Transmogrified Tiger

just kidding I made a stupid math mistake, they might be north of 50 WAR already for 2017

[tweet] [/tweet] Just from eyeballing the two lists, it looks like the depth chart will come in the neighborhood of 45 WAR. Last year's depth chart had 50 fWAR and didn't include Fowler displacing Soler, so they've got some work to do to match the expectation. Last year the Dodgers at 46 were the only NL depth chart above 41 WAR.

I think roster spots become a consideration with the bullpen at a certain point, although I guess if it's a 26 man roster then that spot has to go somewhere. In a 7 man pen you're looking at Rondon, Strop, Grimm, Edwards, the Strop or better acquisition, Montgomery(or a LHRP), and probably Zastryzny as the last guy(2nd LHP, multi-inning, and most importantly optionable).

The bare minimum: - a LH platoon outfielder, preferably CF unless the FO really wants Heyward logging time there - a reliever of Strop's caliber - a SP option of 2016 Montgomery's caliber The upgrade path: - a starting CF - a closer-caliber reliever(I realize I'm splitting hairs since Strop is pretty good, but I hope you'll see the intent) - a SP option better than Lackey with team control Odds are you can go the upgrade path on 2 of the 3 but not all 3. Also what you do to tackle those 3 might open up smaller holes that need patched, like a reserve SS if Baez is traded.

Starlin Castro could put up a 5 WAR season in his dreams maybe Poor man's? wtf lol castro has barely sniffed a season as good as Segura's second best. Castro never got to hit in Arizona for 80 games either. Castro's career wRC+ is better and UZR likes him ever so slightly more at SS too. But 'poor man's version' might be an overstatement, it's certainly possible Segura's coming valley won't be as deep. EDIT: Put another way, entering this season, Segura had a *career* .290 wOBA and 78 wRC+, which is nearly identical to 2015 Castro.

Segura is a poor man's Starlin Castro, traded after a peak instead of a valley like Castro was.

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I believe davell was referring to Roberto Osuna, the Blue Jay pitcher. Marcell Ozuna is a decent player, although it looks like ideally he's more of a corner OF than a CF.

Next year might be scarier with Lodeiro, hopefully Clint, Morris, and probably a DP winger. Set Roldan and Alonso behind those 4 with the center backs they have and they'll win a lot of games.

Was the call incorrect because it wasn't grounding, or was it incorrect because it shouldn't have given the opponent an untimed down?

It's nothing short of miraculous that the Sounders went on this run with one DP hurt and another playing like a 15 minute holdup play sub.

how in the world is that not a straight red I don't know how many patty cake straight reds I saw this year because it came at the neck level, and that's a yellow?

Update on negotiations that's worth a read: http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/labor-peace-lockout-collective-bargaining-agreement-owners-players-baseball-112216 The language is a little alarmist, but I imagine that's half posturing on both sides at this point. Most interesting to me is that the union is going to bat over an international draft.

James' projections are a lot like those you see inside an ESPN fantasy draft, where everyone is somehow on track to be better than last year and if they were accurate then the league average OPS would be like .900.

As long as they're comfortable with Gardner's ability to play CF, I'm okay with sending a marginal prospect to get him. This actually seems like it might be Underwood's time to shine, since it'll take something at least half interesting to get the Yankees to bite considering they can afford to pay Gardner if they want. This also assumes Gardner wouldn't undermine any other efforts on the pitching staff by taking up 13 million, but I doubt that'll be a problem. I think I saw Ellsbury's name pop up in a similar vein too(I don't recall if it was w/ the Cubs specifically). On the field he's probably about the same as Gardner(same age, similar profile), but 4/90 is a much more bitter pill to swallow.

Cameron Carter-Vickers was in camp for these last two games but hasn't been cap-tied yet. Considering he's an English dual national instead of German like so many others have been(Jones, Green, Zelalem) and that he's right on the cusp of playing time at the moment, I don't think Klinsmann getting fired makes a huge difference. I'm not an expert though, so maybe others have more context. Lynden Gooch just got cap-tied this past week, so from a search it looks like the next best option that isn't cap-tied would be Mexican dual national defender Villafana? Again, I'm not the most knowledgeable at this world so maybe there's others I'm missing.

Bauer has 4 years, Odorizzi has 3. Odorizzi I probably still like better as a pitcher, but if you think his HR problem is more structural to him than the Rays, or that he won't be able to start getting righties out(he has a very odd reverse split), then Bauer is close enough to be as attractive an option, especially when you consider the team control and likely player cost.

Wahl says Arena the likely replacement, possibly announced as soon as tomorrow. Good. Thanks for the dual national recruits Jurgen, maybe someone else can do something with them.

It's certainly possible they're optimistic, but at the same time, Baez's near 3 win performance didn't really include any outliers, plus on another team he'd be even more valuable as a full-time SS. He obviously has room to grow offensively and has already made strides, so further improvement isn't out of the question either. As for Schwarber, he played at a 4-5 win pace in 2015 with less than a third of his PAs coming as a catcher, so there's some built in regression allowed there too. I'm comfortable calling him a LH Nelson Cruz, for example, maybe slightly less bat and a little more glove. If the White Sox think Baez's bat is a time bomb or that Schwarber is a -20 LF then that would change things, but like I alluded to before, we have to assume they like the players in question to consider trading for them, otherwise their exact surplus value doesn't matter. In any case, I was also optimistic both ways. Quintana fell short of 5 wins each of the last two years, Sale regressed a bit peripherally but we'll assume that was intentional, and neither are penalized for the much higher injury risk they carry as pitchers. For surplus value, it was a quick 8 x WAR per season minus their salary, which I back of the enveloped to be 25M for Baez and ~30M for Schwarber through arbitration. Arbitration salaries might look very different in 4+ years, but that gets into complexity that is beyond the point I was making, since I wasn't inflating the cost per win each successive year either.

