Miami Marlins

The Giancarlo Stanton saga may be nearing its conclusion. All that's left is Stanton giving his OK to choose his next destination.

Jon Paul Morosi and Joe Frisaro of MLB.com reported the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants each have a framework in place to trade for the Miami Marlins slugger. Miami has given both teams permission to speak with Stanton, who has a full no-trade clause.

The Giants are reportedly offering prospects outfielder/first baseman Chris Shaw, right-hander Tyler Beede and outfielder Heliot Ramos. Second baseman Joe Panik could also be involved in the deal. Morosi previously reported the Marlins were willing to take a package of Panik, Shaw and Beede provided the Giants pick up $250 million of the $295 million remaining on Stanton's contract.

The Marlins are also interested in Cardinals pitching prospects Jack Flaherty and Sandy Alcantara. It's unclear if either or both prospects are on the table in St. Louis' offer.

Stanton, 28, hit .281/.376/.631 with 59 home runs and drove in 132 runs in 2017. His 59 home runs were the most in an MLB season since Sammy Sosa hit 61 and Barry Bonds set the all-time record with 73 in 2001. He became the first Marlins player in franchise history to win the National League MVP.

Miami is looking to trade Stanton almost entirely for financial reasons. New ownership, spearheaded by former Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, has set a goal of turning the Marlins into a financially viable franchise. The team has lost millions of dollars in recent years under previous ownership.

"We're trying to build an organization that's sustainable over time," Jeter told reporters. "I don't like the world 'rebuild' because I think a lot of negativity comes with that. But we're trying to build something here. And we will build something. But it will take time, and there has to be patience."

Stanton's contract is set to run through the 2028 season, paying him at least $25 million annually. The Marlins have avoided paying the bulk of the 13-year, $325 million contract he signed in 2015 and are looking to get out from under as much of it as possible.

"It's an interesting feeling and situation for me," Stanton told reporters in October. "This is the only place I've known, but I also understand the business part of it and the direction the new ownership wants to go.

"The thoughts [this week] were up and down. ... Everything that's going on, how is this going to turn out, what's going to happen with my team and my teammates and me, etc. It's a lot of thoughts going on, but luckily I don't have to worry about playing at 7 o'clock every night [with] those thoughts.”

Stanton's preferred destination is the Los Angeles Dodgers, but it appears there has not been any significant progress made on a deal. The Dodgers and Marlins remain in contact. However, the MLB.com report indicates the Dodgers are wary of potential luxury tax implications of adding Stanton's salary. 

The Miami Marlins have agreed to the "general framework" of trades with the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants to move 2017 National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton, MLB Network's Jon Morosi reported Sunday.

According to Morosi, the deals are pending Stanton's approval. The right fielder has a full no-trade clause as part of the 13-year, $325 million contract he signed with Miami in 2014.

ESPN's Buster Olney reported Friday that the Giants met with Stanton's representatives in Los Angeles on Thursday. Olney also reported that Stanton's representatives received approval to meet with the Cardinals.

Since Stanton could veto any trade, Morosi noted the 28-year-old holds all the cards:

If Stanton had met with #SFGiants and #STLCards without trade framework already in existence, #Marlins would have risked losing leverage if Stanton agreed to move forward with one and not the other. @MLB @MLBNetwork

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) December 3, 2017

Worth saying again: Giancarlo Stanton is in control here, due to full no-trade. If he wants to wait on the #Dodgers, he can — even if that means saying no to everyone else this offseason and revisiting in July/August or next winter. @MLB @MLBNetwork

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) December 3, 2017

Morosi reported Thursday the Marlins were prepared to accept Giants second baseman Joe Panik and top prospects Tyler Beede and Chris Shaw in return for Stanton as long as San Francisco was willing to assume at least $250 million of the remaining $295 million on Stanton's contract.

