Balta1701

As with the Grandal thread, if we're actually "in" on any of these catchers beyond just due diligence, it would be a big statement that this org doesn't believe they can develop Collins and a strong hint that we blew another first round pick in 2016.

One difference though - we kinda already have a guy in Yolmer who, while moderately cheap, covers most of our backup IF positions pretty effectively and hits just about as well as marwin. I guess you could talk me into playing both of these guys, but Marwin doesn't have strong positional splits since he's a switch hitter.

LOL right now his value in trade is basically comparable to Carson Fulmer. Either he's going to break out with the White Sox or he's a throw in.

This page seems generally accurate with the other guys I can guess on # of options and they show Lucas having 1 option remaining.

The right answer is the White Sox because they have a load of talent that could break through, but I'm so tempted to say the Hawks "Because even while they're down they have better ownership and the crappy front offices for both other franchises are why they're down".

You gotta learn how to embed tweets dude.

Thats an interesting concept for this deal.

Honestly, after looking at the names and money left on them, and their arb status, I'm not sure that I'd take that deal if I were the White Sox (Contreras + Happ + Heyward for a bag of balls). You get ~6.5 fWAR based on what they did last year, but all 3 of them are down, and you're spending $20 million on that next year, Contreras is Arb eligible next offseason so bump that well over $25 million that year, Happ is arb eligible the next year so for 2021-2023 you're taking on like $30-50 million a year. Uck.

But Boras also won't know what the offers to Machado are. He could easily be sitting there with the highest offer he has being the Phillies or White Sox offer, then Machado could sign with that team, and harper's best offer is then pulled.

By far the weirdest triple take in this article was reading that Nunez's lawyer is named Jose Batista.

They're in the boat like say, the Ravens the last few years, where their QB play is inconsistent but ok/good enough, and that means they're never terrible, but they're only elite if they can field the best defense in the league, which is also tough.

However, when he was first called up in 2017, Lopez felt something weird while throwing a pitch, the trainer came out, he told the trainer he was fine, but then Abreu stayed behind, asked him what was really up, Lopez told him, Abreu called the trainers back out, and Lopez left the game for a short DL stint. So even though he's not Cuban, we have already seen him do a better job of dealing with the young guys than some of the coaching staff.

Ah, gotcha. I think you're probably roughly right on what Abreu's value was last offseason, but it's probably also true that, since the White Sox don't need to move salary and they have both Moncada and Robert and Lopez and others in the system, he's worth more to the White Sox than he is to other teams, even if he doesn't produce.

Both Goldschmidt and Abreu had 2 years of team control after 2017, both are free agents after 2019 and both have 1 year of control right now. Abreu will also probably make ~$4 million more this year.

I hear Heyman reported the Reds are in after Pollock and Keuchel, has anyone else seen that?

They would want that, but Harper isn't going to take THAT MUCH of a lesser deal in exchange for it. He's not going to sign a $200 million total value deal just because you gave him an opt out after $50 million in the first 2 years. How much they might trade for an earlier opt out...well we'll see.

Well at least I beat him No one other than Harper or Machado makes sense for this team for the next month. They should look for pitching scraps in January to fill their starting rotation. They should not really sign anyone for the bullpen as they need to give their kids innings. The only other position they really need someone right now is backup catcher. So if you're not picking Harper or Machado, pick a backup catcher.

grumble grumble political remark cop a feel grumble grumble

I think it's a combination of still more teams realizing they need to commit to rebuilding over multiple years (Seattle and Arizona join the list) and teams that actually are close but have good amounts of money committed and don't want to go overboard on Harper/Machado to the point they're in tax territory (NY, Stl).

F*** it no one else will say it so I will. Bryce Harper.

At this point...they're usually pretty damn good, but they're not rare and they are regularly available and if you want one there's several on the list who will be free agents after 2020. And I still have no idea what metric you're citing because it's not Fastball Velocity in 2018 from Fangraphs, because that's linked there and it's different than the numbers you gave.

I did that, his numbers still show as 96.2, and the number of pitchers on the list with vFA above your cutoff of 95.8 doubles to 17 compared to what you showed above. Hell, Reynaldo is on there at 95.9. So yeah - your statement that only a handful of guys have velocity profiles like that, well that isn't quite how it is presented, out of that list there are 4-5 guys who will change teams this year so they're regularly available, and somehow you're getting data that is simply mixed up and missing people.

I'm looking at his page right now and in 2018 his vFA is 96.2, it was 95.8 in 2017. Were you giving 2018 numbers in that list?

Ok, so I'm having trouble with that list. I wanted to see how many guys from the 2017 list of people with fastballs >95 mph got hurt, but then I notioced that Jose Urena was at the top of the 2017 list and I couldn't find any record of him going down for a full season injury. Jose Urena pitched 174 innings last year for the fish, had an average fastball velocity of 96.2, but he's not on your list, and that means I don't know what the issue is but there are people missing.

There aren't a lot of contending teams that need catchers now that the Astros filled one of their spots yesterday...if your choice is the Mets trade or holding until the trade deadline what do you do? I'm not sure what the answer is.