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Bertz

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Everything posted by Bertz

  1. Bertz
    My assumption on 3B is they would love to make an upgrade, but with how terrible the market is there it's unlikely to happen. Maybe an opportunity comes up to e.g. expand a Morel -> Seattle trade to bring Josh Rojas back this way or something like that, but ultimately I think it'll be a "nothing ever really aligned" deal and we roll internally. It's not the best, but between Madrigal, Wisdom, Mastro, Murray, Vazquez, and Shaw they'll figure something out. Plus next year's FA market is actually pretty strong at 3rd so there's likely to be opportunity at the TDL to address it. It kind of sucks, taking the volume approach to a position is a good way to rack up some negative WAR the first 2-3 months of the season, but if Jed addresses 1B/DH/SP properly it shouldn't matter too much.
  2. Bertz
    He's not our best prospect but I think Moises might be my favorite of our prospects. I'm under no pretenses he'll be a catcher, I know Kirk has made it work but that very much feels like an exception. But regardless of defensive home doing what Moises has done offensively at his age is ludicrous. Pablo Sandoval has already been mentioned, but I'll throw out another portly catcher as a comp: Carlos Santana. I think that more patience-heavy approach feels more in line with what to expect from Ballesteros. The power to this point has not been amazing, and with his lack of height it might not ever get there. So there's a chance he ends up a tweener, something like .270/.340/.420 with a 110 wRC+. That's a good bat, but at 1B or DH that's a low end starter. So like if you asked me to bet which prospect in the system is most likely to post a career wRC+ north of 100 Moises would be my guy. But we need to see the power or the defense take a big step forward to see a high ceiling.
  3. Bertz
    I'm all in on Belt if we can't pull down Soto or Ohtani. He is my favorite complimentary bat on the market. He is increasingly vulnerable to left handed pitching, so Ohtani+Belt for instance leaves the lineup a little unbalanced (not that either of Soto/Ohtani is bad against lefties). But sans context for the rest of the offseason Belt is my guy I've been looking at Nick Martinez a lot the last few days. He has been an extremely effective swingman the last few years. If he is willing to continue in that role and is not insistent on making ~30 starts he'd be a phenomenal fit (presuming trades thin out our SP depth like I expect). Teoscsr Hernandez is a guy I expect to outperform his contract, but IMO is very much not a fit here. I'm willing to do the 3 everyday corners outfielders dance for a mega star like Soto, but not for a guy in Hernandez's class.
  4. Bertz
    Seems pretty explicit to me here that he's talking about swapping Soto in for Ohtani in an otherwise similar offseason plan
  5. Bertz
    The post you initially responded to was comparing Ohtani + Hoskins + a pitcher acquired for Morel vs. Soto + Hoskins + a pitcher acquired for Morel. Unless you think Ohtani will not have a materially higher salary than Soto, there's either a reading comprehension or arithmetic problem on your end.
  6. Bertz
    There's no separate budgets, it's very simple arithmetic and a sprinkling of reading comprehension
  7. Bertz
    I'm begging you to actually read things you respond to. It would alleviate so much nonsense.
  8. Bertz
    https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/38905458/shohei-ohtani-free-agent-chicago-cubs-cody-bellinger In addition to the above a few other things: - They will get into the mix for Corbin Burnes if they think Milwaukee will dance - Jeimer Candelario is gone, but also Nick Madrigal "probably isn't the everyday option there moving forward." Not sure if that's just saying it'll be a timeshare or if it means 3B is definitely on the shopping list for the winter
  9. Bertz
    TT is saying two things, neither very complicated: - Soto is going to be cheaper on an annual basis than Ohtani. That $10-15M difference can be used on additional players to help the roster - In addition to the 2024 budget, Jed had to think about 2025, 2026, 2027, etc. Soto and Hoskins being one year deals means you can add a 3rd guy on a multi-year deal and still have plenty of financial flexibility in future years. In the Ohtani scenario you might lean on the third guy being shorter term Take those two together and what we can infer about the budget, and you're looking at the FA SP addition being someone from the Imanaga tier with Soto or the Kyle Gibson tier with Ohtani.
  10. Bertz
    Yeah I love Belt. My only problem with him is that he's getting more of a platoon split as he gets older and the two monster DH options we're pining for are also lefties. But like Pete Alonso+Brandon Belt would absolutely be a great way to bolster the lineup.
  11. Bertz
    The other side of the coin is this https://blogs.fangraphs.com/for-bellinger-and-paredes-it-pays-to-pull/ tl;dr being that xstats don't generally look at spray angle, and Bellinger is very much an outlier there. If he just naturally has a crazy rate of pulled fly balls, he doesn't need light tower power to rack up dongs. But yeah, the preponderance of evidence is on Bellinger being more good than great offensively going forward. That doesn't justify substantial money at 1B, and while attrition can certainly hit our outfielder and force Bellinger into a more valuable position, $150M+ is way too much for that insurance policy IMO.
  12. Bertz
    There's definitely a lot of that that happens with the Statcast xstats, but in this specific case with how universally the comp list took a step back and with Petriello very specifically looking at his 2-strike approach it feels pretty hard to poke holes in it?
