max silver

I'm cool with trading Bo if the rumors are true and he isn't amenable to signing an extension before he reaches free agency. I'm incredibly hesitant to ship Vlad at this point given how young he is and the tremendous upside he still offers. I have serious doubts the eventual return would be close to the value Vlad will offer the team if he finally reaches his ceiling year in and year out. Everything he's said publicly makes it appear as though he wants to be a career Blue Jay but it's up to him to prove he's worth an extension in the next few seasons if this is to occur.

Gausman would have a lot of trade value as well but it's hard to imagine the team improving as a whole if he were moved in trade.

Awesome stuff as always man. It sounds like there could be some really exciting moves yet to come this offseason. I'll certainly make do if the front office decides to focus on short term sensible 1 or 2 year deals, but the idea of adding impact talent is always fun to dream about. These updates have me very hopeful for a big year from Vlad, although reports about him refusing to work with the team in season to address mechanical issues is a little disheartening. It was very apparent that something was off with Vlad's swing/timing this season given the frequency he was fouling off meatballs at the plate and often seemed a bit late starting his swing. The 2021 minor league park thing is interesting, but I finally determined how to pull the home away splits on a monthly basis and the narrative that Vlad could only hit in minor league parks in 2021 is largely borne out of a short 3 week slump that Vlad experienced, as he struggled upon returning home to Rogers Center and experienced a massive rebound to end the season. He didn't manage to hit home runs with the same regularity in Rogers Center when he heated up again but the overall numbers were still exemplary once he worked his way out of the slump. He never managed to reach the dizzying heights that he experienced in Dunedin but the overall Buffalo and Rogers Centers numbers are very comparable once Vlad got the bat going again. Vlad performed very well on the road in the first 4 months of 2021, but his home numbers are astonishing. Over the first 4 months or so Vlad produced an overall 185 wRC+. Dunedin 262 wRC+ Buffalo 203 wRC+ Home 46 G 202 PA .361/.465/.805/1.270 OPS 21 HR 226 wRC+ 15.8% BB 17.3% K Away 44 G 230 PA .298/.387/.525/.912 OPS 12 HR 148 wRC+ 11.7% BB 17.0% K Shortly after the team returned home to Canada Vlad hit the skids and experienced a short slump that lasted for about 3 weeks. 21 G 94 PA .220/.319/.305/.624 OPS 2HR 11.7% BB 18.1% K 69 wRC+ Vlad emerged from this slump and ended the season on a heater and displayed that he was able to mash at Rogers Center to levels approaching what he managed in the minor league ballparks. He ended the season producing a combined 169 wRC+ over the last 5 weeks or so. Home 20G 86 PA .351/.419/.701/1.120 OPS 7HR 9.3% BB 10.5% K 193 wRC+ Away 18G 81 PA .288/.358/.534/.892 OPS 5HR 9.9% BB 12.3% K 143 wRC+ I recall the explanation that was offered up at the time of the slump was that Vlad started to struggle, overworked himself in the cage trying to get himself right, and eventually backed off the extra work a bit and managed to regain his form. I am very excited about Roden, perhaps his potential impact not too far into the future is part of what has the club looking into shorter term deals for the outfield for the next year or so. Between Roden and Barger that's two potential outfield options although Barger had a bit of a rough season with the bat. I heard that he had some sort of elbow issue that could potentially require offseason surgery but haven't read any updates since the season ended.

He produced DRS/OAA at a pretty similar rate in 2023 to his gold glove season. I don't think there's much doubt he would provide tremendous defense at third base but he's in really tough to do enough with the bat to justify regular playing time.

I could see a world where Urshela bounces back to 2 win production. He's in tough after suffering a broken hip though. Prior to the injury it seems as though something was completely sapping his power production so rediscovering the power stroke would be key to bouncing back.

I have no idea how you pulled this off but hat tip for sure.

Damn that sounds like really easy money. I once had to provide a stool sample and it was pretty damn gross, but I poop every day anyway so it would be great to turn literal s*** into cash.