On Sunday, Craig Mish of SiriusXM reported pitcher Sandy Alcantara is at the center of St. Louis' offer and the Cardinals' deal includes more money than that of San Francisco. Mish also noted any trade is "expected to be finalized" in the next two to three days.

However, any deal with the Cardinals may prove to be a nonstarter.

FanRag Sports' Jon Heyman reported there's some doubt whether Stanton would waive his no-trade clause to go to St. Louis. Heyman cited a source who said the Giants would "100 percent" be Stanton's preferred choice if he had to pick between them and the Cardinals.

Of course, that shouldn't preclude the Marlins from evaluating all their options.

Miami's season ended a little over two months ago, so the team has acted quickly to try to move its best player. As Morosi highlighted, though, Stanton can all but cease ongoing trade negotiations if he wants another team to enter the mix.

The San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals remain in the mix as they hope to acquire Miami Marlins star Giancarlo Stanton in a trade. 

Per Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports, Stanton was present at separate meetings over the past two days with representatives for the Giants and Cardinals as they continue to pursue the 2017 National League MVP. 

Bob Nightengale of USA Today added that both clubs were told following their meetings with Stanton that neither had been eliminated from trade talks. 

This comes after MLB Network's Jon Morosi reported Friday that the Cardinals were meeting with Stanton's representatives, but he didn't necessarily mean Stanton would be in attendance. 

Craig Mish of SiriusXM reported Thursday that Giants officials were meeting with Stanton's representatives in Los Angeles. 

Heyman noted that the only people present at the meetings were Stanton and his agent, Joel Wolfe, and the general managers for the Giants (Bobby Evans) and Cardinals (Michael Girsch). 

Stanton controls any potential destination thanks to his full no-trade clause. Heyman added that the Los Angeles Dodgers are his top choice, but the Giants and Cardinals are both a "real possibility."

Heyman previously reported Stanton was more likely to accept a deal to the Giants than Cardinals because of his preference to play on either the East or West Coast. 

The 28-year-old Stanton will provide a huge boost to whatever lineup he's in next season. He led Major League Baseball with 59 home runs, 132 RBI and a .631 slugging percentage in 2017. 

The Miami Marlins are reportedly more focused on shedding as much of Giancarlo Stanton's 13-year, $325 million contract as possible than the level of talent they could receive as part of a blockbuster trade involving MLB's reigning home run champion.

On Saturday, Buster Olney of ESPN reported rival evaluators involved in discussions about the outfielder said the Marlins' front office views the players it would get in the deal as a "secondary concern."

The latest update in the offseason's biggest story doesn't come as a surprise.

Barry Jackson and Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald noted in late October the club's new ownership group, led by businessman Bruce Sherman and longtime New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, wanted to reduce payroll to $90 million. Moving Stanton's contract would be a major step.

The 28-year-old California native owns complete control of his future with a full no-trade clause.

Bob Nightengale‏ of USA Today reported Friday the San Francisco Giants, one of the most frequently mentioned teams in the Stanton sweepstakes, came away from a meeting with the slugger's representatives without a definitive answer about whether he'd accept a trade.

The 2017 National League Most Valuable Player and four-time All-Star selection did suggest to Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports he'd consider options if the Marlins were set for another rebuilding project.

"I don't want to rebuild … I've lost for seven years," Stanton said in September.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies and Boston Red Sox are among the other teams linked to Stanton since the 2017 season ended. The list will probably continue to grow until the Marlins and Stanton find an acceptable solution.

It's past time to ponder a hot-stove blockbuster involving the Miami Marlins' other All-Star outfielder.

As in, not Giancarlo Stanton. Plenty has already been said about a potential trade involving him, largely because such a trade seems about as inevitable as him hitting Statcastable dingers.

New Marlins owners Bruce Sherman and Derek Jeter want to cut the team's payroll. Shedding the remainder of Stanton's $325 million contract would do the trick. Since the 28-year-old right fielder is coming off an MVP-winning season, his trade value is in good shape.

