Balta1701

I probably would have too. He will only get like $1 million and they don’t have bullpen depth that is even as good as him.

This was also my thought, if he’s not going to be 100% to start the year then you don’t want him on a guaranteed deal where you only can do a rehab stint with him.

They have sort of replaced Mendick and Harrison with Sosa and Romy.

Apparently Ruiz gets a $1 million guaranteed deal next year.

Arb 1 becomes a guaranteed contract if he’s on the roster on April 1, or I believe he may still be cuttable for a smaller fee at that point, but he becomes a free agent if sent down at any point other than a rehab assignment. They could have offered him arbitration and sent Sosa or Romy down when he came back, and they could have put him at AAA on a rehab assignment.

One other possibility is that Mendick might simply not be ready for spring training. If that was the case I wouldn’t have tendered him either. Since he wasn’t mentioned I assume that means they offered arbitration to Ruiz?

Leury? No he can’t be optioned, neither could Mendick if arb was offered.

Let's be equally real. They spent a lot of money this year. They spent more than the Astros did this year. They spent more than the Astros did in 2017. They spent more than the Nationals did in 2019. They spent more than the Braves did in 2021. They spent more than the Cubs did in 2016. They spent more than the Royals did, ever. They actually did spend money. They did what we wanted them to do on the total budget line. They finished 6th in payroll - the only one of those teams who was 6th in payroll was the Cubs, all of the recent "complete a rebuild then win a title" teams spent less. They actually spent money. They did so in an unfathomably stupid way.

I expect Conforto to cost more and that drives me to Bellinger. If healthy, I expect Conforto to produce more.

You've actually done it, you've found a corner OF who is bad enough that there's no reason to replace Vaughn with him. Seriously, he was -0.2 fWAR in 275 plate appearances, Vaughn was -0.4 in 555. He was -10.9 on defense, Vaughn was -26.7 - so Vaughn was 4.9 runs worse than he was on pace to be. On the other hand, Vaughn put up a 4.9 offense, while he put up a 0.2, so Vaugh was on pace to be 4.5 runs better than him offensively. This is actually sorta eerie how close Vaughn is to "exactly 2 Franchy Cordero's" last year. Apparently Cordero is a better baserunner?

This thread was posted on October first and they provided an update yesterday.

To some degree, they won so many games that they did have him when they did most of their important work, at least in the regular season. They had a 10 game lead after Sale's last start of the season.

He was still a 1.7 fWAR player last year. If he wanted a 1 year deal I have to imagine he can get nearly $10 million based on that, or I could see him having a shot at a couple years with a slightly lower yearly amount if he wanted a guarantee.

I think there was a general agreement that Vaughn wasn’t so bad in 2021 that you would say he couldn’t be tried there in 2022, but I do think you can probably find me saying “but you have to have a backup plan” like I usually say, and clearly they didn’t. By May, it was clear they needed a backup plan as Vaughn was the worst fielding player in baseball, and they had no other options.

I do think the injury worry is real. You have guys who are trying to jump into game level intensity early, without a full spring training, they are interrupting their physical training routine in the process which can matter for getting prepped for the season, and finally game effort is always more likely to cause an injury. For a contrast to what you just said, a big reason people were frustrated with Eloy was that he didn’t need to try to go over the wall during a spring training game, but people would understand Robert trying to do that during a WBC game.

Sale was a 6.5 rWAR pitcher in 2018 and finished 4th in the Cy Young voting. 2.11 ERA in a 150 inning season.

I don’t remember what date he got hit on the hand, but starting on June 12 he went 6/48 with 0 home runs, .453 OPS over that stretch before he was sent back down. Whole lotta weak contact in there.

Apparently I could have put this in the celebrity death thread. Decent chance that one of the next few days we wake up and Twitter has gone permanently offline.

Messing around before heading home, I got Thomas + a filler for Montgomery to work. https://www.baseballtradevalues.com/trade-simulator/ I used this guy and it adds a back of the rotation pitcher. https://www.mlb.com/player/tommy-henry-674072?stats=career-r-pitching-minors&year=2022

Does that clear out the Seattle OF Glut?

I'm not going to rule out that there is someone who isn't in the list of surgeries here who came back more quickly and was effective, (weirdly, Crochet and Rodon are not there if anyone out there likes editing Wikipedia articles), but it definitely isn't the majority of pitchers, even the majority of relievers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_baseball_players_who_underwent_Tommy_John_surgery If you can find one who came back more quickly and was effective in recent years, go for it. I can't.

I used the Wikipedia list of Tommy John Surgeries. Some people are filtered out because if they had the surgery after June 1, they basically all miss the entire next season. But that also is telling us something, because a 14 month recovery would still let those people come back.

https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/2024369 Made 1 start in 2020, left with elbow pain. Out a full 18 months. I do think the White Sox will try to be aggressive with Crochet, but "back in early June" would still be extremely aggressive with him, and I haven't found a pitcher in recent years who has been able to do that successfully without winding back up on the IL. The only guy I could find recently who has thrown competitive pitches after 14 months is Glasnow, and he gave everything he had in a playoff outing this year. He was effective in that second outing, but it was 1 3-innign outing at the end of the year, a 5 day layoff, and 1 3.2-inning outing before the Rays' season ended. Literally everyone else I'm finding either didn't come back until about month 16, or even took longer than that. For Crochet, that would be comparable to appearing in early August. That's more common, Montero did it without getting hurt, Sale did it and then got hurt. Rodon came back in September at about month 16 and then was terrible for a couple outings. Many of the guys who had surgeries in Spring Training tried to come back in the 2nd half of the following year and then wound up pitching like 3 innings before going back on the IL. I'm actually rather surprised how uncommon it is to have a successful comeback in under 18 months, I didn't know that at all until I looked. Maybe if I go back more than 5 years, when guys weren't pushing their fastballs and offspeed pitches to the same extent they are today, the results will be different, but I don't think you want "Crochet is back but he shouldn't throw more than 95 this season and he should go light on the slider."

Justin Verlander's Tommy John Surgery was on September 30, 2020. Justin Verlander's first competitive innings thrown after that surgery happened in April, 2022. That is a full 18 months of recovery time. Crochet's was the first week of April, 2022. Find me a single pitcher who came back and threw more than 10 effective innings in fewer than 16 months. Go back as far as you need to, I've gone back about 5 years. I don't dispute that he can come back strong. I dispute that he is likely to come back strong this year and be a major part of this team.

Hey I finally found one! Rafael Montero, had TJS in March of 2018, returned in July of 2019 and was moderately effective for 20 innings after only 16 months.