Bertz

Speaking of luxury tax and all of that. I put together a spreadsheet to track our payroll and here's where I've got us at the moment. This should be pretty accurate for 2018, with the only discrepancies being with arbitration settlements (highlighted in blue). 2019 and 2020 obviously come with bigger much error bars, because of arbitration raises and contract options. For guys already in arb or whom we already have an estimate, I assumed a raise of 1.5x each year. For guys who hit arb for the first time, I tried to ballpark what they'd get by looking at comparable guys on this year's list, but honestly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Using this as a guidepost though, there's practically nothing we can do at this point to go over the cap for this year, short of Darvish AND Davis. Next year's what's interesting. Harper's probably going to be a cap hit of 35-40 million, so the question is how far above the cap can we go. I think what we do for the last spot in the rotation will probably give us our answer.

I don't actually like Smyly that much because of all the fly balls, but it's hard to argue with these type of deals. Lots of upside with little downside.

I was cool trading Montgomery and backfillimg his swingman role coming into the winter (I even did it in my mock!), but IMO the Chatwood signing closes that door. He's too brittle, we need to have a guy you'd be comfortable making 20 starts on hand.

Sorry I might have missed the discussions, my bad. Just seems inconceivable but I guess with pre-arb players making up a lot of their offensive WAR they can move some money around and afford him. The Yankees and Dodgers are trying to get under the tax, but just for this year. The Tax gets harsher each consecutive year ar you cross it, so most of the big market teams are trying to get under this year and 'reset' their penalties, knowing that starting in 2019 it will be quite a while before they can get back under again.

For Russell I absolutely don't do it, for Baez I most likely don't do it but I'd be willing to listen.

Plus more for one of Báez or Russell. For sure. But they've got enough prospect power to make something work. Their system is killer.

[tweet] [/tweet] Gotta be Brad Hand, right?

I wonder what Zach Britton would cost in terms of players? If signing Cobb is as inevitable as it sounds, then we've filled three of our other pitching holes with multi-year FA deals. That's not a problem per se, but Britton being a rental would be more feature than bug at that point. And since we won't have spent player capital anywhere else I'd be more likely to reach for a luxury item such as Britton. I certainly wouldn't give up Happ for him, but I'd be willing to most our prospects.

[tweet] [/tweet] I know Nightengale is comically bad at this stuff, but I found this interesting. Especially since there were rumors the Sox like Schwarber a few days ago. I don't think I like Scharber for Bradley, but I feel like it's interesting enough that I could be convinced.

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.