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I'd love to see this happen as I think Kikuchi has unlocked beast mode moving forward. I believe he's a Boras client so a pre free agency extension seems somewhat unlikely.

Varsho is off to a rough start to the season but Kiermaier has been even worse so it's a bit of a choose your poison scenario between the two of them.

In a typical offseason that's still bench player money though. IKF is likely about a 1.5 win player if he plays primarily in the infield and receives more than 500 PA, vs Gurriel who is a 2 win player if he receives 600 PA. Gurriel is paid a $14 million AAV for an extra half win vs IKF so it hardly seems like IKF is such a bad contact in comparison.

Baseball games aren't played on paper. Half of the team dramatically underperformed their projections last season and that's very unlikely to occur again. I think the only important loss to the lineup was Chapman, and he was a complete zero at the plate for approximately half of the season. I actually think the combination of IKF/Clement/Biggio may come close to approximating the same type of slightly above league average offensive production with appropriate matchups. Merrifield was a below average bat for the season as a whole and I think the club may actually stand to improve on what he offered with the available roster options, and I think Turner and Vogelback/Votto will essentially replace what Belt had to offer.

How the f*** do you even know if the offense is worse than last year? The team has only played 4 games for crying out loud. On top of that it's averaging 5 runs per game up to this point.

From what I can gather the team may only be on the hook for a prorated amount of the $2 million so the actual cost may be very little.

At a glance he's had a nice spring but then he also had a really similar spring the season before. He produced good numbers in the minors and Fangraphs has him pegged as a future 60 hit tool so it's not outside the realm of possibility he becomes a well rounded player that justifies the deal they handed out. The Rockies are the kings of handing out bad extensions so that's certainly possible as well.

I can only guess the club feels he's made tangible improvements with the bat. The dude looks like a legit premium defender so he won't have to hit a ton to provide a lot of value to the club.

There's no need to be so fixated about this. It simply appears as though Varsho prefers the foot first slide for whatever reason, whether it's due to past injury or some other factor. I looked to see if time to the base had been studied or not and it appears as though there may actually be a small advantage in the foot first slider reaching the bag first. It was surmised that the hand first slide opens up the player to a higher severity of injury due to potential shoulder, neck and head involvement so this should be factored in as well.

This isn't really displayed by his top end running numbers though. He came up to MLB averaging 27.0 ft/second on the bases. This only dropped to 26.9 feet/second last season. His running splits got worse by a similarly small margin as well. To my eyes the glovework is the biggest factor in his defense that declined as he started clanking a lot of plays that should have been completely routine. On top of that he started making a lot of mental errors in the field as well which compounded the issues further.

I don't necessarily think the club did anything to mess him up as it appears as though his swing was a bit of a mess due to the incompatible angles that he created throughout his motion. I find it impossible to not be really encouraged by what Varsho has done in the spring as he's almost completely stopped chasing pitches out of the strike zone and has been swinging at appropriate pitches that he can connect with. I'm a little dubious on his chosen goals at the plate as it very well may lead to an excessive amount of ground balls but at the very least he stands to strike out less this season and work his way onto base far more often if the plate discipline improvements hold to any degree. It's kind of hard to fathom but he's actually stated he wants to put the ball on the ground more this season. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/sunday-notes-daulton-varsho-goes-pull-side-thinks-low-and-hard/ It actually appears as though his swing has been overhauled with this goal in mind. He's been connecting for a lot of line drives which should help improve his overall numbers in conjunction with the plate discipline improvements but I do have a bit of fear that his overall power output will be sapped to a large degree. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/daulton-varsho-is-cleaning-up-his-process/

So in essence you are saying that players can't improve. Based on that reasoning players should stop bothering with swing and approach changes since it's such a black and white situation where their performance is preordained.

He suffered an offseason shoulder injury before the 2023 season. I just don't see any reason to doubt that his shoulder was actually bothering him again instead of immediately pivoting to inane theories about whether he's not "tough" enough or faking an injury for some ridiculous reason. I think it's a good thing that he recognized a shoulder issue and slowed down his buildup to give it a chance to resolve instead of doing something remarkably stupid and ignoring the issue in hopes it would go away.

It's too bad the Red Sox sent over such an awful lineup for today's game. I'd like to see what White can do against a major league lineup when he's commanding the baseball as he was today.

Heaven forbid a pitcher suffers a shoulder issue in spring training. That obviously means he did nothing in the offseason to get ready for the season.

Hopefully you can stop using this completely awful cringe inducing nickname.

I'd certainly prefer to see the hitters having great springs compared to the opposite. Basically all of the lineup regulars who underperformed last season are having great springs so hopefully some of this success carries over to the regular season.

The 7.1% strikeout rate, 19% walk rate and 2.67 BB/k ratios are all but impossible to ignore.

I'm guessing this means he has a sports hernia that'll hamper him all season. On top of the toe injury that he also needs to manage.

My only real concern with Varsho is that the new swing path seems to be a little too ground ball oriented up to this point. Hopefully over time the swing still generates the type of power output he previously provided.

I'm perfectly fine with the foot first slides as it greatly reduces the inherent injury risk.

It's the pisiform bone which is next to the hamate. I have no idea what effect a break of this particular bone would have on power as it doesn't seem particularly common.

Davis isn't likely to provide a lot of defensive value though unless the 2023 OAA improvements stick. His typical defensive metrics at third base are really bad with an outlier uptick in OAA in 2023 with a super negative DRS value.

Cole apparently doesn't even have a torn tendon so surgery at this point seems a little pre-emptive all things considered.

It's a tiny broken bone though not like his wrist is fully shattered.