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This is easily the worst fantasy football team I've ever seen, and sadly it's mine. Autopick goofiness in an auction draft where the computer decided I didn't need to bid more than $1 on any player..... QB Bradford Palmer Flacco Alex Smith RB Tate Hillis Vereen WR Titus Young Blackmon Mike Williams (TB) Burleson Hankerson Jon Baldwin TE Daniels K/D/ST Gould Bills I've made a bunch of moves to try to at least get upside guys on the roster, but without much in free agency I don't think it's very salvageable.

I've always liked Castillo, but as a backup and not as a starter. My reasoning was that his highest full season OPS in the minors was .757 prior to his 2010 OPS of .815, which was in the extremely offense-happy PCL. I'd love it if he does become an average or better starting (offensive) catcher and catchers do tend to develop later than other players offensively, but I've never been a big believer in his offensive capabilities.

Considering how little this front office says anything, it doesn't surprise me. My guess is they'll make an announcement sometime right before/after he makes his last start of the season.

Wow, I definitely would love your team. My main reason for having a preference for Rodgers and Calvin is that there are very few to no questions for either - both are definite starters, neither have considerable injury issues, and neither has lingering issues that may come back to bite them. I also like the depth at RB better than at QB or WR and both Rodgers/Calvin are either better (in a redraft) or head and shoulders better (keeper/dynasty) than the rest of the players at their position. Arian has had fumble issues since his Tennessee days and is a fumble too many or an injury away from losing his job (and/or lots of touches) to Ben Tate. Rice has a lot of mileage on his legs and runs a very punishing style - those types of backs don't generally last real long (though that's less of an issue in a redraft league) and I'm concerned about early decline for him. McCoy could lose some playing time, but he's more of a shifty back than Rice and has more job security than Arian.

Why do you think Hendry gave the players NTCs if it wasn't a necessary part of the contract? Just for the heck of it? A GM doesn't give a player anything in a contract that isn't necessary to get the deal done - either he got the player to take a little less money (almost definitely the case with Aramis and Lee) or the player simply wouldn't sign the deal without the NTC. It may be either case with Z and Soriano, but I strongly doubt that Hendry offered them the NTC out of the goodness of his heart. The question then becomes, was inclusion of the NTC enough to make you want to not sign that player? On Z I'd say absolutely no - the contract was generally considered good at the time and it worked out pretty well for us overall - and with Soriano I'd say the NTC was the least of the problems with that contract - the NTC is irrelevant because nobody will trade for him anyway.

Good point, I'm being unfair to Cherington. Is 1.6 MPH off his fastball enough to take him from a very good starter to replaceable? He's still sitting solidly in the low 90s (91.4 overall) with it, so while I doubt he's a top of the line starter anymore, I don't think he's so bad that I'd want to give him away for nothing but salary relief. He's signed through his age 35 season and isn't an abnormally fat player like Prince. The decline in numbers this year is a concern, but if a couple blips in his peripherals made them change their minds from considering his deal a very good deal (which is all I've heard about his contract) to one that is seen as a problem then they're overreacting on a pretty major scale. And for a big market team to trade a very good to great, 30 year old cornerstone and a solid pitcher with the possibility of rebounding just for the sake of dumping one bad contract, I'm glad that GM isn't running my team because that's a pretty major waste of talent and waste of the big market advantage. You also can't discount the gigantic amount of talent they traded away in Adrian Gonzalez and, to a lesser extent, Josh Beckett for a decent return. I'm not ignoring the salary they got rid of, but very talented major league players are a valuable commodity and shouldn't be dealt simply because you have the opportunity to shed their salary and then try to spend it on somebody else who you hope is as good as the guys you got rid of. I'm not forgetting them - they're included when I say the package the Sox got is right around what I would have demanded for Gonzalez (and the vast majority of his salary) alone. Beckett (and his salary) should have garnered them a decent amount more.

This is the only thing I disagree with in your post. Hendry's penchant for giving NTCs has been massively overstated. The only oddball one he gave out was to Shark and I'm almost positive not one single NTC came back to bite us. By the time it made sense to trade any of the players with NTCs, I'm pretty sure their 10/5 rights had kicked in. Used intelligently, NTCs can be an excellent way to bring down the total price of a contract, even slightly, and that's a good thing when you're wading out into the FA market.

