Orgfiller

I mean honestly this would be as good of a time to make a play for him as any. The Padres ownership family is fighting each other for possession following the owner's death, they're crying poor in in the midst of it and probably struggling from the mega contracts they handed out a few offseasons ago. Tatis lost some goodwill with the fanbase from his suspension, he's expensive and locked down forever, and he's not exactly signed on a bargain contract although he'll be worth it. You could get it done with one of Tiedemann/Orelvis or some smaller combo and convince them that the price savings are enough. The biggest issue would be Tatis waiving the no-trade clause without a guarantee of a Vlad extension. Another interesting play would be Machado for next to nothing, move them Bassitt or something back and try to chip down on the overall contract terms by sending them back one of our better prospects. Yeah the thought of Machado in a Jays uniform is pretty yucky, but if we're flexing our wallet that's the kind of target you might consider making a big push for. On the other hand Machado might be the face of the franchise at the moment, a likely Hall of Famer who is surely wearing a Padres hat to the Hall if he sticks around for only a few more years.

I love Chris Bassitt. I remember someone speculating earlier how he actually hates the FO/team and was probably asking for a trade behind the scenes. lol

To be fair, Flaherty's AAV is kind of fake. It's a 2/35 guarantee which is a steal for the Tigers in terms of tax calculations if they care about that. But it's also just a basic 1/25 prove it deal with an opt-out, which turns into 2/45 if he's mediocre/bad but healthy enough to stick around for 15 starts. It's a smart deal for both parties involved. Lots of chatter around Flaherty and his velo not holding up later in the season, with his fastball being a bad pitch on its own. This was evident in the results getting worse as a Dodger and a pretty bad postseason. If he repeats his 2024 he'll be in line for a proper contract the second time around you'd think. Definitely agreed on your overall point however. The market started hot and then tanked for the remaining FAs post Soto/Fried/Burnes.

My god that Peyton Williams pic. 24 going on 42. Modelling his game around Daniel Vogelbach.

I feel ya. Like I said, it's definitely not as big of an issue if I could just quickly pass by the unreads and mark them as read with the simple click of a button. The only way I see this possible currently is by clicking into the unread and going back.

I mean they could have easily rested on their laurels after the Santander signing and just said we didn't have the money to keep adding. The Scherzer addition just about guarantees that another move is coming since they're pushing their chips in even further. How this happens remains to be seen. Alonso or Bregman might be out of the budget range with the tax surcharge implications, but a trade could very well be on the horizon.

Is there presently a way of marking items as "read" from the Unread Section? Additionally I wish it was possible to combine the news and threads into one in the unreads since they're effectively one and the same, so having to manually mark both as unread is a bit cumbersome at the moment. This is obviously quite minor and most of the trouble would go away if I knew of/there was an option to mark topics as read. Loving the site and love the influx of content. It's not always necessarily groundbreaking stuff, but there's good analysis in there and a few articles have opened my eyes up.

Did not think the Rangers projected that well. But then again I see most models have deGrom pitching 110-150 IP and providing 5 WAR so I don't know about this one. One more bat upgrade like we're all clamoring for and we could be solidly in that second-third tier alongside the Twins and Astros - and in the case of a Bregman signing, also takes away a potential upgrade for a competitor. Although it should be noted that the projections think the weak point is actually the pitching relative to others.

This has nothing to do with what I said.

He’s Max f***ing Scherzer lol. If nobody caved to his demands he would just retire.

Crazy how different out perception/enjoyment throughout would change if so-called reporters and “insiders” just shut the f*** up and reported moves as they happened.

This is a win as long as he gives us 125 IP and is ready come the playoffs.

f*** yeah Ross, bro is COOKING

Estevez is decent at all, but woof on these 2/22 guarantees for alright relievers. The Hoffman contract looks better and better with each of these passing signings. Estevez projects for a > 4 ERA/FIP, did the Royals buy the 2024 ERA? I guess as a flyball pitcher Kauffman is a good landing spot for him.

The BBWAA will be invoking the character clause on this thread now.

The best way to describe them is basically a pretty fun, sneaky good team with a lot of variance. They could win under 70 games just as easily as they could above 90. All in all they probably settle near .500. The OF is awful and any of the IF not named Elly or McClain could swing in either direction. They need the OF to overperform to provide average value as a group, Candelario to bounce back, one of Lux/Steer/Encarnacion-Strand to break out, and Alexis Diaz to return to elite form to be a good team. It's a Royals esque group which could take the leap but might more likely be totally mid. Francona managing them will be fun and he's no stranger to taking on an underdog with big talents. Probably has manager of the year locked down if the Reds are even WC3.

