Orgfiller

Fans say lots of things, but elite defense is really easy to sell. Look how much of a fan favourite Kiermaier was in his one season, how much Varsho endeared everyone with his constant elite play in the outfield. Not to mention the collection of scrappy scrubs with good defense like Ryan Goins, John McDonald, Darwin Barney, etc. I'm sure Gimenez will draw lots of "Alomar used to make those kinds of plays" comments from Buck and the fans will forget if he's hitting at or below league average. He'll be well liked, as they say: defense never slumps.

I don't think you want Bellinger playing 1B with his current offensive output. He was already around the league average 1B production last year, and the Statcast/xwOBA numbers suggest even that was a mirage. His defense has also fallen off in the outfield, but you gotta play him there otherwise his value will tank even more.

I think Gleyber Torres makes little sense now with the acquisition of Gimenez while Bo is still around. Assuming there's still interest given the expected price and potential upside, Gimenez to 3rd in a Torres signing would be the most inefficient scenario IMO. Bo and Torres up the middle would be woeful defense. If all those 3 guys existed in the field, the best course of action would be to slide Gimenez to SS and Bo to 3rd so that the former can cover for the deficiencies of the other two poor defenders around him. But that seems unlikely to happen unless the team is comfortable with changing Bo's position as he enters his FA walk year. Of course, a Bo trade could always be in the works, with Gimenez sliding to SS in his absence, in which case Torres becomes an appealing option once again.

If this is the case then half the league is already offering him this price and he's holding out for a desperate team looking for power (e.g. Toronto Blue Jays) to offer him a 4th of 5th year. Something like 4/90 or 5/100-110 to keep the tax hit AAV low since apparently that's what every team cares about these days. The Dodgers are probably offering "4/100" with deferrals that make it closer to a 4/80 deal and Teoscar is being smart to hold out for more present value money.

Wagner basically projects to be Spencer Horwitz, a year younger, with better exit velos and a bunch of MiLB options.

Gimenez is a year younger than Horwitz.

Jesus Sanchez is a poor man’s Teoscar who hits from the left side. I don’t know how long you can continue to buy his potential, he might just be mediocre. Tantalizing power but he’s got a bit of a low IQ reputation. I guess so did Teoscar and then he broke out anyway.

Yeah definitely possible. Although while he's almost certainly better than Vlad, he'll be 2 years older entering free agency.

This would be an asinine use of resources from the Astros if true. Rather pay Tucker 10/400 than Santander 5/100. Tucker is incredibly good.

Surely this is their Bregman replacement. Paredes is 25, has 3 more years of control, and is a perfectly average 3B defender. The Tucker move also signals they probably didn't want to increase their payroll substantially. Could be in play for mid-tier FAs but I think this signals the end of Bregman in Houston. Cam Smith is also a 3B, so they may have just backfilled the position cheaply for 3-7 more years at least.

Looking at where his homeruns are clustered is hilarious. He make Jose Bautista look like an all-fields hitter.

Isaac Paredes about to put up a 50 HR season with the Crawford boxes.

This is the most Brewers trade ever. Trade one year of an elite reliever who they can and will replace internally (Megill) for cheap, for a 3 WAR SP and an unheralded infielder who projects well, while getting money back in the process. Williams is also coming off an injury riddled season. Naturally, the Yankees love having an elite bullpen and are trading from a position of strength.

Not necessarily. Crochet is quite cheap, if they wanted to add another big arm to have a formidable 1-2 with Burnes they would. Just depends on if they're willing to match the price point he'll get.

I don't think it's that bad of a return for the White Sox aside from the fact that the centerpiece is a f***ing catcher lol. In a vacuum, they received a top 50 prospect in Teel, and ~backend top 100 spect in Montgomery who was picked 12th overall at the most recent draft, a no-power bat to ball guy in Meidroth who is MLB ready and projects decently, and a AA power arm with bad control. Probably something like a 55 FV, 50 FV, 40+ FV and a 40 FV. If Teel was any other non 1B position this would look like reasonable value for Chicago for two years of Crochet.

LOL @ the Rockies not making a selection in the Rule 5 draft with the second pick. Every other team in the top 7 made selections. Even the Braves, Padres, Brewers and Phillies made selections in the bottom 10. Business as usual for the Rox.

The middle infield is as good as any in the game, but Burger is exceptionally mid and Nate Lowe is basically Spencer Horwitz's ceiling. Burger does hit the ball very hard, so maybe the Rangers are hoping to unlock something with some tweaks, but he's also a brutal defender so he's more of a DH really.

