Transmogrified Tiger

I believe Mowins did Sunday's game so might just be a couple days off.

I don't think it's quite fair to write off the rest of the trade as not impacting Betts' value. Yes the Red Sox were LT motivated and that's why they made the deal they did, but they made the deal they did knowing the salary relief that they were benefitting from Price's 31 million LT number(for 3 years!) going away. That said, I do think Steele and Davis is a half step better than Verdugo/Downs, and given Steele's service time is probably fairly appealing to the Angels compared to, say, Hoerner and his 3 arb years. Adding in a high variance/high ceiling guy like Hernandez feels pretty fair to me. However, I can see a number of teams that probably could cough up an above average pre-arb player, a top-50 prospect, and a top 100/high ceiling lottery ticket without sweating a ton, so you're putting yourself at the whims of Ohtani's preferences(probably good news) and the Angels prospect preferences(probably bad news vs. the field), filtered by those willing and able to pay him his contract(probably good news). Long story short, I can grin and bear a great deal for Ohtani under the assumption that 1) he wants to pitch for a while longer, 2) you aren't trading a Soto level amount of prospect capital, and 3) you aren't cutting down your chances in Ohtani's best years by raiding the MLB roster too much. Throw DJ Herz or Horton into the above deal and I don't really care as long as Ohtani signs, but you start tossing in Hoerners and Thompsons and it gets tough to build a short term championship team given how much you'd be paying Shohei.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Does Ohtani want to pitch through his next deal? I’m not sure if it was idle speculation but I’ve seen reports he only wanted to pitch for another year or so.

By ERA, FIP, FIP, K-BB%, fWAR, WPA, HR/FB%...Rodon's been anywhere from the best to the 5th best SP in baseball over the past two years. He's still easy top 10-15 when considering velocity, SwStr%, CSW%, and only slips towards top 30 because of IP and GS. This is to say swapping him out for Noah Syndergaard would totally take the spirit out of a run prevention offseason. Syndergaard's 27% CSW is barely league average for a SP and actually worse than Kyle Hendricks' 28%. His 1.6 fWAR over the past two years, knowing 2021 went to injury, is right with Hendricks' 1.7. He may be "safer" than Hendricks for 2023, but he's about the same talent tier and a big step down from this prime Rodon Worth noting, since the SSs are in your discussion, that only Bogaerts and Swanson are plus defenders at the position this year among the top 4 FA SSs...only Boagerts across the FGs fielding board...If the spirit is satisfied by this swap, assuming we're OK with Correa or Turner in this run prevention oriented hypothetical, it's in a very different way than the original Yes, the idea is a less expensive pitcher wouldn’t quite be as good, though the comparison to Hendricks is silly and Thor is an example. Call it the 20M and under SP and replace the name with your preference. As for the SS, I’d still take Correa as above average, but part of the thinking is there’s enough positional flexibility that you get games with him at SS and 3B just like Wisdom might play at both corners or Hoerner might play both up the middle.

I also saw some speculation that Wisdom’s IL stint may be shielding him from being left for vax reasons.

You could probably get away with adding a SS to that group by scaling down the RP spend a little, and replace Rodon with, say, Thor. Still satisfies the run prevention spirit but gets you that extra star power.

Mervis continuing this trick of improving his peripherals at increasing levels is something else. At this trajectory he’d be prime Yuli Gurriel at the MLB level after starting the year with a .676 OPS at Myrtle Beach to his name.

First time at Wrigley in 8 years, this has been a frustrating game

Estrada goes K, K, GO in the 8th Rodriguez goes IF 1B, K, K, GO in the 9th

If they don't bring back Willson it nets out, which is how most well-run teams with money have approached the QO. Those teams tend to be picking a bit lower than the 2023 Cubs will, but I don't think that's a huge deterrent. What's maybe the bigger incentive for Correa than the QO is age, on a mega deal those 18 months he has over Turner and 2 years over Bogaerts make a real difference.

The new scheduling tweaks are gonna take some getting used to. Only one trip to Busch(would be 2 but for the London games), and series against every AL team.

3+ wins from 2B without spending time higher on the defensive spectrum is pretty good, but the BABIP brings up the other point about Madrigal I've made before. He's supposed to be a hit tool outlier, it's his defining valuable trait that stands apart and why people put a 70 grade on it. Madrigal hitting .320 for an extended stretch with no HR and few Ks(and the BABIP that creates) shouldn't be thought of as an extreme outlier. It shouldn't be the *expectation*, but even if you drop him to something like .300/.360/.350 over a larger sample, you're still talking about an above average player on a team that could use more of them. As of today his MLB career even with multiple ups and downs is 130 games, 504 PA, .296/.343/.364 for a 98 wRC+ and 1.8 fWAR. he gets lazy 70 grades on his hit tool simply for never striking out, his ZiPS babip is still .307 doing unexpectedly well "for an extended stretch" and unexpectedly poorly for an extended stretch adds up to an overall liability, why are we talking ourselves so hard into Aaron Miles 2.0 Not swinging and missing and still hitting .300 at every level is really hard to do and representative of a skill and not some pitcher-induced tradeoff like we've seen from the likes of Theriot or Almora. Since he debuted the only other player with Madrigal's playing time, a sub-10% K rate and a .290 average is Arraez(5 fWAR in 1000 PA). If anything I think people made up their minds that since Madrigal isn't going to hit for pop that he's obviously gonna be bad or hate him on aesthetic grounds for not having huge ceiling or having a crummy first month as a Cub. He's a perfectly useful player on the whole and when he's hot/makes improvements he's quite good. No one is trying to etch his name into the lineup 150 times or insist he's the leadoff hitter of the future, I'm enjoying his run of good form and think he can be useful on a good team(especially at pre-FA salaries).