That's why I think it's complete folly to suggest that the team should trade Kikuchi and sign a free agent starter to take his place.

I don't know what's worse; the drunken Spanky posts of yore or this current stream of completely insane consciousness from Frenchsoup.

So now you are dramatically changing your tune. After carrying on about how Varsho was dogshit, had never hit in his career and was never going to hit in his career you are now claiming he's a touch below average as a hitter. Pick a lane dude.

Osuna absolutely needed to go, he's the only one of the mentioned players I fully supported jettisoning from the team. It's a semi miracle the team was able to acquire Giles in return. Escobar was reportedly a huge problem in the clubhouse due to lousy attitude/constant sulking but at least he was traded for something in return in the ill fated Marlins deal. What's his face essentially shot himself in the foot and forced the team to get rid of him due to intense public backlash after he simply couldn't keep his mouth shut. Pillar displayed what at least appeared to be genuine contrition and this appeared to be someone who was caught up in the heat of the moment and uttered a homophobic slur in a casual fashion without realizing how hurtful his actions were to certain people.

I would assume they haven't completed a formal investigation yet. That should be easy for you to surmise on your own.

At anywhere close to full freight this is a really bad contract. If the Padres are willing to eat something like half of it then it starts being palatable, but even then paying the guy for another 10 years until he's in his 40's is a really hard pill to swallow.

He's a guy I don't imagine the Padres would be terribly interested in moving given their plans to try to compete in 2023. His contract is remarkably team friendly compared to the value he brings and is perfect for a cash strapped team like the Padres.

Machado's contract scares the hell out of me but I'd consider taking it if it meant also receiving Tatis as well.

Yeah Donaldson is still a very solid defender based on the metrics and has been for his entire career At a glance it appears as though he may have had one of the unluckiest seasons in recent memory as he posted a .329 xWOBA but ended up with a .284 WOBA/78 wRC+ presumably due to the remarkably low .115 BABIP. The next lowest batter for comparison was Pete Alonso at .205. I went back 10 years and the next lowest BABIP with a minimum of 180 plate appearances (similar to what Donaldson received in 2023) was Ryan Schimpf in 2017 at .145.

BTS was obviously replying to the bolded section in this post, and things went off the rails when AngrySaskfan or whatever his name is missed that in his reply.

I can't decide if that dude is a troll or the resident harmless crazy guy.

I don't think anyone is going to have a chance to make any sort of realistic case for Varsho ever providing much more than a touch above league average offense in a typical season, but that's a far cry from trying to make a case that the guy has never produced at the plate and is never going to produce ever again. Despite the tough 2023 season he still has produced a 96 wRC+ for his career up to this point, and he's shown nothing to categorically prove that he can't return to previous levels of success or improve his 2023 results. This is a player who had really nice minor league numbers, and in his first two seasons as a regular he produced league average or slightly better offensively. His early projections each show a fair bit of improvement from the 2023 struggles, with ZiPS projecting a 109 OPS+ and Steamer projecting a 108 wRC+. Perhaps those might be a touch optimistic but if two separate projection systems expect a significant bounceback from a single down season then it seems perfectly reasonable to expect for this to occur. XWOBA is not a perfect stat, and on it's own does not paint a complete picture of player performance in a singular season. It has a rather glaring omission in that it does not include spray angle, so as a result it can tend to undervalue players who have the ability to pull fly balls into the seats despite underwhelming exit velocity numbers. WOBA and xWOBA are not 100% correlated to each other, and as such there will be seasons where a player outperforms their expected stats, and seasons where they underperform their expected stats. Varsho had one season where he outperformed his expected stats by 20 points, and 1 season where he underperformed his expected stats by 10 points. With a 100% direct correlation perhaps his career wRC+ output would drop by a few points, but this wouldn't likely be a drastic swing dropping him to something like a career 80 wRC+. If you look at Varsho's home/away splits there is one particular component which sticks out like a sore thumb. Home vs R 52 wRC+ Home vs L 84 wRC+ Away vs R 105 wRC+ Away vs L 120 wRC+ Varsho's 2023 numbers were essentially ruined because he struggled against right handed pitching in the Rogers Center. This is a player with a 101 career wRC+ vs right handed pitching, so there is good reason to expect that this will be a crazy anomaly which is not going to happen again in the future. You are making this grand declaration about the book being out on Varsho after a single down season at the plate. From the listed splits it appears as though he only had a massive hole against right handed pitching, but then only at home at Rogers Center. I guess opposition pitchers chose not to exploit this uncorrectable hole on the road in order to be fair to Varsho or something. You have declared that Varsho has some sort of fatal flaw in his swing where he has no chance to make adjustments. Varsho actually made an adjustment by adding a toe tap in early August, and this immediately saw an improvement to his results. Over his last 50 games he produced a 116 wRC+ including incremental improvements to his batted ball metrics, strikeout and walk rates, with the biggest gains seen in a return of his HR/FB rate returning to values more resembling his career norms.

