Jean Segura is the Marlins’ biggest addition of the offseason, even though Miami is known to have looked into several other options before inking Segura to a two-year, $17MM contract. Some of those other free agent and trade targets are already off the board, and it appears as though signing Segura ends any chance of an Eduardo Escobar trade, as Barry Jackson and Craig Mish of the Miami Herald report that the Marlins had some talks with the Mets about a possible swap.
Timing is everything in trade negotiations, and it seems as though the Marlins checked in on Escobar after the Mets reached their 12-year, $315M agreement with Carlos Correa. Had the Correa deal been finalized fairly quickly, there would’ve been a greater chance of Escobar being moved, as the veteran infielder suddenly would’ve been out of a starting job in New York’s infield. However, the Mets’ issues with Correa’s physical have led to stalled negotiations in finalizing or perhaps even reworking the deal, to the point that other teams have reportedly re-entered the picture. As such, it isn’t surprising that the Mets have opted to hang onto Escobar, leaving the Marlins looking elsewhere for a more immediate lineup fix.
More from around the NL East…
- Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski spoke with reporters (including Alex Coffey of the Philadelphia Inquirer) about his club’s trade with the Tigers today. Moving three players was “not easy for us,” Dombrowski said, but the Phillies were tempted by the chance to add a quality, controllable reliever like Gregory Soto. The Phillies first talked Soto with the Tigers during the Winter Meetings, but negotiations seemed to cool until this past Thursday when Dombrowski said that Detroit PBO Scott Harris called to revisit a Soto deal. In regards to the other players involved, Kody Clemens figures to take over one of the bench spots left by Nick Maton or Matt Vierling, and Dombrowski said the other spot could be filled by a future smaller acquisition, or perhaps by a player already in Philadelphia’s system.
- Sean Murphy’s six-year, $73MM extension with the Braves made him the latest Atlanta player to sign a long-term deal within the last year, giving the Braves yet another key player locked up for the majority of the decade. It is a strategy that president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos has pursued “for the parameters that we have, for the market we have, for what we have to work with,” and also because of the players’ own buy-in. “These guys are choosing to stay here, and they don’t have to. I think that’s important, and it’s a credit to Atlanta and the organization across the board,” Anthopoulos told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Justin Toscano and other reporters earlier this week. “There’s risk to this, no doubt about it, when you lock yourself into this…But we do like the fact that guys can just worry about going out and playing. They don’t have to worry about making a certain salary, getting certain statistics and so on, and they know they’re going to be here.”
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