And yet I propose: The Marlins outfielder everyone should want is 27-year-old left fielder Marcell Ozuna.

It's not because he's Stanton's equal on the diamond. With his career .786 OPS and 96 home runs, Ozuna can't match Stanton's career .914 OPS and 267 home runs. And while he may be coming off a career-best .924 OPS and 37 homers, Stanton is coming off a career-best 1.007 OPS and 59 homers.

Still, Ozuna isn't chopped liver.

He's been an All-Star two years in a row and claimed his first Gold Glove and Silver Slugger this year. He also has one big advantage on Stanton: a substantially cheaper price tag.

Stanton's record-sized contract has 10 years and $295 million remaining on it. Ozuna will earn a small fraction of that in his final two years of club control: $10.9 million via arbitration in 2018, per Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors, likely followed by a good but not outrageous raise in 2019.

Of course, Ozuna's affordable cost is easily viewed as a reason for the Marlins to keep him. ESPN's Buster Olney indicated in early November that their instinct is to do just that:

Marlins communicated to other teams they are open to offers for Giancarlo Stanton, Dee Gordon, Martin Prado. For now, not Yelich or Ozuna.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 3, 2017

But as Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald reported, the Marlins could be forced to shed payroll via trades of Ozuna and others if Stanton uses his no-trade clause to block deals to places he doesn't want to go. 

Otherwise, there's the simpler argument that dealing Ozuna is a better way for the Marlins to achieve what they want.

They don't just need payroll relief. They also need to replenish a farm system that Bleacher Report's Joel Reuter has ranked at No. 28 in Major League Baseball.

Due to the sheer size of his contract, the smallness of Stanton's market is one barrier in the way of them doing both by trading him. Another barrier is the question of whether he'll ultimately live up to his contract, hence why the latest rumored package for him (via Jon Morosi of MLB.com) sounds so light.

Ozuna is a different story. 

He was worth 5.8 wins above replacement in 2017, according to Baseball Reference. Set the cost per WAR at $8 million, and his value comes to $46.4 million. Assume some inflation in 2018 and 2019, and his value over the next two seasons could approach $100 million.

Relative to the $25-30 million he'll actually earn, that equates to a ton of surplus value. The Marlins could use that surplus value to leverage top prospects out of suitors in trade talks. Given Ozuna's reasonable price tag, there should be a good number of suitors to barter with.

For those suitors, though, the elephant in the room is a question that's as fair as it is big: Did Ozuna really reach new heights in 2017, or will his career year prove to be a one-time spike?

He wasn't terribly consistent in his first four seasons, typically following tremendous peaks with tremendous valleys—he even got demoted to the minor leagues in 2015. All told, he averaged just a .741 OPS and 2.0 WAR between 2013 and 2016.

But Ozuna's struggles were never a matter of ability. Pretty much everything that Statcast can measure—sprint speed, throwing strength and, perhaps most notably, power—paints him as one of MLB's best athletes.

His inconsistency at the plate was tied to his approach. He wasn't an aggressive swinger on the whole, but he swung at too many bad pitches outside the strike zone and not enough good pitches inside it.

Here's a look at how that changed in 2017:

Ozuna became the good kind of aggressive, channeling more of his swings inside the zone. He benefited accordingly, rocketing in-zone pitches at an average of 93.3 miles per hour en route to a .661 in-zone slugging percentage. His previous high had been .549.

Here's how Marlins manager Don Mattingly summarized Ozuna's transformation in June, according to Tim Healey of the Sun Sentinel: “Just less giveaway at-bats, as much as anything. Less throwaway at-bats, where he gets a couple of hits and gets happy and just starts swinging. I see more and more quality at-bats, and that’s how you pile up numbers."

Ozuna also benefited from a position switch. Defensive metrics such as defensive runs saved and ultimate zone rating had rated him as a below-average center fielder. Both rated him as an above-average left fielder in 2017, with DRS even rating him as the National League's best. 

