Laika

The offseason has simply become a part of the spectator sport. People just want to see their team do STUFF. ANY STUFF. Three years for Mark Lowe! Entertain me, executives! Give me something to retweet!!!!

Moot point; bullpen is already decent

Mark Lowe wasn't even very good as a Blue Jay. I don't understand the strong desire to have him back. Any RH RP will suffice. Maybe it's a minor league deal guy and Toronto gets the 2016 incarnation of "Mark Lowe".

Irena hotter

Definitely. But I would be tempted to offer him a loooong term contract next winter and ask him to start. He might get offered something approaching 5/$80 to close. I believe this would be both a record AAV and and term for a reliever. Here is the top of the historical closer market: Papelbon 4/$50 Soriano 2/$28 Robertson 4/$46 Rivera 3/$45 (back in 2008!) Maybe some team offers him 6 years but haggles the AAV down (6/$84?). I think some team should offer him a contract over $100M in total value, under the condition that he converts to a starter. If he fails you can always pull the plug and move him back to the bullpen. The guy will still be sort of young, he would probably still sit ~97 which would be the best in baseball for starting pitchers. He has surprisingly clean mechanics. He has three pitches. Do it, Toronto! I wonder if a team could sneak into the Chapman market late, offer him a more lucrative contract than any other team while asking him to start, and be able to get him for less money than Kenta Maeda will cost this winter.

How much will Chapman get as a FA?

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016-mlb-free-agent-tracker

yes, indeed 98% of the guys in baseball are good clubhouse guys

86, on Fangraphs. Projections are unreasonably low on Dickey and Estrada though. So call it 88. 90<- Boston 88 88 83<- Rays 77<- Orioles Actually, they have Goins and Travis flipped right now too. That's a two win flip. So the reasonable range is probably 86-90 wins right now. Easiest spots to add to: Relievers 5-7 are all around 0.0 WAR Smoakabello only project for like 1.1 WAR, combined Thole is at 0.1 WAR in 140 PA Ben Revere is only projected for like 1 WAR (this is questionable).

I would actually want no part of Papelbon, and I generally don't care much about the elusive concept of team chemistry.

King must just sit at his desk all day, one monitor on twitter, the other on BJMB, itching to copy pasta tweets. I get it, but to this extent it's a bit of a weird fetish

His velo was up this year!

lol that's a bad contract GMDM is back

How many do you have so far?

The Rockies seem to never sell high on hitters. They probably should start making a habit of it...

It's funny that Ed Rogers acquired the Toronto Blue Jays for like 1/2 of the $$$ that David Price just got paid to play for the Red Sox.

I wouldn't really say that. Roles are just a lot more blended these days. Atkins will probably do the vast majority of every day GM stuff, but I'm assuming Sha-pie-ro will have the final word on any significant moves, even if the budget is unaffected. Basically, Atkins' motto will be "What Would Mark Do?"

It's too bad that Toronto blew their load last year. I don't see any conceivable way that they can competitively acquire Chapman without making the MLB team worse. The Dodgers have a lot of good prospects. Some guys that are expendable to them, like Austin Barnes, Zach Lee, and Jose Peraza are MLB ready commodities that have actual value. Could see a couple of those guys as part of a Chapman package.

Toronto doesn't need an MLB lefty. Cecil is elite and Loup is good. They could use a RHP to slot in above Sanchez, though. Good thing there are, like, 100 available.

The modern "VP of Baseball Ops" is what the GM used to be. Lots of GMs today are functionally what used to be considered AGMs. Baseball front offices continue to expand as organizations realize the value of talented executives. New titles are needed for the extra suits.

It'll be interesting to see how Gallardo's contract compares to Estrada's.

Well of course he'll cost more, he's better. Do you mean that in a nutshell you think Happ is more talented than Lackey?

Well a lot of people liked to the look of some of the SP2/3 guys like Lackey and Iwakuma

Hard to like his projected $8.8M salary, though.

Nah. Everything from the WM fits cleanly into Around Baseball or the Offseason Roster Thread