David

who said anything about settling for 08 fukudome?

Yeah, I know; again, given his history prior to 2016, that would still seem like a pretty big disappointment. Given the history after 2016, it would seem like http://i.imgur.com/6MWvwWI.gif

What? Nothing. The whole point is that even if he's only 08 Fukudome at the plate, he is a 3-4 win player. That's how high the floor is with his defense and baserunning.

yup (and that's surplus value too) this conversation also brings up another point...it's also why i am relatively optimistic about him bouncing back. it's not like it's a high bar he has to reach on offense in order to be a very valuable player.

he was a bit below average in 2008 (91 wRC+) and a bit above average in 09 (110) and 10 (118). I would gladly take an 09 or 10 fukudome offensive year + his defense if you could guarantee them to me at this point. in heyward's good years, he's basically been at 120 3 times, 110 once, and 134 once. That seems like really settling when it comes to a player of Heyward's age with his history and his price tag. with his history? as in coming off a year where he looked blind at the plate? i'll be very happy if he can just be good enough to where he considers opting out. if a 5-6 win player (what heyward has essentially been when he's been in that 09-10 fukudome range offensively) is settling, then i guess i'm daniel boone. and that'd be serious surplus value with his price tag.

Either you're tempering your expectations REALLY low for a really good player, or we have wildly different memories of Fukudome's offensive production. he was a bit below average in 2008 (91 wRC+) and a bit above average in 09 (110) and 10 (118). I would gladly take an 09 or 10 fukudome offensive year + his defense if you could guarantee them to me at this point. in heyward's good years, he's basically been at 120 3 times, 110 once, and 134 once.

I'm not saying it is, purely on a $/win standpoint. I just don't think it's some automatic laughable disaster. $18M is not a ton of money in today's game, and it's for 3 years. They're likely to get some negative value out of it but it's not something that will hamstring them in any significant way unless they choose for that to be the case. And there's at least some value (I have no idea how to quantify it) in avoiding pissing off the vast majority of your fanbase by letting him walk. If they had some readily available replacement coming up in the minors, I might feel differently...but vs replacing him with Montero or Hundley or whatever after 17...meh. If they actually were to replace him with Lucroy, then, well, yeah. I don't think a player like Molina needs to be worth it to an extreme mathematical degree, but if you have to squint to see an above average player, then paying someone 18 million(which by AAV is still a top 40 salary in MLB) that's a hard bridge for me to cross. The also have a future catcher in Carson Kelly, a consensus Top 100 prospect, starting this season at AAA. And really, those facts underscore why it's silly to make that decision now instead of after the season. Molina isn't going to be such a hot commodity that you wouldn't have the inside track to sign him, and the odds of his value going up instead of down are very low. Take the year to see how gracefully he's aging, and how loudly Kelly is knocking on the doorstep. The consequences from waiting are much less than the consequences of acting now. I don't disagree with that at all. I just found the desire to do backflips (in the post I responded to) over the possibility of them extending him for $18.5M a year a bit silly.

They have one of the top ranked catching prospects, #65 overall per BA, in AAA. Didn't realize that. I thought about checking but I was far too lazy to. Why is that not being mentioned more in this storyline? I guess playing them both and working him in (assuming he has success) as Molina fades out isn't a terrible arrangement either.

it'll be interesting to see how we feel about this when rizzo is hitting FA at 33 or whatever (i.e. if we decide the right move is to let him go, i'd deal with it - but i'm not sure that's gonna go over that well here) in building this team, it was easy enough to deal with the minor backlash from the rebuild (especially with how little there was), but after this team rips through the league for a few years, it'll be interesting to see if the FO can still stick to their guns and only make the best calculated move for the baseball team w/out regard to PR. given the FO's history, the talent pipeline should be there to allow for it.

I'm not saying it is, purely on a $/win standpoint. I just don't think it's some automatic laughable disaster. $18M is not a ton of money in today's game, and it's for 3 years. They're likely to get some negative value out of it but it's not something that will hamstring them in any significant way unless they choose for that to be the case. And there's at least some value (I have no idea how to quantify it) in avoiding pissing off the vast majority of your fanbase by letting him walk. If they had some readily available replacement coming up in the minors, I might feel differently...but vs replacing him with Montero or Hundley or whatever after 17...meh. If they actually were to replace him with Lucroy, then, well, yeah.

3 years at 18M a year is a number that keeps getting thrown out there. If that's the case, then I'm going to be doing a lot of laughing. I really wouldn't be at all surprised if he managed to exceed that value. I wouldn't be shocked if he didn't, also...but, worst case, even if he's terrible for half of it or something, it's not a whole lot of money or time. His performance last year was worth in the neighborhood of $20M, without any accounting for being one of the better framers in the league. Next year, he's projected to be perform around that or a nominal amount better. There's also some small amount of value to doing right by a lifelong team guy who had a great career for your organization, even if it does go a little bad.

i just hit 2 2 run dongs with heyward in the show off strasburg. fixed.

my brain won't even allow me to process the possibility of how good we'd be with an even league average hitting heyward and almora (+ a league averageish fielding schwarber i guess)

[tweet] [/tweet]

Greg Maddux is a strange dude

yup. first time i've seen the story told in any detail by one of the victims, though.

[tweet]https://twitter.com/shamblanderson/status/846827625679065088[/tweet]

Chris Speier lmao

wasn't it free 3-day shipping yesterday and free 2-day shipping today? hold off a couple more days and somebody will come over and put it on you you might be right

if we could pair 2015's pitching with 2016's defense and what will be 2017's offense, we'd win 125

holy crap you did win totals

Kidding, but I'm a bit more annoyed when people refer to signings as trades. Like this (pinned) Tweet... EDIT: whoops, spoilered for nsfw language

Yeah, I'm a stickler for the Oxford comma too.

Eat up the schadenfreude [tweet] [/tweet]

I really want to pretend those Hundleys are for Todd and not Randy.