Transmogrified Tiger

In the way I would prefer to prioritize it, you basically choose whether the money goes to 1B or CF. In this case I felt like there's more potential upside in buying low on a positionless hitter than there is mining for CF gold among the defense-first options, but from a payroll perspective you're in a similar enough place if you, say, trade for Victor Robles and sign Abreu/Bell.

There's definitely some risk there, but he did get it surgically corrected, and if that is the cause then without it he wouldn't be available. I think it'd be fair to question if the production comes back *quickly* even if you're optimistic it will(the surgery was in September after all), so I'm not gonna gnash teeth about if it's Walsh or your favorite buy low bat that gets added.

I've been kicking around various offseason plans in my head for a while and I think this could end up in the realm of possibility Sign Correa - 35M AAV Sign Senga - 4/65 Sign Narvaez 2/12 Sign Bellinger 1/12 Trade Sampson to LAA for Jared Walsh Trade for Trevor Rogers Sign 2-3 RP for total of 10M AAV The end result here I think addresses most of the major criticisms of the team as a whole: - It adds a star position player and lineup anchor in Correa - It adds more pop, bringing in above average power production at C, SS/2B, probably DH, and maybe CF - It adds a variety of offensive profiles that avoid worsening any current imbalances in terms of plate discipline or GB rate, while adding several LHH to help the offense be as good as the sum of its parts(or better) - It significantly improves the team defense, and in particular up the spine with C, 2B/SS, and CF - It adds 2 SP who can fit in a playoff rotation and have big enough stuff to thrive against good offenses - With those moves the team would be roughly 16-20 million under the LT(depending on if you get Bellinger or not), which means you have room to extend Hoerner and possibly Happ too while still having some deadline room before you lose 50M+ AAV that are mostly not expensive/urgent to replace after 2023. What it looks like altogether:

Other interests I assume is code for "running teams that aren't spending 20% of their payroll on Christian Yelich until the heat death of the universe"

If it lowers his market a bit I'd definitely be willing to take that chance, the floor on catcher hitting is so low and the fit with the existing options would help too. I wouldn't give him 3/24 on that belief, but if that 2nd half scared off everyone to the extent he can't exceed the Gomes deal? I'd be on that for sure.

Does Vazquez actually have reverse splits? Career his wRC+ is 81/92 v. RHP/LHP, and last year was a standard platoon 89/130. Closer to split neutral than many, but not really ideal against RHP. Especially when Narvaez is also a FA and carries most of these same benefits while being a LHH.

Celtic and Rangers are 0-8-2 in Champions League (the 2 is a pair of 1-1 draws against Shakhtar), with 4 goals for and 29 against. Beginning to wonder if the median SPL team would win in USL.

I can't tell if it's on the inner third, but it's definitely off a lefty

MLS's new approach of just playing a series of world cup-style tournaments all year long may go up in flames but I'm nothing if not intrigued: https://theathletic.com/3730955/2022/10/25/mls-considering-significant-overhaul-of-playoff-format-sources/

I'd personally be a little more conservative and round down to 70 to account for a potential Happ extension, possibly keeping Ortega if other OF are traded, and a little larger deadline buffer. I think that also forces the type of plans that probably hem closer to reality in terms of targets, even if the FO ends up using 80 million of bandwidth. But either way, it really sells the ultimate limitation you're dealing with, and it helps to work backwards to see how practical things might be. For example, there's been a fair amount of 'go get two TOR starters' floating around Cubs twitter as we watch guys like Wheeler and Verlander dominate the playoffs, but in the FA sense you've basically exhausted your budgetary headroom to get 2 of those guys plus a star SS without addressing C, 1B/DH, CF, or the pen. Maybe it works if one comes via trade, but considering those likely restraints and the developmental success they've had, it feels likely that a 2nd SP is gonna be more speculative.

15 teams, including at least 2 in every division, have won a pennant since the last time the Yankees did.

On the other hand though, the bunt from Grisham, woof. Punting on one of your 2 chances to keep your season alive when Grisham isn't a prime DP candidate just to raise the odds that Austin Nola gives you the lead?

It's a tough call, if you bring on Hader you pretty much need him to get all 6 outs considering the state of the bullpen, and there isn't a significant LHH until you get back to Schwarber 6 hitters later(though Stott and Marsh are LHH). Suarez was excellent against both righties and lefties this year, and that HR was the first he'd given up to a LHH. true, but hader had only pitched 1 inning in the nlcs. I thibk you use him for harper and if he can't go 6 outs you take your chances with someone else. the hit from realmuto to start the inning really made things difficult. I certainly wouldn't have criticized them for doing that. I do get the logic here though, Suarez already got a GIDP in his first matchup against Harper, and trusting him to not get burned over Harper/Castellanos/Bohm and then turning over to Hader for whatever is needed to get to 27 outs from there makes sense to me too.