All this doesn't necessarily erase the threat of Ozuna regressing back to inconsistency and turning into a bust for a new team. For said new team, that would be a good amount of money and talented prospects down the drain.

But as far as risk goes, that beats the specter of Stanton going bust.

In light of his age, mileage and injury history, that's certainly possible. Maybe his new team wouldn't be lamenting lost blue-chip prospects, but that's a small comfort when you have an albatross worth a couple hundred million dollars clogging your payroll. Unless you're the Los Angeles Dodgers or the New York Yankees—both of whom seem to be unlikely fits for Stanton—that's a hard mistake to shrug off.

From the sound of things, it's a good bet that somebody will deal for Stanton this winter. But for everyone else, Ozuna should be either Plan B or Plan A.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.

Trade negotiations between the Miami Marlins and San Francisco Giants regarding 2017 National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton may be heating up.

SiriusXM Radio's Craig Mish reported Thursday members of San Francisco's front office were meeting with Stanton's representatives in Los Angeles.

Buster Olney of ESPN reported the meeting is to see if Stanton would approve a move to the Giants.

MLB Network's Jon Morosi reported what could be the framework of the potential trade:

Giancarlo Stanton trade development: Source says #Marlins likely would accept offer of Panik, Beede and Shaw for Stanton alone -- if #SFGiants committed to paying at least $250 million of the $295 million left on Stanton’s contract. @MLB @MLBNetwork

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) November 30, 2017

Stanton has a full no-trade clause as part of the 13-year, $325 million contract he signed with the Marlins in 2014. It makes sense for Giants representatives to feel out the 28-year-old before they continue working on a deal with Miami.

There's no question Stanton would be a massive improvement in the Giants outfield.

Jarrett Parker's power in the minors hasn't translated to MLB. He has 15 home runs and a .456 slugging percentage in 382 career plate appearances. Stanton, meanwhile, led the majors with 59 homers, 132 RBI and a .631 slugging percentage.

Acquiring Stanton would come with some risk for San Francisco, though. The 2017 season was the first time he had appeared in 150-plus games since 2011.

While a solid defender, Stanton, a right fielder, wouldn't necessarily solve the Giants' defensive issues, either. Denard Span's minus-7.5 ultimate zone rating was 16th among 17 qualified center fielders, per FanGraphs, and Stanton won't be playing center field anytime soon.

Still, Stanton's arrival would build a lot of excitement in the Bay Area after a disappointing 64-98 season.

The Miami Marlins have agreed to lower their asking price in trade talks for Giancarlo Stanton with the San Francisco Giants—provided the club picks up $250 million of the $295 million remaining on his contract.

Jon Morosi of MLB Network reported the Marlins have "likely" come around on a package highlighted by second baseman Joe Panik, pitching prospect Tyler Beede and outfield prospect Chris Shaw for Stanton. The Giants would, in exchange, have to assume the vast majority of Stanton's contract, which is the impetus for Miami looking to deal the reigning NL MVP.  

Stanton, 28, hit .281/.376/.631 with 59 home runs and 132 runs batted in this past season. His 59 home runs were the most in MLB since 2001, when Sammy Sosa hit 61 and Barry Bonds set the single-season record with 73.

Rumors have been persistent about a trade since the Marlins were sold to a group that includes former Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. 

"It's an interesting feeling and situation for me,” Stanton told reporters last month. "This is the only place I've known, but I also understand the business part of it and the direction the new ownership wants to go.

"The thoughts [this week] were up and down. ... Everything that's going on, how is this going to turn out, what's going to happen with my team and my teammates and me, etc. It's a lot of thoughts going on, but luckily I don't have to worry about playing at 7 o'clock every night [with] those thoughts.”

The Giants are coming off a disappointing 64-98 season but are expected to be major players this winter. Adding Stanton could be the first domino in an active offseason as they try to rebound from a massive downturn few saw coming.

