Orgfiller

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.

$7M isn’t much but it doesn’t seem like the best use of resources for Cleveland on a decent not great reliever when they crank those guys out like it’s nothing. You’d think they would be putting the savings from Gimenez and Straw into a little more firepower than this.

Just a note on the article, while Springer has been disappointing his last two seasons, he certainly hasn't been below replacement level. 3 fWAR combined the previous two seasons. Perhaps below average was the intended usage here? Also unless I'm misreading it appears that there's only 4 questions as opposed to 6. Four fair questions, mind you.

This is great in theory, but we gotta have something of value to trade them for their assets. Only one that comes to mind is Bo Bichette, and that would just leave a hole for us elsewhere in the infield unless the contingency plan was to sing Alex Bregman. The Dodgers don't even care that they have too many pitchers because they know half of them will be injured, and they have ridiculous riches in ensuring there's excellent depth behind every one that goes down. I doubt they'll even have more than 7 healthy starters to begin the season, and they only care about guaranteeing the ones on MLB FA deals spots in the rotation.

Edit: accidentally quoted myself instead of editing the previous post and now I don't know how to delete this one.

Seeing we're connected to Profar still, and my question is...how would he fit? Don't get me wrong, I'd take him all day at a bargain contract, but it's a bit of an awkward fit after the recent transaction. Both he and Santander are bad OF defenders, with Profar rating even more unfavourably than the former. The obvious answer of course would be to split OF/DH duties with each other, but both players are starting calibre, so does it make sense to tie up the DH spot like this to not allow certain guys from getting days off the field? With all of that said, the fit from an offensive point of view would be fantastic. Profar projects well offensively, takes lots of walks, and like Santander is a switch hitter. Profar offsets Tony Tater's low OBP, trading some power for it. He strikes out little which we've seen this FO target more and more recently. Would really round out our top ~5 hitter core. Probably go something like Profar-Bo-Vlad-Santander-Springer/Kirk.

I mean this is essentially what decent depth looks like right? Bunch of young guys, most with options, who can play multiple positions and have shown success at the highest levels of MiLB. Of course they won't all be this good, but all you need is 3 hits from this group. We can group them even further: Can play SS: Jimenez Kasevich Clement Can play 2B/3B: Barger (3B only, badly) Schneider (2B only) Wagner (2B only?) Orelvis Clement Jimenez Kasevich Can play corner OF: Barger (badly, probably) Schneider (badly?) Roden Can play CF: Loperfido Clase The CF depth is rather weak, which isn't to excuse the Straw deal, but it does explain it a bit. Ernie is also currently slotted in at 3B, but at least there's options to take over SS and have others cover at 3B if Bo were to get injured (or traded).

Is Roden himself a viable OF? I don't believe he is based on the scouting report. I could see him being marginally better on age alone, but I feel like Roden could use the occasional DH day of his own.

People who can’t read Spanish should just stop posting tweets in Spanish and passing it off as news. You never get what’s actually being said so you’re click baiting yourself and others. Baerga is saying nothing here. He’s speculating that the Santander signing indicates to Vlad that the team is serious and he wouldn’t be surprised if this results in him signing a deal before ST. Proposed speculation amount will be between $450-550M.