keggy

Thomas signed as a 39 year old for $18 million / 2 years with a vesting option for a 3rd year. This was in 2006. He had historically bad defensive and baserunning value, so he had to hit like crazy both years just to break even. He put up 1.5 WAR for 18 million. That's negative value in 2021 dollars. That contract had huge downside the day it was signed. BJ Ryan was an elite closer in his prime at 30 when he signed. His contract was $47 million / 5 years in 2006 dollars, the largest reliever contract in MLB history. You can say the injuries were bad luck, but this was a very obvious possibility from the moment it was signed, particularly for a reliever. Both contracts provided huge negative value and were highly possible outcomes from the day they were signed.

Historically the team has been pretty judicious about handing out free agent contracts, so Roark is definitely among the worst. Some of the dumbest signings in team history: Kendrys Morales BJ Ryan Maicer Izturis Frank Thomas Erik Hanson For one reason or another, I would rank those signings as worse, but Roark is right up there.

Ohtani's swing is a physical marvel. All that whip power comes from hip and torso torque as you mentioned. His arms look like they're doing a lot of work because of his wingspan, but they're mostly along for the ride. This keeps his swing surprisingly short and allows him to put the bat on the ball despite swinging out of his shoes. Ohtani is a freak.

Agreed Jeter was horrific. Keeping him at SS out of respect certainly cost the Yankees wins, especially when they had a better option right next to him. I've always thought the root of Bichette's defensive problems was his arm. For slowly developing plays or grounders deep in the hole he knows he can't just gun down the runner so he gets ahead of himself, leading to bobbles and rushed throws. I'm fine with keeping Bichette at SS with our current roster, but if we ever acquired a classic SS like Lindor, I would move him for good.

It's hard to contextualize this deal because it's unprecedented but it seems reasonable at first glance. The Padres will soak up huge surplus on the front end, and s***** bench players will be making that AAV by the back end. It's obviously a risk at that length, but it's the kind of calculated risk that could set the stage for a dynasty under the right conditions.

He's gotten a lot better since 2018, when he accumulated most of that negative defensive value. He can run a bit and has a nice arm. I say keep him out there and use the DH to squeeze another bat into the lineup.

Law acts like Kirk has literally nothing left to develop. Kirk doesn't speak English, needs to learn how to handle a pitching staff, and probably needs diet off 20 pounds of pure fat just to have a viable long term career. Law either thinks that Kirk will never lose weight, or that he can do all this while continuing to perform well at the major league level.

He'll pitch well until the trade deadline, then get flipped for three unranked prospects--two of which will go on to become all-stars.

He likes to speak in absolutes, which is a terrible trait for a statistician or a baseball scout for that matter. He should've been a defense lawyer or politician.

If there's a minor league season let Kirk play there every day while we see if Jansen can can start hitting. If Kirk looks like the real deal he'll be called up for the stretch run regardless. We're fine with the masturbator as the backup C for now.

All the players involved are flawed. The most likely scenario where this trade hurts us is if it turns into a Liam Hendriks/Jesse Chavez situation, where Foley suddenly turns good for a few cost-controlled years. This is possible but unlikely though.

For the record I think we're a good young team that makes the playoffs. I'm just saying a team like the Dodgers or Padres can take a giant s*** on us without one or two more stars.

Didi has a true shortstop's arm, possibly the best arm strength on the team if he signed.

Nothing against Fisher personally but he seems like a lost cause headcase. Guy has 70-grade speed but doesn't know how steal a base. Lets routine popups hit him in the face more than once. If Yasiel Puig and Guerrero Jr. had a love-child, he might be as baseball IQ stupid as Fisher.

Talent wise we're roughly at the level of 2006 (the one good year under Ricciardi) or 2014 (the year before we went on our run). Those years we had some really valuable young talent mixed with serious flaws that championship teams don't have. We still needed to acquire guys like Donaldson and Martin to become a legit championship contender. With the new format playoffs are well within reach though. This all assumes we don't add any more star level talent this offseason.

Quintana's projections are depressed by missed time due to an absolutely freak injury washing dishes, and he pitched well in a small sample post-injury. If he's recovered this and the Charlie Morton signing are the finest moves of the offseason.

Keep him. Grichuk is a solid 4th OF who can play center or platoon with Tellez if needed. The contract was a mistake but what's done is done. The elephant in the room is that Grichuk, Gurriel, and Hernandez all have somewhat risky batting profiles. If one or two of them takes a step back you won't regret having that depth. Grabbing Brantley and dumping Grichuk also makes sense if you want to mitigate some of that risk.

