Orgfiller

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.

The corrected tweet says Pirates is the team. Pittsburgh collecting all the washed lefty Jays relievers from years past.

Why pay Austin Hays or Randal Grichuk $7-8M a year when there's like a 30% chance Davis Schneider might just be that guy for league minimum?

The issue with Grichuk or Hays is: who exactly are they platooning for? Obviously Varsho is the notable lefty in the lineup whom you'd PH for against a lefty reliever, but he's also far and away our best defender in CF. You take him out of the lineup and suddenly the outfield looks real bad defensively. The bench needs a backup catcher, a backup SS/IF, a 4th OF and then one other player that could pinch hit. If you carry Hays or Grichuk as a platoon bat, then you must have Straw or someone capable to handle CF in case the former are used to hit for Varsho or start in his place. Maybe if Roden forces his hand out of Spring then they become relevant again. Hays is more platoon neutral than Grichuk, so he's closer to a proper 4th OF whereas the latter is more of a pure platoon bat that can start some games in the outfield here and there, but you don't want either starting games against RHP with any frequency. The thing with platoon bats against LHP, is you're signing these guys to ideally get no more than like 200-300 PAs a season. A lefty platoon like Joc Pederson who'll never see a LHP is getting more like ~450 PAs a year.

I didn't think it possible, but the Pete Alonso saga is somehow turning out worse from a reporting perspective than the Roki Sasaki one. How many people now have claimed that their sources saw Pete literally in the middle of signing the contract as we speak, and yet zero news has come out later validating this? The media needs to leave the f***ing Blue Jays out of their mouth ffs.

Like Chafin and Coloumbe from that list as strikeout guys. Hill and Alexander are groundball soft contact specialists, and depending on what our infield looks like might not be the best fit lol. Especially if we intend to give Vlad lots of PT over at the hot corner. Bo and Vlad over on the left side with guys who induce lots of groundballs seems like a disaster waiting to happen, although those guys will primarily be facing lefties anyway.

An incentive laden contract would seem like the obvious way to go with a guy like Scherzer. Something like guaranteed $12M for one year with escalators as high as $2.5M each for 100, 125, 150, 175 IP. Just 125 IP would take him to $17M which is in line with his projected salary, but then again he's Max f***ing Scherzer so he can probably just get the 1/16 guaranteed or go wherever he wants if every team is offering similar contract structures such as this, which hurts our position.

Awesome breakdown. In particular love the use of the Stuff+ graphics, really gives a clear picture for some of the highlighted guys. I didn't know anything about Ryan Jennings so that's a nice find. The stuff looks legit in the bullpen, and the age isn't super concerning given that he was still being tried as a starter as early as this season.

Vlad will be 26 entering free agency. He has elite K/BB ratios while doing everything else Pete does (whether good or bad) at a similar level. Two seasons with wRC+ above 160 and WAR above 5.5. Pete on the other hand has eclipsed 140 wRC+ twice and only beaten 4 WAR in his rookie season, 5 years ago. While paying Vlad $450M would be a mistake, he's a significantly better player and much younger. He has the same WAR in his ages 20-25 season as Alonso did in his 24-29 age seasons.

People really thought Ross initially offered a straight 4/82, got rejected and had to compromise like a beta to up the ante. We didn't even know what he had in stock for us.

This man deferred the signing bonus. Absolutely diabolical work from Ross.

Ross cooked hard on this one.

Ninja Ross is quietly working away at a Profar signing at a discount while the rest of the world talks up Alonso.

lol @ the source. This is the same one that had Sasaki being a done deal to use right?

Two NY reporters and one random ass Leafs fan lol. Really don't think Doug has any sources whatsoever.

I thought the announcement about Varsho changing his jersey number came before Santander signed, but maybe that was him hinting at it.