Subject: Fwd: pic.twitter.com/AImGeIAlyG

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) November 30, 2017

Don Mattingly is set to serve as manager of the Miami Marlins for at least one more season, but that isn't stopping Jose Canseco from shooting his shot.

On Wednesday evening, Canseco tweeted a video that included a brief message to Miami CEO and part owner Derek Jeter.

"Derek Jeter, it's Jose Canseco. If you're looking for a manager, I'm the man for the job," the former slugger confidently stated.

If nothing else, Canseco's postgame press conferences would be must-see television.

[Twitter]

The Miami Marlins have reportedly warned Giancarlo Stanton that it's in his best interest to waive his no-trade clause. 

According to the Miami Herald's Clark Spencer, "the Marlins informed Stanton in October that if he refused to waive his no-trade rights and accept a trade, he would remain a Marlin and team officials would look to trade off other top players to reduce payroll."

Stanton, 28, is scheduled to earn $25 million next season and $26 million in 2019 and 2020. He has an opt-out option after the 2020 season.

All told, Stanton has 11 years and $295 million remaining on his contract—with the final eight years functioning as options that fluctuate between $25 million and $32 million. 

Spencer added that if Stanton resists a move, the Marlins would be inclined to deal outfielders Christian Yelich and Marcell Ozuna to clear money off their balance sheet. Yelich will make $7 million next season, while Ozuna is projected to rake in $10.9 million through arbitration, per Spencer. 

On Monday, MLB Network's Jon Morosi reported Stanton submitted a list of preferred trade destinations to the Marlins, with the Los Angeles Dodgers among that select group. 

Morosi previously reported that the St. Louis Cardinals made a formal offer to the Marlins for Stanton. Terms of the proposed deal were not disclosed. 

That move came on the heels of a formal bid by the San Francisco Giants, which was first reported by The Athletic's Ken Rosenthal. 

The Boston Red Sox have also been discussed as a potential landing spot for Stanton, but their viability as a landing spot for the reigning National League MVP has waned significantly of late. 

Citing a source, NBC Sports Boston's Evan Drellich reported Tuesday the Red Sox are "an extreme long shot" to acquire Stanton. 

According to ESPN.com's Jerry Crasnick, "a couple of MLB teams have gotten the sense there could be a resolution to the Giancarlo Stanton situation by the winter meetings Dec. 10" in the form of a trade or a decision from rivals to turn elsewhere. 

     

Contract information courtesy of Spotrac unless noted otherwise. 

The San Francisco Giants and Miami Marlins discussed including Marlins second baseman Dee Gordon in a potential Giancarlo Stanton trade, FanRag Sports' Jon Heyman confirmed Wednesday.

SiriusXM's Craig Mish first reported Monday the Giants and Marlins had preliminary talks about a deal in which Gordon and Stanton would head to San Francisco in return for second baseman Joe Panik, minor league pitcher Tyler Beede and minor league outfielder Chris Shaw.

Heyman tweeted, however, the odds of Gordon landing with the Giants may be low, since "other teams have greater [second base] need."

Heyman called the Los Angeles Angels and Toronto Blue Jays the "most logical" destinations for Gordon and added the New York Mets are in the market for a second baseman as well.

While Stanton is fresh off winning the National League Most Valuable Player Award, the Marlins appear likely to move the 28-year-old outfielder. The Miami Herald's Barry Jackson reported in September the franchise's new ownership group, which includes former New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, plans to shed some payroll.

Since that's the case, Gordon is a natural trade candidate as well. He's set to make $37 million over the next three seasons and has a $14 million vested option for 2021.

The Marlins should be in a position to receive good value back should they deal Gordon. The 29-year-old was tied for seventh among second basemen in WAR (3.3) in 2017, per FanGraphs. He stole an MLB-best 60 bases—though he was also caught stealing a league-high 16 times. His .308 batting average and .341 on-base percentage were also the second-highest of his MLB career.

Especially with a weak crop of free agents at the position this offseason, Gordon would be a sensible target for any team looking to upgrade at second base.