It's a tough call, if you bring on Hader you pretty much need him to get all 6 outs considering the state of the bullpen, and there isn't a significant LHH until you get back to Schwarber 6 hitters later(though Stott and Marsh are LHH). Suarez was excellent against both righties and lefties this year, and that HR was the first he'd given up to a LHH.

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Funny enough I was adding up an almost identical offseason earlier. The "obvious" valve is going cheaper on SP2 than Smyly, but he's the strongest sourced rumor of all of them and 5 million only goes so far. The other one I can see working is finding a trade for the bat, hopefully using the likes of Madrigal and/or Sampson since Jansen will probably cost something a little more painful. You've mentioned Seth Brown before, maybe the Angels would move on from Jared Walsh? The Rays will probably part with Ji-Man Choi, or maybe Gallo comes cheap enough since the Dodgers didnt' fix him? I'd love the relative predictability of Abreu, but not enough to forego any of the other substantial additions.

Without thinking too deeply about it, I'd say 10-12 million. If he can get to 20 million then my guess is he won't be non-tendered because the Dodgers could extract at least something for him on his Arb 3 salary if the market is that strong.

I didn't list trade candidates to avoid getting too bogged down in what folks thought were possible options/reasonable prices, but I did frame this as 'investment' because I think the same dynamic holds true with the trade market. They aren't going to run a 300 million dollar payroll and they aren't going to trade half their Top 10 prospects, and moving downwards from that extreme example they will need to make some tradeoff on whether they use marginal players/money on plugging one hole vs. another. Yes there are probably trade candidates who are better bets than others without breaking the bank, but there's also buy low free agents(one example being our near universal interest in a non-tendered Bellinger) and ultimately there's a sacrifice of some certainty or ceiling in doing so.

Curious how folks feel about one of the possible position player tradeoffs. To my eyes, the two position player needs aside from star IF and catching help are 1B/DH/"Bat", and CF help that is ideally defensively strong. With the aforementioned IF, C, and pitching help, it seems likely that you'll have to choose one to invest significant resources in while going cheaper with the other. So would you rather have: 1)Greater investment in a bat(e.g. Abreu, Josh Bell, Wil Myers) and less investment in the CF(there's a bunch of cheap LHH defensive CF that K too much: Phillips, Quinn, Zimmer, etc) 2)Greater investment in the CF(e.g. Bellinger, Nimmo if his market isn't strong), and go cheaper on the bat(find another Frazier/Reyes, maybe Tellez) There are probably ways to split the difference a bit(e.g. Kiermaier and Mancini), but I'm more interested in if people feel strongly about which one should be prioritized.

For filling this particular roster spot, there is a large difference in magnitude of investment in giving Contreras 4/75 vs. giving Abreu 2/32, and those estimates are probably more conservative for Contreras than they are for Abreu(at least in years). The 3rd and 4th year belonging to a younger player doesn't change that they'll be ages 33 and 34 for a guy with about 1000 pro games of catching wear on his body. More importantly, what makes this pointless is that the front office is not interested in Contreras as a catcher capable DH, and Contreras is not interested in being a 1B/LF/DH. If the front office were enthusiastic about Contreras the catcher, they'd be pursuing him independent of Abreu because they need to add a catcher anyway or are knowingly underinvesting in the position.

Last full season. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal to ignore a weird pandemic shortened 60 game season especially when it was an outlier compared to the rest of his career. I'm not trying to relitigate the actual decision to keep Schwarber or claim his 2020 was absolute proof of his level at the time, but in the context of being surprised at the claim that Washington 'fixed' him, it definitely matters that he was near replacement level in 2020.

If I could sign Abreu or Contreras to identical short term contracts as a 1B/DH, I would lean towards Contreras because of age, even though Abreu has been a more productive hitter each of the last 3 years. They will not have the option to choose between Abreu and Contreras signing identical short term contracts, and part of the reason Contreras is functionally gone is that the front office doesn't value him as a catcher while he is not interested in being next-gen Nick Castellanos positionally, so it's a fairly pointless comparison to make.

2019 was not Schwarber's last season with the Cubs

I wonder if it's ever happened before that there were playoff games from different rounds on the same day.

lol no one ever hangs a breaking ball in the big leagues, what are we doing here Keith Was there not an extremely online debate about how noteworthy it was that Aaron Judge was constantly getting mistake pitches and hitting home runs off them constantly, like a month ago?