Bertz

I'm increasingly pessimistic about landing Correa, but Jed would say that regardless. It was notable when right before the lockout he said they weren't happy giving the spot to Hoerner, because the default for most GMs is generally "we're always opportunistic but we're happy with the guys we have."

Trying to put on my positivity hat in a morning where it certainly seems like we're getting primed for a kick to the nads, should we be bracing for Trevor Story? Simmons + Correa IMO didn't make any sense, but Simmons + Story makes a lot. Trevor Story is historically a pretty good defensive shortstop, but was bad last year, especially in the second half. That was probably just because of a shoulder injury in his throwing arm, but you would understand wanting to not risk it. Plus, as more of a pretty good defensive shortstop generally, it's not as infeasible that a team would bump him over to 3rd a few days a week when they have a superior glove on hand. Financially, we know Jed wanted Correa on a shorter term, 6-7 year deal. Well Story is/was expected to get something like 6/150. And hell, you could always pay up and try to get that shorter term too, something like 3/100. That's essentially what Jed just did with Stroman. There's also the matter of who else is going to sign him. He might be who the Twins were clearing up money for last night? Otherwise while there are teams who could use a SS, most of them seem to be in tank mode or focused on improving elsewhere.

https://twitter.com/Machete1224/status/1502447719457169410?t=54PS0qqR-FLqvazure4KAQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/Machete1224/status/1503199932546695170?t=3HRwRb6CsBpK0G37WZV-Dg&s=19

Grrrr, I wanted him

Do we know if that's for everyone or just pitchers? Lindsay's tweet made it sound like everyone but the Dombrowski quote sounded like pitchers only. It's emblematic of the PA's improvement this go around that the small quality of life stuff they focused on this go-around is stuff like this and not leg room on airplanes. Looks like the latter

Fangraphs thinks he was 14th in the Twins system, projects as a reliever, and has an ETA of 2026 Yikes

Do we know if that's for everyone or just pitchers? Lindsay's tweet made it sound like everyone but the Dombrowski quote sounded like pitchers only. It's emblematic of the PA's improvement this go around that the small quality of life stuff they focused on this go-around is stuff like this and not leg room on airplanes.

The floodgates appear to have opened

I'll preface this by saying that I don't think that signing both Simmons and Correa is a particularly neat fit, and the *best* interpretation would be that Hoyer doesn't think Correa is a lock, and desperately needs to guarantee that there's a true defensive SS on the roster(and doesn't rate Alcantara that way). Having said that, I think you can come up with some reasons that don't shut the door on it even with the facts you're stating. - Correa hasn't played another position, but he has missed his share of time to injury. Insuring against that is worthwhile and can even be a point in selling him("we're gonna keep you in the lineup more often by DHing you every week or two") if that resonates with his mindset. - Simmons hasn't played another position because he's too good at the position he does play. It makes no sense to play an inferior defender there while both are in the lineup, so as a bench option his utility is in playing SS while others slide down the defensive spectrum. Admittedly Correa dilutes this benefit a bit, but if he's open to a handful of games at DH and/or 3B, great. Plus Correa isn't signed. But in any case, the idea that Villar(who I'd hesitate to call a SS or at least a better defender than Hoerner) or Iglesias(who has a worse defensive history than Simmons and hasn't played a different position in 9 years) have played other positions isn't a selling point in their favor. - Simmons isn't exactly in a position to make big demands of his role. He's 32, coming off a sub-replacement season, made himself into a potential locker room distraction, and signed for backup catcher money. Even if the odds of him being the primary SS are only 10%, that's probably more potential playing time than he could bank on from other suitors. - Simmons' skill balance is extra helpful on this team. While he is right handed when he does hit, we've talked before about this team really needing defensive strength to suck up the groundballs that Stroman/Hendricks/Miley are going to induce. You can make the argument that in a limited role he provides more benefit than a Villar or an Iglesias because his strengths are so maximized. I sure hope so. I hope we're really far along with Correa, and he gave the thumbs up to sliding over to 3B on Stroman days. Those days we'll have an all-galaxy infield defense, and otherwise Simmons is just a standard backup. I've been vocal about us needing two left side infielders, so hopefully this is just an unexpected way of getting there. Occam's Razor though is pretty clearly Hoerner and Simmons splitting SS, probably Andrelton on Stroman and Miley days plus against some lefties.

I'm all for "it's just a little airborne" rationalizing, but neither Simmons nor Correa has played an MLB game anywhere other than shortstop. If Jed was still signing Correa, and this was just to have a better defensive backup than Hoerner, they would have gone with Jose Iglesias or Jonathan Villar who could slide around the infield.

Literally the worst on field choice amongs the shortstop options, and also a vocal anti-vaxxer Horsefeathering Christ

This is probably a day of the week deal. I know they've tried to not have it on Sundays previously, so they might set it to always be e.g. Friday

Consider me very curious about what "corresponding move" could mean

That's done. Joe Davis does a really nice job as Fox's #2 baseball guy, I'm sure he'll just get bumped up. The NFL spot is the interesting one. I really like the Kevin Burkhardt Greg Olsen duo. To me this is a win win because Buck/Aikman upgrade the ESPN booth and those two presumably get more prominent games. I hope Joe Davis doesn't have to partner with Smoltz.