In the pure mathematic sense, this is a good illustration of how much surplus value Baez and Schwarber have. Sale is a 5-6 win pitcher on a 3/39 deal, at 8M/win you're looking at roughly 90 million in surplus value. Quintana is a near 5 win pitcher on a 4/37 deal, which is about 120 million in surplus value. Baez is a near 3 win hitter under control for 5 years, with arbitration estimates you're looking at 90-95 million in surplus value. And Schwarber is a 3-4 win hitter under control for 5 years, with arbitration estimates you're probably in the neighborhood of 105 million in surplus value. So again, from a straight 'value to the team' perspective, you aren't looking at adding much to one of those guys to make this match up. That's "fair", and not really a homer opinion. However, you still have to offer enough to 1) convince the Sox to make a move and 2) be the best offer out there. That's what would take additional pieces, not that Baez or Schwarber are so much less valuable, but that you need to convince the Sox to blow it up with the quality of your offer to get them. Personally, I'd still be very interested in a Baez + some other major piece for Quintana deal depending on the details.

That basically means Sale, Robertson, Abreu, and all their guys entering the last year of their contracts(Frazier, Lawrie, Cabrera). Everyone else(Quintana, Jones, Rodon, Eaton) is either at 4 years of control when you count team options or is not worth trading for.

What you really want to look at is the culmination of several years ending in 2012, to make sure we aren't seeing some fly by night results. Here's 2010-2012 leaders: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2012&month=0&season1=2010&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0 We'll want to pay special attention to the ERA-/FIP-/xFIP- columns, because those are park and league adjusted so we can account for the fact that the offensive environment has changed a fair bit. What you see there is Kimbrel lapping the field, with Mariano a solid 2nd and everyone else in the 50s and low 60s(including Jansen and Chapman themselves!) for all 3 metrics. It's also worth noting that most of the names you see on that list have held up pretty well once you account for the inevitable injury risk, and filter out guys near the end of their careers in 2012 like Putz and Rivera. Now let's look at 2014-2016: http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&qual=y&type=1&season=2016&month=0&season1=2014&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0 You can see off the bat that Chapman and Miller are in Kimbrelian territory with Jansen right behind them(along with Betances). In 2016 alone both rise to that threshold, along with Miller, and Britton's outlier BABIP suppression. The point being made here is that Chapman and Jansen are rare birds, they aren't just 'good closers' who happened to reach free agency, for the last 5 years they(along with Kimbrel) have consistently been the best relievers in the game. I don't expect them to be at that threshold at the end of a 5 year deal, but I also don't expect Dexter Fowler to be a 3-4 win CF at the end of a 4 year deal and I'm still interested in signing him. Chapman and Jansen's dominance means that they can decline and still be effective relievers, and their method of dominance(Chapman throwing several mph faster than any man alive, Jansen throwing cutters faster than anyone with great control) portends well for them aging gracefully too.

11/30/15: 12/1/15: [tweet] [/tweet] 12/3/15: http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/story/free-agent-market-oakland-as-sonny-gray-chicago-white-sox-chris-sale-ken-rosenthal-notes-120215 12/4/15: Cubs sign Lackey 12/8/15: Cubs sign Zobrist, trade Castro 12/11/15: Cubs sign Heyward

I've actually brought this up in previous seasons, but I think a non-Dodgers or Yankees team sort of has to have a limit on how many 20 million plus guys they have on the books. And with Lester and Heyward already above that I feel doing another for a closer makes it more difficult to get a top of the line pitcher next year or......Bryce Harper a few years from now. I might be wrong, though. It's fair that you have to keep future flexibility in mind to a certain extent, and the Cubs core is going to get more expensive as the young guys hit arbitration. The upshot is that there aren't many future holes to fill, they have a lot of payroll room without the payroll skyrocketing, and the payroll very well may skyrocket with the momentum of the WS leading into a new TV deal. So for anyone wanting to sign Fowler and Jansen/Chapman and then spend big on a SP next year, yeah it's something to keep in the back of your mind. But personally I don't think things are tight enough to say we can't get an elite guy at a position of need because of future payroll considerations. After all, they have more than 50 million coming off the payroll next year alone with Arrieta/Montero/Lackey/Strop. Sure some of those guys will require money to replace, but if we're spending to get back to the status quo then things are more than fine considering the revenue that's coming.

I think this really illustrates the misunderstanding of the scale that relievers operate on. I'd give Chapman something absurd like 6/180 before I considered Cecil at 7-8 million. Chapman and Jansen are cheat codes and have proven themselves far more immune to the volatility that suppresses reliever cost than Cecil. Part of it is I just don't like Chapman as a person. I didn't want us to trade for him because of it, and I'd rather we not sign him for it now. And I'm just not buying that there's a reliever that is that much more immune to volatility. It wasn't that long ago that people were talking about Craig Kimbrel like they're talking about Jansen now. I'll agree that I don't want Cecil at that price, but I still think it's fine to spread the money among cheaper options and hope you get guys like Rondon and Strop have turned out to be. Kimbrel gave up a few more HR when the league did, and then he got the AL East penalty on top of that. If there's a takeaway I think it's that you need to weight recent years a bit more when considering consistency(and the HR thing is something to keep in mind with Jansen), but I don't think he's at all a cautionary tale. He had the environment/ball change, got moved to the toughest league/division, and had control issues and was still very effective. The takeaway isn't that Chapman and Jansen can never have a downturn, it's that they're so dominant that even when you stack the volatility deck against them, you have the downside of 2016 Craig Kimbrel, saving 94% of opportunities in the AL East with a sub-3 FIP. Or in other words, the downside is good Rondon!