Balta1701

He also only made the short arm super effective with the ridiculously spinny changeup though. Now that he can’t do that any more, it seems reasonable to try to adapt. But…he has never been effective against big leaguers without the short arm, so for the season who knows what this will bring.

I distinctly remember reaching a point with Jake Peavy where I never wanted to hear him talk again until he actually went out and pitched successfully. I am approaching that point with Joe Kelly. You wrote a book about pitching? Congrats, maybe it would help if you were able to pitch.

The good news this time is that they haven’t yet made a classic Hahn trade for a veteran that winds up costing way more than expected, so the damage on future years is limited. However, if they had only $17 million to spend after Pollock opted out, signing Benintendi to a 5 year deal and Clevinger for $12 million, but deferring $10 million of their 2023 money onto future years so that you can have them right now is still kinda icky.

The terms are going to be up to the team and the insurer. They may insure different amounts for different things, a guy missing an entire season for cancer treatment is likely to be the kind of thing where the team might have a good chance at insuring the whole amount fairly cheaply because that isn't going to happen very often.

I am genuinely impressed by the accuracy of the MLBTR estimates.

No one has said this yet, so just to drop one other concept into this thread. If hypothetically this were real, this could be a step made possible with insurance money gotten back from a policy on Hendriks.

Are they actually going to cut Yaz or would they keep the more expensive player and cut Zavala?

I think the obvious way this would go wrong is that they cut or trade Zavala to clear the roster spot, and in order the quality of catchers out of this group next year turn out to be Zavala, McGuire, Grandal, Sanchez, best to worst.

If Leury was a free agent he would be getting exactly the same offer as Alberto here.

When I went down the list of reliever salaries looking for something awful, assuming I ignore Kimbrel, the first one I hit that I want no part of after last year is...um...Joe Kelly. Ok, ignoring that, Taylor Rogers was bad last year...and I had to check, he signed his contract in December 2022. That's not movable. Oops. Aaron Loup wasn't all that good for the Angels last year, but Leury is owed more money than him. Ok I give up. Outside of Guys who pitch for the White Sox, I've got no one in the top 25 reliever salaries that I would want to dump for Leury without money coming back.

Please don't suggest it they're already thinking it.

Unless they decide not to go with their rookies due to Spring Training failures, he is a backup who is at Charlotte through April until someone in the infield gets hurt. Leury is on a big league contract, he won't be cut to start the year for a guy who has had a similar career so far. If and when someone gets hurt, he is now the first replacement in the organization. It will be interesting to see how many of these guys opt out on May 1. They now have several guys who can do so, and if several of them do so before someone gets hurt in May or June they could be seriously scrambling to find warm bodies.

Presumably this is a minor league deal with an invite?

No, I don't think it's a good idea for the White Sox to be giving up the little talent they have for a guy like this. My preference all offseason has been "assume that the White Sox have a low chance to make the playoffs this year, fill holes as practical, but play the long game overall - don't add long term payroll (they did) and don't trade away the guys they have control over (they have not yet done so).

No, it's certainly not guaranteed that he's going to be an elite player. But an average starter (2 win player) with 4 years of control including a pre arbitration year, who could also still have some ceiling? That's seriously expensive. That's what I was referring to when I said you're "paying for control" earlier. The price in a trade is through the roof!

There's very little reason for the Marlins to want Vaughn in a deal like this. Both Andrew Vaughn and Marlins Player of Interesting Name have 4 years of control remaining. They'd be going from a guy they will probably have to actually trade in a couple years to a guy they'd probably have to actually trade in a couple years. The secondary pieces would have to be worth more than Vaughn himself for this reason; Colson + Vaughn probably gets serious consideration, but some other team could potentially beat that if they had 2 prospects with a full 6 years of control.

From a trade perspective, the problem with this player whatever his name happens to be is that he has 4 full years of control remaining including a pre-arbitration year. Because of this, the Marlins have zero pressure to move him the next two years unless they get a super strong offer that makes them substantially better long term. I believe this is an example of what Bmags has been calling “paying for control” - the White Sox would literally have to empty their system for the guy because he’s under control for so long. We actually have experience with this on the other side as the Nats and Cubs paid serious prices for control on Eaton and Quintana. Assuming Colas is off limits, basically you need a package of just about everyone else the Sox can afford to move. If they had two top 50 prospects I would say that’s a starting point but they don’t, so it’s clearly Colson as the headliner and then 2 or 3 other serious pieces from the Sox’s top 10, and even then the Marlins might well just say no.

If a team hasn't been "Very active" by this point, I'm skeptical at the notion they will be. The FA cupboard is bare, there aren't a lot of teams selling parts, and those that are want great deals to do so. These Twins clearly needed more starting pitching help last year and they scraped the bottom of the barrel rather than trading for any of the A's guys. That is telling us what they were willing to pay.

It makes them better than they were yesterday. Does it make them better than they were last year? This is clearly a treading water move, they literally brought back a guy that they had last year. He might be slightly better or healthier, but not vastly so. Outside of that, as of now they've lost Sanchez, Bundy, and Archer who were at least tolerable contributors. They have brought in Gallo and Vazquez, which probably offsets those losses, but does that make them better? If Gallo turns back into an all star yes, but otherwise that's at best a tiny upgrade. They have brought up a couple of kids, but not a ton of them and not obviously guys who are franchise changing. Their bullpen should be better with a couple kids there, but that doesn't make up the ground against Cleveland. So what are they counting on? They need guys who are there to stay healthier and perform better, including guys like in their starting rotation who have been hurt recently and regularly, and guys like their CF, who has all the talent in the world but keeps only playing half a season. That...sounds pretty familiar.

You're counting 1 WAR as about $5 million? I found Fangraphs showing last year that teams paid $8.5 million/WAR on the Free Agent market. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/what-are-teams-paying-per-war-in-free-agency/ At that level he would have to average 3.92 WAR. I think there's also a very good chance that number will look higher this year thanks to the new CBA, Disney money, and Mr. Cohen, leaving it at <3.9 WAR he needs to average to have this deal "break even" based on what teams are spending.

Yes this is his third contract this offseason. The previous two have fallen apart during his physicals. No we can’t afford players like this.

The Metropolitans just want 100 wins this year and a playoff run. If they get that it's probably worth it to them.

And Romy (or Sosa) would be back with the big league team by sometime in April.

I had to double check this but Correa is actually 3 months younger than Benintendi, so the Twins are buying his age 28-33 seasons here. Without any particular insight into what this medical status is, he's not comparatively old for a baseball player and he won't be at the end of this deal - the Mets are going to be paying Nimmo for his age 37 season.