squally1313
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Everything posted by squally1313
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Castellanos to the Cubs, ok sure, good call
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I mean, that's an absurd tweet
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Wait, hold on. Matt Shaw is absolutely not Kris Bryant. But not a single person here is expecting him to put up 6 fWAR in his rookie season. I won't speak for anyone else here, but I'm totally fine with the expectation being a 3 win upgrade from Bellinger to Tucker and a 1.5 win downgrade from Paredes (3) to Shaw (1.5). I'll take the marginal upgrade, plus whatever we get for Bellinger, plus the $15ish m in 2025 net salary reduction, plus 12 months of exclusive negotiation with Tucker, plus the possibility of the right side of the bell curve on Shaw's performance. Shaw will most likely struggle. It's harder to hide that when you try to trot out the line up of 9 above average players. It's easier when you have a 160-180 wRC bat in the middle of it.
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Probably, until they sign Burnes.
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While I'm still on Team Shaw-Opening-Day-Starter, I'll acknowledge we need someone else on the roster. If we're going to dip into something like Moncada....just re-sign Wisdom for $1m. Warm body, good fit in the clubhouse, etc. Whatever money we have needs to go to the pitching staff.
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Not a bad idea but I think I want to use that money on the pitching side of things. Grabbing Pressley in the Tucker trade, signing a back end reliever, etc. My preference is to take on some risk and just go with Shaw. Tucker basically replaces the production of Paredes and Bellinger in the line up. Signing a guy like Rojas who caps out at a couple wins is fine, and those marginal wins are important, but a guy like Tucker allows you to throw Shaw into the deep end in the 8 spot in the line up for a couple months. If it's a disaster come the summer....go make another Morel/Paredes deal.
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Best case scenario for Smith is what....mid-2026? I think when the prospect is that far away you don't really worry about redundancy.
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Love the narrative forming. Jed is either going to be a pussy for not getting the deal done (remember all the incredible 'He must be hibernating' jokes from last year) OR if he gets a/the deal done, he gave up too much and we can immediately shift to 'well, there's no way he's going to extend him, so that was dumb'. And then if he does extend him, man, what a waste of money for one player. There's always some way to confirm your priors!
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In the same way that it would put us in a pickle trading away the top two 3Bs in our system…you’d have to think the astros would pause at trading for a ML third baseman with three years of control and then also an essentially ML-ready 3B/2B (altuve has basically a lifetime deal). Generally you just want the best player, but smith makes a lot more sense for them to be the 3B of the future.
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Wait, sorry, do you want to sign Tucker to an extension? Or is your current logic that Jed is smart enough to realize he's dumb enough to not sign him to an extension? If so, is he more smart or dumb?
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But even with a Bregman signing....just trade for Tucker, not Bellinger. Yeah he's not a LHH, but he's 70 points better from a wRC perspective, so think they'll manage to get over it. I think on the whole we can offer more to the Astros than they can, and that's why everyone perceives us as winning the race thus far. Just don't follow the whole 'the Yankees are going to give us a prospect to facilitate the Cubs/Tucker deal' development.
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Things I don't quite understand re: the motivations of the other teams involved here. Astros: Trade Tucker to sign Bregman. Why? I get 6/150 is not 10/350, but Tucker is vastly better and if they are trying to avoid a step back, playing next year with Tucker instead of Bregman is a much better team. Cutting costs to go sign Bregman to that deal doesn't make sense to me unless they just want to sell Altuve/Bregman/etc nostalgia for the next five years. Yankees: If we're trading for Warren to trade to the Astros....why wouldn't they just cut out the middleman (us) and go get Tucker themselves? 1 year of Tucker >> 2 years of Bellinger, throw in one of their 8 starting pitchers and some hyped up other prospect and there's their actual Soto replacement.
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Don't have the illustrated chart, but BaseballSavant has Paredes with 26 homes if he played every game in Houston last year, which is the most of every park. 21 for TB, 13 in Wrigley (not relevant, but has him with 6 in Baltimore, which, lol). https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/isaac-paredes-670623?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb
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I certainly wouldn't go this route, but if you make Cam Smith the third guy in that trade, anything Matt Shaw does as the starting third baseman that clears the 'falling on his face' bar (aka the '2024 Chris Morel' bar) is just a bonus in terms of adding 2025 value. Now, do you trade 2 future years of Paredes, 2 future years of Suzuki, and Cam Smith for a 1 win increase in 2025 and then Alonso on the decline? Almost certainly not. But that's how good Tucker is. In this hypothetical, playing out the dominos, that makes it more likely that Bregman goes to NYY, making them less likely to go after Bellinger, making it less likely we get a NYY surplus starter for Bellinger. Brings the Castillo deal back into play, maybe.
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The Cubs were third in offensive fWAR and 5th in wRC from the day they traded for Paredes until the end of the season. Again: they should get Tucker, and/or other good hitters. Big market team, less money for PTR, dongs are fun, etc etc etc. But there's certainly an argument for better overall results than what we've seen in the past (due to, among other things, not running out the same lineup that they have the past few years).
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This has been covered before but this isn't a real thing. Opening Day 2023 line up/who would be the starter right now for Opening Day 2025 C - Gomes/Amaya or Kelley 1B - Hosmer/Busch 2B - Hoerner/Hoerner SS - Swanson/Swanson 3B - Wisdom/Paredes LF - Happ/Happ CF - Bellinger/PCA RF - Mastrobuoni/Bellinger DH - Mancini/Suzuki That's 5 new starters since the beginning of last year (four if you don't want to count Suzuki and his injury). And they basically kept the first four in the line up (ie the good players) and replaced the bottom 5 (the not good players). I want Tucker too and I'm letting myself get annoyed they can't just push it across the finish line. But this whole 'we'll run it back again' thing just isn't the reality.
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Are people saying that they aren't trying to do this? You guys do realize those concepts are intrinsically related right?
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The equivalent is probably something like Shaw, Ballesteros, Birdsell, and Rojas?
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-Hey Jed would you like a really good player on a suppressed salary? -Psh, what, do I look like some sort of nerd?
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Shota and Nestor could moonlight as the greatest buddycop TV show in world history, as an added bonus
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Yankees have a lot of starters and want Bellinger?
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I think his defensive struggles are more memorable/glaring (because they're usually just outrageous gaffes) than other poor defenders who just have no range, a bad arm, terrible reads, etc....stuff that adds up on bloop singles and extra bases and what not over the course of a year. His bat more than makes up for his defense and he's still a net positive out there. But....we have Happ, PCA, and some combination of Bellinger or Tucker. Seiya pushing any of those dudes to DH makes no sense.
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It's interesting to use the Red Sox as a comparison since they'd been getting a ton of crap up until about 17 minutes ago for how poorly their team was being run back through the Mookie debacle. They made a few trades at the deadline but nothing of real consequence. I think it's maybe just a different kind of sports town with a more voracious appetite for rumors and drama and whatever else. But besides the Crochet deal that just happened, there isn't a ton that I can point to in the last couple years that stands out as some stark difference in front office approach.
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Yeah, while you wait for the next Suzuki defensive gaffe to put him back in the elite-hitting-DH-doghouse
