max silver

I'd be interested in signing Bellinger (assuming he comes at a reduced cost compared to present) and Teoscar this offseason. I think Teoscar is a good candidate to bounce back in 2024 as he posted dramatically different home/road splits. He posted the best defensive metrics of his career last season as well, so he could provide a little diversity to the club in a combined DH/OF role. I'm also a big fan of the idea of signing Taylor as 4th outfielder as well. He's just too perfect for this roster as a guy who would likely provide great defence across the outfield with a bat just a little below league average. My only potential concern is the sizable increase in his k level.

This is obviously a case where jaysblue erred in thinking that he could really show it to the Atkins Bootlickers TM for once and for all, but his argument was quickly picked apart like usual.

Acting like a Gallo signing would be similar to the Belt and Kiermaier signings is a false equivalence. Both of Belt and Kiermaier were greatly hampered on the field with injured body parts that were surgically repaired. Each of these guys experienced only a single down season before signing with the Blue Jays. The key difference with Gallo is that he has displayed greatly reduced baseball skills over the last few seasons with no underlying medical issue that I'm aware of. Gallo has simultaneously seen his already too high strikeout rate continue to rise to career worst levels while also posting the highest pop up rates in his career. He's only been a 105 wRC+ hitter on the good side of his platoon, and has been reduced to essentially a 1B/LF at this point of his career. It really seems like his best days are well behind him at this point and he just isn't a realistic candidate to bounce back given all of the offensive red flags.

It's technically fair by BTV but this trade would seriously weaken the Brewers chances to compete.

It reduces the long term payroll commitments but does nothing in the short term except most likely make the team noticeably worse.

Baby's what? You mean babies? How on earth can a baby be 60 years old? Does finding a constant barrage of nonsense posts to be really irritating make one a baby in your estimation?

I placed you on ignore upon your return as all you posted was troll level s*** in every post something like 500 times a day. I noticed that it seemed like nearly every other response to the various threads had your name attached to it so I unblocked you to see if the post quality had improved. Looks like it's time to add back to the ignore list.

Why would the Brewers want to swap Yelich for Springer though? They make similar salaries and Yelich was literally twice as valuable as Springer last season.

As far as I can see Adames would be a rental player.

Definitely. Varsho might actually be an upgrade on Kiermaier, and left field may be Varsho's worst defensive position in the outfield based on the early OAA returns so Bellinger should be a fine replacement.

I don't know man, the guy has a 97 wRC+ Steamer projection, but that includes Gallo improving his k rate compared to the last 2 seasons and producing a higher BABIP value than he's managed the last 5 years. I just tend to think he's nearing the point where he will have no offensive utility whatsoever as the k rate just keeps increasing year over year.

I'd certainly rather have Bregman and Soto vs Bellinger as well, but those guys are likely to see the team facing way more competition for their services and are unlikely signs as compared to Bellinger who doesn't appear to have very many suitors. Eventually the Jays will be forced to move on from Bellinger as they need to fill their lineup holes and this will remove one potential option, so hopefully Boras will eventually lower the demands to something more in line with the value that Bellinger is more likely to provide (3-4 WAR vs the 5+ the contract demands imply).

I wonder if Keston Hiura will be of any interest to the club. He was above average offensively in 2022 (115 wRC+ despite the 41.7% k rate). His 2023 numbers in AAA looked good and the strikeout rate was more manageable.

I'd give Bellinger what it takes for him to choose the Jays over the Cubs but that's it. There's no sense and caving into Boras's ridiculous demands at this point and paying the guy like a true star player as he simply hasn't shown that he's that type of player moving forward.

For the last two seasons Gallo basically has essentially been an automatic out in half of his plate appearances. Combine his 2023 42.8% k rate with the popup rate of 7.2% (58.3% FB x 12.3% IFBB) and you end up with an even 50% strikeout and pop up rate. That's the last kind of guy a team with so many lineup openings should be employing.

This just goes to show how s***** most depth pitchers actually are. Unless you have your own home grown optionable starters these guys tend to be completely fungible.

Bellinger hasn't generally been a dead pull hitter for most of his career though and certainly wasn't in 2023 with a 44/37/19 split. The results back up this approach as well as he produced 183 wRC+ to the pull side, 187 wRC+ up the middle and only 73 wRC+ to the opposite field. It's certainly fair to wonder if he has much of a chance to recreate the success on balls up the middle as these included a .397 BABIP.

