Laika

I think the Jays will add at least one more baseball player this offseason

huzzah

It's completely possible that nobody is willing to pay what he is worth.

shhh

Seems like a nice deal for St Louis. Basically the same contract Toronto gave Russell Martin in f***ing 2015, when he was 31. Russell was better though.

100%

I literally just come her to make you smarter. I am trying to sharpen you like a stubby pencil, so you can land a wife.

like, 6?

Yeah but this stuff has almost nothing to do with "protection" and everything to do with the facts that: 1. mosquito hitters suck at hitting 2. mosquito pitchers suck at throwing strikes So you basically ALWAYS want the 9 year old to just throw strikes and make the other kids swing the bat.

Does protection exist at all, today? I think it has to, logically. Teams today don't think about "protection" at all but they do think and act in terms of "expected results" and they model out "expected results" for their own players and their opponents and iterate constantly to try to perform actions that have the lowest possible "expected results" for their opponents. Sometimes this means pitching around hitter A to pitch to hitter B. You would do this if the expected run value of hitter A hitting against you is say 1 run but the expected value of hitter B, hitting after hitter A has walked, is 0.8 runs. This is based on their projected wOBA and run matrices. Obviously, if the difference in talent between hitter A and hitter B is large, you would see this type of action by opponents more often. So it stands to basic reason that if Hitter A benefits from having a Hitter B behind him who is just as good, that Hitter A will not suffer these slight reductions in his production by having the chance to hit essentially taken away from him. Like, if they pitch around him he gets credit for 0.1 runs for the walk, but maybe his "expected" production if pitched to is 0.2 runs - this means if he gets pitched to all the time in these scenarios over the course of a season his wOBA will literally be higher! We have just proven that protection exists, on first principles!

The protection concept comes from the old school ways of looking at the game. When people cared about RBIs. Because if a hitter was followed by good hitters, then hitter A would not get pitched around as much so he had more RBI opportunities. The protection concept classically does not really have much to do with modern conceptions of value! People try to put the square, old concept into the round, modern holes all the time. It's an awkward line of discussion, always.

Jansen is the slowest RP in baseball and now has to speed up his tempo because of the pitch clock. Most arms won't be impacted much by the pitch clock but I think Jansen could be the rare exception. He might decline horribly, immediately. He's also super old.

The extremely cynical answer is they wanted to help Judge set a big record. And wanted to juice the ball for the playoffs and other events. The normal and probably more truthful answer is that it was unintentional and the "special" balls just came from a different batch, that has slightly different characteristics. So this Goldilocks ball ended up being the one they used for ever stamped baseball. So it was incidental and not on purpose. MLB may not have even known they had two slightly different baseballs out there.

In 2027 the Yankees will be paying Cole + Judge + Stanton $101 million combined. They will be 35, 36, and 37 Stanton just had a 1 WAR season.

Do we know what the Giants even offered?

Oh god that’s a gross contract for Walker

If Toronto wants Cody Bellinger I have trouble seeing why he would sign almost anywhere else. He'd be the starting CF here, clear cut with lots of leash, in a good division for hitting, in a good lineup. Even if Toronto is offering less money it might make sense to play here.

Guardians need to bring in whoever they can afford and land. Naylor and Bell clogs up 1B/DH buuuut typically they bring up players with defensive utility these days so not sure that matters in 2023 much.

Yes, maybe I am being too conservative. Some of you who think you are big macho dudes might need gender affirming hormone therapy as you age.

If any team wanted to pay Bellinger $20M they would have just traded a D prospect to LA for him. I expect him to get like $12M. And there are probably 7 teams offering him that same deal.

Or the public version of WAR is wrong Teams at certain points do of course try to buy playoff wins but that's still WAR!!! It's PWAR. Just because it's not on Fangraphs doesn't mean it does not exist.

Yes, they are paying him for his projected WAR

I have unlimited power internet message board god

Yes. Put your highest projected WAR team on the field.

Even KNOWING your testosterone levels is so incredibly low T can't think of something more girly than bloodwork