Seems like the injury may be more serious than we think? Far below his projected cost although obviously the opt-out gives him a second chance to rebuild his value. I wonder how far into the season he's projected to come back, and what the immediate recovery is for an injury like this one in terms of performance.

Bregman is too good a 3B defender to move him. Paredes is okay at 3B and has played 2B before so he's a natural candidate to shift over. Altuve's defense has been tanking at 2B so it makes sense to move him down the defensive spectrum. Assuming everyone is healthy, nobody should ever be playing above Christian Walker at 1B, and Yordan Alvarez should always be the DH. Versatility is great but so is familiarity with one position. With these guys all being starting calibre I think it's better to just stick them in one position and not pivot unless injury requires it.

I don't know how it works since the Cards non-tendered him. I figure there's no requirement for us to add him to the 40-man roster having signed him on a minor league contract. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong. I think he starts the year at AAA and it's not hard in his position to see a path to getting starts at the MLB level should injuries arise. The org knows him well and he's just about MLB ready as it is. He presently slots behind the top 4, Bloss, Yariel, and around Eric Lauer. Manoah and Ricky T are nonfactors as long as they're injured.

Yeah lol. The assumption is Bregman would obviously play 3B in his return, which puts the newly acquired Paredes in a weird spot as they also signed Christian Walker. So Bregman returns to 3B, Walker 1B, Paredes to 2B I guess?, and Altuve would have to find a new position. LF in Houston is a bit of a joke anyway. Paredes is a capable fielder still and Walker is obviously elite at 1B so neither are bound for DH any time soon, not to mention Yordan Alvarez exists and should never be taking the field. https://www.mlb.com/news/jose-altuve-willing-to-move-to-left-field

Honestly kind of puzzling the Cards let go of him altogether, Kloff still has options. Nice little get for us, guy has familiarity with our system and will provide decent MiLB depth. Hopefully his shoulder injury is behind him and we can right the ship again to his pre-trade trajectory.

Not sure we could afford Gray without moving another big contract like Bassitt or Springer. The Cards certainly wouldn't need to eat any salary there like they may need to for Arenado.

His medicals must be kind of f***ed if that's all he's getting. Or teams just don't think he's all that good, 1 WAR ceiling. I was going to say good depth for the Reds but he might very well be their 3rd best OF lol.

He honestly might be in physical decline as a result of the injuries. His sprint speed and arm strength are trending down, bat speed was in like the 10th percentile even though he didn't qualify. He's also the worst kind of switch hitter, one which is better against lefties than righties. Career 83 wRC+ against RHP. Age and pedigree are pretty much the only things he has going for him at this point.

This is a tough one to break out of. Schneider still showed most of the positives in 2024 as he did in his short stint in 2023 and presumably his minor league breakout that same year. Even though he chased more, he still didn't chase very much - 87th percentile chase rate with a 77th percentile walk rate is plenty good on its own. The swing path is still absolutely elite, with his barrel rate and LA sweet spot rates both being in the 80th+ percentiles. These are the makings of a good hitter! Of course then there's the bad. He's got such a small frame that even though he gets the most out of his power, the bat speed is only in the 20th percentile. That's not necessarily a death sentence on its own. Other guys within 1 mph of his bat speed include Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Taylor Ward. The common denominator between those guys is elite LA sweet spot, good barrel rate and good squared up %. Schneider has 2/3 of those working! Unlike those guys, the Babe swings and misses far more frequently, generally just indicating that there's several levels of hit tool in between himself and these lower bat speed guys who succeed. For him to find success, he needs to figure out a way to just swing and miss a bit less. That's a tall ask when the hit tool might just not be good enough to allow it. But shave a few percentage points off the whiff and K rates and we're back in business. It's also not as simple as just cheating on the fastballs. I remember in 2023 he went through a slump where pitchers started attacking him with high fastballs and he started struggling. He adjusted by being more aggressive on fastballs, and then the league countered with offspeed which he suffered with as a result. Spam fastball/changeup on a guy who can't catch up to the heat and will start cheating on it, and you got him exploited. That's what he needs to overcome to get back into being an MLB guy. Maybe just keep it simple by platooning him against lefties as mentioned in this article, and hope he can work on the other stuff as the season moves along, hiding him from RHP unless he's showing adjustments.