Tim

Literally nobody here is saying that. Even I wasn't saying that when I posted it.

I have to admit that this is the most optimistic I've been about a season since the Lovie era. That's really not saying much, though.

Along with everyone else, thank you Raisin for maintaining this throughout the year!

Nah

That's what they said.

Third.

ANTHONY

That was horrendous.

I vote for robZ

Replace him with next best option, then.

I'm really starting to wonder if we go after Bryce or Machado unless we can get a relative bargain. I think we may see an offseason that goes something like this... Exercise options on: Hamels Quintana Strop Trade: Chatwood, Duensing, Kintzler for whatever savings can be had (assume we can save $6M while paying the rest) for lottery tickets LaStella for relief prospect? Sign: Yasmani Grandal Justin Wilson Jesse Chavez Lineup: Contreras / Rizzo / Baez / Russell / Bryant / Zobrist / Heyward / Schwarber Bench: Happ / Almora / Grandal / Bote Rotation: Hamels / Lester / Hendricks / Darvish / Quintana Swing: Montgomery / Smyly Bullpen: Morrow / Strop / Edwards / Cishek / Wilson / Chavez Shuttle: Maples / Mekkes / Webster / Norwood / Alzolay / etc That might be a disappointing outcome for us, but it would be enough below max luxury tax that they could make in-season moves. The starting pitching is seven deep. The bullpen could use one more guy and they could sign someone else to join the crew, but there's a lot of quality depth building up in AAA. Signing Grandal would encourage Joe to give more rest to Willson and Grandal might be able to help him improve his framing, for whatever that's worth. Hopefully Russell's nagging injuries this year have been the reason for his performance, much like Zobrist last year. Bote replaces LaStellas as the last man on the bench, though they may keep Tommy since they love his fit in the pinch hitting role. I'd call that the "If it ain't broke" offseason. ---------------------- On another note...I could see them falling in love with what Murphy has brought to the offense and prioritizing extending him this offseason.

Robles keeps choosing to run into walls every year, Realmuto lost a year a service time since then...Almora, Montgomery, Caratini (in which case go grab one of the many floating backup Cs for cheap, which they should do anyway), Mills, and Marquez for Realmuto and Conley Doesn’t that offseason cover the needs? Harper, first division SP, more reliever depth, better lineup, better bench...We’re quibbling about potentially being a couple million over the LT for a year to acquire Harper, Realmuto, and Stroman in one offseason when natural FA losses will cover both those guys’ ‘19 and ‘20 salaries I don't know that you could prove Stroman is better than Monty right now.

You know we need to keep ~40 on the 40 man roster, right? how will replacing minimum cost players with other minimum cost players help?

Framing numbers are a really inexact science and have a huge amount of variance from year to year (are not that predictive). I'm not at all certain they have been able to separate out the catcher impact vs pitcher. For example, when Chatwood is constantly out of the zone, is it harder to get strikes called for any catcher? For example, in 2016, Willson was far better than Realmuto based on BP's data. For me, if this were a true measurement of a real skill, there would be a higher degree of auto-correlation from year to year. Heck, Welington Castillo was top 10 in baseball last year. He was bottom 10 in 2016. He's bottom 15 again this year. Is he a good framer or no? Did he learn the skill last year and then forget it this year? It's an interesting data point, but not consistent enough to be a determining factor for me.

:flythew: :flythew:

It would have to go over the little chain link fence to be a home run.

Lester getting a nice, long blow between innings here.

You continue to be obsessed with Stroman. It's possible that he's not as good as he was projected to be.

Strange how it turns out Junior Guerra wasn't really cy young material.

He's got like 100 more innings caught than anyone else in baseball this year.

Atta boy Davey.

:flythew:

We will draft guys from that list. We always do.

Indians aren't as good as they appear to be. Half their games this year have been against KC, CWS, Detroit & Minn. Imagine how good all our players' stats would be if that were the case for us.

I'll take a guess of Steele being one of the pitchers we send.