Bobthe4th

The Padres have payroll space and California to offer. IMO Cole ends up in California - Padres, Angels, Dodgers etc.

You're over simplifying things. The main aims of Shatkins this season were to work out who was part of the core going forward, trading anyone with value but isn't a part of that core (exceptions - Giles got injured and I assume Smoak had no market), and writing off payroll for players that weren't valuable enough to get a decent return (Morales, Tulo, Martin). One of the main reasons this squad hasn't been near .500 is that not enough players that could be part of the future core have established themselves. Hernandez and Tellez haven't progressed. Fisher, Grichuk and McKinney have all been terrible. The only young starter who has shown anything is Thornton. We've had some injuries too. We are not signing Cole, there are other teams that can offer better situations and just as much money. We are not increasing payroll >$100m on the 6 or 7 players we'd need to turn ourselves into a contender. We will be looking for people like Kay, Merryweather and Borucki to establish themselves in the rotation. We will be giving our collection of s*** outfielders more time to see if any of them don't suck. We will be giving time for Vlad to see if he can stick at 3B. Time for Gurriel to see if he is now a full time outfielder or can be used as a super utility player (who starts every day but at different positions). We will be acquiring some vets, maybe 1 or 2 mid tier starters, and getting (hopefully) a nice return for Giles. A .500 season and 4 to 5 more core pieces established = a good year next year. Ideally that's what this year would have been, but it didn't turn out like that. Again, I think that the front office will follow this strategy, I'm not advocating for them to do it. But "no reason" is obviously not the same as not agreeing with this strategy.

We are a nearly 100 loss team this year, with a risk averse front office. We'd all love to be really aggressive this offseason, but can't see it happening.

It's the return of the Champions League today! I think it may finally be Man City's year.

Yeah some of them really went all out!

Bingo.

Yeah anyone who thinks this front office is going to use this offseason to spend millions on top free agents including Cole, are unfortunately deluding themselves. And even if the FO target better players than they did last offseason (which is by no means certain that we don't go dumpster diving again), without acquiring some of the very best players we aren't going to turn from a 95-100 loss team to a 85-90 win team in one year without a miracle.

Vlad was (rightly) hyped as our best prospect ever and people hoped he'd hit the ground running like Bo, Acuna, Soto etc have done. So in that context it's not out of line to be a bit disappointed. But it's not like he's looked out of his depth and with a bit more experience he should secure his place as one of the elite bats in the league. There remain questions over his weight, and his near term future at 3B. But him not setting the world on fire might even be the incentive he needs to lose some weight in order to maximise his talents.

Spot on:

People's issue with Grichuk is mainly with the length of the contract not the value. IMO it'd be better keeping the DH free for rotating players, but a 1 year deal for any amount isn't a negative, especially if we managed to get a prospect thrown in to take the contract.

Yeah, he's unlikely to be used, no point exposing him.

Exactly the same number of days left in the season:

Looks like Elvis has “recovered” from his “injury” just in time to get enough service time to satisfy rule 5 requirements. How fortunate!

I love the optimism, but we are close to a 100 loss team this year. Next season we have no reliable starters (yet), a poor to average outfield, no quality depth, Giles (who is going to be traded), Vlad, Bo and a bunch of promising young players. The foundations are there, but we’d need everything to go right, plus significant investment, to be a contender as early as next season.

“Easily” yeah if we acquire multiple elite players (including more pitchers than just Cole). Which obviously isn’t going to happen in one offseason.

Haha, I guess it’s a nice present not having to watch the Jays anymore!

We didn’t call up Pompey last year because we had plenty of outfielders and he had no future with the team. Same situation with Alford this year, except he’s been called up, so he should be playing.

Taken in context (i.e. he seemed to love it here before it all went wrong) it suggests he would have wanted to stay if he’d remained fit and we’d been competing. Rather than suggesting that after his Jays career was ruined by injury (which he blames the medical team for mishandling) and we started a rebuild, that’d he’d choose to play for us right now.

Yeah it doesn’t make any sense to call him up if you’re convinced he’s not good enough and are ready to cut loose in the summer. If he’s here he should be playing every day.

Hopefully!

Haha, yeah but it’s different this time. They’ve made some good acquisitions this offseason. And there aren’t any obvious Western Conference superpowers this year (unless you’re a believer in the Lakers).

The Red Sox haven’t had more than 2 losing seasons in a row for 25 years. They’ll just sign some free agents and release some deadweight if they aren’t a playoff team again in the next couple of seasons.