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That would be good, provided the achilles is healed.

I know he isn't a starter for them it was just an observation of paying a guy nearly 500,000 an inning. Not many teams can do that. I think their starters would be Kershaw Heaney Anderson Buehler Uria May Some subset of that. doesn't look great with a 270 mil payroll. 90 mil more than the Sox. Their 3 highest paid pitchers are Bauer, Price and Kershaw. None of which may pitch this year. That's 100 million.

Starting rotation seems to be the most glaring. They especially with health. Which again is on a team with probably at least 60 mil more to spend. Just glanced at the payroll. They are paying David Price 32 million and he pitched 73 innings last year.

My wife gets free charging at work so that decreases our cost even more.

Agreed. I don't like it either. They obviously didn't have the resources to address all of them. That is going to be a weakness this year, however very few teams have no weaknesses. Even the almighty Dodgers with the highest payroll league has weaknesses.

But they do play as much. You are just looking at in a traditional sense. A hitter with a full season will at most have 600 plate appearances. If they average 4 pitches per plate appearance that 2400 pitches they effect in a season. A starting pitcher if the have 30 starts and average 100 pitches, have an effect on 3000 pitches in a season. So they may have a greater effect on more plays in a season. RPs obviously not as much but they have a greater impact as they pitch in higher leverage situations more often. Plus as I said good pitching beats good hitting more often than not. You need to think out of the box more and not so traditionally.

No. That's a bad analogy. Punters and kickers don't handle the ball 30 times a game like a pitcher does. Specialits are relative. Football is not identical to baseball.

It's a valid way to look at it. I just disagree. Good pitching will beat good hitting more often than not. Plus with a team that has a good offense already I will pick to reinforce the weakness for a more balanced team. While RPs pitch fewer innings I'll say that they can be more important innings As far as hitters versus pitchers, hitter se may 30 pitches if they take a lot of pitches in a games while each individual pitcher throws more than that.

You can't walk off the island.

Agreed. So they needed to prioritize where to put the resources.

Don't know what the greatest name in baseball has to do with Kimbrel but I love the name.

Maybe they will use it on the player they acquire. Until the deal happens we won't know.

Ok. So one.

That's RF in isolation as opposed the whole pitching staff. Compare it to the whole offense. Or compare the bullpen to the offense. They lost at least 2 pitchers in Rodon and Heuer.

It would be helpful, it all depends on the cost.

Depends on what it costs to acquire a starter. They needed to acquire more pitching in one way or another.

I don't disagree. As I've said I like the philosophy but don't know the players well enough to decide who was better. The advantage of having the young cost-controlled lineup is that they can spend the money where they have weaknesses. So they ca spend money on the BP arms with short deals. I don't think any got more than a 2 year deal with options. So none of the deals are long term issues.

Correct. So where should they allocate their resources? I know I'm in the minority but I think the pitching especially the bullpen was the greatest weakness. The bullpen prior to signing anyone was Hendriks, Bummer and Crochet.

Which is all valid. But again what was their greatest weakness? Everyone will have an opinion. I just think it was the pitching staff.

Agreed. It all depends on what you think the greatest weakness is. In my opinion a lineup with 7 out of 9 spots filled was less of a weakness than a bullpen with Hendriks, Bummer, Crochet and....... (assuming Kimbrel is traded). So while they do need a RF the bullpen was really a weakness, especially this year where pitching innings is going to be limited. Both are understandable weaknesses just where is the greatest weakness as we know the salaries are near the luxury tax limit.

In theory, this is true. In reality we all know this isn't true. The will be a budget and they will not go over it. What we don't know is what the budget will be.

I think this is true to an extent this year. With the shortened Spring training either more starters or a deeper bullpen will be a key to winning.

They have experience in RF, didn't you watch last season? (its a joke by the way)

There are 7 teams without a first round pick this year. Semmes like a lot.

I don't remember which year it was.