ConstableRabbit

I was being mostly tongue-in-cheek, but Arenado has been better over the last few seasons. If you're replacing Bryant with Arenado, and Arenado opts out, it means he's balled out over two seasons. If Bryant has somehow been that great over those two seasons you can discuss trying to sign him, but he's going to be older and probably not worth the long term deal he'll want. I'm not sure that he's going to hit some new gear and decide to be a 7 WAR guy again because FA is getting closer but it would be cool if he did. ETA: this is actually fun. Just added a poll.

Bryant will be a FA

nah that ship has sailed the past couple years imo aside from the injuries and the concern they cause (vs. arenado who has played at least 155 games every year since 2015), arenado fields 3B at an elite level and is just about as good a hitter. kb's defensive numbers have taken a big step back the past couple years from where the were in 2016. Now this is the kind of creeping anti-Bryant content I am here for. It is neither creeping nor anti-Bryant to say that his MVP contender days are likely over and that he's "merely" a top 20ish hitter in MLB with middling 3B defense.

I wonder if they did this, the goal would be to get under the tax next year and not this year. Maybe this would be viewed as an exception to add a long-term star. We also could maybe get them to take Chatwood for the year in a deal and throw in some prospects with it to help the LT burden this year. It seems like they have been avoiding the year 3 tax like the plague so this could work, especially if they are comfortable with being under next year and the overage this year is small enough so that the higher year 2 tax isn't too impactful.

Unions generally prioritize tenure over everything else. The MLBPA has shown that they are cool making tradeoffs to this end based on how they've set up service time, pre-FA salaries... even minor league players. They could put these issues to the forefront in negotiations, but they've probably have to give up other items they've deemed more important.

I’m excited about the pen.

Hmmm, yes if only there was something they could do about it One thing that they probably are not going to do is trust that staff 100% about Strop, who they'd love to have bounce back if he was able to.

The Cubs know Strop better than anyone and he wanted to come back. That the Cubs didn’t sign him but did sign Jeffers probably says more about what they think about his arm than anything. I’m not giving the medical staff the benefit of doubt that they made the right decision here based on health. Jeffress had shoulder and hip injuries last year. If you're critical of the medical staff I can only imagine how frustrated Theo and Jed are. With that said, they had a lot of info on him. If he was willing to sign for the same money and he went somewhere else, there must be something there. Full disclosure: I love Strop as much as anyone and am sad he's not back.

The Cubs know Strop better than anyone and he wanted to come back. That the Cubs didn’t sign him but did sign Jeffers probably says more about what they think about his arm than anything.

not fair to take it out on the pitchers Oh who will think of the innocent pitchers who mysteriously all had their spin rates spike when they got to Houston?!

His justification for the Cubs makes no sense and he says as much lol

Or any other season. Only the sort of move you make if you've basically given up. Not a good baseball player and has the same flaws our roster was already riddled with. He's basically Ian Stewart. Decent troll. 6/10.

A lot of these guys seem to have high spin curves. With the success last year we heard about having guys switch to/learn the knuckle curve with Wick, Wieck and Yu I wonder if that’s the angle with the high spin guys. If only there was another guy on the staff who has a good knuckle curve...

I saw on TV that he's the 3rd heaviest player in the NBA at 285. Like I can't figure out that he's just that fat or that they're lying on TV cuz there has to be more than 2 guys in the NBA that weighs more. Felicio has to be one. I don't watch enough NBA now to know any others. Boban has to be the heaviest. He’s well over 7 feet.

Yeah, it's kind of like when a board of directors woos a successful CEO with a great track record and a big offer with base + company performance incentives, only for the CEO to realize that the rest of the C-suite is full of b-players who the board won't support replacing with better (and more expensive) execs. The person is paid a lot but is worth a lot, and can't win as the team is constructed. I can't imagine how frustrating that would be.

Harden and Dantley both have effective field goal percentages higher than Kobe and Jordan. They aren’t typically throwing up bricks all night.

I think it depends on how it’s executed tbh. It doesn’t work on national broadcasts in large part because broadcasters on national telecasts... don’t really say much. The big value of color commentators outside of explaining more details of what’s happening on the field is providing anecdotes from playing and helping listeners understand what it’s like to be in a given situation. If this is done well it will be a lot of fun. If thing that is never done well is done well it would be good. I think the problem is the talent and remit of that talent; others think it’s the format. Reasonable people can disagree.

The pre game and post game stuff and studio shows I don’t care about. Those are usually bad and they got some good names for that anyways that have ties to the org and have experience doing shows already (Pena, DeRosa, etc.). Throwing a third person in the booth with Len and JD is horsefeathering dumb and unnecessary though. They have great chemistry, they don’t need a wrench thrown in. If they want to throw a third person in the camera well or something like they’ve done with Glanville to chime in here and there, fine, but a third person in the booth for a whole broadcast is stupid. I think it depends on how it’s executed tbh. It doesn’t work on national broadcasts in large part because broadcasters on national telecasts... don’t really say much. The big value of color commentators outside of explaining more details of what’s happening on the field is providing anecdotes from playing and helping listeners understand what it’s like to be in a given situation. If this is done well it will be a lot of fun.

If they’re going to extend Baez they’d almost certainly be over the CBT next year, which could be some justification for getting under this year given the penalties.

You guys are so negative. The on air talent is going to be 10x better than what we’re used to. We lived with David Dejesus as the top non-broadcast analyst for years. It’s going to be fun.

[tweet] [/tweet] Bauer, you may recall, was also roasted for insinuating that Houston was cheating with gripping substances for increasing spin rate.

nah. she sucks for this but she does a good job on tv and is the only good thing about that booth. matty v is the man. Second this. I like Matt V.

i enjoyed Mendoza's commentary on ESPN but her worst characteristic was trying to co-opt red-ass viewpoints to earn her insider credibility and this is a real bad case of it Mendoza has always sucked just like every other national color commentator. This cements that she still sucks.

Sure it's a gamble and inviting disaster to a degree, but so is signing vets and depending on them like Brach, Carl, Duensing, etc of years past. Of course I wasn't happy with it but the point was they were able to take unknowns and find something with 3 guys, I have faith they can do it again. My biggest gripe with the pen last year was they weren't aggressive with getting guys up sooner because they were stuck with bad vets without options. Wick should've been up much sooner. Joe also seemed to make the wrong mistakes often (no entirely his fault given the talent wasn't great but he managed the pen poorly). How wasn't Ryan all that great? ERA/FIP in the 3s, good GB rate (13th best GB rate of all qualified RPs), limited HR's, good enough K numbers, BB were a bit high but he's been better in that area before, he was really good vs lefties and adequate enough vs RHB to be able to face 1-2 in an outing with the new 3 batter rule. He also changed up his pitch mix a bit from previous years (more cutters and curves and cut back FB usage and essentially stopped throwing his change). As a guy who projects to be the 3rd to 6th best RP (depending on how things shake out) I think he's plenty solid. Wieck obviously was a small sample but the eye test and numbers say he was really good, again also changed his pitch mix once he came over. The difference is that with vets you have some level of expectation when being brought in. You don't know what to expect when bringing in untested, young pitchers. As you said, it's great if you discover one, but the risk is high if you're a contending team. Of course, we didn't have any choice with PTR crying about the LT. One of the reasons our pen sucked last year is that we depended on guys who had been good to very good before and tried to let them work it out before realizing that they just sucked.

Let’s see if they actually come back for senior year.