Photo by Laura Peebles for TalkNats
For most baseball executives, the day after Thanksgiving has little “Black Friday” shopping. The bargains are out there for most teams as we saw last year. There will be the Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, and Patrick Corbin deals that are like the Louis Vuitton boutique that never has a sale. Other players will be bargaining in the wheeler dealer negotiations. For Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo, he has signed three players under the radar already in the Kyle Barraclough trade, and the free agent signings of Trevor Rosenthal and Kurt Suzuki. The early bird gets the worm as they say.
The other shopping Mike Rizzo has to do is to acquire a top of the rotation starting pitcher and at least one middle of the rotation starting pitcher and one of them has to be a left-handed pitcher. Will there be a bargain again with Jeremy Hellickson who Rizzo snagged last year for a cool million? Probably not, but Helly might be available for a few million and just above him is a pitcher like Wade Miley.
The Nats also need a lefty first baseman to back-up Ryan Zimmerman, and the price on those players as we saw last year with Matt Adams was about a $5 million to total package. There was a development this week with Derek Dietrich coming available and while he is not a good outfielder defensively, he can play second base and first base and he would cost $4 to $5 million.
Mike Rizzo could also be in the mood to re-gift to players to some fellow GMs:
We are a week away from the tender/non-tender deadline for arbitration eligible players. There could be some tough decisions on the horizon but already we have seen teams like the Reds make a deal with Raisel Iglesias to buy-out his arbitration years. Mike Rizzo has to look at Tanner Roark’s arbitration and consider a deal before next Friday’s deadline. With the Winter Meetings about three weeks away, do not expect a lot to be done this weekend, but “quick strike” Mike Rizzo might surprise us!
