Hairyducked Idiot

I'm totally sympathetic to a general FA aversion. I hate to say it, but if we stood pat this offseason, it wouldn't infuriate me as much as it would most years.

Look, it's as simple as this: Either you are scared that the player you sign is going to turn bad, in which case your reasoning for not wanting to sign him is that and has nothing to do with some A-ball prospect you are worried about "blocking." Or it's that you are worried we might have two good players at the same time, which is something to be hoped for and not avoided.

Eating the money destroys value. Destroys whose value? If it destroys the value of the veteran, then the veteran wasn't good enough to get the contract to begin with. Which again, is possible, but has nothing at all to do with Almora. I was being generous.

You can always trade anyone, so long as you are willing to eat the money. "Blocking" isn't a real thing.

Then don't sign him for that reason. Almora has nothing to do with it. Almora's a way to extract maximum value at that position. Sign Ellsbury to a huge deal for 6 years and that value is wasted. So if Ellsbury is there, there's absolutely nothing to do but let Almora rot in AAA. Can't trade either of them, can't put either at a different position. Just wasted. This is some neely-level stuff.

Then don't sign him for that reason. Almora has nothing to do with it.

That would be really, really nice. If you sort of zoom in and focus on all the "ifs" we need individually, they all seem so reasonable. If all those lives arms can turn into a good bullpen. If Samardzija and Jackson can be who they should be, and Wood doesn't regress too much. If Castro stops being heroin-injection-worthy. If Olt can win the 3b job. If Baez comes up mid-season and rakes If Rizzo takes a step forward If Castillo's season can repeat itself If we can add a major piece this offseason You just have to think about how reasonable each one is individually and not how unlikely they are taken together.

Because 1) We don't know for certain that Almora will be a good player. 2) There's barely such a thing as "blocked" to begin with, let alone with two guys who could both be useful at three different positions. It's not like he's going to be sitting there hitting .330/390/550 in Iowa for two full seasons because we just can't figure out any other way to extract maximum value out of the situation. There's plenty of reasonable reasons not to sign a guy like Ellsbury, but some exciting kid who has half a season in the Midwest League is not one of them.

Almora is semi-close? Outside of the IFA guys, of prospects of note he is easily the furthest away. If he starts at Daytona next year, that would put him about 2 seasons away, wouldnt even be halfway through ellsbury's deal. Two seasons if absolutely everything goes right for him as a prospect. It's pretty crazybuckets to be passing on good players right now because you think *maybe* you might have another player for that position two years down the road. Is that even something you *want* to avoid? Having too many good players isn't a bad thing.

Almora hasn't made it to Daytona yet. He has zero bearing on the discussion of what to do with the MLB team in the near future.

Cleveland wins, and now the worst they can do is a three-way tie for two spots. Riding a 9-game win streak.

All we need is a Minnesota win to send it to a three-way tie for two spots heading into the final day.

I'm guessing that means Choo gets more just by virtue of having less competition. There's going to be more teams with money than big-name FAs this offseason. Seller's market.

Andrew Cashner out-fWARed Rizzo this year.

League top-20 sounds kind of exciting until you stop and think that 380 prospects will make these lists.

I still just can't believe that we'll be all that aggressive in the offseason. There's just too many things working against it: 1) The FA class sucks. Really bad. 2) The very few major FAs we might be interested in, we're likely to be blown out of the water by teams with a lot more toe spend. 3) There's still the possibility of the renovations eating into our budget. 4) I'm a big fan of going for it every year, but if you aren't, then it's hard to say 2014 looks like a year to do it. The disappointing seasons of our three most important MLB players puts a huge cloud over any 2014 projection. 5) It finally is time to start thinking about not blocking some of the top prospects. 6) Unlike last year, when we had a ton of playing time to give out and nobody interesting to give it to (making us an ideal landing spot for guys like Feldman, Villanueva, or Schierholtz), going into next year we are pretty loaded with guys who need to have MLB playing time to make use of their value: Arrieta, Lake, Grimm, Cabrera, Rusin, maybe Olt, in addition to the leftovers from last year's deals (Schierholtz, Villanueva). 7) You can keep your eye out for major trade possibilities, but those are extremely hard to pull off and not something you can count on as a plan for the offseason. If we don't have the money to buy our way into the few premium talents that are out there, then as much as I absolutely hate it, it probably makes sense to just run out what you have next year and place your hopes in player development. There's enough talent on the 40-man that if you squint really hard, you can sort of buy into the possibility of there being something there.

It's that time of year again to root for tiebreaker scenarios. Tampa Bay and Cleveland are tied for the two WC spots, with Texas a game behind. If two teams end up tied for the last spot, then there's a tiebreaker game to get in to the Wild Card play-in game. If it's a three-way tie for two spots, then you get: Day 1: A and B play, winner gets into the WC game Day 2: Loser of Day 1 and C play, winner gets into WC game Day 3: WC game

It's possible. I'll believe it when I see it.

I thought that about Epstein. Maybe all the best baseball executives and managers secretly want to be on rebuilding teams with no pressure.

I'd be pretty stunned if he's not at this point with the whole "wait until Monday" thing. You can keep a manager anytime, but you only fire them after the season.

Theoretical/sabermath question: If a manager called for 30 extra sacrifice bunts a year, spread randomly throughout the lineup, how many runs would that cost his team?

It's possible, but I also see a couple guys who are capable of doing that by themselves, individually. 2014 is going to be a tough season to project. The safe projection is probably "bad again," but there's some upside.

What logic and stats, out of curiosity?

It's a play-in game, and it's awesome. It simultaneously creates an exciting one-game playoff and creates a meaningful difference between winning the division and a wild card.

I'm not privy to the inside finances of it, but I was under the impression we convinced the city of Mesa to pay for the Spring Training facilities.