Terminator

Yeah I think Deadpool made a good point that I don't disagree with. 1-4 is solid and seemingly durable enough that it does cover for a lack of depth at 5-8. It's kind of like having a stacked lineup 1-9 without a great bench or AAA options. If 1 or 2 guys go down you'll still have a formidable offense but injuries will hurt.

White is out of options but we could stuff both Kikuchi and him in the bullpen to start. It will cause a logjam but the depth will be important and we can option Pop and trade someone like Richards or Merryweather.

Did you at any point last season watch a Kikuchi start? I wouldn't blame you if you blocked it out of your memory due to the PTSD it likely caused but handing him the ball every 5 days right now is the opposite of a "set" rotation spot lol.

The average team can expect to have to use 32 starts from pitchers not already in their starting 5. It's basically it's own rotation slot. Maybe we are better than average but last year we went in to the season with a very similar rotation in Gausman-Manoah-Berrios-Ryu-Kikuchi and we needed 42 additional starts outside our Opening Day rotation. Luckily Stripling soaked up 24 of those but he's no longer here. The group you listed is a collection of iffy talent (Kikuchi, White, Francis), guys who haven't gotten past AA that are probably another year away (Zululeta perhaps but moreso Tiedemann) and guys that I don't think we can rely on at all (Ryu, Pearson). That's not a group of guys that I'd want to bet on to cover the #5 spot (~30 starts) in addition to whatever is needed to cover in case of injury.

Siddall caught 73 games in the big leagues and was ass. If anything I think that experience is clouding his judgment and he's overestimating those things and assigning more importance to the position than he should. Because he was so terrible he really can't point to anything he did and say he was good, but he can speak to this vague notion that "game calling" is some magical talent and he did have that he was just bad at the other stuff! And no one can disprove it because it isn't real.

Keeping all 3 Catchers should only be done if we aren't getting 80-90 cents on the dollar for Jansen. 1. He's only got 2 years left, so the longer we wait to trade him, the closer we are to losing him in FA, thus losing the catching depth which is spurring the trade to begin with. 2. Trading him for a less valuable player isn't that risky. How badly can we get burnt by losing out on 2 years of his production when we've got both Moreno and Kirk (both of whom project better) in the fold? Yeah we could be EXTRA protected in case of injury but this ignores the fact that: 3. We are thin in the OF and in the rotation. Both of those are more important than the #3 Catcher. Trading a 2.5 WAR Jansen for a 2 WAR Outfielder or a #5 SP is going to be a net improvement for the team. And it will take advantage of #1 (while we still have that surplus to actually take advantage of) while not likely to burn us (#2).

What in the hell is he talking about? A Kirk and Moreno tandem isn't good enough? Lol it would be a Top 5 catching tandem in the league, maybe THE top catching tandem. Kirk and whatever MLB bum or Moreno and whatever MLB by themselves would probably Top 10.

Wow Jim I thought you were better than this...

Yeah I don't trust defense fueled WAR spikes like that.

So is Hosmer league minimum for the next 3 years until his contract is up? No room for him on the Jays but someone out there could use him at that price I'm sure.

Yeah it's fine in a vacuum but it's basically waving the white flag and saying we are going to be mediocre in LF for the next 5 years.

I’d take a chance on him but I think you’re right about the Jays not wanting him.

Lol exactly and that explains why he likes the Blue Jays subreddit so much. Over there he can talk about how good Greg Bird is or how Nick Frasso is going to the Hall of Fame and they’ll all clap like seals. But when he says that dumb s*** on the BJMB he’ll be staring down the barrel of The Sheriff’s six shooter. Crap like that just doesn’t fly around these parts.

Well posting your team isn't that bad if you are dogfighting it out in a competitive league and people have helped you along the way. But if one's goal is to collect every future Hall of Famer by trade raping a league full of noobs and then boasting about it that's not very interesting.

Your fantasy questions are actually good though. TL's were "Should I trade Lourdes Gurriel Jr. for Mike Trout? 14 team 5x5 dynasty" about 2 or 3 times a day and then he'd do the trade and then post his entire team. No one cares about anyone else's fantasy team though. It's boring as hell. Some of us are barely entertained enough to look at our own. But what we do like is being helpful when possible and then evaluating individual players and trades, particularly if they are close calls. "Gurriel for Trout" doesn't provide for that nor does showing off your roster.

