Orgfiller

Could probably platoon Barger and Ernie, and Ernie should get plenty of reps with Bo probably getting a lot of days off to load manage, same with Gimenez and that bum ankle he was dealing with all year.

Weird deal for Cincinnati. I know Pagan doesn't suck, and this might be reasonable ish terms considering what every other reliever that's signed is getting, but he's firmly a tier below anyone that's signed yet. Heading into his age 35 season, I don't really see the need to give him an opt out, and he's coming above MLBTR and Fangraphs projections in both AAV and years. His Statcast page looks good so hey, if they think he's legit then power to them. I just have this image in my head of Emilio Pagan continually blowing games with homeruns. Don't think I've ever been watching a game and just seen him dominate through a lineup without trouble, but the numbers certainly seem to indicate he's been doing that more often than not.

The short answer: look at his Statcast page https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/cedric-mullins-656775?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb Longer answer, he was a 1.3 WAR player in his age 30 season, with declining defense and hitting, who may not be able to play a good CF any more. He projects for a 94 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR, those kinds of guys just don't get very much in free agency.

Rockies hired Josh Byrnes, SVP of Baseball Ops for the Dodgers who apparently supervised the scouting and player development for them, to be their GM. That's two FO hires outside their usual box, which in theory seems like they're making good progress moves for the first time in years.

They did just lose Ethan Katz to the Astros, but in general their pitching development is quite good all things considered, so maybe they think they can get him to be a 2-3 WAR innings eater.

His K-BB% numbers in the NPB last two seasons would be below and right around the MLB average lmao. Good for him I guess. He could be a cromulent innings eater for cheap, but with no real upside to speak of.

I know the league has tested pre-tacked baseballs in lower levels, along with additional ABS testing and whatnot. I remember when evaluating certain guys in AA in the past two(?) seasons you had to take some results with a grain of salt because of the differences in gameplay as a result of these tested changes.

A likely Brewers target would be Trevor Megill since he's in Arb2, but a 32 year old reliever who routinely misses the 60 IP mark is a very scary guy to go after, especially in trading assets to get him.

Uribe is pre-arb and a stud, so the Brewers would have no real incentive to move him yet. Ashby is not a bad target, although he certainly wouldn't need to take Barger to get him. He's also cheap and good and has prior starting experience, so they might not be quick to part with him.

Ha-Seong Kim Jung Hoo Le both guys who have had success despite some injuries Erick Fedde had a 3.4 WAR season after coming back from the KBO

Already with Ponce I don’t see how Berrios and his contract sticks around. You add a major piece like Tucker and then a guy like Straw is getting traded for a ham sandwich, or potentially even attached with a prospect. I don’t think we’re going all Steve Cohen with the luxury tax budget, so adding these dollars is going to come at the cost of trading some of our expensive depth potentially alongside prospects to make the numbers work.

lol Let’s also forget the 41 innings pitched at the MLB level, 27 of which were in the postseason ho-hum.

Rogers is impossible to square up. If you look at his savant page, he routinely rates in the top 99-100th percentile in avg exit velo, 95+ percentile in barrel rate, and also among the top in GB rate. He also walks nobody. So you're getting him into games and he immediately provides a very different look to any other pitcher that hitters see throughout the year, resulting in uncomfortable ABs with lots of strikes and extremely weak contact. He's not really the guy you put in with a runner on 3rd and < 2 outs to get a much needed strikeout, although he could work if you want to induce a groundball at a defender to come home on or turn 2, it's unlikely he's giving up a deep flyball. His low velo and arm angle also means he's a rubber arm who never misses time and can pitch whenever. Finnegan is a fastball-splitter guy, who started locating much better when he arrived in Detroit. Hard to say if that's sustainable, although I would believe you if you told me that Detroit is ahead of the curve compared to Washington when it comes to pitching more effectively. His stuff didn't change at all, although Detroit doubled his splitter usage and limited the fastball, pretty much pitching backwards leveraging his best pitch most often.

Not sure why people are down on Robert Suarez. By Pitching+ he was the 12th best reliever in the MLB last season. He's firmly in that second tier of available relievers in free agency this offseason alongside Helsley, Raisel Iglesias, Fairbanks, except unlike most of them he was still trending positively, improving his K-BB% rate substantially, so he's arguably the best of those options. Elite velocity, tough on righties and handles lefties well with his changeup. With his age, you would think he wouldn't need a huge commitment. I'd be quite satisfied if he was our top option in the bullpen, certainly at least throughout the first half of the season.

I see Fairbanks as more of a Seranthony replacement rather than the top high leverage arm in the bullpen. Either of those options could also be acquired midway through the season if the price tag on Williams/Diaz is too high, or if we'd rather use budget on Bo/Tucker without going too deep into the luxury tax.

Doesn't matter for luxury tax calculations. Only way to really get around it as it stands is to add extra years to soften the luxury AAV ala Padres style, or get the player to accept significant deferrals.

Outlandish claim. The only tool that Barger comes close to matching Marte in is raw power. Marte is an elite hitter with no real flaws in his offensive profile, even if Barger hits his best case scenario he'll be hard pressed to come anywhere near "90% of Marte". At Barger's age Marte was just coming off a 6 win season. Barger should by no means be this untouchable piece. I'd move him as the headliner for a player of this caliber, that has such a reasonable contract, in a heartbeat. I think you might be overreacting a bit to his excellent postseason performance.

Interesting that Pinango got unprotected. He seems to think guys with his profile - good not great hitting, bad defense - don't tend to get picked often so they rolled the dice they can still retain him.

Juan Soto's max EV at the MLB level: 116.6 mph. No others above 116. Just gonna leave that information there with no further comment.

Adames is not a bad best case comparison. The power took a bit to develop, he ran a worse K/BB rate in A+ as a 19 year old with less power, albeit much better hitting. Age is still on Nimmala's side and the K rate hasn't gone off a cliff, there's still a chance there that he can become a good regular, but less likely to be special than the outlook from a year ago. If he can make it to AA by end of 2026 and tread water I still think he's on a great developmental path. He was touted as a pretty raw prospect on draft day, so I'd say he's progressing well.

Jesus Christ, almost 116 mph max exit velo as a 17 year old is insane, that has to be minimum a 70 grade power projection. Combine that with BA giving him a 55 hit tool and his encouraging low K rate and it's hard not to dream a little about the kind of player he could become.

The sample size is pretty small, but he had a 5.58 FIP in the playoffs on the back of an 11:6 K/BB over 14 IP with 3 bombs given up. Call it vetrin presents and "playoff experience grittiness" all you want, but if it happened on any other team you'd probably say that Max got pretty lucky to not be shelled. Obviously it worked out for us and I'll remember his playoff run fondly, but easy to see how this could have gone sideways with worse sequencing luck.

Surely someone like Barger goes back in a potential Marte deal though. Seems very unlikely we could just send back a pure prospects package, at least while still retaining some semblance of a farm system after the fact. The offense would be unreal with both Marte and Bo, but realistically you wouldn't retain Bo if you acquired Marte. Probably use the savings on a top tier SP or maybe go all-in for Tucker.

Imagine being like "why would the Toronto Blue Jays inquire on <superstar player making peanuts> when <worse player across the board> may be available to sign for a premium dollar amount?" lol

Marte is a top 5 player in baseball who can switch hit and is on a dirt cheap contract. I love Bo but I'd rather have Marte and the money savings any day of the week.