Miami Marlins GM simulation: Giancarlo Stanton interest, a primer

The Miami Marlins figure to move Giancarlo Stanton this offseason. No surprise, as he stirred a lot of interest as soon as the FanSided simulation got started.

In case you’re unaware of what we’re doing at FanSided, take a read and catch up. It’s a lot of fun and you’ll want to follow from start to finish. But in short, this offseason, all of the site experts acted as the general managers of their team.

Acting as the Miami Marlins GM, I wanted to stay as close to reality as possible. My goal was to cut payroll within the $90-$100 million range. The most obvious place to start, is Giancarlo Stanton.

He garnered a lot of interest from the usual suspects. Trades involving Stanton were complex, heated, and full of posturing.

Naturally, I was determined to get back as much as possible. But that meant finding away around Stanton’s huge salary figure, which bidding teams used to their full advantage. The consensus approach was “we’ll do you the favor of taking him off your hands.”

Certainly at first, teams took the position that they were totally unwilling to take the entirety of Stanton’s contract. That was a problem for me, because even retaining some of his salary meant somewhere between $2-$4 million staying on the books every season.

When you’re strapped for cash, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Before we get into the particular bidders that were vying to get Stanton to switch his clothes, let’s take a look at some of the guidelines. I came up with a few tenets, which I didn’t disclose during the bidding process of course, that I needed to pull the trigger on a deal.

Guidelines for trading Giancarlo Stanton set by Miami Marlins GM Michael Napoles. I wrote the header this way because I wanted to see “GM” next to my name.

There were a few things that I was going to require of other teams. Some of them were fairly obvious, but others were hotly contested throughout negotiations.

Contract: This was a big one, obviously. The Miami Marlins owe Giancarlo Stanton $295 million, and he’ll earn $25 million in 2018 alone. I wanted whatever team that was trying to acquire Stanton to take at least 90 percent of his contract.

I fully intended to push for all of it, even at the cost of a prospect if I had to. But 90 percent would mean the Marlins would only pay out $2.95 million each season for the life of his contract. That’s a lot, but it’s not so much that I’d turn down a great deal because of it.

Tax compensation: I didn’t want any part of this. Wherever Stanton goes, he’ll effectively take a pay cut because of income tax. Florida doesn’t have any income tax, and so his agent will seek a bonus to compensate for the wages he’ll lose. I wanted whatever team acquired Stanton to handle that entirely. It was an “out of state, out of mind” mentality as far as I was concerned.

Prospects: I was looking for pitching above all else. I wanted the top pitching prospect from whatever organization was trying to acquire him. I also wanted their most promising, MLB ready starting pitching prospect. There also needed to be a direct replacement for Stanton in the deal; someone team controllable and young.

I would push for as many prospects as possible, but due to his contract, it likely meant a lesser haul.

The Boston Redsox came flying out of the gates as the favorite. They showed immediate interest, and negotiations quickly got down to the nitty-gritty.

The Red Sox GM for our simulation in Sean Penney. Sean is a great guy, and a shrewd negotiator.  Right off the bat, I stuck to the guidelines I mentioned above. I wanted all of Stanton’s contract off the books, and I wanted their top pitching prospect named Jay Groome. I also wanted Brock Holt.

“For me, this is where the deal starts,” I wrote him in one of our earliest email exchanges. I also included the following players that I was interested in: Bryan Mata, Jhonathan Diaz, Brian Johnson, Hildemaro Requena.

Looking back at this now, it seems highly reasonable to me. But Sean balked. He didn’t want to give up Groome, instead offering Eduardo Rodriguez. We would exchange a number of emails until he realized I wasn’t willing to come off getting the top prospect in their system.

This would prove to be one the longest exchanges in an attempt to acquire Stanton from the Miami Marlins.

The San Francisco Giants emerged as major players very early on as well.

The San Francisco Giants are in the market for a power bat in real life. Their site expert, Daniel Sperry, certainly did his due diligence to bring him into the fold.

These negotiations mirrored what the real life Miami Marlins are likely talking about. The Giants franchise has no shortage in cash right now, but their stable of top-end prospects is pretty depleted. Just like in real life, dealing with Giants was a decisive step in dumping salary, but not getting a ton of value in return.

The challenge with the San Francisco Giants became a matter of staying within the simulation guidelines. In the name of realism, teams in the simulation were to do their best not to exceed their real world 2017 payroll by more than 15 percent. Obviously an issue if you’re trying to move $25 million.

I again stuck to the script I laid out before negotiations began. Things stalled out initially, but picked up a serious head of steam as the simulation progressed into the 11th hour. The Giants emerged as a serious contender for Stanton as it came down to the wire.

The St. Louis Cardinals were slow to get into the mix. But when they did, they pushed hard.

The St. Louis Cardinals round out the four teams that made a push to trade for Stanton. Their managing GM, Tito Rivera-Bosques probably struck the best balance between being reasonable, and trying to get as much as he can for as little as he can.

Trading with the Cardinals presents the opposite problem of the San Francisco Giants. The Cardinals are rich with prospects, but didn’t have the funds to take all of Stanton’s contract. That meant the Miami Marlins would have to do one of two things:

1. The Fish would need to eat some of Stanton’s contract, likely more than I desired.
2. Or, they were going to have to rope another team into negations to help the Cardinals unload some of their existing payroll.

The second option was obviously the more desirable, but also far more difficult to find. Tito and I exchanged over 18 emails, hammering out the particulars of a deal until both sides were happy with what they would theoretically be getting, and giving up.

The Giancarlo Stanton trade dominated the offseason simulation the way it has in real life. Several teams made furious attempts to sign him.

The best way, or at least the most comprehensive way to break down all this Giancarlo simulation drama is to do it in individual posts. The negotiations were long; exchanging various player names and haggling over player value results in a startlingly long email chains.

I’ll be writing a separate post for each of the negotiations and how the progressed. This was only a primer to introduce you to the major players.

Each of these teams wanted the same thing, but all presented different a challenge for Miami. But the biggest problem of them all was that pesky no-trade clause.

David Hill filled the role of player agent throughout all of our negotiations. He was incredibly well prepared and made true to life demands for his client.

Keep an eye out for all of the Giancarlo Stanton posts that are going to be published over the next couple of days. As always, I want you to reach out to me on Twitter about all of this stuff! Let’s talk about it!