davell

HR on Dusty just now:"He had to overcome Votto's lack of RBI's this year."

I'm pulling for A-Rod.

I like TT's a bunch and mine wouldn't be very different honestly. So, I'll try to go a different direction just to see what happens..... We currently have 47 players on the 40 man, lessened by 5 FA, so we're at 42. I'm going to add Alcantara and Jokisch to it, to make 44. Then drop Putnam, McDonald, Neal, and Boscan to get back to 40. First trade- Shark and Schierholtz to KC for Yordano Ventura and Lorenzo Cain. Gives us an electric arm and a very good defensive CF, gives KC an innings eater with upside and the large side of a platoon with pop. Second trade- Castillo/Alcantara/Vogelbach/Cabrera/Candelario to Tampa for David Price. We get an ace, Tampa fills C longterm finally, gets a MI that likely also becomes a longterm fixture for them and gets a 1B/DH masher as well in a few years. Upside type in Candelario and also a live arm in Cabrera that they'd likely look at as a bullpen piece. These two trades put us at 37 on the 40 man and also leaves us without a C on the roster. That said, it gives us an ace and also gives us a CFer and the payroll, which I have at 69 mill prior to these moves hasn't moved much. To fill the 3 40 man spots, I'm going to sign Salty to a 4/40 deal. Seems high, but I think the lack of C on the market would get him into that range. I'll also sign Jose Molina to a 1/1 deal. And give Scott Baker a 1/3 deal with incentives. Team isn't finished yet, so I'm going to drop Trey McNutt off the 40 man and do the same with Lim, who would cost us 2.5 mill next year, if we kept him. At this point, we need bats, so I'll give Shin Soo Choo 6/102 and Corey Hart 1/5. It puts the payroll at 111 mill, which is fine, since there's no posting fee involved and we save 2 mill off the draft this year and at least 6 off of IFA spending. Lineup on Opening Day RF Choo SS Castro 1B Rizzo LF Hart 3B Valbuena C Saltalamacchia CF Cain 2B Barney BU Molina, Bogusevic, Olt or Vitters or Gamel, Lake, and Murphy or Watkins SP Price, Wood, E-Jax, Baker, Arrieta BP- Strop, Russell. Parker, Bard, Rondon, Grimm, and Villanueva You've got Ventura ready to come up at any point to give the rotation a true boost and you have Rusin as a fallback along with Hendricks. Bullpen has Rosscup, Rivero, Dolis(assuming he's not claimed)Raley, Neil Ramirez, Vizcaino, and Fujikawa coming back midseason. Offense has Javy replacing Barney after Super Two cut off, with possibility of Bryant coming up, if Olt doesn't pan out. Like I said at the outset, I like TT's, Tanaka and CarGo or Stanton are my top options, but this is another way to go and I think that it could put itself into contention and us adding midseason.....

Cubs just claimed Matt Gamel. Can't hurt to give him a look.

Are you figuring in the league wide TV money that's supposed to be in the area of 20-25M per team? Probably offset by our drop in revenue. Bring in Cargo and Tanaka and I'm guessing a lot of that lost revenue comes back. Doesn't matter in some ways. We can't show an operating loss at any point during a calendar year. Yes, we could up the payroll to 130 mill and be just fine with plenty of profitability at the end of the year- evidently we're just locked into a deal that keeps it from working that way.

I'm not saying he is, I understand that line of thinking. The quotes basically call him naive and/or raked over a barrel. Either way- It does suck for us.

I'll see smaller comments-"until Ricketts quits acting like a mid market owner" but that's the extent. Mostly from Mooney. Wittenmyer has been all over the debt issues though and while not voicing his own opinion, does have quotes basically calling Ricketts a moron.

Here's how I look at the posting fee, if our payroll is static: Looking at MLBTR'S arb expectations, we'll be around 70 mill after raises. We went into last year at 106. 36 mill of play area- give 10 to CarGo and 6 to Tanaka as a 1st year salary. Leaves us 20 mill. Add in the 2 mill we'll save from our draft budget by picking 4th instead of 2nd and let's figure they'll trade the IFA space, while last year we spent a bit over 10 mill counting penalties. So, 32 mill, minus a backup C, leaves 30. Need to take money from elsewhere to bid more if baseball ops DID in fact, spend entire budget last year.

I'm honestly not sure the worst poster on this site could have written anything that mindnumbingly stupid.

OldHossRadbourne just wrote an article for FoxSports. That eliminates Keith Law, who I've always thought ran that Twitter account? Who the hell could it be?

TT, just curious, how are you figuring 6/150 on Tanaka, in terms of posting versus salary? Also, is this yours or what you kind of suspect the FO to do? Great outlook, either way. I like it a lot.

I don't picture Kyle as someone who can rip our arms off.

If this is your attempt to bring a new negative shtick, try again. It was awful.

Hmm, can't take this as good news, but kind of glad to hear he had a legit excuse for his play with us as well. Olt isn't a true necessity for us, but if he gets the help he needs Texas is REALLY going to regret that deal.

True. My honest guess is we can find warts with anyone, probably even Maddon. Without looking at anything, my impression of Black is he's developed a fair amount of position players, has plenty of success stories with starting pitching, and has great success inventing bullpens. I'll look this stuff up when I'm finished with my meeting. I'm probably way off.

Who? Black? Sorry David. Just saw this. But yeah, Black is who I prefer, didn't know he runs as much as he does, but maybe that's based on what he's had to work with.

Works great with pitchers, tons of experience with youth. He's my top choice.

I could see him or Lake going in a deal like the CarGo one. Same here. Castillo may not be good fit with Rockies(Rosario) but he would be with the Marlins....

It doesn't worry me to hear the C thing. We may trade Castillo, but we're not signing someone to put Castillo on the bench. We know what we've got.

Love having Pedro in the booth.

Can we have Michael Keaton as our fan mascot please?

They're not baseball men.

As a longtime(now former) resident of Va Beach, I'll certainly disagree. I wanted it big time back during the Nats relocation. Just no way to make it work. Traffic is awful, no place to put stadium and the two tunnels people commute to and from work everyday already get backed up an hour on a normal day. Add in its a transient area with too many people coming and going quickly(military) its just not a realistic option.

This actually brings up a decent topic: contraction or moving teams.....Anyone got ideas on where a team could work at this point? 3rd team in NY, LA, or Chicago? Vegas? Anywhere else?

You hate poor, smart people with a passion? You serious Clark? I just don't see why anyone would hate the Rays, although I do appreciate a good Cousin Eddie reference.