Balta1701

I never said the division was up for grabs. I said there’s reason for the Twins and Guardians to try to get better even if they can’t win the division.

Makes sense for the Yankees but not so much for the As, so now you need a 3rd team to take Gleyber and give up a younger player.

Heck this is actually kinda fun. Here’s 4 playoff teams. Like when the Dodgers lost Bauer? Like when the Rays lost Glasnow? Like when the Braves lost Anderson for 2 months and Soroka for the year and Morton in the playoffs?

Like when Verlander went down for TJS, what did that do to the 2021 Astros?

If there’s one thing I can say about Scott Boras, he’s not dumb. He doesn’t need to wait on a market to know how much his guys are worth. He has set a high but not unreasonable price for his guys. In some cases he may not get it, but I can guarantee you that if a team comes to him right now and says they are going to get Conforto signed, and they’re somewhat close to his demands, they will get him signed. Boras doesn’t pass up a legit effort to sign a guy once it’s there. The waiting game is not just a Boras strategy. It is much more the owners being reluctant to spend money and hoping that maybe prices come down. Except now there’s only days left to do business, so the waiting game is kinda silly.

The White Sox will insist that “this just puts them in a better position to compete with us.” Except this time it will actually be somewhat deserved.

Having just woken up I would like to confirm that the small amount of available sleep due to daylight stupid time was in fact the correct decision.

The question was “what are the Twins doing they obviously can’t win the division”. That can be totally true and at the same time the Twins can still have reason to add players because of those wild card spots.

There are 6 AL playoff teams. Both of those franchises could win 86 games and challenge for them. Both made the playoffs in 2020.

This was a point that was made by a number of people during the rebuild - Hahn was piling up these minor league relievers and people were saying he was doing a great job because some of them were going to turn into big leaguers, so we wouldn’t have to spend big on the bullpen. Now, people are saying it’s obvious that they were going to spend big on the bullpen and it just shows what a great job was done. Well no, the first bullpen plan went belly up, they’ve been dumping assets into the bullpen since 2019, it’s really starting to take its toll, and now they have an extremely high priced bullpen that is expensive enough it is potentially costing elsewhere. This may very well work! Maybe having a strong and expensive veteran bullpen is more important than a LH bat. But if it doesn’t, we should be clear as can be that this was a choice of the GM and manager, and a result of the work of the GM. The GM brought in a bunch of arms that were supposed to fill these roles and they flopped. Now, they decided to spend huge resources on the bullpen and not elsewhere, so let’s make sure we evaluate them based on these moves when we see the final product.

That makes 6 in 2 offseasons/one trade deadline (count Tepera on top of the 5 you listed). 6 bullpen pitchers brought in over the last 14 months. That is not what was supposed to be happening when Hahn was being praised for how all those bullpen arms he stockpiled would make the bullpen no concern at all. That’s a huge miss on all the guys who were supposed to fill up that bullpen.

I’m sorry, the bullpen in 05 was nice, but that year was the White Sox’s starting pitching first, second, third, and fourth. Bullpen and defense were the next things on the list. The starters were that team.

Here's the thing, the White Sox weren't supposed to have to sign and trade for 6 different guys to fill out their bullpen. They were supposed to have filled at least some of those slots internally, and then by filling the bullpen that would let them get higher quality players elsewhere. The fact that they couldn't do that should actually be viewed as a major concern and maybe a failure. I'll let you make the case here:

It could absolutely have been a quick signing! Half of Boras’s big names signed in November and the first big signing after the lockout was Rodon. Getting a quick signing done means you have to pay a few million more than you want. Meet the guy’s contract demands and it’s done.

Compared to his 2 seasons as Oakland’s closer, his HR/FB rate went from 5% to 15%. That was the big negative for him last year, so - was that all bad luck and Manfred using the Happy Fun Ball in big games, or is that telling something more long term? My guess is more the former, that seemed like a lot of WTF home runs that made no sense.

When that is defense quality and defensive positioning, isn’t that likely to be an ongoing problem? And one that leads to inconsistency when a few balls get through in a row?

I don’t think this concept holds up very well, TBH. The last team I can think of that tried the super expensive bullpen route was the Yankees in 17-19, and they could never turn that into even a WS appearance. Braves - Bullpen was fine, but you think more of their starters and OFs as the key guys. The 2020 Dodgers kinda, with Jansen, Treinen, and Kelly out there, but they also got contributions from guys like Graterol out of the pen. The Astros always keep a solid closer and 1 or 2 setup men, but never go that deep on solid guys, going with matchups and starters instead. The 19 Nats had an awful bullpen saved by Hudson. Won thanks to their starters. 18 Red Sox got use from Kelly but their big thing was using their starters to finish things off. Rays - matchups. You have to go back to Miller and Chapman in 16 to see a huge pen impact, and then the ‘15 Royals. And in 16 it was more “2elite arms, pitch them as much as possible.” 14 - Bumgarner.

Hopefully Hendriks’s home run spike was either bad luck or the Happy Fun Ball getting him. If that’s the case, then you kinda say that no matter what. Bummer being better than last year would help a lot. Nails down the stretch but inconistent a lot of the year.

As of now, bullpen: Hendriks Bummer (LH) Crochet (LH) Kimbrel Graveman Kelly Lopez Velasquez If Kimbrel is traded, either they go with a bigger bench or someone out of Ruiz/Foster/Stiever/Lambert/Bilous take the last spot as they’re already on the 40 man?

What is confusing about this is that they already have one of those guys in Lopez…and neither that guy nor this one have the ability to be sent to the minors without being released. This guy on a minor league deal for the same money? Sure, you can bring him up when needed and figure things out afterwards. Instead they’re both sorta locked into the roster unless they hit the IL. Even Vinnie Duber went “how great is it to have a guy you can send down and call up when needed”, except unless there’s some contract detail we are missing, this guy can’t be.

If this is a major league deal doesn’t he have to be released to go to AAA?

If that’s the case, then after the number of teams that completed rebuilds and won titles in the last 8 years I’m sure you can give an example of a team that did this. I’ll hang up and listen.

That’s fine! I specifically said Pods was solid defensively. Eloys bat being stronger only makes his defense better in the eyes of some gold glove voters and I guess you? Pods being defensively strong meant the whole OF was strong and Rowan’s could cover for Dye some. Eloy and Vaughn would give bad defense on both corners and be a bigger injury risk since we do have to worry about Robert’s hip.