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A key point to remember is that Matt Chapman was dealing with a mangled finger for much of the second half.

Yeah that's something I can't say. It was only a 2 month sample size as well so who even knows.

It was a murderers row lineup of talented hitters so that's far more of a factor than the park in my view. The entire team was en fuego in September despite Rogers Center playing in a pitcher friendly Roger's Center.

Rogers Center was actually a pitcher friendly park that season.

Yeah you can really see the added mass to his legs in particular. His fat photos from last spring showed a ton of added mass in his lower half but it was largely obscured by the extra chunk.

The extent of the improvements to the results very well may be an unrepeatable fluke. His underlying numbers more support something in the 110-115 wRC+ range so he needs to prove he can repeat the 2023 numbers.

That's why it's likely best for Bellinger to take a short term deal to prove that he's developed into one of these Statcast beaters and not the beneficiary of a single fluke season.

I've said repeatedly that IKF will most likely continue to be a below average bat but simply pointed out there is actually some potential upside. He managed to post a .750 OPS over a nearly 4 month sample last season and this was easily the longest stretch of sustained success of his entire career. He hit a stretch where he didn't appear in any games for a 10 day stretch. I haven't been able to determine if this was injury related or he was simply benched. Around this timeframe in Mid August the wheels completely came off as his strikeout rate experienced a dramatic upwards spike and his numbers completely cratered the rest of the way over a small sample of at bats.

You could maybe at least wait and see how this year's team performs before planning a full of revolt. Just because the team doesn't want to pay completely exorbitant asking prices from premiere ripoff artist Scott Boras doesn't mean the team doesn't want to win.

He better watch what he says given how the Orioles completely muzzled their broadcasters.

Pitching prospects are certainly prone to flaming out but I still place a ton of value on those prospects with legitimate top of the rotation potential given their relative rarity. I don't personally place Tiedemann in the completely untouchable category but it's close to that level for me personally. I'd move him out for a cost controlled player like Luis Robert but not for any rental player no matter how good that player is. I guess we just differ in how we value a single season of Soto. I fully agree he's one of baseball's best hitters but he is so bad defensively that he actually provided the same defensive value as full time DH Shohei Ohtani. I think the Yankees paid an exorbitant price for Soto personally and even that type of deal would have been one I wasn't willing to make.

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.