Orgfiller

This is the best game the Raptors have played all year but the Phoenix Suns decided that missing shots isn't fun.

Yeah Baynes is brutal. He aged 15 years this offseason it seems.

The guy who we gave a max contract to finally showed himself for the first half. Keep that going Pascal.

The last one was started by Bob and he also isn't the most beloved by some out there so we can probably let this one slide.

How do you have that list available and pick the cohort of players that's both older, more injury prone, and projects for less combined WAR than 2 of Springer, Bauer, Realmuto and DJLM?

Have you been keeping up with Bauer at all? This really doesn't mean anything at all aside from stating the obvious in that we're interested in him. Bauer is pretty much playing out his FA process as a reality show in order to boost his social media following.

Bottom of the team page lists them for the current year and next.

I'm not sure Contreras is even better than Jansen, let alone more valuable. He's a better hitter and in general a good hitter especially for a catcher but his defense is pretty bad and that can translate over to the pitching staff. Jansen projects to be better over fewer games and is 3 years younger with two more years of control.

To be pedantic, we have a franchise SS, we're just trying to eliminate the black hole that exists at 3B.

lol

Not necessarily. Snell is more valuable than Darvish and they didn't give him up. I think they can get it done with some combination of Cronenworth, Campusano, Ryan Weathers and one of their 2019 or 2020 first round picks as the headliners. Their farm system has quickly thinned out considerably though.

SS and 3B, the two positions he's played regularly since becoming a KBO regular.

I have to think if they're serious about Darvish they'll be offering Cronenworth to the Cubs in a Darvish deal. The Cubs have a hole at 2B and an imminent gaping hole at 3B when Kris Bryant leaves.

Murray was absolutely lights out in the playoffs a couple of months ago, although he tends to be a very inconsistent player most of the time. Some games he'll drop 40 points and you'll think he's a true superstar, others he'll put up some stinkers that you wonder if you're watching Demar Derozan at his worst out there. He's still young, Denver hopes he can turn into the star he looked like in this previous playoff run on a full time basis. Denver's got a good team on the whole, they have some high upside players aside from Jamal Murray such as Michael Porter Jr.

Half as talented? Dahl was picked one spot later in the draft than Veen in a year with stats and cracked several top 100 lists as a top 50 prospect. He's also now just 26 and was dumped to one of the worst hitting parks in the league, so there goes all of his value. That's the risk when you buy a Coors guy.

wat First of all, Contreras defected when he was in his 30s, so he was old his entire MLB career. He wasn't cooked at all when the White Sox acquired him, less than two seasons into his MLB career. In fact, he was an instrumental part in them winning in 2005 and posted consecutive 3+ WAR seasons in '05 and '06 before gracefully finishing off his CWS career as an average starter. As for your second point, okay? The Yankees had El Duque who obviously was a high profile Cuban player and might've helped them land Contreras. So the White Sox basically took that and ramped it to 11 by acquiring Contreras for the winning run, followed by Alexei Ramirez - who was excellent for them btw - and continued to fill their farm system with Cuban players, with Jose Abreu being one of the highest profile of the IFAs to come to them, which helped signed Robert, probably helped them sign Grandal, and probably helped them sign Yoelqui Cespedes. The White Sox have a strong history with Cuban players, and certainly Contreras is part of that history, whether he signed with them immediately or not.

It seems hard for Vlad to be worse at 3B than he previously showed, considering what he showed was the worst defensive 3B in the league. Being better than that doesn't mean that much, he could be better and still be terrible. For someone like Bichette, you're hoping he goes from below average to average, for Vlad you're hoping he goes from completely awful to being playable or something you can live with, which might be an even bigger jump value wise. He's honestly just a terrible defender, I think him looking lost at 1B on routine pop ups said as much.

I think your bigger issue is FIP vs ERA/RA based WAR for pitchers like Jim Palmer who proved an unprecedented ability to beat his DIPS significantly over an entire career be it through elite contact management, running game prevention, or other measures that were hard to measure at the time (and still are largely unclear now how much is skill based). Glavine is another one when compared to someone like Pettite who had much smaller difference between his career ERA and FIP. Guys like Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens for instance have FIP and ERA within .03 runs of one another so their WAR differences whether looking at FIP or RA9 is less pronounced, where the only difference comes from the years in which one was better than the other when compared to league average. I disagree that WAR is broken for career comparisons, it's pretty much the best thing we can use as it stands, since it tells us how valuable a player was compared to his peers during the era in which they played. It's obviously not anywhere near a perfect comparison as important factors will be missed, but otherwise stuff like park factors, quality of competition, run environments will be missed and those are certainly more valuable than sometimes subjective measures of awards won which are voted on by people who may not know the sport very well.

But again, why stop at him? I see him around as valuable as the non Bauer pitchers in FA and could come cheaper given the foreign posting process. Let's say we sign Paxton or literally Tanaka instead, are you comfortable with one of them at #3 with Ray and Roark still following? No one wants to watch Tanner Roark pitch significant innings, the hope is we can add one or two decent SPs, and IMO Sugano is one of those that could be added at a reasonable price to bolster our weak rotation.

A pitcher who projects for 3 WAR lol? I don't think anyone is banking on 5 WAR from Sugano here, if he's exactly as good as Tanaka and with diminished injury risk that's a pretty valuable guy. Tanaka's ERA-, FIP- and xFIP- are all around 10% better than league average. Sounds pretty good to me. A 4+ FIP in the juiced ball era AL East isn't as bad as you make it out to be.

Reminder that the season begins tonight for those not paying attention. Make sure to start your Brooklyn/GSW/Lakers/Clippers guys. Or don't, your opponent might appreciate that.

There's no way Sugano's stuff is as bad as a 45 FV fastball paired with a 45 FV breaking ball and he's put up similar NPB numbers to Tanaka, unless he has like 70 command or you believe Tanaka also has similar stuff and just manages to make it work?

He absolutely is wrong when he's comparing Sugano to Yamaguchi. Sugano is significantly better.

The White Sox have basically been a desirable location for Cuban players since they integrated Minnie Miñoso back in the 50s. Later in the 2000s they signed Jose Contreras and Alexei Ramirez, both high profile Cuban players, culminating with Jose Abreu's signing in the 2010s. It's certainly paid off massively for them and will continue to do so.

Jose Bautista and Josh Donaldson seem like obvious recent examples. If either of them fix their swing much earlier in their careers either would have been on Hall of Fame trajectories. In Bautista's case obviously him coming to the Blue Jays is what did that for him but in an alternate universe Cito and Murphy were coaches on the Pirates at the beginning of his career and he has 30+ more WAR by the time he retires. deGrom might be another although if he secures another Cy Young and continues to be good into the back half of his career he could still be enshrined. Donaldson also has an off-chance if he avoids injuries and manages to average 4 WAR through the end of his Twins contract.