BTS

Damn, scoreless inning for Stroman in his spring debut. I really want to see the fireworks of him being used in middle relief.

Regarding the placement of the articles, I don't see the issue as long as the articles are clearly identified in the thread title (which they are). There are currently 243 replies to Tuesday's Vlad article, when there might not have even been 10 if it wasn't added to the forum.

I really hate the argument that if they were willing to offer Soto 700M then why not Vlad 500M (or whatever). There are a number of reasons why an organization might be willing to pay huge for Soto but not commit 500M (or even 400M) to Vlad. To be outraged over this one has to find it implausible that that the team sees a lot of daylight between the projections for both players going forward. In reality, sound projections might actually see like 20+ WAR separating them over the life of the contract.

Damn Spanky, that -71 reputation score is rough

If this is true, it's true regardless of what happens with Vlad and Bo, and the thing that killed them was an inability to develop MLB talent. For a well-run organization, 1 or 2 players leaving via FA wouldn't dictate that a rebuild is in order.

Soto (ZiPS + Steamer) projects for 6.5 fWAR next year. Vlad is at 4.8. These are their respective career stats: # Name Team G PA HR R RBI SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA xwOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR 1 Juan Soto 3 Tms 936 4088 201 655 592 57 18.8% 17.0% .248 .305 .285 .421 .532 .404 158 -9.8 280.7 -55.0 36.3 2 Vladimir Guerrero Jr. TOR 819 3540 160 475 507 20 9.9% 15.6% .213 .304 .288 .363 .500 .367 137 -14.8 139.8 -91.5 17.0

The biggest failure here isn’t not signing him - it’s going into the season with him unsigned. If Houston can trade Tucker and SD can trade Soto they could have traded Vlad, but they won’t because Atkins is too passive for the job.

So today is the deadline for getting a deal done before free agency?

I don't understand why people think Robert would be cheap. He's the kind of high-variance talent that contending teams drool over, and he's controllable for 3 more seasons on very reasonable team options. There would be no shortage of interested teams and Toronto's farm system is ass.

Team feels incomplete. Need either Bregman or a couple of relief upgrades.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck

Two-team dynasty is an interesting format.

Good article on the topic. Don't let the league's cheap and/or incompetent owners use the Dodgers' success to convince you that a salary cap is necessary. Sick of the Dodgers Signing all the Free Agents? Well, Get Off Your Butt and Do Something About It. | FanGraphs Baseball

Refreshing seeing an exec/owner be that candid. Sounds like almost no chance Alonso is back in NY.

What does the team even have to trade for Robert?

Of course not. We anoint Atkins as a king after he gets Pete Alonso for 3/75 and wins the offseason by getting Alonso, Tony Taters, and Hoffman to sign for dirt cheap.

So if Ross lands Alonso and Scherzer are we thinking him and Shapiro get standard 4-year deals or do we try locking them up forever so that nobody can poach them?

I have no issue with what the Dodgers are doing. The deferrals are accounted for in the CBA. Other owners are going to use LA's spending to garner fan support for more restrictions, but the reality is that every owner in the league could have afforded Snell or Teo or Yates or Sasaki. These guys chose LA because they've made themselves into a world class organization that does what it takes to win. The obvious answer here is for other owners to get better at owning a baseball club. Also, it's fun having villains. The NHL has a hard cap, and honestly it f***ing sucks. Great teams are forcefully dismantled in order to create parity. It rewards mediocre orgs, and forces teams to compete in cycles instead of sustainably. There are like 4 very good teams, 4 very bad teams, and 24 teams that are average and may or may not make the playoffs in a given season. And it makes trades really hard to come by.

I'd rather have Santander than Teo all else being equal. I take him at his contract every time over Teo at his.

14M CBT hit for Santander is crazy good. Ross Atkins striking back at all the haters and the losers.

It is still objectively funny that they traded Teo 2 years ago because they weren't interested in a FA contract for a bat only corner OF, and now they're signing a bat only corner OF for 92.5M.

281

This takes us to 262.7. Already 1.7M past the second threshold.

https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/payroll/blue-jays Roster Resource already has it at 5/92. Not bad

It's scary because the deal is underwater as soon as he loses anything offensively. There are no secondary skills, and the carrying skill (his bat) isn't good enough to make him an asset if it slips by even 10%.