Bertz

Speaking of Sherman, he had this to say in an article earlier this evening

Butler does seem like a guy who might turn into a monster if he's just airing it out for an inning. I'd like to see him come to ST competing for the last spot in the pen, but if he doesnt earn it there's no sleep lost when you have to put him on waivers.

Love this. He's my favorite reliever on the market on a per inning basis, and if we're signing him either his MRI isn't too scarey or we're getting a damaged goods discount.

I doubt they're going to go on full six man rotation, but I wouldn't be surprised if the plan is for Montgomery to make 10ish starts even if no one hits the DL. Have the plan from the outset be 30 starts each for the top guys and Montgomery pick up the other 12. Maybe pick up a little more slack for Chatwood in particular. I don't love Cobb after signing Chatwood. I saw them as either/or. Theo must like the idea of trading for relievers and signing starters. I thought with the supply of good setup men the opposite made sense, but we obviously don't know their current asking prices.

Other side benefit I just thought of: this probably makes it more likely the Rays pack it in and deal Archer.

On the one hand I love this for us, it really helps our odds of getting Harper next year. Bryce in pinstripes is basically a foregone conclusion amongst the media types. On the other hand, horsefeathers the Yankees, so I don't want players I really like going to them.

False alarm [tweet]https://twitter.com/SamMillerBB/status/939214208889008128[/tweet]

Disappointing, but this is probably the best case scenario if he wasn't going to choose us. He stays out of the NL and raises the odds that we as baseball fans get to see see Mike Trout in meaningful games while in his prime.

The 40 man guys cost what, 200k apiece or so? I figured 15 on the insurance stuff. At any rate, I think we've got close to 50 mill to spend, AFTER Chatwood, and still have about 10 mill leftover for in season moves. 150k per person. So 150k x 15 is 2.25 million. I also realize now my wording was a little misleading, the 15.5 million is insurance AND guys on the 40. But yeah I think you're spot on. It makes me wonder if we will make a move or two specifically with the LT in mind. For example, buying out Rizzo or Quintana's options would shift some luxury tax burden from 2019/2020 to 2018. If come February we're 20+ million under the cap, it's something to strongly consider.

When calculating the LT, you've also got to be sure to include the guys on the 40 man and insurance payments, which Cot's estimates at about 15.5 million for next year. That plus filling out our roater with league minimum guys puts us at ~138 for next year as of now, and ~161 for 2019 (much less reliable because of arb raises). That puts us about 60 million under the 2018 tax and 45 million under the 2019 tax, as of now.

Chatwood's also a Statcast darling

BTW looks like ZiPS has him at 2 wins in only 140 innings.

I think how I feel about this depends entirely on how much money Cobb gets. I doubt we're getting both, and I like Cobb more, but if it's 3/30 for Chatwood vs. 4/60 for Cobb I think I'm happier going this route.

Heyman had an article on it that was mostly nonsense, but had a few good points. 1. Because the Padres are so terrible, they can most afford to give him a shot at being a legit two-way guy this year. 2. The Padres farm is pretty great, and they have no money on the books, so with Ohtani in the fold they actually look very promising for 2019 on. And Ohtani would be getting in on the ground floor of that. 3. He'd get to be 'THE guy.' (Though he's probably the best player on the Rangers or Mariners as well?) I don't know if I buy those reasons as being worth choosing the Padres, but they're something.

