artie_fufkin wrote:

Not yet, anyway. Jim Bowden reports the frontrunners are the Phillies and the Cardinals.
​Which means he's going to the Phillies.

https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/manny-machado-trade-market-eight-teams-talking-to-orioles-but-these-two-are-the-front-runners/

I hope you're right.
 

I'm not particularly enamored of the player, partly because his home/road splits are relatively dramatic, but we play this game every year - the Cardinals are supposedly interested in a player who could conceivably make a difference and he ends up going elsewhere.

If I thought the Cardinals had any chance in hell of re-signing Machado after the season, I'd tell Baltimore to pick whatever 3 pitchers they wanted and I'd put a bow on the package.

But I wouldn't make a trade for a 3-month rental that the team has no shot at re-signing.

forsberg_us wrote:

If I thought the Cardinals had any chance in hell of re-signing Machado after the season, I'd tell Baltimore to pick whatever 3 pitchers they wanted and I'd put a bow on the package.

But I wouldn't make a trade for a 3-month rental that the team has no shot at re-signing.

I agree.  Only way id do it is if there was a signing window and the cards could workout a long term deal.  That simply isnt going to happen.  Machado would be stupid not to test the market. 

Machado doesnt make the 2018 cardinals good enough to justify giving up young pitching.  If trading for him turned them into ws hopefuls id listen.  Truth is that with machado the cardinals are still fighting for the wild card. 

I assume the starting lineup would be

C. Molina
1b. Carp
2b. Munez, gyorko, wong
Ss. Machado
3b. Dejong
Rf. Martinez, bader, fowler, oniell.  I expect martinez to be traded
Cf. Pham
Lf. Ozuna

artie_fufkin wrote:

"Machado would be stupid not to test the market. "

I read somewhere his agent is Boras. 

Has a biras fa ever not tested the market?

Machado to the Dodgers for 5 minor leaguers, only one of whom is in the top 100 prospects in baseball

APIAD wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

Machado to the Dodgers for 5 minor leaguers, only one of whom is in the top 100 prospects in baseball

Hmm, 5 minor leaguers has to have an effect on the system but only 1 top 100?  I still say having so much quality means you have to give up more in these type of deals.

Not in this situation. Machado is just a rental, so Baltimore couldn’t ask a king’s ransom for him. The Dodgers has 2 higher rated prospects (an outfielder at AAA and a catcher at AA), plus they didn’t have to give up anyone like Bellinger or Muncy. The Orioles settled on quantity over quality.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the Cardinals should have done this deal because they’re a lot more than 1 player away, but looking only at prospect rankings, it appears they could have gotten it done for something like Tyler O’Neill and a handful of lesser prospects.