UWHabs

It's really hard to predict what he'd want to do, and which team is most likely. I mean, we can all pretty much assume that he's not going to go to a small team like KC or Milwaukee, and given that nobody can give him a deal more than a few mill, you have to assume he'll go based on who has the best under the table offer for the future, and who can give him the best playing time. The real question I think will come down to who believes in him the most to potentially risk playing an ace starter in the field on a regular basis. Do you limit him to only DH/PH where he doesn't have to throw, or can you give him games in the OF too? As an AL team, you can offer him more DH chances, but on the flipside, you either forego his bat on days he pitches or give up the DH, so hard to say which is preferable.

I thought too that an AL team would make more sense since then he can DH more often, but on the flipside, an AL team would have to give up the DH in games he starts, which might suck for them late-game. A lot of it I think will come down to whichever team is able and willing to give him the most play-time as a batter, so it won't necessarily be whichever team has the most international cap room.

Charity auction prizes all have a "player may be swapped out" disclaimer on them I noticed, so would suck for whoever paid 5k or whatever to have a bbq with him, but I'm sure they could swap him for someone else. But yeah, otherwise Grilli has been like a 6 FIP guy since September of last year. He had a great run the first couple months with the team last year, and obviously seems like a great personality guy, but his time of pitching effectively seem to be at an end.

A lot of pretty terrible options. I mean, sure, if the Rockies wanted to deal us Car-Go for Liriano, sure, let's do it. But I don't think we can count on any of those guys as a 5th starter, and then potenatially as a 4th starter if Estrada's back acts up again.

I imagine part of the problem with removing a pick and not giving it to someone else is that they'd have the PA complain that there's 1-2M in slot bonus that's not going to players, so unless if they had some weird plan to re-allocate that space to all the other teams, they'd probably have the PA complain.

Nobody really knows how much it hurt the Astros, and how much the Cards benefited. And since MLB can only fine a team up to 2M, seems like they were always planning on 2M+top-2 picks. The only weird part is that since they signed Fowler, that doesn't factor in. Should have been their first pick this year and their first pick next year to be more fair.

Would be tempted to go more all-in with the extra years to keep the AAV down. So give Fowler 5/80 (or maybe only 5/75), and give JB something like 4/52 and tell him he can retire as a Jay. Deal Upton off to anyone who will take his contract, and I can live with that lineup overall.

I could potentially see a deal with the Rockies for Parra. They already have 3 LH OF better than him, so he's completely wasted on their roster. He was one of the worst players in baseball last year, but could potentially bounce back to at least be an okay 4th OF option. And Smoak would give them a usable player for 1B, allowing Desmond to play more often in the OF.

The key point is that he's been a bad defensive player in both 2015 and 2016, and he's not going to get better. He was bad in 2010-2011 as well, but as mentioned, nobody cared when he could hit the snot out of the ball. He turned it around and was above average 2012-2014, but since then, he's been really bad. And he's not going to get any better. He still should be good enough offensively that we can live with it, but it definitely costs him value overall.

He was worth -1 WAR last year, with a 38 wRC+. Nobody's claiming him.

The key here is that we're not paying him like a star. We just need him to put up about 1.5 WAR combined the next 2 seasons to make the deal worthwhile. Maybe his body breaks down and we don't get that, but in worst case, it's not a lot of money spent (barely more than we're wasting on Smoak). And he has the potential to be a solid player, in which case he could be the steal of the off-season. And as well, this also means that if Tellez forces his way into the lineup this year, Pearce can either shift over to the OF, or even just go to being a platoon bat/PH, and we're not paying him enough to feel guilty about doing that.

Pearce has been a legit lefty masher for years. Edwin has actually generally been better against righties (3 year splits has him with an .871 vs LHP and .913 vs RHP). Pearce is still a massive downgrade against righties, and health is a legit concern. I don't want him playing a lot of OF, but he can easily fill in there and probably is a better fielder than JB or Saunders were last year. Smoak can get starts at 1B against tougher righties - hopefully Atkins can convince Gibby to not make Smoak as the primary starting 1B against righties, please. We still need an OF or 2, but a very solid deal for a guy who's been worth over 7 wins the last 3 years, despite the fact that he's never played more than 102 games in any season.

Yeah, at first I thought it would be too small, but on second glance, a part could likely fit on the main island. You'd still need to reroute some transit, since even the opposite side of the exhibition grounds is a pretty decent trek. Plus, you have virtually no walk-up traffic, since it's a solid 20-30 minutes even from the dome. But you would get pretty awesome views - city view over LF, and water view down the 1B line. The Don lands would have to be re-purposed, but there's also a lot of potential new work that can be done along that whole eastern corridor to build it up. The other "flaw" is that since parks are supposed to face East-ish, there's less views from that spot, as it would be hard to orient it to get city views. But again, either plan is a 1B+ pricetag, and with some renos, there's no reason why RC can't still function for the next 10-20 years, so probably no reason to speculate too much on other site locations.

Yeah, I imagine you're going to see an awful lot of guys skip a start due to a "sore arm". But at least they still get an MLB paycheck instead of getting sent to the farm for 10 days. But I think that's essentially the MLB's solution instead of this 26th player on the roster - let you skip a guy's starts, or maybe a position player who was day to day will just be fine with missing the 8-9 games over a 10-day span and go on the DL instead, giving the teams a little more flexibility.