  13. Bertz
    Really good look at Bellinger. Tl;dr is he improved a lot but he doesn't really have a prayer at sustaining that 140 wRC+
  14. Bertz
    Yeah Wicks had a 16.3% strikeout rate, a good-but-not-elite 47% groundball rate, and has below average fastballs by any objective measure. Like we all love him, but there's a very good chance he ends up being more or less Kyle Freeland or something similarly unexciting.
  15. Bertz
    Hate to say it but this has me kind of wondering about Davis too
  16. Bertz
    Wow, expect multiple trades this winter I guess
  17. Bertz
    Being like "yeah but what else did they do" beyond a hypothetical Juan Soto trade has some real "In six games" energy
  18. Bertz
    If you read Passan's article this AM or Kevin Acee's from last week the vibe I get is that the ask on Soto will actually be two pre-arb SPs. Looking at their depth chart, they desperately need innings after losing Lugo and Martinez (in addition to Snell). So something like Wicks & Wesneski or Brown & Assad would be the main part of a Soto trade. I'm sure there will be other pieces (Mervis makes a lot of sense?) but I increasingly wonder if the Morel/Caissie/Alcantara tier of bats can go untouched in this specific deal. That said it would force Jed to further shore up SP this winter. Maybe that's a Morel to Seattle trade. Maybe it's a 2nd FA starter acquisition, someone in that like Kenta Maeda/Kyle Gibson tier.
  19. Bertz
    The Orioles had a real monkey's paw situation where they begged for Angelos to stop being so hands on and forcing their FO to do dumb crap. They eventually got their wish, but from that point on the cash mostly dried up. They haven't had a payroll north of $100M since 2018. So I mean never say never with the ownership class but I have a hard time seeing how a new owner could be any worse than what Baltimore is currently getting on that front.
  20. Bertz
    One of my personal baseball truisms is that age doesn't really matter for pitchers. Like if you have two identical pitchers, one 25 and one 35, I think their short and medium term (let's say < 3 year) outlooks are largely the same. But like even if that’s true (and I think I'm in the minority in this belief), I'm not sure how well that idea holds up for a 19 year old? So a case like Ferris is interesting. It does sort of feel like he just needs 18-24 months to build up his strength (to improve his velo) and get some reps (to improve his command and tighten up his breaking stuff). We've seem with e.g. Jordan Wicks that the velo bump doesn't always come, but when comparing a 19 year old to a 22 year old this might be where age actually matters. I think if we had more at the lower levels of the farm I'd be pretty okay with Ferris as trade bait. But given that SB and especially Myrtle Beach look kind of sad next year, guys like Ferris and Gray and Rojas take on a bit of an outsized role in the org's health.
  21. Bertz
    I don't actually see Carlos Santana as a fit. I think there's a certain threshold under which you just say "Welp, we're not addressing 1B this winter" and Santana is very much on the wrong side of the line. He is legitimately a worse offensive option than Eric Hosmer or Trey Mancini were at this same time last year (he generates a bit more WAR because he's actually a snazzy defender at 1B). There's some of that with Kenta Maeda, but it comes from a more positive place. I've mentioned a few times before I love the crop of back end starters on the market this winter: Maeda, Nick Martinez, Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, James Paxton, Michael Lorenzen etc. There's some space to really clean up with vets on 1 or 2 year deals. But I don't think that's an area the team should really be playing in unless A) the guy is very comfortable with swing-man duty (as you alluded to with Manaea) or B) Jed deals away multiple young starters. We're thankfully in a position where we don't need much help just covering innings, we need impact.
  22. Bertz
    Smyly's written in pen, at least for opening day. He was very good as a reliever last year, provides some emergency SP depth, and is owed almost $10M. Conversely I think both Leiter and Cuas are likely to make the roster but not total locks. So then there's two questions: 1) how many resources do you allocate to the pen and 2) do you want to reserve a dedicated spot for the Iowa crew, or rely on them just as depth? My preference would be one pretty certain late inning reliever, David Robertson being my favorite, and then leaving a dedicated spot for the youths. Jed's recent comments at the GM's meetings make me think he might go the opposite direction.
  23. Bertz
    Goes to show I should have checked instead of assuming since it's 3-4 hours from here to the West Coast a much further flight would hold onto most of that.
  24. Bertz
    I do sort of wonder if him being a longtime Angel will hurt the Dodgers. Like Ohtani very much seems like a type to go out and conquer new worlds type. Moving an hour up the coast may not be enough of a change for his big foray into free agency? I do expect Shohei to end up on the West Coast ultimately. Every team is going to be offering him the world, if you don't have to leave any money or competitive aspirations on the table why not choose somewhere that knocks 4 hours off of every trip to/from Japan?
  25. Bertz
    Even assuming he gets that extra option, I think if you made me put odds on prospect most likely to get traded I'd choose Canario. He's reportedly not great in centerfield ("fine for now" seems to be the consensus), and doesn't have big time splits. The lack of splits is good for his prospects of ending up an everyday player, but bad for finding him plate appearances in April of '24. So you've got a good-not-great prospect who's more or less major league ready without a clear path to MLB playing time. And on top of that he's got better prospects not that far behind him. More or less textbook trade bait IMO.
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