Balta1701

Jimmy has apparently agreed to a 2 year extension.

Butler to the Warriors for Wiggins, a protected pick, and a couple other guys.

I don't know. If I had confidence in my performance, I'd turn that down. But you've doubled his contract. That's a lot of money for a guy who got a $29 million guarantee.

He doesn't discuss Colson's struggles last year one bit. He does seem to think more highly of Colson's defense than others have, saying he could field at SS just without a lot of range. His Jacob Gonzalez review is basically "Well I guess maybe he could be a utility guy he did used to look better", which doesn't give you a lot of confidence in the lower half of this list.

The trick for him would be - how much money would it take for him to NOT want an opt out. I'm guessing he would not take a 3/$45 million deal with no opt out, I'm guessing he'd take 2/$29 with an opt out after year 1. If I believed in my abilities, I definitely would take the shorter deal with the opt out. The only reason I wouldn't is if I really believed my body couldn't handle it, at which point haha the stupid white sox signed me for 5 years when my body only lasted 1.5.

1. As we discussed. This is because Prince Fieldwr was vastly better and younger than Pete Alonso. 2. So a guy gets $13 million this year, with an opt out, and you say that by giving him $12 million a year over 5 years you’re spreading the money out. Riiiiiight.

For this player at present they wouldnt. However, they would have for Santander and Alonso, both of whom you’ve suggested signing this offseason. I could not tell that this post applied to only one player. For this player, Kim, he CLEARLY does not want a 5 year deal at reduced annual salary because he accepted a short term deal with an opt out after year 1. His goal is to prove he’s a solid player this year or this year and next year and test the free agent market again. Even if you made the full contract offer a lot richer, he wants to hit free agency again so you’d just be increasing your payments if he sucks or is hurt. Furthermore, by signing with the Rays, he gives himself a good chance of playing competitive games this year and a good performance in those games or in the playoffs could make him more money - in Chicago you’d have to pay a year 1 premium because the only way he’d play competitive baseball is if he were traded, which is disruptive as well. This fit is terrible from the players perspective, so you better be shelling out a much higher salary in Y1 and your spread out the payment plan shows you didn’t pay attention to the contract he signed.

In this case its far more justifiable given his injury history and the risk of him being non-tendered. I just wonder if people are ready for him going while bringing a return weaker than the Cease deal.

This system is weird now in that yes, they're absolutely missing high ceiling talent other than the lefties, but they also seem to have more candidates to be position player regulars than the 2017 system. I'd definitely take the 2017 system in terms of high ceiling position players, but one of the things that system was lacking was anyone behind the top few guys, which we've seen the results of. You got down to like prospect 11 and suddenly you're at Zach Collins and thinking "I'm not sure this guy's a big leaguer". You look at Meidroth and you think "ok maybe?" I'd certainly hope they could get at least a couple of position players who stick, even if they're not all stars.

One of the things law noted in his league-wide review was that he felt like the minor leagues were in really bad shape this year, without a lot of talent present, so if he thinks they're 12 this year, they might have been lower if he felt the minors were more normal.

1. I didn't think of the Madrigal comp for Meidroth, since there's a big difference in OBP on there. 2. Hearing about the "declines in stuff" is interesting from a scouting perspective since we saw some of their struggles this year and we didn't have a full context. Iriarte, for example, did all right at AA, but he was also sent back down to Birmingham, a big ballpark, so it was hard to evaluate what we saw statistically down there.

Well it depends on the quality free agent though. I could see the motivation for signing a shortstop if they were young enough, although there's several arguments against it. Losing a 2nd round draft pick doesn't seem smart if there's a QO attached to anyone, and even if you could develop a defense-first SS, doing so internally using the available playing time would be a big boost. Signing a SS to a 2 year deal, why? That's all he got from the Rays. You're going to have to pay a premium price to sign him, and you can sign him in 2 years if the position is still available and if he's still healthy. Signing an expensive OF/DH/1b, why? Just no, too many guys could get moved to those slots.

Yes, I think there is a notable trade this week where the GM sold a guy without a fair return, and that was more a commentary on the GM than on the player. The market right now for Cease is probably about what the White Sox got for him, because he has only 1 year of control left rather than 2 playoff runs worth of control left.

I'm going to give you Dallas Keuchel. Former Cy Young award winner, World Series champ, when he was signed we heard nothing but slogans about his great leadership. Was surprisingly good for the first year, had more left in the tank than I thought, and then completely fell apart as soon as the sticky stuff ban started.

Some of the other stuff we’ve heard: Dallas wants to build a combination destination casino and basketball arena, but the Texas legislature isn’t playing ball on allowing casino development in this state. Over the next 5 years there could be a stadium or team moving standoff developing, and the top person/family who Cuban gave up control to has ties to Vegas. Their front office now is a bunch of rich people who think their stuff doesn’t stink. Someone including their GM seems to have looked at their offense first finals team last year and decided “defense wins championships” is the correct slogan so they tried to do that with this trade. In a way this one reminds me of Reinsdorf wanting his team to be made of David Ecksteins so Chris Getz acquired a bunch of guys like that and all of a sudden they’re stunned by how terrible they are when they followed the slogans about the importance of leadership.

The pitchers did great and awesome and Katz and Bannister are legends.

Looking at the available cap spaces there are a bunch of teams this could make sense for. Top on my list would be the Commanders. Others in good cap shape who could use this include some teams the Bears don’t like, basically the whole NFC north had about $50 million in cap space available so the Lions, Packers could be in on this. Vikings maybe but not sure if a chunk of their cap space is going to Darnold. Going down the list, Steelers have same issue as Vikings, Broncos could be interesting, Bengals could be interesting.

If there’s ever a week that proves “a guy bringing a disappointing return in a trade does not mean the guy was only worth that return, it means you GM has issues”, it’s right now.

I was looking around 40% and was shocked I didn’t find them there with the other three teams. They haven’t made any big additions this offseason, they didn’t call up a load of prospects that I know about, and they missed the playoffs last year so why does the projection think they’re clear favorites?

Why does PECOTA like minny so much?

Ath took me a minute to figure out.

While I totally get the appeal, I can't imagine the Bears would benefit from giving up 1-2 top picks for him. They need the younger guys right now.

He literally said "If Thorpe has a ridiculous changeup". You said "Thorpe has one of the best pitches ever". The term "if" is a conjunction meaning 'in the event that' or 'on condition that.'

I think they are taking Zach in order to make the cap numbers work and to wind up with extra first round picks from San Antonio.

Oh my you mean an insider leaked that other teams would pay more and there was tons of interest? Well that clearly settles it, insiders off the record never have ulterior motives. We can count on them to be completely correct. I always compliment and believe insiders. Look, LaVine was a problem. He was good enough to push the Bulls to 11th in the conference, but not really higher, and if you want to talk about a mistake - it was tripling down on him with a contract that no one else in the league would do. They did what they had to do to clean that mess up yesterday. They got out of that contract without sacrificing a lottery pick to do it. If you want to criticize for the contract, go ahead you’re correct, that was where they really got stuck in multiple years of stagnation. Yesterday was what they had to do to end it.