That post might as well be written in gobbledygook. You need to learn how to string words together into a sentence that resembles the English language.

Got something of use to add here? Feel free to pick a side and add to the debate.

Huh? This post makes absolutely no sense.

Varsho strikes out at approximately 1% higher than league average. You are acting completely irrational in nearly all of your posts lately, it seems like maybe somebody needs to get laid or something.

What voodoo metric is this that you are referencing? Varsho was exactly average by wRC+ in 2021 and 7% above league average by wRC+ in 2022. You should chill out here, Varsho is a low average/high power hitter when he's at his best, but that is far from a terrible hitter despite your incoherent ranting.

It's all well and good to be jealous about Baltimore but it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison given how bad Baltimore was during their tank style rebuild. They get full credit for hitting on so many of their picks but it's impossible to ignore how much they benefited from being able to pick from the top of the draft 1st overall twice, 2nd overall once, and 5th overall in a 5 year span. This would have also given them a far higher draft budget, and as a smaller market club they also receive extra picks and budget in the competitive balance rounds. This allowed them to essentially pick 4-5 top 100 level talents in every one of those seasons. Add in the fact that they are going to be further rewarded for their tanking efforts and small market with even more potential picks for having these players succeed upon callup and they are set for a potential dynasty. The amateur acquisition and development definitely experienced a lull after Bo, Vlad and Cavan emerged and that's one of the primary reasons why the system is light on impact talent in the upper levels of the minors at the moment. It's completely disingenuous to give zero credit for later round players and amateur international free agents signings and act like they don't count just because you don't care for the general manager. There have been quite a few minor league players traded to supplement the major league roster from the listed draft years. That's just as valid of a use for minor league assets as playing them on your own roster, but it would definitely be preferrable if the team can start developing more of it's own home grown talent for long term sustainability. On top of that there are still players who were drafted/signed in the listed time frame that are still working their way through the system as well so the book isn't fully closed on those years at this point. Guys like Barger, Orelvis and Leo Jiminez were acquired during the years you mentioned and they are nearing readiness for their first call up. A lot of the 2020 acquisitions are still pretty young/raw as well so it simply wouldn't be realistic for some of these players to have debuted already. Dudes like Kendrys Rojas and Dasan Brown are some such players who still have a shot to at least make it to the majors at some point. The 2020 draft was shortened dramatically due to the pandemic, and there were far fewer opportunities to actually lay eyes on these players before the draft. It really sucks that the team drafted a bit of a dud in Martin but at least they were able to turn him into Berrios in trade. At the same time most players lost a year due to the pandemic when no minor league games were played, so it's not overly surprising that this particular draft year and subsequent lost year slowed the development of a lot of the players in the system. This would have certainly been a factor for other teams as well so it doesn't completely excuse the relative lack of results by any means but it had to have been a factor in the lack of development for many earlier in the decade.