Terminator

Totally lol I mean I get it. There's a difference between your star players who are expected to carry the team and a guy fighting for a bench spot. But it is funny.

Depends on what we could get for him. There is also Clement who is out of options. I think a trade would probably benefit us the most.

Yeah why shouldn't the Jays make these moves? They both suck but Escobar is a season removed from a 2 WAR year and Vogelbach projects for a 112 wRC+. We basically get free looks at them in ST. The Jays probably promised them Spring Training ABs and nothing else and these guys jumped on it. The FA market is extremely slow to develop this year and rather than waste a couple of weeks of Spring Training for a better minor league opportunity they just jumped on the Jays offer so they can get into camp and start working out at the best spring facilities in MLB. And who knows how the rest of ST will play out. They are blocked by Espinal and Horwitz right now but if we made a trade then I could perhaps see a path for them to make the team for a couple of months as seat warmers for Barger, Orelvis, and the other guys in AAA.

Yeah those guys are blocking him but Horwitz is blocking him more than anyone.

Yeah I'm seeing lots of back sweat in those bullpens he's catching.

That's what I'm thinking. Let's say we trade Espinal, then we could give Escobar a crack at a bench role. Even last year when he sucked he still hit lefties to the tune of a .284/.319/.450 slashline in 116 PAs. His career line against LHP is similar. If he hits we can keep him, if not we can give Barger a try.

Well I had a lot of complaints filed against me for the "dying monkey" and hope springs eternal so it was time for a change. I've been toying with some different options and I'm always open to feedback but I'll probably stick with the current one for now.

Currently adjusting my own personal projections and I'm lowering Manoah's ERA from 6.50 to 3.20 in 200 innings based upon what I've seen so far this spring. I've got Vlad up to 45 homers now after previously writing down 20 for him. I'm waiting to see a good pic of our meatball Catcher but yeah, I'm kind of thinking that the World Series is going to be easy to make too.

What a mess

It's been two days and Alek Manoah is taking the Best Shape of His Life trope to new heights. I don't know how much longer I can hold off on the Kool-Aid. He not only lost all that weight but he's saying all the right things as well. He's actually kind of likable right now. Huge fan of Mrs. Manoah for getting her fat ass husband in gear.

Barger still at 3B is good. He was playing OF exclusively in AAA so I had worried that he had moved down the defensive spectrum but they were just adding some versatility to his resume. I wonder if the projections are a touch low for him since his 2022 performance was likely due to some injury issues. If he doesn't break camp with the big league team, and he probably won't, I hope the plan is to call him up after a month or two. He could be the solution to our 3B problem.

Yeah I don't really like him and think he could have handled some things a lot better but his overall legacy will be a net positive: Astros Sign Stealing Scandal: Didn't punish the players, handled poorly Covid: got the players to play, probably a net positive here Relocating the All-Star Game: This was really, really stupid 2021 Lockout- Got a full season in and this has been forgotten, good job World Baseball Classic: he pushed this and I think it was good Oakland A's: He gets hammered for this one and he handled it poorly but ultimately moving the A's to Vegas will be good Rules Changes: Awesome

Mashes lefties, versatile defender, switch hitter, vetrin presents. We got our guy. Great signing.

We are going to Frankenstein the living hell out of 3B on our way to an AL East title

^I think IKF is a huge part of what this whole 2nd threshold argument/payroll discussion is about. Atkins haters want to pile on Atkins for signing IKF because they think it ate up payroll and is precluding the team from making better and more impactful moves. The Atkins lovers want to protect their boy Atkins by saying that the IKF signing isn't stopping the team from doing what they want otherwise. I lean more toward the latter as we have spent more money than people think this offseason (2nd most amount of money spent in the AL after the Royals lol). It's just a weak FA class and the team isn't that high on giving big deals to Chapman or Bellinger. I can't say I really blame them. They project to be 2.5 WAR players next year and want to get paid Springer money who was projecting as a 4-WAR player at the time we signed him. No matter how you slice it though, it's been an uninspiring offseason. (Though it's not over yet!)

Ok I haven't exactly been following this discussion that closely but I see what you are saying and you are probably technically right. But it's kind of splitting hairs as: 1) The Jays could still authorize the second threshold for a certain player but Chapman or Belly don't fit that criteria. Heck, we know this is true because they approved the 700M Ohtani deal. 2) Trading Espinal and Richards (the last guy on the bench and bullpen) isn't exactly that hard or that big of a deal to do. And that would allow us to add Chapman or Bellinger and be under the 2nd threshold, right? Plus, you have to take everything Atkins says with a grain of salt because he is probably actively trying to get bottom dollar prices on remaining free agents. He'll never say something like, "Oh yeah we can go above the 2nd threshold it's no problem." In addition, is not going above the 2nd threshold a hard rule? I believe going above the 2nd threshold only increases the amount of payroll that is actually ABOVE the 2nd threshold right? So if Atkins signals we aren't going above the 2nd threshold does he mean we aren't going "materially" above the second threshold? And being 1 or 2 mil over is no big deal? Or does he literally mean we aren't going above the 2nd threshold by one penny? There's a difference there.

Isn't trading some of Yimi Garcia, Richards, Espinal and Biggio the "break in case of emergency piggy bank"?

I had to read that 4 times to understand what he was talking about. At first I thought he was simply talking about trades. Well no s*** you have to add and subtract when trading. But he's talking about if we make an addition by signing someone of significance then we will have to make a subtraction by trading someone else.

Yeah one day of Spring Training and I'm already tempted to start chugging the Kool-Aid. If Manoah can put up a big season, the entire staff falls into place and can handle an injury or two with ease. If he sucks again we have to quickly pivot to Plan B and the depth looks shaky.

Maybe in powerlifting that works but this is baseball which relies on the functional strength necessary to perform baseball moves. This includes a lot of various factors like proper mechanics, flexibility, general athleticism, etc. Gaining 40+ pounds is going to affect all of that stuff negatively. Also, let's not pretend like Manoah lost so much weight that he's now skinny. The dude is still very chunky. Probably even considered obese on the BMI scale. He's just not shockingly fat anymore. And finally, we saw what the all-powerful fat f*** version of Manoah could do and it was abysmal. He might as well try a season while having shed significant weight.

Loving the mod edit on this one lol

This one sucks too.

They all suck. If I had to pick one I do think Colorado's might be okay. But it really is kind of shocking that they couldn't do better than this.

Here are this year's FA signings so far. Taken from Reddit: I'm just eyeballing this but it looks like we've spent the 2nd most amount of money in the AL after the Royals lol.