Balta1701

Thought experiment. I believe after yesterday most are ok with the QB draft: For those who are fully convinced, is there a price you still make the trade? The Pats offer 3 firsts and 3 seconds, so you still draft Williams? 4 firsts?

Baseball prospectus ranks him in the bottom 20% of the league in terms of blocking and bottom 10% of deterring base stealers - which is far more consistent with his terrible CS% rate and high PB rate (also far worse than the other pitcher on the roster)

This...doesn't seem worth a thread.

The 2017 Royals had an opening day payroll that was higher than any White Sox payroll until 2021. https://www.kansascity.com/sports/mlb/kansas-city-royals/article142357154.html https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/index.php?team=KCA&cyear=2017

Fine, statistically it's hard for them to be worse since they were basically worst in baseball last year, but I'm guessing still well below average.

I have no idea. Most of the guys they brought in are so bad offensively that they will be difficult to keep playing. Many of the guys they brought in have trouble staying healthy or are particularly old so you wouldn't be surprised if they kept getting worse. People told me last year that they had definitely upgraded on their 2022 defense because of Benintendi replacing Vaughn, Robert playing a full season, getting Eloy out of the OF, and they were actually worse! Colas was supposed to be their backup CF, people told me he'd played CF in the minors, and he was really quite bad in RF.

I don't know about Seby but I do know that Stassi didn't play last year so I don't know what to count on him as. I do know that Martin Maldonado was the worst defensive catcher in baseball, and I've already heard Dusty spend an entire year making excuses for him.

I hate that this is the quality of post we're going to get for a full year after a game where Maldonado has 1 hit, 3 strikeouts, 0/2 throwing runners out, a passed ball, and the starting pitcher gives up 7 runs. Got it the whole year for the Astros, the starter has a good game and it's Maldonado's credit, he has a bad game and Maldonado makes mistakes and its on the pitcher for not pitching over it.

No, Dusty Baker was flat out dumb about this. He had a better catcher but played favorites. Maldonado should have been a backup by the end of the year, they had a vastly better young catcher, but Dusty had to play favorites. It's the kind of stuff that veteran managers do that clearly hurts their team, it avoids building confidence or experience in young guys and tells them they're not good enough, meanwhile it loses games on the field when a guy is simply awful. And yes, I live in the Houston area, how many Astros games did you watch? Maldonado last year couldn't block, couldn't throw, and was as bad or worse than Grandal in everything you note. He was tolerable a few years ago, but last year was awful. Last year he was worse than Grandal on defense.

In 2023 Maldonado was a worse defender than Grandal. Advanced stats and eye test. Maldonado actually threw out fewer baserunners than Grandal, Maldonado led the league in passed balls, almost 2x as many errors for Maldonado. Maybe this doesn't carry over, but that's literally coasting on his reputation. The definition of it.

Let's put it this way, if Maldonado/Stassi do what they did in MLB last year they will be a defensive and offensive downgrade from the White Sox's catchers in 2023. Maldonado is coasting entirely on reputation.

FWIW, last year Benintendi was quite bad in the OF. This was unusual for him, over his career he's been average, but he was poor in the OF at best. Maldonado, last year, was defensively ugh. According to BP he was literally the worst catcher in baseball without counting his offense. Calling him an average defender because he was one a couple years ago and not evaluating him now is probably why Getz signed him, don't do that, it's just wrong.

Well there’s been a few changes. In defense, Houston was the worst in the NFL against the run in ‘22, they’re top 10 against the run this year. Stroud is a big part, but they also did a good job with the coaching staff and with the defense. Much like the Bears, they also had a metric ton of dead cap space in 2022 that they cleared out, allowing them to build much better depth this year.

The Texans lineup has been a plug and play lineup most of the year. They had Tytus Howard playing out of position and then he got hurt early in the year. They lost Kenyon Green for the full season and he was supposed to be one of their starting guards. They also struggled mightily with the run the whole year. If you think Houston’s line is solid, then either Stroud or their coaching is also a big factor.

I think they’re pretty obviously not going crazy. Snell is still waiting, Montgomery is still waiting, we have just over a month until pitchers and catchers report and there’s not a lot of money pouring after those guys.

The most recent observation was that for pitching the deadline was nuts last year. Giolito was clearly struggling but brought back a top 100 prospect. Lynn was leading the league in HR given up and brought back a guy probably in the top 150. Right now the Braves can say “What if Sale is healthy,” the Dodgers can say “what if Gonsolin is healthy”, the Mets can say “we have too many question marks to be aggressive”, and the Orioles can say “what if we win the division anyway”. Any of those could be true, but by the deadline some of them won’t be. For pitchers at least, last year that created a big imbalance between need and supply, and there’s plenty of reason to suspect that will be the case again this year. For position players it was different last year, only a few teams needed guys at specific spots, so that market didn’t go as crazy. Everyone needed starting pitching, not everyone needed a DH.

Basically, the Mets have clearly said that as of today they aren’t trading for a guy like Cease. The guys they have may suck, but with that new GM/President they are committing to a more sustainable path than what they did last season. Fill out a roster with some guys who may or may not be good, hold onto the young talent the organization has, and make decisions once you’re into the season and can see how things go.

thats 3 guys the Mets have brought in for rotation depth this offseason. They might well need pitching during the season but have to think they’re out of slots for now, at least until someone is hurt.

This one doesn’t push the market. Almost every insider leak you have heard about the extraordinary interest in Cease makes sense to me if Getz and co are trying to use Nightengale, Morosi, and the minor guys here and on Twitter to drive the market - make teams think there’s a lot of interest in him so that some team will step up and pay for him. Problem is, you can only leak that for so long before everyone else figures out the game. Getz texting Nightengale about how he is talking to Baltimore the 17th time is less effective than the 2nd time. Predictions that he’s 90% likely to move become less believable as the offseason goes on and more teams look for other options while saying Cease’s price is too high.

Aw Hell, that garbage person now agrees with me? Ugh.

You don’t read this and think that the thing they’re salivating about is getting their own Gerrit Cole to the Astros deal, getting a starter they can unlock without paying a big prospect price?

It used to be fully against the rules so there’s going to be very little record of it. It’s allowed by the more recent CBAs, but difficult to make work - lots of guys have only short minor league stints after playing full seasons before the draft, leaving them limited track records and often more struggles than you want.

In the end it still saved them like $7 million!

Who do the Royals have that will interest the Os in a trade?

Don’t they have Acuna’s brother now?