The inaccuracies with WAR accumulate over the course of a career, especially for pitchers. Jack Morris was a league average pitcher over a very large number of career innings. This is a very valuable pitcher but he doesn't deserve to be discussed for the Hall of Fame. The bigger problem is that pitcher WAR is broken for career comparisons. Morris has a similar career WAR as Jim Palmer, who was a >90% first ballot Hall of Famer and was like 20% better at run prevention over a similar number of innings. Andy Pettitte has a higher career WAR than Tom Glavine despite being worse at run prevention with > 1000 fewer career innings.

The amount of blind faith casual fans put into defensive metrics, especially for historical players, is why the old school guys hate analytics so much. Look up how Total Zone is calculated.

Rookies always get hosed by umps, he'll likely get more calls as his reputation spreads around the league. If he reaches Bautista level respect for his eye he might even start stealing close calls, which is a scary thought given how many walks he draws already.

Kid has terrible baserunning and statcast numbers, but he can clearly run. Losing weight and gaining some baseball IQ will pay dividends in so many ways.

I was only referring to their profiles, since the purpose of the original post seemed to be projecting future value. Alomar was a career .300 hitter and at the height of his powers had gap power to all fields and strong control of the strike zone. Because of his swing and profile, Biggio may hit .300 in individual seasons, but he will never consistently hit for average like Alomar. Conversely, Biggio's patience is elite and he has more power than Alomar, again due to his fundamentally different approach. On the bases, Alomar was a high-volume burner while Biggio is a highly efficient baserunner with solid average footspeed. I can envision Biggio providing similar value with his legs as Alomar without the benefit of 50 SB. Again, completely different tools/profiles. With the glove the two aren't comparable. Alomar was an all-time great with lateral range in both directions and the arm of a shortstop. He was basically Robinson Cano without the steroids and more acrobatics. Biggio is fringe average and just doesn't have that physical firepower. With his baseball IQ I wouldn't be surprised if he continues to improve his D, depending on how much autonomy he has with positioning. Biggio and Alomar have very little in common other than they both played 2B for the Blue Jays. I'm not saying Biggio isn't capable of putting up 6 win seasons (he can but probably won't). But if he does, it will be with a drastically different offensive profile. Like I said, a Biggio career year probably looks more similar to Chase Utley (later career start, great power, eye-popping value on the bases without being a burner, etc.), but even then the comp isn't great.

They are very different players. Biggio would have to become a batting title level hitter to become Alomar. With his strikeout rates and batted ball profile that will never, ever happen. Chase Utley is a better comparison but even that's a stretch.

If we can't identify the problem, we are guaranteed to fail. The question isn't whether Guerrero is entitled a starting position at 3B, the question is whether he is even salvageable at 1B. Scouts have been projecting Guerrero to move off of 3B since he was a 16 year old kid. In 2019 he accumulated the most negative defensive value at 3B in the league despite playing a partial season. The eye test, numbers and basically common sense tell us that he shouldn't be out there. Somehow he managed to play even worse at 1B. Just by memory, he dropped at least one chest-level throw from the infield and overran MULTIPLE routine popups. These are among the highest percentage plays in baseball, I'm talking little league stuff here. I'm not even going to touch his journeys into 2B. I'm fine with using Guerrero as a third string/emergency 3B for roster flexibility, but indulging him with a shot at the starting 3B job that he hasn't earned won't help at all with his maturity/baseball IQ issues. He's basically Ryan Braun/Gary Sheffield out there, and the coaching staff/management should be threatening to make him a full time DH if he plays even remotely as bad as he did last year. This will probably raise a lot of eyebrows, but from a pure baseball standpoint I would really have liked if they moved Vlad to RF earlier in his development. He has a good arm and he can run after the ball all he wants out there. His footspeed is actually playable in right, especially if he loses weight. When it comes to the weight, fielding, etc. management needs to communicate a clear plan with expectations and stick with it. Teasing fans by having him take grounders at 3B in the middle of the season when he was drowning at 1B was silly. Vlad has clearly been confused over the past couple of years and that's mostly on management. He seems to be taking his weight more seriously which is a great first step.

It's pretty interesting that the Cubs went from the exemplar of tanking to build a dynasty to what amounted to a pretty standard window of competitiveness. After 2016 people were seriously debating how many consecutive World Series they might make. Looking back, their rebuild and playoff run was less impressive than the Phillies teams of the late 2000s.