Bobthe4th

Cleveland need outfielders - maybe we can sell them Pillar & Pompey.

TBF this was a pretty good comeback:

Haha, Drury should be happy if he gets a 25 man place on a team. He's nowhere near good enough to dictate what position he should be playing, Vlad or no.

Well in theory openers are only used when the normal starter would be a back of the rotation guy like Gaviglio. It’s only if they begin to be used in games aces are scheduled to start in that it may mess up your decisions on which games to pay attention to.

DeMarlo Hale and Luis Rivera have got to be worried, starting to look like a big revamp of the coaching staff.

Bautista to replace Jacoby?

Would be cool to see! I'd replace Drury with Bo or Travis, and Pompey with Smith Jr. It's not going to happen though obv. Smoak could be a valuable trade piece at the deadline, no one is taking Tulo or Morales, Martin and/or Pillar might be traded now if there's interest.

They might be projecting Smoak to spend time at DH with Morales, Tulo (and Vlad) on the roster.

FWIW both Buck and Pat’s contracts expire at the end of the 2019 season - they signed 5 year contracts in 2014.

Kawhi sat out most of last year to try to force a move to LA, he’s not going to take any even minimal risks with his health that’ll jeopardise his free agent contract.

Yeah I agree. I was also a bit surprised that Brantley didn’t get a QO.

Haha, what’s your issue with the ignore list? It’s one of the best features of the board - it means you can deal with trolls a lot quicker than the mods will ban them, and you can ignore people who don’t contribute anything positive to the board.

Ryu did get one in the end.

Heyman has the more reasonable (!) figures of $330-374m for Harper and $300-325m for Machado:

Haha, that's not important. I just wish some people would decide to fully commit to being complete twats so that they can be ignored like the petulant children that they are!

mlbtraderumors.com free agent predictions FWIW they have us signing Trevor Cahill for 2 years and $22m. Also predicting $420m for Harper, and $390m for Machado!

Best case would be the Braves with an earlier than expected playoff challenge. That'd probably require players like Tellez working out (so Morales getting injured / traded) as well as Jansen & Gurriel, Stroman/Sanchez being injury free and a few pitchers having good years, on top of Vlad being elite straight away. Even if that doesn't happen it should be an interesting season!

If Stroman and Sanchez pitch 194 and 164 innings (nearly double what they pitched this year) I'd expect both to beat their projections of 2.4 and 0.9 WAR. Obviously that's a big if! I don't agree with the narrative that Sanchez has shown nothing, and he's hardly had any injury free starts in 2 years. This year is obviously vital for him to first try to have a run of no injuries, and then prove whether he's still a legitimate starter when fully fit. If he gets injured again he won't get any where near the projected innings. With the seemingly limited budget and therefore assuming we don't sign multiple starters, Borucki and/or SRF should get 20+ starts . If that happens it'd be disappointing if they both suck. I doubt we see Merryweather in the rotation until late in the season. Gavligio fits as a 5th/6th starter type. Pannone has more chance of cracking the 25 man as a reliever IMO. So overall, in a year where we aren't expected to be a serious contender, IMO our rotation isn't that bad with 1 or 2 sensible additions. Meanwhile the bullpen has Giles and the usual random chance pieces, that bar spending serious money is fine. There will be a few relievers that have good seasons out of nowhere, a few that are terrible and are DFA, and the usual turnover that we always see.

I assume there's no way to allow threads started by someone on your ignore list to appear in the thread lists? There's at least one person I'd love to IL but they fairly regularly start threads.

We should be signing at least one starter, but yeah those projections would be incredibly disappointing if they ended up being close to accurate.

Ho-hum, projections for non elite relievers are basically worthless, and I'll take the over on the projections for at least 3 of the starters.

Apparently throwing beer cans at celebrating teams is a tradition in Boston.... I know, I couldn’t believe it either.

It’s not just old people, there are plenty of younger fans who have no interest in spreadsheets. A lot of people find that stuff boring and it’s a niche interest.

Yeah it’s really weird, alternates seasons between superstar level and just a good player. Potentially a sign he might struggle when he loses athleticism in his 30’s? Who knows. Maybe a new team could help him with consistency.