3+ wins from 2B without spending time higher on the defensive spectrum is pretty good, but the BABIP brings up the other point about Madrigal I've made before. He's supposed to be a hit tool outlier, it's his defining valuable trait that stands apart and why people put a 70 grade on it. Madrigal hitting .320 for an extended stretch with no HR and few Ks(and the BABIP that creates) shouldn't be thought of as an extreme outlier. It shouldn't be the *expectation*, but even if you drop him to something like .300/.360/.350 over a larger sample, you're still talking about an above average player on a team that could use more of them. As of today his MLB career even with multiple ups and downs is 130 games, 504 PA, .296/.343/.364 for a 98 wRC+ and 1.8 fWAR.

About how valuable is that plus bad defense plus whatever he does on the bases (I have no idea) Entering tonight he was at 0.3 fWAR in August, that line tonight probably bumps it to 0.4. Extrapolating to a full season from this small a sample is pretty fraught because rounding does a lot of dirty work, but ballpark you're talking about a 3 win player. That's partly because UZR and Statcast both like his defense at 2B and DRS thinks he's neutral this year after being bad last year. That's only 120 games' worth of innings in his MLB career though, so not conclusive and therefore your mileage may vary on that front.

Madrigal post-DL up to 65 PA, .321/.400/.357, 6/7 BB/K

Alcantara has had 4-5 games off this month, presumably to try to keep him from physically wearing down given his frame and the fact his previous career high was 41 games/174 PA in a season. It seems like it's working, these last 2 weeks he's 11 for 32.

Not a for sure non-tender given that the Dodgers won't be in a snug LT situation and they don't have abundant in-house CF options, but if they do non-tender him and he could be had on a short term deal that isn't too expensive, Bellinger could be a bit of a skeleton key for the offseason. LH bat with some pop that plays a legitimate defensive CF but also is at home at 1B, it gives you some real options in how you put the rest of the roster together. It's not without risk, the quoted article says ZiPS thinks the remainder of his career will look like Brant Brown, but that's why he's available and not super expensive. For example, an "aggressive" offseason could look something like Correa, Contreras, Bellinger, and trading Velazquez for Marquez. Aggressive is in quotes because it does take the overall payroll above where I think it's likely to be on opening day, but does so in a way that is consistent with how Jed has operated. It only adds 2 contracts longer than 1-2 years(Correa/Contreras), it prioritizes youth(only Contreras is even 29 on opening day), and it doesn't make longer commitments to pitchers. Add in your favorite cohort of relievers and maybe a bat-first rehab for free, and I think that team is looking pretty competitive.

No WIllson in either game's lineup, the ankle must be hurting him still.

I’d still like to know why they think shortening games will bring in more viewers. It also shortens the commercial/ad time, so that’s a revenue loser. I don’t buy there’s x thousands or y millions of people out there that will watch or attend more baseball over games being 20-30 min shorter. The commercial breaks are in the same spots they always are - between innings and pitching changes - so I don't think that part's an issue. Like you, I remain skeptical that casual fans are waiting to watch baseball in droves if the games are two and a half hours 162 times a year instead of three, but as long as the actual gameplay isn't being negatively affected I'm not against it. The gameplay is the point, the length is a side effect of making a more entertaining product. Games have become ponderous, if you make them move at a more entertaining pace(and hopefully also make changes to increase action in the game), you have something more people are gonna watch. Will that make TV ratings spike starting in April? No, it's a change for the long term health of the game that should hopefully have some short term impact, but the short term isn't the motivation.

They aren’t over the LT this year with Trout, Rendon, Ohtani, Upton and Pujols on the books? And they never hit it with that period of Wilson, Upton, Hamilton, Pujols, Trout overlap? Looks like it: https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/al-west/los-angeles-angels/ Trout's megadeal didn't start til 2019, so Rendon/Ohtani and Wilson/Hamilton kinda netted out. Plus they've been so bad at player dev they're never paying much in the way of arb salaries that sneakily boosts payroll up.

I think Miley in particular would be an uphill battle, but not impossible. If you're only adding one SP then it needs to be someone who has higher ceiling or more certainty than Miley, probably both. If you're adding two then he becomes a little more feasible if the price is right, but since Miley doesn't have that upside, wouldn't be one of the Top 5 starters if everyone's healthy, and wouldn't be a great fit for the bullpen with his repertoire, I think they probably go their separate ways. Those things are far less true with Smyly, hence my interest on the last page.

Tommy Edman has 3.8 fWAR on the season. It's mostly based on the farcical idea that he's like a +20 SS, but league average offense up the middle and 25 steals is still plenty good/annoying.

Has anyone seen a specific number for Smyly's option next year? This year's salary, the incentives, and the buyout seem to be common knowledge, but I can't seem to find any place that spells out how much the option is for. Given the buyout isn't super substantial my guess is it's 8 figures, but given the ambiguity around the rotation and Smyly's strong finish I'm at least curious.

It could mean either. Thompson's injury and the DH means they need two starts this week, and Wesneski pitched on Friday so he wouldn't be a good option for Tuesday. They have an extra reliever right now anyway with Espinoza taking Thompson's roster spot, so there's flexibility. That said, if I had to guess I think you're right. If you're adding Wesneski to the 40 man to let him start Wednesday, I think he's probably a bit more 'ready' for taking several rotation turns at the MLB level.