I was a little unsure how our draft would look under the new rules, so I decided to dig in a little bit. Apologies if this gets a bit rambly, the new rules are extremely convoluted. Based on record, we pick 24th in each round. Because we extended Davis and Arrieta qualifying offers, we will receive an extra pick when each of them signs elsewhere. As a large market team that is NOT above the luxury tax, those two picks will be placed after Compeitive Balance Round B (which itself comes right after the 2nd round). The other teams losing QO FA's this winter are the Royals, Rays, Rockies, Cards, and Indians, who I believe all recieve revenue sharing (I'm not positive on this, especially the Cards). Therefore, each of their extra picks would come after the first round. That means that, tentatively, the draft would look like this: Round 1: Picks 1-30 FA Comp Picks for everyone but us: 31-37 Competitive Balance Round A: 38-46 Round 2: 47-76 Competitive Balance Round B: 77-82 Our Comp Picks: 83-84 Round 3: 85-114 That would place our picks at: 24 (1st rounder) 71 (2nd rounder) 83 (comp for Arrieta/Davis) 84 (comp for Arrieta/Davis) 109 (3rd rounder) However, like under the old rule, when a team signs a QO free agent, they lose a draft pick. The way it works now, teams that receive revenue sharing money lose their 3rd pick, while teams that don't lose their 2nd pick (you also lose your fifth if you're over the luxury tax). As mentioned above, there are nine total QO free agents, seven excluding our own. Because of that, those are seven picks that are going to disappear as part of FA compensation. Ideally, that would move every pick after our first rounder up by seven spots, but because of a bunch of wonky nonsense, that's not quite the case. I've included said wonky nonsense in the spoiler tags. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to assume that our 2nd rounder will climb 5 spots, and all picks afterwards will climb by 7 spots. That would give us picks at 24 (1st rounder) 66 (2nd rounder) 76 (comp for Arrieta/Davis) 77 (comp for Arrieta/Davis) 102 (3rd rounder) It's apparently a good and deep draft, so this should be a nice way to replenish our depleted system. Now, my numbers could be off, but barring something weird (or me completely whiffing on some of the rules) nothing should be off by more than 2-3 spots.

Any plan that involves signing Harper is going to take the Cubs over the luxury tax, or be really bad. The one exception would be a Heyward trade/opt-out, which is basically a non-starter at the moment. That's okay, as long as they stay under this year they don't have to be all that concerned about how much they exceed it by in order to get Harper, but they will exceed it nonetheless. As an example, my path upthread which is basically Ohtani, Yelich, Cobb, and 2 relievers in terms of 2019 expenditures, leaves them about 13 million under the threshold in planning the '19 offseason. There's no path to being 30+ under entering 2019 that doesn't make 2018 much worse. Yeah, I think I fat fingered something with the Darvish scenario. As of right now, we are ~55 under for '19, and Harper will be something like 35 by himself. I don't expect us to be under the tax in '19, but i do expect that we can't go too far over. Specifically, I expect us to stay within 20 million of the tax to avoid triggering the next tier of penalties. I imagine that means one of our rotation spots will need be filled cheaply in terms of dollars, whether that be Ohtani or a trade. It also means that at least one of our 3 bullpen slots will go to a one year prove it guy in the mold of Duensing.

Ohtani makes this whole exercise especially fun. For instance, we could sign Darvish and two Morrow/McGee types to multi-year deals and still be approximately a Bryce Harper under the luxury tax next year. Or you could trade for Archer knowing that losing Happ's lefthanded power off the bench is suddenly much less painful. I think if we get Ohtani I don't go after Cobb. I would want to either go way above his talent level and build a super rotation or go a little cheaper (and no draft pick) and save our bullets for more goodies next winter.

I don't think there's a specific thing. It's mostly just a compulsion for transactions (the M's literally have ~2x as many as the next team during his tenure) and a generally high energy personality.

Oh I already did that a few pages back but it was the Big Bowl in Streeterville

A big part of the survey was about how a team would assimilate Ohtani and keep him healthy and productive. Texas showed they can do a great job on all counts with Darvish (unless you are a weirdo who blames them for Yu's TJ surgery).

Heck could they make a late play for Stanton if they got Ohtani? Not sure what sort of payroll they can afford My understanding is they have 20-30 mil to play with, so I'd think so. Though with them needing to play Cruz in the OF more to accommodate Ohtani, I doubt they'd go that direction.

I'd be going nuts right now if I was an M's fan. They're a fringey wild card team as is, but add Ohtani and another big move (Lorenzo Cain?) and suddenly they look as good as anybody. Same with the Giants. Stanton doesn't get them to the Dodgers level, but Stanton+Ohtani plus a decent 3B like Todd Frazier and they're right there.

[tweet] [/tweet] !!!!

Also. my understanding is that Spring Training in Florida is WAY worse than ST in Arizona from the players' point of view. In Florida apparently everything is stupidly far apart, you spend half your day in the car/bus.