Bertz

BBTV is great, but it is just a WAR -> Dollars calculator. If, for example, you're at a point on the calendar where the only projection system currently showing on Fangraphs has your 2B who's generally +8 to +10 per year is only listed as +0.5, that's context you need to understand. Likewise any prospect valuations you see listed in November are going to be based on stale prospect ratings from July or August. That's context people should account for that they probably don't. People who point to a difference of like 26 vs 23 on there as if it's at all meaningful should be shunned until they take a data literacy course at their local community college.

People took "Paredes' swing was uniquely optimized for the Trop and he's going to lose some offense going to Wrigley" and then just went absolutely insane over some normal small sample size noise. The over/under on his wRC+ is something like 110 or 115. Reasonable expectations for Willy Adames shouldn't be any higher than that. Spending $150-200M to add some dong to the lineup and some athleticism on defense is absolutely silly.

I think the argument against the Dodgers is mostly about staying out of the shadow of Ohtani and Yamamoto. The dimwitted Jim Bowden actually had a great point about how by coming over early and foregoing a huge salary, Sasaki is going to likely be counting on major sponsorship dollars. So even setting aside anything like pride, the Dodgers might be a bad fit financially with Ohtani sucking up all the air in every room he's in. The Padres seem the next most logical. Playing with his idol Darvish, west coast, and fueling that Dodgers/Padres rivalry. I feel like the Cubs have as good of an argument as anyone else though. Still a very large market. Darvish evangelizes for the city, the team, and Hottovy. We also have two Japanese stars, but guys who would slot behind Roki in Q Score. The team did a phenomenal job of onboarding Imanaga last year culturally, in terms of his performance, and maybe most importantly his health. While it's certainly unlikely he comes here, it also doesn't feel like a pipe dream.

The other thing on Keegan is he was one of the few guys that Craig was willing to give leverage opportunities to. His 1.4 average leverage index when entering a game is a fairly standard setup man number. Now obviously that is due in no small part to guys ahead of him immolating, but I'd be surprised with the inexperience elsewhere in the pen if the team just chucks a guy that they know can enter a tight game and not just immediately piss his pants. The ship has probably sailed on Keegan being good, but there's value in "not bad."

Keegan Thompson is way too high on this list. He's as good a bet as any waiver wire guy they can grab. I don't have supreme confidence in him making it onto the Opening Day roster, but I'd be pretty surprised if he's not given a crack in spring training. Canario and Mervis likewise are way too low. Maybe they've got enough value where there's some semantics in that their exit from the roster comes in the form of some minor "my crap for your trash" type of trade in the next couple days, but they're in essentially the same spot as Kilian (though Mervis does have an option left).

Dylan Moore is a nice short side platoon bat in a utility role. Deluding yourself into thinking he's as good as Nico Hoerner would be like a Cubs fan deluding themselves into thinking they don't need frontline rotation help because of Javier Assad's superficially pretty ERA.

Singer's tough. On the one hand yet another low velo guy with less swing and miss than we'd like. On the other he is good and I'm not the most confident we end up with two starters better than him? I feel like I'd potentially have a much different opinion if this rumor popped up in January, but right now I'd pass.

Christian Franklin should have gotten the call to Iowa when all the Uber prospects did. The fact that he didn't to me signaled that they wanted to hold off on rostering him but also maximize chances of him surviving the Rule 5. Aliendo was I believe eligible for some level of minor league free agency. So him sticking around again feels like he's safe to not roster. Caissie and Cowles are slam dunk. There will also be the annual pitcher or two we're not sure about that gets rostered.

I think the problem is that any Nico trade needs to immediately upgrade another area of the team. For example: Nico Hoerner (3.5 WAR) + Javier Assad (1.0 WAR) + Prospect Capital for Bryce Miller (2.5 WAR) plus An open spot for Matt Shaw (2.0 WAR) and Nico's $11M salary coming free (1.0 WAR) It makes sense! Both teams improve and the Mariners get the clear best player in the trade. The problem is how many of these situations can you find where a contender, or at least aspiring one, has a need at 2B/SS and a surplus that can immediately step in and help the Cubs? You're pretty much limited to SP and C, positions where teams usually aren't super thrilled about parting with depth. Theoretically I'm cool dealing Hoerner, but you start looking for specific landing spots and it gets dicey fast. Like even the above, which I think works great on paper, falls through if Jerry DiPoto simply doesn't like Hoerner.

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I would hate this so hopefully this is just Morosi being Morosi

Looks like Shota has his AAV of 13.25 instead of his actual salary of 13.5. That minor nitpick is all I can find Otherwise everything else looks right. I generally tend to think of payroll in terms of LT dollars, but unlike some years this year there's not a lot of difference between actual salaries and AAVs so it's probably not worth nitpicking. $241 LT payroll limit vs. $220 but ignoring benefits and minor leaguers is very tomayto tomahto.

