Transmogrified Tiger

I think he could see Busch was definitely drawing a throw and gambled he could make it behind the play. Problem was they fumbled the relay and made him an easy target.

Cam Smith HR

Again, this only makes a difference if they would change their spending significantly to avoid repeater penalties. Unless they previously intended to be way, way over the tax line(30+ million) in the next 2-3 years, the penalties are a rounding error of total roster spend so there's no reason to think it does impact future spending in any meaningful way.

It's less that Fangraphs is *wrong*, it's that we have to work with estimates so when you get within a couple million you can't be certain one way or another. Even the teams themselves have to operate this way, as Sahadev pointed out today (emphasis mine)

I could probably be convinced of either removing Neris or adding Neely being the primary motivation. Neris wasn't pitching poorly on the whole, but the pen doesn't have a bunch of optionable guys and the 40 man already has a lot of pitchers not easily removed thanks to the glut of 60 day IL guys. On the other hand, they're using a 40 man spot on Wingenter who they just claimed in August, Neris was still pitching in leverage situations, and we're 10 days from roster expansion making it easier to add to the pen. So if I have to pick I think this is more about the option.

Ultimately I think it's dependent on specific contract language, but based on how incentives have been described in other situations I think it's safe to assume that 14 appearances on a new team would convert the option to Player.

Still? The Dodgers are outspending the Cubs by about 100 million this year on an LT basis. Do people think the Dodgers have a similar or even lower payroll than the Cubs or other teams at large? Because the only team in the NL within 60 million of the Dodgers are the Mets, and that's partially because they're paying Scherzer and Verlander to play on other teams.

The devs really need to release a patch for Jack Neely, the trade clearly glitched him and now he's the best reliever to ever live

It's never only one thing, but the trend line and the relationship to his actual success at the plate seems like a clear positive step

Shota start and an off day tomorrow hopefully helps, though the current pen is light on obvious candidates. 5 of the 8 can't be optioned, Hodge is not gonna be optioned in his form, which leaves Roberts(the only currently fresh arm) and Pearson(a weird developmental move). The other silver lining is that Miller, Lopez, and Smyly haven't thrown too many pitches in their outings, so I could see them sticking with the status quo and counting on Shota + Roberts to make it through 7, then picking one of those guys to go a 3rd day and then Neris. With 9 straight before an off day right before expanded rosters, if Roberts goes multiple innings I wouldn't be shocked if he goes down after today though.

I'm sorry this is a bonkers take that is like reading news from a different reality. Cade Horton is a failed pick because he is a pitcher who had an injury is nonsense exceeded only by the idea that he now is behind the 8 ball to be a starter because he didn't throw more college innings. At least on the Swanson signing it's bad analysis that is more common, but we're also going to pretend that "Nobody was saying the Cubs absolutely had to get a shortstop entering 2023", excuse me? Hoyer would've been carried away to fan-built gulags at Cubs convention if he went 0 for 4 on the SS. And the scorecard on which one he picked still looks quite good even if Swanson had a crummy first half with the bat.

Having seen Neris in person today I’m more open to the idea that he is a menace to society that must be stopped

Can confirm That might be the longest HR of Happ’s career, almost certainly as a RHH

I'm not inherently opposed to the 6 inning minimum, and I think the whole suite of options discussed are generally trying to get to the right outcomes. I think double hook DH and the longer reliever minimums discussed might be a little better carrot to try first. The third time through the order penalty weighed against losing the DH and having to insert a reliever that has to go 5+ hitters may be enough to tilt the scales enough to restore SPs as main characters without needing a harsh SP minimum that also has 4 exceptions in its hypothetical version.

This seems only clear if we invent restrictions on exceeding the luxury tax that don't have a good reason to exist, and flies in the face of how Hoyer talked about the team heading into the season. The team wasn't going to exceed the luxury tax in seasons it wasn't a competitor, partially due to the makeup of the roster and Hoyer's approach to team building(which seems to value incremental expensive additions vs adding 5 big contracts in one offseason) and partially because ownership likely didn't want to take an unnecessary haircut on top of having an expensive uncompetitive team. Now that they intended to be playoff caliber for the foreseeable future starting with this season, the marginal difference in roster spend from the LT penalties is a rounding error. Said another way, if this is shocking to anyone, they can either reconsider how they interpreted the team's relationship to the tax line, or we can conclude that Hoyer did something grossly incompetent, out of character, and ignored obvious mechanisms to fix it mid-season. Occam's razor gives us a pretty clear answer to that one. What the 2024 team being over the tax does seem to confirm is not about Jed but about ownership, and it's that there is no reasonable situation we can expect them to blow out the tax and go 40+ million over it, even for a single season. THAT possibility would have made exceeding the tax in 2024 meaningful, and if you take it off the table and have the team risking repeat penalties at the more mild rates, then there's nothing incorrect or irrational about Jed going over the tax and (crucially) not going back under this year when he had opportunity at the deadline and little competitive motivation for 2024.