Kim has a career wRC+ of 101…guess what Gimenez’s is? Kim is about to get a higher AAV than Gimenez while being 3 years older and coming off injury.

I feel like Yimi only got better as his tenure with the Jays went on so I don't mind extending the partnership another couple of seasons. Projects better than Romano at a similar price point, and I thought he really hit his stride as a dominant bullpen arm earlier this season prior to the elbow barking. Let's hope the elbow holds up, I'm sure they did their due diligence on his medicals. If he's healthy that's a great price point for a good, reliable reliever.

It appears the report was fake. Loaisiga himself said he hasn't signed with any team.

When you have a chance to sign a 30-year old replacement level reliever who's pitched 21 IP the last two seasons combined you do it and ask questions later.

Yeah I think the biggest thing here is just how these deals are reported. Ohtani signs for 10/700 and Snell for 5/182 makes it seem as if the Dodgers are flexing their financial muscle to vastly overpay for players. They aren't really, Ohtani actually went for 10/460 and 5/153 or whatever, which they still need to pay over the duration of their contracts into escrow. It's not like they're "only" paying Ohtani $2MM and Snell $18M per season, they still have to pay out the escrow amount. The rest of it is still being actively paid out by them, so this is where their financial muscle is actually being flexed. They're still spending an insane amount each year on payroll, be it for present year payments, or future payments to the same players. Not every team can pull this part off, you still need to be able to afford having Freeman, Betts, Ohtani, Snell, Glasnow, Yamamoto etc. on FA level deals at the same time, while still affording to give out "pillow" 1/23.5 deals to Teoscar Hernandez level players. I think this is the part people are/should be actually upset about, but it's being convoluted around the misunderstanding from them as being mad at all these deferrals and complex contract structures. The Dodgers are on a late 90s/early 2000s Yankee esque run of domination that includes them attracting and signing just about every big FA. That's disheartening as a fan of a non big market team, and I'm not even really including the Blue Jays in this as we've seen that a top 10 payroll can very much get the job done against these kinds of teams. Adding Soto to this mix would be an absolute slap in the face to MLB fans in terms of parity. Super teams are great for ratings but it sucks for everyone else who are fans of the sport or literally any other team.

It definitely sucks that Felix won't get in due to just missing a few extra years of average performance in his 30s. He was a true ace and defining pitcher of his era, basically the kind of guy that tends to be a shoo-in Hall of Famer. With that said, I think we're underrating CC here, they're much closer in careers up until Felix's downfall than one might think. CC started out as a 20 year old with 180 IP in the peak of the steroid era and was good right away. Felix had a slightly earlier start at 19 with 80 IP of elite performance. Both settled as good-not-great pitchers for a few years until breaking out as bonafide aces, for CC that was at age 25, for Felix 23. They then had identical 6 year peaks of elite (5+ WAR) performance. Felix subsequently fell off a cliff immediately, whereas CC had one more very good season at age 31 before dealing with injury and reinventing himself to round out his career as a crafty vet with average results as his velo declined further and further - not to mention his struggles with alcoholism which he overcame. Both had a Cy Young and 6 All-Star games, Sabathia arguably could've had one additional major trophy as his best season came when he was traded between leagues midway through the year. All in all, Sabathia's entire career encompassed Felix's, 2001-2019 vs 2005-2019. Sabathia will be a deserving first ballot HOF IMO, especially in this era where pitchers just don't accumulate as many innings as they used to.

You realize Fried is likely to get double what Kikuchi got right? Projections have Fried netting a 5-6 year deal at a total of $140-160M. This while projecting for roughly the same next season - Kikuchi 2.9 WAR, Fried 3.2. Kikuchi actually slightly edges out Fried the last two seasons and has no major injury history to speak of, with the biggest caveat being that obviously he's 3 years older.

If you look at some of the predictions, MLBTR had him getting 3/60 so bang on there, fangraphs' Ben Clemens had him at 3/51, while the fangraphs median crowd had him at 3/54, so hard to say if people there were misreading the SP market and Kikuchi's performance the last 2 seasons - including an excellent stretch with Houston entering FA - or this was an Angels overpay to secure a player that might prefer going to a contender for slightly less. Seems fair and agreed that 3 years is what Kikuchi should have gotten, you could argue the AAV is a tad on the high side but nothing egregious.