I'm on the other side of the fence - I think it's a much better deal for the Dodgers and I kind of wonder about the Red Sox' motivation to do this. Gonzalez' numbers are down this year, but he's still on pace to be a 4-5 WAR guy and the only stats that have dropped off are his BB% and HR/FB. Both are concerns, but neither is a clear indication of a decline and considering he's only 30 for most of next year, decline is very unlikely. Beckett has had a down year this year, but his BB/9 is still good and his xFIP is a pretty average 4.39. He's been a good to very good pitcher every year since 2006 other than this year and is signed to a respectable amount of money for just 2 more years - it's perfectly reasonable to think he can bounce back and be worth the money over that time period. Crawford's the only clearly bad contract being dealt here and, honestly, I'd want what the Dodgers gave up (or close) for Gonzalez alone, so the Red Sox are basically just giving away Beckett and Crawford for salary relief. This trade makes me glad that we got Theo and not Cherington from Boston.

I don't understand why the minor leaguers are exempt from the waiver process. Seems like they should have to clear waivers as well. Or is this a ptbnl type thing? If they're not on the 40 man (not sure if this is the case for any of them) then they don't have to be put on waivers. If they're on the 40 man, then I'd guess most or all of them will be PTBNLs until the Dodgers can trade them.

I think what's being lost in this discussion is that it shouldn't have been, nor should it be going forward, a case of either signing big name, elite FAs right now or tanking. There is a middle ground that I think is being ignored by both sides here. My primary issue with this strategy of tanking 2-3 seasons and then by year 4 being a juggernaut is that it's very likely to not work that way. There's a very large chance that if we decide to start trying to contend in 2015 that the necessary pieces won't be available in the 2014 offseason - thus giving us the choice of either overpaying for less than ideal pieces (Soriano-esque) or pushing back our timeline of contention. What we should be looking at doing is making incremental improvements as they come available that make us better now and in future seasons. It doesn't have to be the biggest name guys that we're signing, but adding guys who can help us both today and 3-5 years down the road is what I'm looking for. This past offseason, think of guys like Wei-Yin Chen, Darvish, Cespedes. For the upcoming season, think of guys like Upton, Stephen Drew (if Barney becomes a sell-high guy), Edwin Jackson, Liriano, etc. All of those guys are on the right side of 30 and would be assets to the major league roster that provide incremental improvements that lessen the challenge of adding numerous players in one offseason whenever it is that we decide to compete again, but none would cost so much as to be prohibitive to building a perennial powerhouse. My argument has never been that we must contend right now or it's a failure. My argument is that we should add pieces to the major league roster intelligently as they become available so that we keep a level of respectability, giving us the opportunity to jump at a chance to contend should one present itself.

3.74 FIP, 3.81 xFIP, 10.84 K/9, 46.4 GB% The only thing on his statline that really jumps out as bad is his BB/9 (an exceptionally abysmal 4.88). He's been pretty good this year and has a chance to be even better if you can get those walks under control.

There's a guy I'd like to have in case they decide not to turn the Cubs into the 1993-2011 Pirates. Choo just turned 30, and could be worth a 5 year deal, especially judging by the upcoming free agent class. What would it take to pry him away from the Indians, and would it be worth it? I'd like Choo a lot, but I imagine the Indians will ask for too much and he may be a tad too old for the price tag he'll likely command. I'd rather pursue Upton this offseason.

Da'Rick Rogers has been suspended indefinitely and Dooley expects that he won't return at all. This sucks. A Bray/Hunter/Rogers/CP group would have made for a really nice offense. It still could be really good if the offensive line and Rajion Neal perform like they should.

They'd probably say no. The Marlins probably should have done things differently, but I was never a fan of most (or any) of their offseason moves.

We missed out on Darvish too, but the whole blind bid part plays into that and murks up how much we really wanted him. I was also a big fan of Wei-Yin Chen and still think that would have been a solid move to make. I'm also talking about the upcoming offseason as well and arguing that we should make intelligent moves to improve the major league roster then. Guys like Upton/Greinke/Sanchez/Drew (if he reaches FA now) could be good moves that shouldn't be disregarded simply because we want a higher draft pick. TT answered this in the Garza thread and I don't think I could state it better: As for the average 31 year old SP signing a 3/30 contract, please point me to where I said we should do that. I've even argued against the Buerhle types that would match your description. I've also argued that we shouldn't give up first round picks in signing players, unless the player is really worth it. I don't think there's anybody this upcoming offseason I would advocate doing that with, off the top of my head. I've never argued we should go all out to win now - I've argued we should pursue players that fit a win now and later philosophy, while at the same time doing a better job than other organizations of scouting the draft and IFA in order to outdraft them. This front office's biggest strength is their ability to evaluate amateur talent better than others. Once again, it's not all about the big name FA. It's about adding talent intelligently as it comes available and working to make the major league roster respectable while still building up the farm. I was a Pujols advocate, but there were other moves we could have made that could have made us better and there are moves we can make this offseason that can bring us closer to respectable next year and help us win in future seasons as well. None of those moves would hurt our chances of being a powerhouse long term and very likely would help in that pursuit. We're all arguing in favor of a long term powerhouse here, we just have different methods of getting there.

