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My preemptive lemons into lemonade approach for tonight’s game is hey, if the bears lose, at least they can rest guys next weekend.

Because his actual results have been down and he hasn’t stayed healthy. Teams aren’t going to pay up until he shows his offensive struggles are behind him while also maintaining health leading up to the deadline.

Robert’s xwOBA last year was .033 points higher than his wOBA and above league average overall. And that’s despite a rough start to the season when he had little protection and was still working through stuff. If he can play even 2/3 of a season and hit like that he’s well worth his $20M salary. If he can get his wRC+ to say 115 and stay healthy, he provides a fuckton of surplus value. I can’t guarantee he will stay healthy, but I think there is a good chance he gets his wRC+ to that figure and erases the notion he is suddenly a bad hitter. Given we have nothing else of value to use the money on, I’m ok rolling the dice on Robert and seeing what happens.

Yet teams haven't valued him that way.

This is the first time I can recall making a case for Benny, post signing.

Sunk cost fallacy is where the alternative of the cost is superior. Obviously that doesn't apply here when Robert is still a quality player. You could apply it to Benitendi where we could get similar production for that 17 million from some guy off the street by sinking the cost. It's clear Robert has more upside than downside at this point. Wasn't the case two years ago. Probably wasn't the case last year. That is all of course because he's hit his downside the last two years, leaving much more room above to where hes at now. No reason to make a trade just to make a trade in some attempt to correct the mistake of not trading him the last two years.

He has another team option and could be QO’d after that if he mostly returns to form and stays healthy. If he produces and stays healthy (both ifs obviously), he is no longer a pure rental at the deadline and any return would reflect that.

Suddenly your letters to JR make sense.

I don't think any player was ever directly confirmed by Whittenmeyer (which i guess isn't surprising). Petty was listed as an example of what was on the table. Nothing about a comp pick in the Whittenmeyer article either. He brought up Julian Aguiar and Brandon Williamson, both of whom are recovering from TJ surgery. Williamson is also 27 so not super interested in him. Aguiar is 23 so maybe? His minors stats are just ok. If all three were offered maybe? Very much doubt that was the case though. Just don't think there's enough value there to replace Robert for even 1/2 the year unless they have a strong hunch they can fix Petty. As he is, he's a bad AAA pitcher. I just don't get the rush to trade Robert for scraps. I'm 100% fine having him play CF. Not like he's blocking anyone.

I thought it was about Benetti for like 10 seconds 😂

he had .2 fWAR and a wRC+ of 103. He's like a 1 WAR player at best at this point with no future here. I'd rather give 100% of his PA to someone like Brooks. He's also a butcher but he's also got some pop and is 25 with some development left.

Not that the Dodgers need any help financially, but Benintendi for Treinen or Tanner Scott would make sense here.

Why are we releasing him? He put up positive production this last season, and he's relatively cheap.

Not that somebody leaked that info to him, but that Getz was asking for a player beyond Petty (which Wittenmeyer has already told us) AND the Comp pick, which we know Getz wants to get his hands on.

It has zero veracity

Well, if the Bartolo Colonoscopy tweet has any veracity, they'd get a starting pitcher they could work on this season, a CF who hasn't made the transition to AAA yet, and a Comp pick that pads out the 2026 draft even further. While that is certainly not the Crochet return, this would definitely be workable for $10 and Robert.

Essentially it is. They seem determined to get "value" for Robert, even though for years now they haven't agreed on what that "value" is. I think of it this way. Two months ago, you could have let Robert go for almost nothing. Then you obligated yourself to $20 million for him. Now, if we were willing to pay $10 million dollars we could supposedly have Chase Petty, a Comp Pick, and maybe another post TJS pitcher. If you remove Robert's name, essentially we would be paying $10 million for the two players and the draft pick. That's 12 years of pretty highly thought of pitchers, plus the 72nd pick in the draft (including the extra draft cap space of around $1.15m based on LY). So is that "value"? Isn't that about what we turned down in July, and not too far off of what Cincy offered a year ago? If that has been his worth for a year now, why did we bring him back knowing what his worth has been?

Guessing a lot of casual football fans wouldn’t even think of KC as being outside of Kansas.

Keep him and let’s see what happens this season. I would really love to enjoy a baseball season again. If the org is that strapped for money, it makes zero sense to choose extending him for 20mil then eat half his contract for a return that simply adds some depth to the system.

You mean the Kokomo Creek Chubs?

reminds me of sunk cost fallacy

94 contact% and 3 SwStr% is crazy

Which is what makes this song and dance so weird. What we know so far is that apparently no one was willing to put a decent return out there for Robert. We pick him up again on a one year option at 20 million, and again put a price tag much higher than his injury history and contract status valued him a few short months ago, and around we go again. Why? So we can get to July with him probably playing around 60% of the season, another stretch injured, and maybe a month where everything went right, so that teams can again value him as an injury riddled rental? We have done this for YEARS now. Why?

And if teams view him this way (which it seems they do), then there's no shot they're getting anything good for him right now either, even if they eat money. So you trade him and pay $10 million of his salary and probably get nothing useful - if the best case rumors are true, where the Sox get a reclamation pitcher in the minors and a comp pick worth about $1 mil is that enough for you? It's not for me, as neither the comp pick nor a reclamation project are very likely to amount to anything. You then have a hole in CF and if it was so easy to find 1.5 to 2 WAR there in free agency or in other trades, then teams wouldn't even be talking about Robert.