UWHabs

The flaw is they just gave him that money a few months ago, so it'd be weird to give up on him so quickly after the deal. I don't think they have him written in in pen to the starting lineup, but wouldn't shock me if he was at least pencilled in.

Fangraphs crowsourcing has EE @4/90, JB at 3/60, and Reddick somewhere around 50M over 3-4 years, so JB+Reddick > EE in total value, but obviously more years of control total combined.

Rusney's struggles probably made people more cautious, but still thought he would have been closer to 30-40M at least on a 7 year deal.

EE will probably come in around 20M per year. JB I expect around 20 as well, but bidding wars might put him closer to 25. Reddick should be cheaper, in the 15-17 range I'd expect. The only reason that Reddick or JB will come in "cheaper" than EE is because he'll probably get a longer deal than either of the other guys. The AAV of his deal won't be substantially more than the other guys on the market.

If we don't get Bautista back, Reddick seems like a painfully obvious choice, being a LH bat, has put up good numbers in the past, won't take a massive commitment, and is still young enough that he can be productive for the length of his deal.

No, I really can't see management doing that. He's in a very similar position to Rasmus was last year - Saunders with a QO on him, with all the other OF options out there, will not find a take from any other team. Thus, if we gave him a QO, he would accept it. And I really don't think that the management would be too fond of signing him for 1/17. I think if we want him back, we might do like Estrada last year. So if we actually did want him, we could sign him for something like 2/26. But I think there's basically 0 chance that we give him a QO.

Yep, I think you basically have to trade one of Liriano/Estrada/Happ. We have 5 viable SP, so let's deal one of them, stretch out Biagini to start next year as our #5 guy, and aim to get a top corner OF/DH bat in return for the starter we deal. Estrada with only 1 year left is probably the guy I target trading. I could see a team like the Dodgers want to take a chance on him, and they have a real excess of OF (assume they keep Joc, but they also have Ethier, Toles, Kendrick, Puig, as well as Van Slyke and Thompson). They could afford to trade 2 outfielders and still have more than enough to fill out a roster with.

Well you don't really want him to bat against righties, as Saunders is a better hitter. But to me, I think I'd rather have half a game with Upton in the OF and the other half with Saunders, rather than a full game of Bautista. If we got out to a big lead, then Upton could just stay in the field against righties. Gibby's just thinking too much of the "what happens if we start Upton, then hit with Saunders by the 3rd or 4th inning, and then they bring in Miller later and we want to hit with Navarro, then I would be forced to bring in Pompey for defense for him instead of potentially using him as a pinch runner". Honestly, I wouldn't necessarily even count on Merritt lasting that long that I'd be tempted to still start Saunders against the lefty and save Upton to be able to use later off the bench as a pinch hitter/pinch runner/defensive sub.

It's the narrative of "oh, they're losing Ortiz, they must replace him". But yeah, I'm more expecting them to essentially run with Sandoval/HanRam at DH, and they still have Shaw/Holt and whichever of Pablo/HanRam isn't DH-ing to cover 1B/3B for them, with Moncada likely taking over at 3B starting in July. Maybe if they don't trust Pablo they add someone, but yeah, it seems more likely to be a Pearce/Napoli/Joyce/Alvarez type of player, someone who comes in cheap and can provide an adequate bat, and they can use the remaining cash to go after pitching.

Well, fantastic is a bit of a stretch, but yeah, he's definitely more than just a LOOGY. So yeah, I don't want him facing Napoli, but I'm not too concerned with guys like Ramirez.You want the lefty in for Crisp, for sure, and keeping Cecil in got us the matchup of Guyer instead of Naquin against the righty. You don't worry as much about matchups for the guys with a sub-.700 OPS like Davis. I'm not a big fan of Gibby in a lot of things he does, but yeah, the fact that he's willing to do stuff like Donaldson 2nd, Bats leadoff, doesn't bunt, etc... at least gives me enough to live on. Would like him to be a bit more creative in the pen, or at least not just use the same 3-4 guys over and over, but then again, not like we really trust the back of the pen that much anyways, so can't fault him for a crappy roster. Even using Osuna with the 4 run lead, he was at least warming up Loup. I think if we got to the 5 run lead he would have held off on Osuna, but the fact that Osuna was already warming up from the previous inning means it doesn't cost us as much to just bring him in and lock down the win. Especially with the meat of their lineup up, can't take too many chances with them. Were it their 7-8-9 hitters up, then yeah, I think you save Osuna.

Hill on short rest today wasn't so great, and game 2 for them is only 2 days of rest away. I'd expect them to play it: Maeda game 1 Bullpen game 2 (Urias/Stripling/etc...) Kershaw game 3 Hill game 4 Maeda game 5 Kershaw (short rest) game 6 Hill/Bullpen (short rest) game 7

Well, we got to replace him with a reliever last series while keeping him eligible for this series. Had we put him on the regular DL last round he wouldn't have been eligible at all this round. Or if we didn't use the concussion DL we could have played the last part of last series short a man, and then yeah, presumably he would be eligible for game 1 in this series still.