I apologize, I didn't feel that really changed the sentiment at all. So you believe a team can only become good if they're awful for multiple seasons or have a payroll in the $250 million range, unless they get lucky? I also fail to see how winning now and in the future is nonsensical or illogical, but we clearly have a huge gap between what we see as possible anyway. You did explain yourself, it just didn't make me agree with it any more. I'm not going to be real happy if we tank 3 seasons in order to be able to win 90+ games for 5 of 7 seasons - no matter why we didn't win for those 2 seasons. The Braves reeled off 13 90+ win seasons in 14 years. The Yankees have won 90+ in 14 of the past 16 seasons. We may not replicate exactly those extremely high runs, but they are signs that we should shoot quite a bit higher than 90+ wins in 5 out of 7 seasons. Especially since we have one of the best front offices in baseball and one of the biggest markets in baseball with a new cable deal likely coming relatively soon.

My interpretation wasn't that they would come out "checkbooks blazing" and stock the farm system. My interpretation was that they would make moves that kept the major league roster at a respectable level while still building up the farm system in the process. What we did was completely ignore adding real major league talent outside of buy low opportunities and put all of our focus into the minors and there's the belief that this will continue for at least one more season. I agree with CCP on this part - I don't think Theo thinks it was a lie and you can probably finagle around on technicalities that say it wasn't, but I don't think the FO had any intention of attempting to put a contender or a team that could conceivably be a contender on the field this past offseason. I think they'd like to try. I think it's too coincidental that Theo started talking about the conversations he and others had in Boston about building like that and mentioning that if he had it to do over again, he might do it that way. I don't think the plan is necessarily to be 100% home-grown, but if they completely ignore the FA market for at least 2, if not 3, seasons - other than adding trade bait - before looking to add any real major league talent externally, then I think it's reasonable that their plan is to build very largely internally. I think they probably thought things would go quicker before the CBA, and maybe the new CBA gave them the opportunity they wanted to go through with this plan. As for the egregious deception, I don't think they see it as that - they see it as the necessary PR talk that most any organization would do. They're not going to come out and say that they plan to tank multiple seasons any more than any organization would say that.

That's a pretty strong statement you made, and then you followed up by arguing and then defending the argument that if we tank 3 seasons we'll be able to win for about 5 out of 7 following that. That's if the plan works, and that's a really big if - even with this front office. I want to see that offseason plan that has us adding $30-40 million in payroll in one offseason because we haven't really spent anything prior to that because we weren't ready to contend. It's hard to believe there won't be any really bad contracts in there, even with this front office. I still have a lot of trouble believing this front office couldn't build the farm system to a very high level without tanking multiple seasons. Especially since we've had high draft picks for the past 2 drafts already. I hope we do love the final product, but if that final product is good for 5 years and that's it, it simply won't be worth it.

And that scares the hell out of me. Yeah, if any front office group can pull this off, it's our current one. But I'm really concerned that it's going to lead to either an extended period of being bad (i.e. too many prospects bust and we suck through 2015-2016) or the Theo regime is going to feel the need to reach on a signing or two and we'll have a couple Soriano/Crawford-esque contracts.

The bolded is exactly what the Braves did, though. They rebuilt their farm system and produced guys like Smoltz/Glavine/A Jones/Chipper/Neagle/Scmidt/Wohlers/etc and built around them. If you're arguing that the CBA keeps teams from being good for extended periods of time without the excessively high payroll, then it sounds like you're arguing exactly what SSR asked and you denied earlier.

A combination of A and C, maybe a tiny bit of D. I'd go 75/25 between A and C. I think the "dual fronts" talk was mainly just PR to keep as many people possible interested and coming to the park. But I think the Theo regime is intrigued by the chance to build from the farm almost entirely and they see their opportunity to do that in Chicago with the media/fan frenzy for "young players who really want it and care" instead of "old, overpaid guys who just want to count their millions." Likely finding out the minors were a bit more barren than they originally thought just encouraged that line of thought.

Honestly, I'm going to be extremely disappointed if we sacrifice 3 seasons so that we could contend for 5. With our resources and the men leading us, there's no reason we shouldn't be able to pull off a Braves-esque run of 10+ years. Especially since we're tanking multiple seasons to build up that core that the Braves used.

Very possible. I'd still make the offer in hopes that we could get him and then go from there.

Unless they like Hinshaw.

That will have to happen, yes. Bowden, Maine or maybe Beliveau is my guess. This is a longshot, but I wonder if there's a trade in the works.