Wamco banned. Another good decision. His disgusting and bizarre sexually charged comments/analogies will not be missed.

I don't mind him. I like his spreadsheet and his GDTs but he's on the lower end of the baseball IQ spectrum here. That's not necessarily a knock on him though because I legit think if you could ignore whatever individual personal baggage some might have, there are plenty of people on here who could be capable MLB GMs if they had a baseball ops team backing them. He's not one of them but acts like he's smarter than everyone else and speaks in absolutes. It's not "Greg Bird would be an interesting 26th man" it's "wow huge mistake by the FO to cut Greg Bird." Dude hasn't been productive in 6 years and goes on to hit .216 in Scranton. It's not, "I don't like trading Nick Frasso for Mitch White" it's "Nick Frasso is a f***ing superstar and I am LIVID with Atkins for that trade." He's a 24 year old A-Ball pitcher who proceeded to struggle in AA after the trade. But if you push back with similar rhetoric like "what are you talking about? Greg Bird sucks" he gets way too offended and has a meltdown similar to the one he's having now.

Lol we got Kiermaier for cheaper than that.

He'll 100% be back. I guarantee it.

This is a lightly moderated board for several reasons. As Laika said, it's a handful of volunteers who do it and they aren't always online. Also, it isn't like Reddit where you have dozens of people who will downvote and report stuff, the mods are mostly on their own and they participate in the discussions themselves. If they come across something while they are participating they might take action but they aren't going back and scouring threads for potential offensive posts. Finally, this board/community has been around forever and the mods have a good pulse on how heavy they should moderate and the people here seem to prefer that it operates like the internet of 8-10 years ago where people simply ignored what they didn't like rather than the mods having to take action. So all told, as far as how heavily this place is moderated I'd say that it isn't 4chan around here, but it also isn't Reddit. It's probably somewhere around what Twitter is like now.

As we all know I serve as law enforcement for a team specific baseball message board and am not in fact a doctor. So take this with a grain of salt but I think I can safely diagnose you with a case of being "Extremely Online." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_online#:~:text=Extremely%20online%20(often%20capitalized)%2C,online%20posts%20are%20very%20important. If I was a proper doctor I'd prescribe a daily dose of chills pills and touching grass at least once daily.

Live look at TL's meltdown:

I wasn't so sure about him when you first brought him up but you've sold him on me now. I'd do the 3/30 for him for sure. We could add a player option with a buyout to kick in some more cash if needed. Fangraphs' take on him in their Top 50 article makes him sound like a picture perfect fit for us. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2023-top-50-free-agents/ #19- Taylor Rogers I’m not convinced Rogers will get the 19th-biggest contract this offseason. He’ll be 32 next year, he’s a reliever, and he just posted negative WAR with the Brewers after coming over in a big deadline trade. It’s not the kind of profile that commands a top-dollar contract. I’m putting Rogers here because I think he’ll be a bargain acquisition, and turn some team’s bullpen into a late-inning nightmare for opponents, a model that has paid dividends in the playoffs in recent years. I’m inclined to give Rogers a mulligan for his struggles in Milwaukee. Everything he threw turned into a home run; a 27.3% HR/FB mark is hard to recover from regardless of what else you do well. That led to some nibbling, which led to some walks, which led to the homers hurting more… it was a vicious cycle that scuttled his season. I just don’t see much reason to think that will persist into next year. Teams that already have a few solid bullpen arms could kick their unit up to the next level by adding Rogers, and the price won’t be unthinkable.

The whole Varsho situation is crazy because C is so high on the defensive spectrum that it's rarely worth moving a guy to a different position anyway. It's usually done in situations where the player is a bat first guy and you can squeeze a few more ABs out of him by having him play 1B or LF for 20-30 games a year. For a guy to be elite at a different important position is crazy and is the rare scenario where moving him there full time makes sense. Moreno's situation is a little bit different than Varsho's in that Moreno seems like he might be an elite defensive Catcher whereas Varsho is not. There probably isn't going to be a gain in value by moving Moreno whereas there is with Varsho.