BTS

Padres lineup is so weird. It's like they assembled half a team and just said f*** it good enough

Catcher caught it straight, so not a foul tip. Twitter is saying umpire interference

I'm watching the Padres feed and I still don't know why Betts was sent back to 1st after the steal

Holy f*** can you idiots just use the IL?

But that doesn’t really make sense though. If you’re optioning Espinal, you’re doing it because nobody wanted to trade for him. You don’t actually want to pay him 2.75M to play in AAA. So you DFA him. That serves an immediate purpose (clearing a spot for Serven). And there are two possible outcomes: 1) he gets claimed - great, his salary is gone 2) he doesn’t get claimed and reports to AAA and gets re-added to the 40-man again if the team needs him I can’t think of a single reason why the team would just option him

I meant why not DFA Espinal if they can’t trade him. You’d just carry him and Clement on the bench?

Why not? If he’s not making the team, best case someone claims him, worst case he goes unclaimed and waits in AAA as depth. I don’t think it will be him, but it should be.

Clement is on the 40

Votto and Serven need to be added to the 40-man

There is absolutely no reason not to have a Serven, Clement, Votto, Biggio bench. Just trade Espinal or DFA him.

2/62 for the reigning CY winner is crazy

Rodgriuez just struck out Goodrum with a perfectly placed fasball at 97

Yeah, split squad. Yariel starting vs. Twins

And Yariel Rodriguez pitching

Actually the team should have given Espinal the old JD Davis and lowballed the f*** out of him to force an arb hearing

It would be surprising if they drop a pitcher. They don't have a ton of bullpen depth, and all of the guys they'd consider dumping are optionable, which gives them value. I think Espinal will ether be traded, or outrighted if they can't fins a taker. I don't think 2.75M is enough for the FO to care much about the sunk cost on a guy they just signed a couple months ago.

So who do we think is getting pushed from the roster with Serven needing to be added? Everything kind of points to an Espinal trade. It would clear a 40-man spot for Serven, and a 26-man spot for Clement, who can't be optioned.

I'm not talking about offensive players though. I posted this a few weeks ago, but: Dodgers just gave Heyward 9M for 1 year and Hernandez 4M. Joe Kelly 8M. Rays gave Phil Maton 6.5M Braves gave Joe Jimenez 3/26 and Reynaldo Lopez 3/30 Orioles have Kimbrel 13M Phillies gave Merrifield 8M

Also - I think it's pretty clear that the team thinks IKF projects better than Urshela this year, given that they jumped on him early when Urshela was still available. If their assessments have IKF as the better player this year by, say, 0.5-1 win. It's perfectly justifiable to prefer spending 7.5M on IKF instead of 2 or 3? on Urshela. Fans are considering Urshela and Rosario as completely interchangeable with IKF, but the team probably doesn't see it that way.

I don't know if they were there in previous CBAs, but the incentives in the current CBA should probably be addressed. Teams are incentivized to lowball arbitration eligible players pre-arb. It's better for them to go to arbitration than to settle because that preserves the flexibility to cut players before the season if roster situations change between December and opening day. Players are not incentivized to maximize earnings because the more they make, the more likely they get cut a few weeks before the season and hit the FA market when most teams have no more money to spend. It's pretty crazy that they arrived at this set of rules.

That's not actually true though. Teams like TB, LAD, ATL all spent IKF money or more on players expected to be worth about 1 win this season. I'm not really defending the choice to sign IKF. I think that's the valid criticism to make here. We'll see how well they evaluated him. I think the cost is immaterial though. They decided that they were comfortable with IKF getting 400+ PA at 3B. If he's good nobody will care that he cost 7.5M a year and if he's bad the the opportunity cost of going to him instead of another solution will be the real harm, not that they signed him for 15M instead of 5M or whatever. I think the complaints about the cost are mostly just silly. First it was whining that they couldn't afford Chapman because they signed IKF. Then it turned out that the FO isn't completely moronic, and knew at the time that Chapman didn't want to come back. Now people are complaining that Clement is blocked. We'll see how that plays out, but almost all whining that fans do in ST about players being blocked ends up being a complete non-issue once injuries and poor performance start to kick in.

I don’t think that’s an actual problem. 2B is open if Schneider earns it. They can easily roster Clement. Playing time will be available. I’ll concede the point if Clement is waived and then plays well for whoever claims him.