I agree that if you distill being a good prospect down to three things and pretend that Hearn is good at all of them, he is a good prospect.

Here are some things that might make a player a good catching prospect. Hitting for Average: Hearn has career high .230 average this year and has historically run very low BABIPs given his K rate Hitting for Power: Hearn has done this decently well(roughly .200 IsoP), with the caveat that he's repeating the level when he does so Take walks: After previously showing some eye for free passes, Hearn's walk rate is below league average at 8% Make contact: Long a problem, he's striking out 29% of the time in his second go round at A+ Perform well relative to age and league: Hearn turns 24 in 2 weeks and is still in A ball so he's behind the curve. On the worst offensive roster in the org he's 4th among regulars in OPS. He's also either outside the Top 10 in OPS or in the back half(depending on your definition) of catchers in the MWL Avoid errors/misplays: Hearn has 18 errors in 53 games behind the plate, a rate that has been pretty steady at each level Throw out baserunners: Hearn's 18% CS% is worse than the league average of 23%

I think we're really close to a breakthrough here fellas, just a couple more pages should do it

stop and think about the causation between these two facts

When you're talking about half the lineup's worth of positions(OF+1B+DH), if you have one person per spot you're actually short. If you have 6 players for 5 spots you've got an average of 135 games per person, a very reasonable target. Case in point, we're 120 games into the season as of tonight, and Seiya & Bellinger have missed 30 games each. Throw in 10 games each(at least, given Busch and PCA's uncertain platoon strength) for the other 3 spots for rest and matchups and you've got a near full time work load for someone. Also players can have long term injuries, pitchers could figure out PCA or Busch and make them unplayable, etc. What this does do is make it a little bit harder to convince certain players to join your project. Juan Soto won't care, he's at the top of the food chain no matter what lineup he joins. But any bat-first FA they approach might have second thoughts about how long they'd be allowed to work through any struggles. That JD Martinez/Anthony Santander caliber of player that may be a fallback(or primary depending on other moves of significance) is the type of guy who may go elsewhere so he doesn't have to worry about a PCA breakout ruining his ability to get another contract.

For me the foundational thing with Hodge is throwing strikes. It's probably a big part of what got him removed from the pen, and it's the big differentiator in terms of his big league results. I'm curious if there's a mechanical or other change that's been made to improve the strike throwing ability or make fewer uncompetitive pitches, because 25 innings is still a small sample but it's big enough that it's greater than the 'good couple weeks' we've seen from countless relievers before. I don't see anything significant in plate discipline data between his limited AAA time and MLB, outside the fact that major leaguers are simply swinging a lot more despite a similar amount of pitches in zone and an unremarkable first pitch strike percentage. Hopefully there's an underlying reason for that and an advanced scouting tweak to swing less doesn't send that walk rate back up north of 15% like it was at Iowa.

Considering he only has 12 IP at AAA and he doesn't seem to have a high likelihood of being an elite relief ace in the Hader/Williams mold, I'd be a little bummed if they burned Neely's first option year on getting a handful of MLB innings when they don't really have to.

I've mentioned it before, but I'm gonna be pedantic and say that no bullpen building strategy would have withstood the amount of late inning and rotation injuries that derailed the first couple months of the year. Ponying up for Hader doesn't mean anything if he's on the IL, and all the prospect depth in the world can't help the pen if it's hurt or has to be thrust into the rotation. This is less impactful, but I also think the suggestion that Jed sat out a bunch of higher end RPs and dug around for leftovers is a bit overstated. There were basically 3 RP deals that were meaningfully larger than Neris(Hader, Stephenson, Kimbrel), and one of those hasn't pitched at all due to TJS.