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The pitching prospect is only about to enter his third professional season so I really don't get why people would be so anxious to flush his potential future value down the toilet for a rental player. He was averaging closer to 5 innings per start towards the end of the season after being built up. Some pundits believe him to be the most talented left handed starter in the minor leagues and he's been given a 65 FV by Baseball America. Excuse me if I think it would be an astronomically bad move to trade him for a 1 year rental player, no matter how good that player is. The team would have no chance to extend Soto before he reached free agency. The Yankees knew this and basically didn't bother trying. The team would be stuck bidding against the rest of MLB for Soto's long term services, and not having him for this season allows them to take a crack at it next offseason and keep their best prospect. The comp pick more than likely would end up being nothing given where it's located (after second or third round if memory serves). Given how difficult it's been for the organization to develop their own starters it's total insanity to even consider trading the guy with the highest ceiling of anyone in the entire organization. The expensive rotation is quickly becoming unsustainable with the looming Vlad and Bo decisions, and it's as expensive as it is due to primarily building the rotation through free agency and not internally.

This isn't really a big deal at this point. As you mentioned Tiedemann is going to have a pretty low innings cap for this season so missing a few weeks might actually make it easier to manage to overall innings later in the season.

Yeah that's insanity that people didn't want to trade a potential top of the rotation arm for a 1 year rental DH.

That's not true. Chapman essentially hit like a superstar middle of the order bat for about half of his season (10 weeks total) and struggled for the other 10 weeks.

Seems to me like it was a winter bulk gone awry.

That's entirely possible but that doesn't somehow mean IKF needs to provide 3 wins to provide value on a $7.5 million contract. Despite lingering on the market in February Matt Chapman will still likely earn upwards of $20 million a season, and he would only be reasonably expected to provide 3-3.5 wins so it doesn't seem particularly reasonable to require IKF to provide similar wins on something like 40% of the salary.

Or conversely Kiner Falefa plays well and earns more playing time. Given how much competition there is for the third base position I don't see how he's going to receive unlimited rope if he largely struggles at the plate.

A 2 win season for $7.5 million would be perfectly acceptable (only averages $3.75 million per win), the dude isn't being paid $15-20 million after all so the bar for success is accordingly much lower.

That seems like an awfully long deal for a guy of Ryu's age and injury history. The dollars are so low that it also seems semi pointless to lengthen to term to lower the AAV as well, but I'm not particularly familiar with the economics of the KBO to comment too specifically about this.

Yeah that's a fair point in that Vlad is going to need to prove he's worth that kind of deal, but a 7 year $150 million deal only pays him a shade over $20 million which just feels a bit low if he reaches 150 wRC+ in consecutive seasons. Another key point is how much younger he is going to be when reaching free agency compared to those other guys as well so it's a bit tricky to come up with a prospective contract length.

I'd give Vlad that type of deal with no qualms right now.

I can't help but think back to JP Ricciardi's comments about how Adam Dunn didn't even like baseball.

Nice straw man argument. In real terms since Judge debuted and became a full time player he's only avoided missing major time due to injury in half of the 162 game seasons. He's one of MLB's scariest hitters when he's on the field but has historically missed a lot of time due to injury. This would still be the case if he played for the Blue Jays and not the Yankees.

Nate has the raw stuff to be an excellent closer, I think that would classify as a tremendous ceiling. I'm not claiming there's much likelihood of reaching that ceiling at this point and I'd be reasonably happy if he could even become a low leverage reliever at this point.

Or maybe everything comes together for him and he leverages his talent to become a fearsome middle of the order bat year in and year out. He was tantalizing close last season and hopefully the better conditioning and mechanical changes bridge the remaining gap.

My take on a lot of his struggles was that the opposition could largely ignore the offspeed pitches and zero in on the heater vs Nate tipping his pitches.

Is Nate a jobber in your view? He still has a tremendous ceiling, unlike Ryu who likely maxes out as a decent back of the rotation pitcher. They wouldn't even serve the same roles in the first place so I'm failing to see why you are directly comparing the two of them to start with.

In an interesting bit of news Nate suspects that he was tipping his pitches last season. I'm not necessarily buying that as a primary reason why he was so ineffective at times due to the suspect command but it certainly wouldn't help things any. https://www.mlb.com/bluejays/news/nate-pearson-working-on-new-pitch-for-blue-jays

Remains to be seen. I'd guess it comes down to whomever has the best spring. I suspect a bit of a platoon between Biggio and Schneider but that is up in the air at this point.

The only starter that Ryu would have any chance outperforming would be Manoah if Alek doesn't recapture his previous stuff and/or command. Trading any of the other starting options and replacing them with Ryu would be a step backwards both in expected results and likelihood to avoid the injured list.

Steamer projects them as a tossup offensively as each has a 95 wRC+ projection. Rosario had a butcher level defensive season at short stop (-16 DRS/-14 OAA). That's on par with how poorly Bo performed at short stop in 2022 for comparisons sake. It's far from a given his skills would successfully transfer to third base given how steep a defensive decline he's shown the last few seasons.

Nate underperformed his statcast expected stats by a decent degree. Add a touch more effective results on top of actual and expected stats lining up to a closer degree and you're likely left with a pretty effective reliever. (Stats are pulled directly from baseballsavant) Slider .320 wOBA .270 xwOBA Curveball .287 wOBA .254 xwOBA ERA 4.85 xERA 3.90

It would be imperative to have him throw primarily to Kirk as he's one of MLB's most effective pitch blockers.

The Orioles very well may be due for their own regression. Their rotation stands to start the season without two expected members of their rotation with top of the rotation stud suffering a partial UCL tear. The offense was more like the Blue Jays except with better clutch numbers, and they punched far above their expected win total.

There's no harm in giving this chance given the incredibly high ceiling he possesses. If he ever puts everything together he could be a high octane closer. Even if he's a step below and becomes a fireballing multiple inning reliever that's a fantastic outcome as well. The chances are obviously less than great but the potential upside makes it well worth giving him another opportunity.