There was a definite element of bad luck in the two week slump Schneider experienced over a two week span. He was absolutely striking out too much during this period of time, but still managed some solid contact. In the 34 plate appearances where he went hitless he produced 5 line drives, barrelled up a baseball and averaged 89.3 MPH off of the bat. None of his batted balls fell in for hits despite producing some decent contact off of the bat.

It's too bad Bellinger employs Boras as his agent as Boras has historically been perfectly willing to let his guys wait the market out until spring training starts to maximize their contracts. It really hampers the rest of the team's offseason work not knowing if they will be employing Bellinger and Chapman as well as each of these moves will have a sizeable effect on the remaining budget to spend on other players.

There's just no way the team could roster all of those guys at once given the redundancies this would present. I think Barger is likely to replace Biggio at some point, and Jiminez is the most likely heir apparent to take over for Espinal as he seems to be the only guy with the glove to handle short stop.

I would have loved to see Schneider receive more playing time down the stretch to give him a chance to work through his issues at the plate. The team completely benched the guy after a rough week at the plate which is understandable given the stakes of the games at the time, but the issue was that Merrifield was in a two month slump of his own and the team kept inserting him into the lineup every day. I guess at the end of the day the team accepted the higher offensive floor that Merrifield offered vs the higher ceiling Schneider added if he were able to emerge from his slump.

How many seasons do you think it would take these two to hit 4+ WAR? Steamer has the two projected for a total of 1.4 WAR, and over the last two seasons combined they produced 4.5 WAR. I could easily get on board with a Taylor signing provided he'd be on board with typical 4th outfielder level of playing time, but damn that Gallo strikeout rate just keeps getting worse and he's having an increasingly hard time even managing a .300 OBP.

So despite all of the evidence you view Kiermaier as a better center fielder just because. That checks out based on your entire posting history. Kiermaier was on record stating that he chose to sign with the Blue Jays because they promised him a starting job in center field. It shouldn't come as a massive shock to you that they were true to their word and started Kiermaier there as promised. The Semien situation is similar but had some key differences. Atkins stated that they weren't going to move Bo off of the short stop position for a single season as they still viewed him as having potential to be a quality defender at the position. At that time it was also stated that there was no interest in moving Bo off of the position for a single season, as if he were moved it would be a permanent position swap and not a single year move. Moving Bo for a single season would have denied him of the necessary repetitions required for him to improve at the position. Varsho is already a premium defender in center field, so there would be no lost developmental time if he were to spent time at a different position.

Perhaps the eye test tells you Kiermaier is a better defender but the metrics don't back that up. We can compare these players metrics directly to paint a more complete picture. I'm going to utilize Varsho's last two seasons of center field play as he's produced very similar rates in these seasons, and will use Kiermaier's 2023 only as his numbers were most likely negatively affected by a bad hip in 2022. DRS/OAA Overall Comparison Varsho 841 innings 23 DRS (27.3 DRS/1000 innings) 18 OAA (21.4 OAA/1000 innings) Kiermaier 981 innings 18 DRS (18.3 DRS/1000 innings) 13 OAA (13.3 OAA/1000 innings) Kiermaier has a higher top speed compared to Varsho, but Varsho has simply been a far more effective fielder on a rate basis. It remains to be seen if Varsho can replicate these types of numbers over an entire season in center field as he's yet to play a full season there. If these numbers stick he is arguably the best center field defender in the sport. Kiermaier also possessed a stronger throwing arm, but he hasn't turned this into extra outs compared to Varsho who has a relatively weak throwing arm in comparison. I think Varsho benefits from great technique as he gets into position very quickly, gets rid of the ball quickly (likely his years at catcher benefit him here) and he has a very accurate arm as well. It stands to reason that runners would be more likely to attempt to advance on the bases as well, giving him more opportunities to throw out runners compared to Kiermaier. I have also included the DRS throwing component over the same timeframe. Statcast also has this type of statistic, but I did not include it as it does not break down the outs saved per position played so it's not an apples to apples comparison as Varsho split his time between left field and center field. DRS Throwing Runs Saved Varsho 4 DRS (4.8 DRS/1000 innings) Kiermaier 2 DRS (2.03 DRS/1000 innings)

I think Teoscar is a decent left field option as his metrics for his last few seasons out there looked good in limited playing time. I think if the team brought in someone like Michael A Taylor as a platoon option/defensive replacement type of 4th outfielder the team would be in very good shape defensively in the outfield with Teoscar offering potential upside with the bat if he bounces back.