Via fangraphs depth charts the Mariners rank: 21st at 1B 22nd at 2B 18th at SS 24th at 3B 25th at DH They also already have a higher payroll than they have at any point since COVID before they make a single move. I'd be surprised if they have more than one move of substance salary wise in them. I'm sure they love their young starters, why wouldn't they? But there are only so many ways to upgrade their crap infield without spending a bunch of money that Jerry seems unlikely to have available to him.

I tend to think that, setting aside the injury risk that exists with every pitcher, the two outcomes for Birdsell are that he stays in the rotation and wildly outpaces his prospect ranking, or similar to Wesneski platoon issues force him into relief. The stuff is above average, the command appears above average, there have yet to be major durability or injury concerns. You just look at that delivery and yell "reliever!" and also there's not currently an up to snuff reverse split pitch in the repertoire.

Yeah Jerry HATES making trades

I think beyond any idealogy, the user experience on Twitter has gone way down the last few years. Community Notes is the only positive change during his tenure. There's also network effects. Less so for other verticals I follow but most of the sports people I care about have made the jump (or at least started cross posting) over the last week or three.

Jesus I had heard their OF situation was bad but the Phillies' current outfield is: Austin Hays - Brandon Marsh - Nick Castellanos Their payroll for 2025 is already $25M higher than it was in 2024 as well. Dombrowski is going to need to get creative. Actually they make a ton of sense for Tauchman. Tauchman for a reliever...Alvarado?

The Phillies want help in the outfield (and at the TDL were reportedly sniffing around Bellinger specifically) and in addition to adding Bellinger directly being able to get Castellanos off the grass would help as well. I would probably not do it, I'm not so desperate for dongs that I'd be okay with the defensive hit, but it's absolutely worth thinking about.

Totally, there's some risk there and honestly I'm increasingly of the camp that even if we added an unequivocally ace like Tarik Skubal I'd want to add two SPs this winter.

As, I believe, the highest guy on Kikuchi, I figure it's worth elucidating a bit on why he'd be a strong signing - At a topline, I expect that Kikuchi is the 3rd best pitcher in this FA class behind Burnes and Fried right now. I also think the gap between any of the top 3 (or Snell for that matter) is pretty nominal. Maybe half a win between #1 and #4 - Despite being right there with Burnes/Fried/Snell on talent, projections are that Kikuchi is going to make something in the $60-80M range. Snell will get around double that, Fried about 2.5x, and Burnes about 3x. I expect whoever signs him him to "win" this round of free agency on a $/WAR basis - Despite being 33 (which is why he won't get 9 figures), Yusei probably has the most upside of any FA pitcher on the market. He leveled up significantly immediately upon going to the Astros behind some very straightforward tweaks to his arsenal. You probably shouldn't expect *that* as his true talent, but the Blue Jays are pretty clearly behind the curve on pitching development and you can pretty safely assume he's better than his Blue Jays numbers - To the above point about upside, and also when wondering how he'll age, it's worth noting that Kikuchi was 6th among left handed starters last year in fastball velo. He was 5th in Stuff+ (his whole arsenal not just his FB) and 3rd in PitchingBot's stuff - Kikuchi does come with risk. He has always given up more dongs than he "should" given his peripherals, and while there are zero flags in his performance as an Astro it was only 60 innings. He was mostly bad before 2022 - It's not enough of a reason on its own to do this signing, but you have to think having another Japanese teammate in the rotation would be a positive on the Sasaki pursuit

This might be more on the Bluesky folks themselves and less on web folks like you but getting skeets to embed as cleanly as tweets would definitely make the transition easier. Especially now that it seems like a critical mass of writers have migrated over.

I believe at one point Jed mentioned, either directly or through the guys at the Athletic, that they value the picks lost for a qualifying offer at around $20M. So I think there's just a fairly high threshold where "oh and another $20M on top of the cash" isn't a backbreaker. I would guess given how he zeroed in on Taillon two years ago that the threshold is a good bit higher than even the $80M he got. For simplicities sake in my head if I'm trying to predict Jed a QO for any 8 figure contract is a no go, while at 9 figures it's at least believable he'll pull the trigger. We unfortunately only have an N of 1 in Swanson.

I think if he was a strong defender you could squint and see a fit with his platoon numbers, but as is there's not really anything he does well. On top of that catcher is probably the spot on the position player side where it's most key to bring in a real upgrade in case Amaya faceplants again.

Lamenting requires some tether to reality

So we've just skipped right past whining about every rumor and moved onto whining about theoretical fits we don't like simply existing