bmags

but he's 29 now! He is a career .318 obp with several years higher, plays multiple positions, and our OF position is trash on top of trash. OTOH, if he does get close to the 2017 version then he is very valuable compared to what it appears he'll sign for.

I'd rather go after marwin for LF and platoon tbh. No one over 30, they don't offer even much upside if they outperform.

Why don't you believe in the Giants?

Players with no trade clauses get traded all the time. Can hurt return but as long as its to a competitive, bigger team you can get stuff back.

hell yes I am here for fegan interviews.

Eloy gets 130 games and a 130 wRc+ Abreu decent year. Only 3 above average offensive players. Negative WAR at two positions and a downgrade at catcher. The comp it gave for Eloy was Greg Luzinski which is pretty fun. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2019-zips-projections-chicago-white-sox/ Some pretty good predictive slashes on Palka .222 / .281 / .439 Nicky D .226 / .304 / .402 I think if I would put the underrated category I'd put it on TA having better power this year and the bullpen is young so had no shot of projecting well but I'm pretty certain some of them will be decent. Really disappointed with the playing time sox had available last two years they were unable to find a decent starter in the bunch. Let's hope we find it with Palka. This is the worst projection in league in case you were wondering.

Guys I think you are close to convincing iWiN!

See I see that as a decent long term move and all it required was moving their catcher they were updating from and a dynamic pitcher I love, but still a 19 year old pitching prospect. And I am 100% that they will re-sign realmuto, so, again it's mostly that I'm kinda skeptical on this phillies rebuild/core. Could turn around big time if Scott Kingery comes around though, to be sure.

We are about 5 minutes off pace in our debate. Definitely true, it's just when they are truly competitive that extra space is needed to acquire that 4th good starter, or a few bullpen pieces, and that adds up quite a bit. I don't see ability to add another dominant guy on FA with harper. So they are going to rely a lot on farm as resources. Just not 100% on their future and fit, but, it obviously makes a lot of sense, there are just some areas where I wonder if that FO is worried about getting pot committed on this core.

I understand all you wrote, but I'm just looking at a team that looks like a wild card team with harper, and past this year will need to be really creative to add elite players.

I don't agree with this at all. That group allows them to be competitive for 2 years and figure it out. The only person you have mentioned there that matters is Realmuto and nova. They can shed bad mccutchen and arrieta deals if they need and restock on different FAs. The phillies are walking into a tough NL east this year and harper essentially maxes out that squad for the next 5 years in a not particularly dominant way (in my opinion).

To be clear, I'm like 80% phillies get this done on the obvious deal that breaks stanton's record. But the 20% is I think philly may be looking at the yankees and thinking they made a mistake getting stanton when they probably really wanted harper/machado this year but it made it untenable. And they have a situation like that coming up with trout. I really believe yanks could have gotten machado for the white sox deal if they were in it at the end and offered a 4 or 5 year opt out and phillies are going to have to think about Trout coming along and making sure they have ammo.

I think it's likely, I honestly do not know that even with the owner comments and phillies fan they feel as much pressure as you state. I really think sox with their fickle fanbase was much bigger deal philly just has a bigger media market to express theirs. I think it's phillies, I think 10 year 330 would be what I would put money on if we had to. I would not be surprised though if he has to take the higher AAV lower guaranteed money because it does seem that philly may be more dogmatic on years. Giants are so interesting. This seems to ride against what peoples impression of Farhan would be, but perhaps he is more aggressive than the front offices he was a part of and how has bigger budgets.

This is a good question. I think Yonder finishes out the season. I think there is a high likelihood that Nicky and Palka out perform him offensively (I don't even think highly of Nicky at all). Jay had a terrible second half last year. I think it's pretty likely that he is entering his steep decline and will be rough, but would probably still be someone you trade for nothing in july.

This is probably true but this really was an interesting take by Jeff Sullivan. It is funny, it feels like there has been so many phases of the offseason where it would seem the big articles were that harper was probably the more likely to succeed player, then it whipsawed to machado. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/it-seems-unlikely-scott-boras-has-a-300-million-bid-for-bryce-harper/

Yes sorry Fulmer article. I'll look for it. It was a nice article outlining what the relationship is like between player and org. Big fan of Fegan, he always seems to take the angle that the soxtalk board is most curious about. Here's the quote:

Alonso is bad.

Yeah and their big class was 2016.

Fegan At least acknowledges their presence in the Fuller article. Pretty certain they use it.

If you want a preller sucks argument he was behind the kinsler for prince swap that relieved the tigers. The rangers were "overloaded" with infielders at the time. One big lesson that dodgers showed everyone, don't try to make the perfect team with one player at every position.

interesting enough both tatis and machado both played in pretty big pitchers parks in AA so the power numbers are pretty great.

nice to see you posting VAFan.

Yeah that would be one consideration. And again, it may be largely anecdotal on my part. But certainly with stars, it seemed pronounced. Think about how our 05 -08 run was largely fueled with free agents over 30! The other I thought of was that maybe pitching velocity hit a tipping point where suddenly it became too consistently fast for these players with declining bat speed to keep up on fastballs. And suddenly while they previously could have maintained average production in later years they were suddenly below average and more expensive. Total theory. No idea.

I wouldn't put chris davis as first tier. His market was pretty bad and then all the sudden baltimores deal came out and people were pretty stunned. Some of those were from a different time, but pujols was on the heel of arod who did decent on his second deal. It was on pujols deal where the aging curve seemed to fall off a cliff. I'm not sure I've ever seen this definitively shown, but it sure seemed like around 2011-12 it got a lot worse with ages 31 on.

I'm sure it was but I am pretty sure in that same article it said they expected him to make a decision over the new year.