It's pretty much a perfect location right now, so there's no point in thinking of building a new one. And you really do need the retractable roof in the Canadian climate, so I can't see them wanting to change anything with that. If you wanted to build a new retractable roof stadium in the downtown area, you're talking about 1B+, which I can't see them do. At some point in the next 20 years they'll probably need to build a new stadium, but I can't see them wanting to leave the downtown area, and there's not a lot of space. The only space that really makes sense would be moving east towards the port lands/cherry beach area, but then you have a big wasted space where RC is right now, it's a worse location than now, and you also have the problem that the park is supposed to face E-NE, and the view from that location isn't really anything of note. For RC, I assume grass is a no-go, so I would assume that the changes would revolve mostly around the seating and concourse areas, and essentially removing all the "convertible" features. What I would most want/expect: 1. redo the 100-level outfield to stretch to the field. As others have mentioned, the wasted space there is kind of stupid (obviously there as a relic from when it was convertible). 2. Have more open spaces/congregating spaces where you can view the field. The Flight Deck was a huge positive when they added that in - I fully expect to see more like that. You probably have enough space maybe down the LF or RF lines to take out a few seats, and put in a nice multi-level bar/seating area. 3. Replace seats/add cup holders. As mentioned, the ones down the line can certainly be angled more towards home plate. 4. Expand/open concourse areas. This could also help the view from the outside as well, if they add more windows, would help to remove some of the concrete. Even something as simple as blasting out the concrete on the ramps and replacing that with floor to roof windows for that section would go a long way to opening it up more, even if they don't end up adding escalators. They also need to do something about the hotel hallways - it's such a dark and ugly section to walk through to get around the stadium on the 500-level, but I'm not sure what they can do there to open it up. Of course, the flaw is that you really only have a few months to do any construction, so I'd expect they'll take this winter to plan the options, and then plan one big change a year for the next few years. Not sure how long things take to do, and sadly there's not really a lot that can be done, especially with the added problem that any work needs to be done over the winter.

Yeah, kind of a double edged sword. I think it mostly gets rid of any notion of a player accepting unless if they're a real marginal case. I mean, for a guy like Bautista, he can reject the QO, and even if his market dries up and he "only" signs for 2/40 or 3/45, then the team isn't paying a penalty to sign him anyways. And if it really dried up fast, he can likely still get 1/15 or even 1/20 knowing that the team isn't paying a pick to sign him anyways. But yeah, it also makes the reward a lot less. For a guy like Saunders, it's probably almost impossible to think of him signing for 50+M, so we wouldn't even think about giving him the QO. The main guys who it might affect would be the middle tier guys like Reddick, were he QO-eligible. He signed for 4/52 - if he had a QO attached to him, he likely settles for 4/48 to avoid the team paying the compensation pick to him. But with the compensation for signing guys lowered, teams will still be willing to give big deals to guys like Fowler, Bautista, etc... The one thing that could impact things is that since guys can only be offered the QO once, maybe a guy like Bautista is more likely to sign a 1 year deal this year, knowing that next year he's guaranteed to not have any compensation tied to his next deal.

Yeah, but "better stats than Smoak" is a very low bar to clear.

Yeah, I love having a set rotation, but a few points stick out: -The extra rotation depth matters less when you get to the playoffs -FA suck and are expensive You can't always budget when guys will be healthy, and I will admit our rotation depth after the top 5 is suspect at best, but if you can turn Happ or Estrada into a legit bat because there's nothing out there for FA pitching, then it's definitely the sort of deal that you have to seriously look into. I'm not trading them to trade them, but if you can cash in while their value is high, knowing that the team's 5th starter matters less than their starting RF, I would definitely be loosely shopping either around.

92 wRC+ 1B? If we didn't have Smoak, then maybe he wouldn't be a horrible bat to have on the bench, but he's not really any better than Smoak.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-2017-free-agent-bargains/

Mike Trout has played 3 playoff games. He'd still be the best player in baseball if he hadn't played those 3 games.

My guess is we weren't willing to offer the 5th year, so probably maxed out around 4/80 or 4/90, while he's still holding out for 5/100 or 5/110.

Your numbers on Reddick are wrong there. vs RHP the last 3 years he's hit .297/.355/.492 (.847 OPS). Having the extra almost 150 points of OPS against righties is huge, since you do face a lot more righties than lefties, but yeah, the fact that you have to replace him if the other team brings in a lefty in a tough spot certainly does drop his value. But it is certainly nice to get the extra offense against righties, since if you can get enough runs on the board early in a game, it doesn't really matter if they bring in a lefty later since you'll already be ahead. I'd rather get a guy who can play every day, but especially with a guy like Upton on the bench who should only play against lefties anyways, we've got one roster spot in the OF for a platoon.

Which is why I don't really like it. 2/22 seems reasonable, but the 3rd year is essentially wasted money.

Pretty much confirmed as we're out on EE. So hopefully Shatkins has more up their sleeves to help the team, since losing Eddie is a big blow to the lineup.