Brownie19

It's wild that Verlander will be 43 next year. What a beast. His age 39 season is still mindboggling. 18-4, 1.75 ERA, 6.1 fWAR. He's one of the greats.

The Rockies have a plan? Are you sure?

Just another obvious example that the Dodgers are slipping in pitching development 🤣

It's like Atkins reads this board and kept hearing a few people screaming incessantly that this team needed more power and needed to add 2 impact bats - forcing him to cave and sign a guy who goes against a lot of their values. Thanks guys. Tony does make pretty good contact for a power guy though - so he didn't completely break the mold. I think there's a good chance he rebounds, despite what projections say (I don't think they take injuries into account very well).

I must admit - Bellinger has shown a lot of resiliency to get his career back on track since those shoulder injuries. I'm just not sure I can trust the sustainability. I do like the power/contact ability and the fact he's a great athlete who can play multiple positions though.

Perfect depth to have as a AAA catcher. 3 options remaining.

We don't get to the World Series, or Game 7 without Hoffman. 10 GP, 12.1 IP, 13.1 K/9, 2.9 BB/9, 1.46 ERA, 2.73 FIP in the playoffs. Suggesting one single thing killed us in Game 7 is silly and wrong. That said - I'm all for adding another high end bullpen option if the budget is available.

They DFA'd him.

That's why I told him.

The shine has certainly wore off.

Holy f*ck - let's not please. The Dodgers are the best in the league at everything - I was wrong.

I'm sorry you spent all that time preparing this, but this comparison is stupid because I also don't think the Jays have been good at developing pitchers. All I was saying is LA used to have a staff full of home grown talent in he late 2010's and early 2020's. Kershaw, Urias, Buehler, Gonsolin, Graterol, Jansen, Baez, etc. Now they buy most of their talent and have had issues developing the really talented arms they did draft/develop. I'm kinda done with this - are you? Please say yes.

100% agree.

And they only get Ward for 1 year...

Wowsers. You'd think the O's need the pitching more than another bat. They must think Rodriguez is damaged goods?

Wow - incredible stuff. I had no idea.

They are? I've watched Bobby Miller and Dustin May come up and flop recently. The Dodgers buy most of their pitchers these days. I'm not suggesting they're "bad" at developing arms, but they haven't had nearly as much success lately.

I mean - Grisham was really good last year. I don't blame him for betting on himself to repeat, in which case, he'll have an opportunity to really cash in. Unfortunately for him, his defense is declining quickly and he may only be a CFer for another season before having to move to the corner (which will hurt his value). Woodruff is a surprise. I'd have thought he'd shown enough to land a good multi-year deal, or some type of short terms deal with opt outs or such in it. I thought the same of Bieber though - so it's an interesting trend developing (although perhaps 2 people don't make a trend). Is the FA market going to be a little soft this year? If so - good news for the buyers (ie - the Jays)

I haven't seen anyone reporting on the AAV/$$$ involved in this signing, but I just noticed on Naylor's Fangraph page it says 5 years $92.5M (2026-2030). That seems about right to me - $18.5M AAV. To be honest - he has a lot of similarities to Santander prior to signing with the Jays. Santander hit free agency a year older than Naylor. He also has more power and a slightly higher K%. But in general, they are 2-3 WAR players with 115-125 wRC+ type bats.

So true. I have put (what I feel is) a lot of money into my kids to play sports (hockey and baseball). The funny thing is you almost have to put a certain amount into them when they are young to put them in a position to take advantage of that opportunity when they get hair on their balls. That's when it matters - that's when you find out if they really want it or not. You find out who they really are once they get their first BJ.

The way I read it is Barger was SOOOO privileged that even after his dad built a ball diamond and training facilities for him, home schooled him and hired a personal trainer - he still SUCKED and couldn't get playing time on one of the thousands of local travel balls teams - so his dad started his own travel ball team and filled it with Dominicans (was Barger a loser with no regular friends?) and FINALLY, after all of that, he finally became a legit prospect. The epitome of "daddy ball" for sure. In fact, he might be the biggest and most successful example of daddy ball in the history of baseball.

Do we really need these responses to gruber's nonsense? We've beaten this horse to death over the past 2-3 years. Atkins haters point to the lack of playoff success and love to wave the "waves of talent" quote in everyone's face. We finished 2 outs away from winning the world series and we're still giving these naysayers the time of day? It's nonsense. 2020-2025 is CLEARLY the best stretch we've seen since the incredible 1983-1993 run (which was really remarkable). You want to argue the payroll is the reason? Well guess what? It was a major factor in '92 & '93 - you want to discount that success too? You want to focus on one quote - like everything a GM says must come true or they are failure? That's moronic, but OK. The list of homegrown talent that were drafted/developed by the Atkins regime is pretty substantial. Vlad, Bo, Kirk, Barger, Schneider, Yesavage and Flu were all major contributors this year. Add in prospects we've traded to bring in guys like Varsho, Berrios, Teo, Clement, Varland, Gimenez, Little, Fisher, Bieber, Sandlin, etc. Obviously the FO isn't perfect, but you have to be one miserable c*nt to not give this FO some credit. To keep repeating the same nonsense year after year is really embarrassing at this point. If you haven't or can't enjoy the run we've been on and the current state of the team, than I feel bad for you. It's really sad.

It's really too bad that Straw isn't at least an above average bat v. LHP. If he was a 105-110 wRC+ hitter v. LHP, he'd be the perfect fit for this team. As is - I can appreciate what he brings to the team, but it does feel like we have some guys in the upper minors who can replace Straw for next to nothing...

Joe - when you post, I can't tell if you're trolling or if you're just generally out to lunch.

Varsho's floor is like 2 WAR and the ceiling is 5 WAR. a 4/$40M extension would be a steal.