BTS

Has a non-player ever returned something as valuable as Hoffman?

I kind of like the idea of a Weeks/Kawasaki 2B platoon. Kawasaki can cover short if Reyes goes down too. Don't want Goins anywhere near the 25-man.

lmao

I looked into this, but he doesn't really have any more.

Meh. Orioles fans would be saying the same about us if they checked out the torontobluejays.com message boards or TSN/sportsnet comments sections.

This would be acceptable.

Yeah it does. For five months of the season and playoffs baseball is a strategic game played by two 25-man teams. For one month, baseball is a strategic game played by 30-35 man teams. 7-man bullpens and 4-man benches dictate bullpen uses and pinch hitting patterns for every game played, except for those played in September. It's dumn.

One change I'd love: no expanded rosters in September.

There were no winners here. Ed Rogers acted like an incompetent ass, while at the same time Angelos should have let Duquette take the raise/promotion. The alternative was offering Duquette the same role in Baltimore, but those jobs are reserved for Angelos and sons.

Everyone involved in this debacle should be ashamed of themselves.

You keep saying this, and people keep responding in the same way. fWAR is usually a good quick and dirty measure of what a player can bring to the table, but there is reason to believe that for catchers the number isn't of much use at all because it don't account for framing. Navarro in his career has been worth about 1 fWAR per 500 plate appearances. He's been better recently so his projection is going to be a bit better than that (Steamer has him at 1.4). He's a bad athlete with a league-average bat and no significant platoon split, so you don't want him anywhere but catcher (including DH). So without any reason to believe otherwise, you have what should be a ~1.4 win player in 2015. Now, there are four pretty good sources of information on pitch framing. They are as follows: Matt Carruth's statcorner has Navarro -8.2 runs per 8000 chances from 2007-2014 Mike Fast's study -6.1 runs/8000 from 2007-2011 BP's framing report -8.0 runs/8000 from 2008-2014 JFaS, who's exact numbers escape me, but thinks he's one of the worst framers in baseball So the best guess we have is that you take a ~1.4 win projection and cut about 8 runs off of it. So you have a player that you'd expect to provide you with about 0.5 wins over 500 plate appearances while earning $5 million. And it might be worse than that: Carruth had him at -20/8000 in 2014, BP had him at -11, and IIRC JFaS had him in the -20 range. Sure, there might be a team that A) needs a catcher and can add one at $5 million and thinks Navarro is worth giving up an actual asset for, but you're counting on incompetency from any possible trade partner in that case.

I think it's something like this right now: Hoyer Jocketty Antonetti Zaidi Dombrowski Beane Huntington Sabean Mozeliak a bunch of guys Zduriencik Moore Stewart Hart Amaro As things stand right now, I don't think you can convincingly argue AA out of the "bunch of guys" tier, in either direction.

I obviously understand this. I think it's important to give credit where credit is due, which I've done all offseason for the Martin, Donaldson, and Saunders moves. By the same token, I think poor roster depth is a pretty fair criticism - they really do give away large amounts of playing time to bad players, and I think this is something that is absolutely on the FO. They just haven't been good at stocking the bench with good players that have complementary skill sets. They've entered seasons with multiple replacement-level players on the 25-man from day 1, and it's been exacerbated by a typically weak crop of talent in the high minors ready to fill in.

I don't think the Navarro thing is that weird. Navarro is a replacement-level player making $5 million. AA is likely trying to get an asset for him. Trying to get assets for players that make more money than they're worth doesn't usually end well. The only justification for the proposals thrown around on this site is "the D-Backs are dumn, so AA should be able to get a good reliever from them".

Beachy is exactly the type of arm they should be in on. His arm is probably going to fall off. But maybe it doesn't and he gives you 2-3 wins. Or maybe it falls off after he gives you 100 good innings.

Not exactly. People point this out as a roster flaw every March, and AA's teams have historically been among the worst in the league at giving tons of PA/innings to replacement-level talent (or worse). It's a huge flaw of this group.

It would also be nice to add another starter that projects for like 1-2 wins. Dickey Stroman Buehrle Hutchison new guy Estrada (pen, ~ 1-win starter maybe) Norris (AAA) and then into the likely replacement-level guys

AA has definitely had a nice offseason, but it's still incomplete. Given the ages of the team's top players and the projected cost of retaining this group going forward, this roster needs to be bolstered as much as possible. There are still issues that should be addressed: - The team is projected to be replacement-level at 2B. - Jose Reyes is now 32, has not exactly been a model of health, and there currently isn't a player on the 40-man who can cover short and be better than replacement-level. - Dioner Navarro is a complete waste of a roster spot and is still on the 25-man. - CF is a Pillar/Pompey platoon, and there is nothing outside the four outfielders that has much chance of being above replacement-level. The OF is currently very vulnerable to injury or disappointing play from their unproven CF platoon. - Bullpen is probably going to be below-average. As has always been the case under his tenure, the roster looks like it will be incomplete entering the season.

Yup. I really hate the interruption of the schedule. I'd prefer to watch any two teams play a regular season game than watch an all-star game.

Yeah. AA can't be too happy about this. Dan Duquette is a GM. That's his background and skill set. He's going to want a say in how he roster is constructed, and as AA's boss his opinion will matter. AA loses a lot of autonomy if Duquette us brought in. Ed Rogers has managed to alienate his current President and current GM, piss off the White Sox and Orioles, and made the team look like a complete clown show in the media.

Holy f***. That's embarrassing.

Marcum was the best.

Like JFaS said, that's not really representative of the quality of his season.

Why not just sign K-rod?

Hiring a young assistant GM to be team president would be ridiculous, as would promoting AA into the position. I don't faukt them for not chasing Zaidi.