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Transmogrified Tiger

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Everything posted by Transmogrified Tiger

  1. Transmogrified Tiger
    It is 195 in AAV.
  2. Transmogrified Tiger
    Problem #2, Ricketts refuses to transact in Pesos
  3. Transmogrified Tiger
    The Mets have about 65 million in dead money(Verlander, Scherzer, McCann) coming off the books too. I'm not sure if they'll go to their peak spending, but they won't be out on Soto simply by being spread too thin to fill in all needs.
  4. Transmogrified Tiger
    Terribly unlucky that he managed to find 4 different fraudsters to accuse him of sexual assault. Also he's 34 and was wedged between Zac Grotz and David Reyes in Mexican League performance. It's over.
  5. Transmogrified Tiger
    Absolutely not
  6. Transmogrified Tiger
    As for the FA I want, I'm most interested in Clay Holmes and Danny Jansen. I'm not enamored with the options for the 2 main additions(bat and SP), so I'd like one of those to come via trade(both would be great but probably unrealistic). What that trade is informs what the other FA target would be, for example trading for Brent Rooker means different things for the resources to use on a SP than Josh Naylor.
  7. Transmogrified Tiger
    I like Kikuchi and Eovaldi fine as targets, but they aren't the same caliber of pitcher as Fried, who has shown greater peak production and (crucially for a multi-year contract) consistency, especially relative to 2025+ expectations given the ages of the players. Also the Cubs had an elite defensive SS already when they signed Swanson! Hoerner was 2nd in SS OAA/FRV in 2022, and there's way more opportunity to have additional impact from a 'redundant' SP than there is a middle infielder. If you want a more legitimate reason a QO FA may not be coming, it's that Jed(and most of the front offices folks admire) generally do not sign one without having one of their own to mitigate the pick cost. But either way it is not an uncrossable line in the sand.
  8. Transmogrified Tiger
    I am not actually *celebrating* Nico having surgery and the recovery that entails, that would be silly and why I mirrored the charged phrasing someone else used for effect. But while there are always technically ways to trade a player to make the team better, the number of Nico trades that were realistic and actually made the team better are far fewer in number than the volume we saw in practice. Nico has somewhat unique value to this team and people overrate the ease in replacing that value(and the likelihood that a locked on starter for 2025 exists in house)
  9. Transmogrified Tiger
    I am celebrating because trading Nico was always a silly idea and now hopefully we read less of it.
  10. Transmogrified Tiger
    I can appreciate that view, but I also don't think the group is that far behind the 8 ball from a workload perspective. Only 126 pitchers league-wide hit 100 IP in MLB last year, having the 5+ rotation spots up with a group of guys who run the gamut in their likelihood to go to 150(Assad and Birdsell were north of 130 last year, Wesneski has hit 140, Wicks has hit 125) doesn't strike me as an intractable problem. As for where the money goes, the bullpen is an obvious either/or when it comes to something like a 2nd SP. You can also lean higher end on your main targets as needed.
  11. Transmogrified Tiger
    This is where I keep banging the Mitch Keller drum. He gets a 10 million AAV raise starting next year, which makes him about 15% of Pittsburgh's expected payroll alone. He's not going to front a rotation with Skenes and Jones so a payroll-conscious team like the Pirates would get more out of those marginal dollars by spreading them out and by picking up some promising bats to line up with the pre-arb core they have. In another thread I said the SP priority should be 'better than Taillon, and preferably throws hard and right handed', which is Keller to a tee. And the MLB-ready prospect bats are a potential differentiator in a trade for him.