He was worth almost 4 WAR this year. Aging means you should essentially budget for him to be worth something like 8-10 WAR over the next 4 years. At the current rate of around 8m/WAR, that means he should get a deal between 64m and 80m on a 4-year deal, not counting inflation. He is still pretty much limited to AL teams, but the fact that he can play a solid 70 games at 1B certainly has some value. Take a team like Seattle - they already have a DH in Cruz, but since he's a similar type of player who can play about half the time in the field, they can still be in the mix for EE. If he was truly a DH-only (like an Ortiz), then Seattle wouldn't even look at him. He should get more than the Victor Martinez contract, which is 4/68. I'd expect that someone will offer him 4/80 or thereabouts. I'd expect our offer would be closer to 3/60 with a 15-20m option 4th year. Whether that would be enough to get him to sign, hard to say.

The main argument is that it feels like we don't need all 3 of Feldman, Tepera, and Loup. I mean, we should only need them in a mop-up role essentially, and if we have that many mop-up roles, then we're not winning the series anyways. Bring along 2 of them just in case, and bring along Pompey who might be able to come in and give us a critical pinch run.

Yeah, I hate a lot about Gibby's usage, but you can't really fault him for over-using our only reliable relief arm. If we had anyone else who we trusted, yeah, would have been nice to save Osuna a bit more down the stretch.

To me, missing your closer for any playoff games is kind of a big deal. Hopefully he's alright, although obviously better to sit him out an extra day than pitch him, make the injury worse, and lose him for the remainder of the playoffs or any part of next year.

No, you put the better defense in the field. A Bautista mistake in the field can easily be more damaging than the potential value he might bring at the plate.

1. He's a better pitcher. That's basically all you need. If you want more: 2. Going RHP/LHP/RHP against Baltimore makes their life tougher. They either let Kim/Alvarez bat against lefties in the middle of the game, or they're gone for the righties at the back end of our bullpen 3. Liriano has (limited) experience in the pen. Stroman hasn't pitched out of the pen since 2014 4. Similar to 2, having the extra lefty out of the pen gives us a little more versatility. 5. Stroman has been a lot worse in high leverage situations this year. Liriano has conversely been worse in low leverage but better in high leverage. You're only talking about 50-some PAs, but it makes sense to then pitch Stro in the earlier low-leverage innings and save Liriano for the later higher leverage ones. 6. Lastly, Stroman has been awesome the first couple times through the lineup. He's probably our best pitcher by numbers the first 2 times through, but he's been absolutely rocked the 3rd time through or later this year. If he only pitched to 18 batters a game, he'd have an ERA of about 3 this year.

Jones has historically had reverse splits, and he's got enough of a history that I think they'd be statistically significant. Davis obviously with big splits for his career. Kim basically never played against lefties this year. So basically 3 of their 5 best players likely to be decently worse against lefties. Machado as a righty should fare better, yeah, and Trumbo historically has done better against lefties, although this year had the huge reverse splits. So yeah, they're not as skewed as a team like LA who runs like 6 or 7 lefties in their lineup, but given equal talents, I'd choose the lefty to go against them. Thing in this game is that Stro is a much better talent than Liriano.

Baltimore clearly should be a worse team against lefties, but shouldn't be as big splits as they were this year. Can't trust that Trumbo going to keep running a .600 OPS against lefties. This way you know that Kim will be facing a lefty late in the game, so force their hand.

Other than the fact that Stroman is the better pitcher.

The thing is that we don't need to "save" a pitcher for the ALDS, since whoever pitches here isn't going again until game 4 of the DS anyways. Pitching the lefty against Baltimore is essentially better that Trumbo's crazy splits this year are an accurate reflection of his current talent and not simply a random fluctuation. Sure, Davis is expected to have a platoon split, Kim doesn't play against lefties, and Jones does also have a reversed career platoon split, but I'm not convinced that's enough to justify pitching a much worse starter. Of course, if we actually plan this as a bullpen game where neither Liriano nor Stroman would be expected to go more than 3-4 innings, as we should be planning, then it almost becomes a question of what kind of management is better for us. Mostly, if we start Stroman, they start Kim, if we bring on Liriano to face him later, will they pinch hit for him? Or are we better to start Liriano, let them keep Kim on the bench, and then have him available late game as a pinch hitter. I think in general, I'd rather plan to have him in their lineup at the start of the game, and let him either face the lefties later in the game, or force them to take him out.

The obvious choice is Stroman gets the first 2 times through the lineup, then Liriano can handle the 3rd time through the lineup before the bullpen takes over. Stroman has a roughly .290 wOBA against the first 2 times through the order this year, and a .355 on the 3rd time through. He's been great in the 2nd half. He's a better pitcher than Liriano overall. I understand a lot of the reasons why Liriano is a solid option too, but the right call IMHO is Stroman, although planning on an extended bullpen game.

We're still in a much better shape than Baltimore or Detroit, no question about that, but we're still only about 90% chance to make the wildcard game.

It will take 3 wins to clinch a wildcard spot. If we win 2, Detroit wins all their games left, and Baltimore wins at least 3 of 4, then all 3 teams are at at least 89 wins. In that case we'd have tiebreakers to deal with. Part of the problem at this point is that Detroit is playing a s***** Atlanta team for 3 games, and even Seattle plays a s***** Oakland for 4 games. Boston is still going to be trying to win to stay ahead of Cleveland to secure home field in their series. We're basically guaranteed a tiebreaker game at this point, but I would definitely much rather only have to play 1 game to advance to the ALDS than have to play 2-3.