keggy

I think this is the wisest path. Gurriel isn't going to land you an ace anyways, and mid-level pitching is affordable on the open market. I understand the desire to sell high due to Gurriel's risk profile, but our outfield is so bad I think he needs to stay on the books. Or better yet, sign pitching, sign one or two league average outfielders, and trade Gurriel for prospects.

The Jays were the best true talent team in baseball by a huge margin in 2015. They were underperforming their pythagorean record by like 10 wins and were still in line for the wildcard before the deadline. Big trades always carry risk but adding an ace to that team is a pretty easy call to me--and most people in the industry agreed at the time.

The Price trade was the correct move from the day it was made regardless of Boyd's performance 4 years later. This isn't like Gord Ash trading Michael Young for Esteban Loaiza on a mediocre team. The team was a legitimate championship contender and they gave up a blue chip prospect for a true ace.

This is by far the most important factor in this deal. Talent for talent the trade is fine but we basically absorbed a contract at open market value. This trade only makes sense if the front office thinks he will exceed his projections (which he could).

Refusing to throw on short rest or come out of the bullpen during the playoffs would destroy his reputation as a teammate among baseball people. Better players than Cole haven't refused to pitch on short rest in the playoffs (Pedro, Smoltz, Schilling), even when they had career-threatening injuries. Whether or not your personal reputation affects your payday is unclear. It certainly didn't seem to prevent Machado from getting paid.

That's all that mattered as recently as 2013.

Hendriks' entire career has been an interesting story, starting as a soft tossing control artist as a starter and turning into a flame throwing destroyer in the bullpen. Hendriks has put up like 6 wins since leaving the Jays, making him as valuable as guys like Dellin Betances, Brad Hand and Ken Giles.

Front office favorites Smoak, Pearce, Gurriel, Drury, McKinney, Teoscar, and Grichuk all somewhat fit the profile in one way or another, but Morales is the most classic example of the type they like to take a flier on. This year they seem to be targeting speed and athleticism a bit more as well (Brito, Hansen, Fisher), so their internal valuations are probably evolving behind the scenes.

Donaldson literally told Anthopoulos that he wanted to stay in Toronto like a week and a half ago.

People have been waiting for Pillar to turn into Socrates Brito for the past 4 seasons, but he actually followed a pretty predictable aging curve, during which time we soaked up tens of millions of dollars worth of surplus value. He'll probably be demoted to a good 4th outfielder next year or the year after and out of baseball a couple years after that.

Castellanos has no defensive or baserunning value, poor K-BB%, and destroys the baseball when he makes contact. This is EXACTLY the kind of profile the front office targets except that he's also a good hitter.

We didn't part with Edwin on great terms either. We basically dared him to turn down our contract offer and signed Morales at the same time to seal him off.

This is an aside, but I very distinctly remember Aaron Sanchez and Liam Hendriks of all people touching 100 during the 2015 playoff run. Harold Reynolds was drooling over Sanchez's stuff out of the pen.

There are a lot of crucial details you're sweeping under the rug in this analysis. First, Grichuk is almost certainly in his prime or starting his decline. Age 27-32 hasn't been considered prime years since the steroid era. Second, the most egregious part of the signing was that they bought out his arbitration years to pay him that contract. As such the optimistic dollars per WAR valuations are inflated. And perhaps more importantly than the dollar cost was the fact that we gave up a huge amount of flexibility, leverage, and risk management. If he didn't sign the extension, we could easily bring him back after this down year for a bargain in arbitration, or even non-tender him and resign him as an even cheaper free agent. Or at the most extreme cut him completely to extract value from the extra roster spot. Now we're stuck. Finally, your outcome probabilities severely underestimate the risk associated with a player with Grichuk's batting profile. His quality of contact was good at the time, but as the Morales signing demonstrated to us directly, hard hit % doesn't guarantee a breakout. But far more important to his projections is his abysmal K-BB numbers. There are very few players who can sustain success with numbers that extreme, and he's just a handful of extra strikeouts or fewer walks away from becoming unplayable. You make it sound like Grichuk sucking is a freak outcome, but in reality his profile is one of the riskiest you can find. This was another example of the front office bidding against themselves for a profile they liked. The reasonable AAV mitigates some of the negative value, but this was not a good signing that didn't work out. This was a questionable signing that may work out but hasn't so far.

Rainouts and turf are two separate issues. You can have a retractable roof stadium with natural grass.

Placido Polanco

I like the crossfire approach to RHH. I'm getting Aaron Loup when he was good vibes.

Fair enough. I tried to hedge by saying a reasonable floor is a high-end reliever. His absolute floor is garbage which is what he's been as a starter. I honestly think a good reliever would be a 40-60%ile outcome for him and I don't think that's a controversial opinion.

Agreed on all counts that there is no guarantee that he'll be an ace reliever. I say give him 15-20 low-leverage appearances out of the pen and use that data to make an informed decision.

Again, you're using starting data to translate to bullpen performance, which doesn't apply equally to all starters. Take some of the very best relievers in the league, like Dellin Betances, Liam Hendriks, and Brad Hand and predict their numbers as full-time starters. In fact we don't even have to make predictions since they were all bad starters which is how they became ace relievers in the first place. Sanchez is a terrible SP and will most likely stay somewhere between terrible and bad. However, to the original premise, I would have an extremely difficult time non-tendering Sanchez based exclusively on his performance as a SP without even trying him out of the pen.

Some organizations have academies, dorms, and English tutors for Latin prospects who are older than Guerrero. They teach rural prospects how to pay a phone bill and order food in restaurants. American coaches are asked to take Spanish lessons to better communicate with their players. If a team can't get a 20-year old franchise player to improve his body, they need to make some changes.

A struggling starter with a big arm with durability issues who struggles when the lineup turns over and has prior success in the bullpen isn't likely to be a good reliever? I can't think of a more historically classic style of pitcher to improve in the bullpen unless you turned Max Scherzer into a closer or something. Sanchez hasn't had a relief appearance since 2015, so it's not like we have any data that he would be a bad reliever.

A reasonable floor for Sanchez is as a high end relief arm, which is worth what he'll garner in arbitration. I would be surprised if Houston gave up on him completely before trying him as a reliever.

Also 20-year old Miguel Cabrera was ripped and lean. He started turning into a fatso in his mid- to late- 20s. If Vlad is this heavy at 20, he's gonna look like Gord Ash when he hits free agency.

Fair enough. However I would also argue that comparing transactions over just the past three years is quite favorable to the Braves though.