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Transmogrified Tiger

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Everything posted by Transmogrified Tiger

  1. Transmogrified Tiger
  2. Transmogrified Tiger
    They gave the job to Buster Posey, so...time to sharpen up any proposals you have for Giants players.
  3. Transmogrified Tiger
    In real time and on the initial replays I saw on social media it seemed to be pretty straight forward that he raked Maddison high with his studs, so I understand the initial red given the ref's angle. Why VAR didn't recommend downgrading to a yellow when they had the angle showing he didn't get him with the studs is another example of the weird incompetence/hubris that surrounds VAR decisions from EFL refs.
  4. Transmogrified Tiger
    We should be prepared for the macro run environment and Wrigley's park factors to revert towards norms in a way that hurts the rotation/pitching staff more than it helps the offense. For reasons both understandable and frustrating not many people want to hear this but there should be more urgency/net resources given to the pitching staff than the offense.
  5. Transmogrified Tiger
    Seiya having that rolled ankle makes for a more clear opportunity, probably why they're doing it now in a more spontaneous fashion.
  6. Transmogrified Tiger
    get well soon, Luke Little Statcast doesn't do park factors by pitching hand, but I would assume that any relationship to pitching handedness would probably manifest itself somewhat in batting handedness, which they do have splits for. Year RHH LHH 2021 102 104 2022 96 106 2023 100 102 2024 93 91 I can probably reason my way to RHH being suppressed a little bit by not being able to feast on LHP as well due to worse visibility, but the effect seems to be modest. Or at least, not more pronounced than other factors like the fences/wind patterns not favoring LHH power
  7. Transmogrified Tiger
    Yes, the trades are likely for players on somewhat hefty arb salaries. This avoids making your biggest adds being more speculative(a la the Busch deal), and by adding an Arb 3 guy you're able to preserve a little 2026 flexibility where there's basically nothing coming off the books but you have a lot in internal increases(Steele, Paredes, Shota). In practice, the SP could be Luis Castillo or Mitch Keller, the bat could be Vlad, Tucker, or Josh Naylor. Combine with spending ~25 million on 2 relievers and a C and you fill up the spending bucket pretty quick.
  8. Transmogrified Tiger
    trade for the SP, buy the C & RP, and try to trade for the bat
  9. Transmogrified Tiger
    Pythagorean record isn't gospel, but 'their pythag record is inflated because they only blew out teams for a certain portion of the year' is kinda missing the point of pythagorean record.
  10. Transmogrified Tiger
    Thankless work as always doing these threads daily, Raisin. We appreciate you!
  11. Transmogrified Tiger
  12. Transmogrified Tiger
    Also offense is down league wide(only 35 qualifiers have an .800+ OPS), and Wrigley in particular has been brutal this year(29th park factor for runs in front of only Safeco).
  13. Transmogrified Tiger
    This will be difficult since the Mets and Braves play each other 3 times.
  14. Transmogrified Tiger
    They were FA one offseason apart and Swanson got a higher AAV by a couple million, so seems pretty similar in the eyes of the market to me.
  15. Transmogrified Tiger
    Correct, I edited to say that Lowe is a bit of an indulgence if you aren't giving up Nico, and if Bellinger is still around he's pretty wasteful. In the Bellinger opt-in case you can maybe see if you can use the resources you would've used for Lowe on a reliever or catcher to bridge the salary gap between Bellinger and Lowe. That'd be pretty tight though, and I think an overly simplified offseason model is that they aren't going to have three 20M+ AAV 'additions', including Bellinger.
  16. Transmogrified Tiger
    1. Lowe's options are surplus value so there's little doubt that they'd get picked up. Us talking about him as a trade target is pretty proof positive that if the Rays don't want to pay him the 8 figures they can get something for their trouble. 2. IMO, Vlad + Castillo I don't think *requires* Nico or Busch. Castillo has little surplus value and the point of trading him is about freeing up money more than making a specific acquisition. If the Jays decide to trade away Vlad they're signaling a step back in 2025(so Nico makes no sense), and while it's possible they may want Busch I'm guessing they'd want to gamble on upside more so something like Alcantara may be preferred(and 1 year of Vlad at 25 million is unlikely to get 2 pieces of that caliber). 3. Short answer, yes. Assuming you don't give up a locked in roster player/guaranteed contract in the trades, you can trade for Castillo, Vlad, and Lowe, then use 25 million on a FA C and a couple relievers and basically be where you are now. You may have to make a marginal cost decision like running with an NRI/prospect roster spot instead of Wisdom's 3+ million, but that's the level of sacrifice we're talking about. However, if you're trading for Vlad and not trading away Nico, the need for trading real assets for Lowe loses some luster.
  17. Transmogrified Tiger
    With that HR, Swanson is now tied with Freddie Freeman at 26th in fWAR among position players.
  18. Transmogrified Tiger
    The NRI comment was about the 26th roster spot, not about someone expected to carry any type of starting role. And Lowe can also hit enough to DH(and is a worthy addition even if Nico isn't traded) so I'm less concerned about that, but otherwise I agree with what you're saying. My broader point distilled is don't get rid of an existing starter to make room for a prospect, injuries and circumstance will do that on their own, and the prospects themselves have a low enough floor that you can't risk them as day 1 lineup fixtures. That plus the backup SS point is very much why I don't have any interest in trading Hoerner.
  19. Transmogrified Tiger
    Yes we are? As mentioned above Busch is a break glass in case of emergency guy there, and the other guys on the 40 man(Vazquez, Madrigal, Mastrobuoni) are not even 2nd division starters at this point.
  20. Transmogrified Tiger
    I think we're saying similar things. All teams need to integrate prospects to be consistently successful and that requires reps and bearing with some level of struggle. In fact I'm coming around to earmarking one bench spot for an NRI-caliber player on opening day knowing that one of the AAA crew will break that door down soon enough(maybe opening day!). But we also don't need to clear a pristine path for them on Opening Day, especially when Shaw has so little AAA time. Said another way, if you're getting rid of Nico, you need someone else adding in who has better short term expectations than Shaw(Brandon Lowe?) to avoid taking an unnecessary step backwards at the position.
  21. Transmogrified Tiger
    I feel like we should try to learn from PCA's 2024 since so many people were ready to hand him the reins Opening Day so they can use resources elsewhere, which likely would've been very bad for the team's chances and possibly PCA's development. Shaw has proven a bit more at the AAA level than PCA had, but it's still just ~35 games and he doesn't have the defense/baserunning floor that PCA has.
  22. Transmogrified Tiger
    Makes u think
  23. Transmogrified Tiger
    yeah, Busch did play more 2B than other positions in the minors, but he was a college 1B and didn't get a full-time run out there for a reason. That said, I think there's situations where you can be okay putting him there(e.g. you want to stack LHH against the opposing pitcher and Shota is on the mound limiting GB and opposing LHH in the lineup), but it's more of a plan C type of thing and not something you trade Nico for.
  24. Transmogrified Tiger
    Roster Resource has them about 600k over, but more importantly, Jed himself said they were probably going to be over.
  25. Transmogrified Tiger
    A 5th round pick is also much more marginal a loss when it comes to cumulative draft pool than the 2nd rounders that folks are normally discussing in that cost/benefit calculation. In this example they also give up the 2nd rounder, but the point being is that if you're okay with giving up the pick and pool for the 2nd, the odds are that you're going to be okay with the 2nd + 5th.
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