Passan and Rosenthal are likely near comatose from the past 2 weeks, and when they wake up just deluge us with signings

Thinking out loud, this would be fun - Sign Correa for ~$35M per - Take Eric Hosmer off the Padres hands for one of their top prospects (Robert Hassell?) and one of their young MLB pitchers (Chris Paddack or Ryan Weathers; Paddack likely requires us to send a little value their way in the deal but that's still preferable IMO) - Sign a LHH bat for super-sub duty, e.g. Brad Miller - Sign two setup caliber relievers, let's say Andrew Chafin and Chris Martin just to have names - Sign a swingman who would, if things work out right, be a pure reliever. I like Carlos Martinez here Payroll is ~$200M, though may change significantly depending on how you structure Correa's deal. Lineup: 2B - Madrigal LF - Happ DH - Schwindel SS - Correa C - Contreras 1B - Hosmer 3B - Wisdom CF - Hoerner (he'll be doing a lot of roaming) RF - Heyward BN - Gomes, Miller, Frazier, Hermosillo SP - Stroman, Hendricks, Paddack, Miley, Alzolay RP - Wick, Martin, Chafin, Martinez, Wieck, Effross, Steele, Thompson That team is solid, but obviously not much more than that. I do think that IF the team is good about self scouting, knowing if/when to pull the rip cord on the Wisdoms/Fraziers/Schwindels of the roster, they can be legitimately good. There's also Brennen Davis and Caleb Kilian lurking at Iowa. I think, given a significant infusion of talent in offseason 2.0 like above, there's a very good 25 man roster in the org. It's a matter though of figuring out what that looks like in May/June rather than taking until July/August.

We won't have a full accounting of the new CBA for possibly years (Brett found the revenue sharing penalties tied to repeat CBT offenders in 2019), but I think this is where we netted out with the new CBA. The Bad - Little changed systemically. Free agency works the same, arbitration works the same, the tanking and service time manipulation measures are marginal - Because of the above, there's almost no chance the egregiously cheap teams (Rays, Pirates, A's, Marlins) change their behavior one bit over the next five years - The new CBT tier ($60M over the first) seems destined to progress into a fairly hard cap, if it's not there already The Unknown (as of now) - We know the thresholds, but I don't believe we know the penalties for the CBT. I think I saw financially they were status quo, but what about the increases for repeat offenders? The draft penalties? Revenue sharing? The CBT served as a cap last go around because it was a death by a thousand cuts sort of deal, particularly for repeat offenders. If some of those other penalties got dropped, it'll function as more of a soft cap again - Did any revenue sharing changes make it to the final agreement? Even pretty late in the process the players offers all had a small ($20M) decrease - Obviously, are there any quirks none of the writers have found yet, any monkey paw sort of unintended consequence deals, etc. The Okay - Expanded playoffs. Expanding the playoffs is bad, but we knew inevitable. Keeping it to 12 instead of 14 was good. The structure seems solid? I've been going back and forth on whether I think it's okay that Division winner #3 and WC #1 are treated the same, but otherwise I think it's good - The CBT increases of $20M this year and another $14M over the life of the deal. They're substantial from last year to this year, but probably not enough during the deal itself The Good - While little changed systemically, the players did get the pre-arb bonus pool created, and introduced artificial ways to increase service time. Like the CBT has for the owners, these are things that could snowball if the players keep building on them in future agreements - Young players are getting paid a lot more. The league minimum is up ~30% this year, and will jump another 10% over the deal. I haven't seen details, but it sounds like minor leaguers on the 40 man got substantial raises as well. Possibly AAA players too (not sure if this was just someone poorly wording the 40 man player raise?)? And then of course the $50M bonus pool - I'm curious to see the reverberations of more money flowing to young players. Does this commensurately increase arb salaries? With more guaranteed money in hand, are we less likely to see team friendly extensions? - Manfred got more power to make rule changes faster. The game needs to evolve, and while it seems clear that the initial implementation of any rule from Manfred will be as ham-fisted as possible, changes are necessary. And the players have frankly been babies about a lot of this stuff - the anti-tanking measures of a draft lottery + bonus draft picks for small market teams who make the playoffs and/or finish over .500. While these measures aren't going to change how e.g. the Pirates operate, they might impact how small (but not tiny) markets like Cincy and KC operate? I'd guess they've also made it very unlikely we ever see a large market do a prolonged full scale teardown again like the Cubs, White Sox, or Astros - Similar vibe with the service time manipulation. The issue is not suddenly solved, not even close. But the calculus is now more complicated, particularly for mega prospects like Kris Bryant who compete for MVPs/Cys, and also for super polished prospects who will compete for the RoY - The players fought. After 2016, the MLBPA was rightly viewed as a joke. This led Manfred and the owners to habitually line step over the last five years. The players' modest win here won't make the owners cower in fear, but it should help keep their most egregious horsefeathers in check

https://twitter.com/drivelinebases/status/1502124192291983364?t=Q2NqCCcUMPo9P8ZGqsHE8A&s=19