castellanos, Dickerson, and Santana, as well as Cano, Diaz, and Ottavino will be coming (or coming back) to their teams for 2019.