  12. Transmogrified Tiger
    Get a starter clearly better than Taillon, preferably one that throws hard and right handed. Don't need to make it much more complicated than that. The Buehlers of the world are fine targets in the abstract, but the range of outcomes for that archetype is not much different than you'd expect from one of/the best of Brown/Wicks/Assad/Wesneski/Horton/Birdsell, so it's not as if they need the innings along with that upside. If you trade one or more of those guys, then maybe that's a pool worth fishing in, but it will be difficult since the pitchers and their agents will see the lack of opportunity relative to other teams(even if you offer marginally more $)
  13. Transmogrified Tiger
    "Ricketts vaguely alluded to CBT penalties being bad, so I need to see them do it in consecutive seasons before I believe it" [The team behaves like they do not care about being above the tax in consecutive seasons] "well that's a stupid mistake"
  14. Transmogrified Tiger
    Having said that, I would not bet the farm on them being over the CBT line next year, but that's not at all because they're over this year. It's because they clearly aren't going to go 40+ million over in any season in the current environment, and unlike each of the past several seasons there isn't a bunch of bad contracts(Heyward, Hendricks) or dead money(Hosmer, Bote, Mancini, Barnhart) being freed up after 2025. Add in that several important players will have material raises(Steele/Paredes in arb, preventing Shota's opt out), I think there's a chance they don't want to eliminate all of their 2025-2026 flexibility before that offseason arrives. You can hedge that by simply ensuring some of your additions are only guaranteed 1 year though(relievers and bats in particular), and I've seen stray mentions the purse strings may be marginally loosened with improvements in the debt service situation.
  15. Transmogrified Tiger
    I believe that used to be a bigger deal, but the compounding penalties only really hurt on the overages, so if you're only Phillies/Astros level over instead of Yankees/Dodgers level over, the only difference is the total expenditure rises like 1-2%. Copy/pasting myself from an earlier example, take two hypotheticals of 3 year spending: A: under LT, 10 million over, 18 million over; 7.4 million in total penalties B: 5 million over, 10 million over, 15 million over; 13 million in total penalties
  16. Transmogrified Tiger
    Going over in 2024 meaning they won't go over in 2025 is closer to being nonsensical than it is a presumed fact. And the difference in going over as it relates to QO is the 5th rounder and 500k in IFA money, as a revenue sharing payor they'd lose their 2nd pick and 500k in IFA regardless of their CBT status.
  17. Transmogrified Tiger
    Who? Flaherty and Lorenzen didn't even bring back 45 FVs using Fangraphs midseason 2023 board. The only other 50 FV was Manzardo going for Civale, who was having a better season at a younger age and 1/5 the salary with an extra year(technically 2 since he opted out) of team control.
  18. Transmogrified Tiger
    Gonna need you to show your work on that one. Verlander sure, much better pitcher. Nothing else is remotely close to that as far as I can see.
  19. Transmogrified Tiger
    Are we acting like Hoyer didn't play a big part in signing FA and winning a World Series? We can't ascribe all the good stuff to Theo and then say Jed bears responsibility for things that didn't go well.
  20. Transmogrified Tiger
    Chapman signed a 3/54 deal originally though, his big extension ripped up the last 2 years.
  21. Transmogrified Tiger
    2024, yes. Beyond 2024, let's say maybe.
  22. Transmogrified Tiger
    Not ascribing these to anybody, but illustrating the fact that some complaints will exist regardless: Waiting for Bregman(whose 2025 and beyond is probably not a large upgrade on Paredes remaining team control) would amplify complaints about Jed sitting on his hands and prolonging 'how long the rebuild is' Signing Chapman would've amplify complaints about Jed not being willing to sign a long term deal and over-prioritizing defense. Chapman's 2025+ should also not be expected to be a material upgrade on Paredes, and paying Chapman would've also come at the expense of other acquisitions, further diluting the impact.
  23. Transmogrified Tiger
    I'm scared of what we thought Ballesteros looked like before if the slimmer version of him is evoking comparisons to the Naylors
  24. Transmogrified Tiger
    I'd also add that these tenures are not uncorrelated! Theo's biggest failing was a fracture in the pipeline to the majors, through a combination of trading away talent in competitive seasons and falling behind in drafting and development. That meant that Jed not only had to repair that issue but bear the consequences at the major league level for multiple seasons.
  25. Transmogrified Tiger
    If the difference in FG and BR WAR were negligible, then either would make your point, but they don't. Especially for hitters there's no reason to use BR. More to the point, the list of 3B significantly and/or reliably better than Paredes is basically Jose Ramirez, Alex Bregman, and Rafael Devers(2 of which are 5+ years older than Paredes), so being worked up that they didn't get a nebulous 'star' instead of Paredes is getting worked up about an impossibility.
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