chw42

Sosa isn't ready and Romy can't hit a high fastball to save his life. Once the scouting reports caught up to Romy, he was striking out every other AB.

With Pollock gone, Conforto is well within reach I think. I just don't know how good he'll be after he shoulder surgery.

Yelich forgot too. Darvish actually accused Yelich and the Brewers of stealing signs before the Astros scandal went public.

I'm just hoping they stay at around the $190 million range. Because there's still some room to sign some FAs if that's the case.

I have a hard time believing they'll give Nimmo a $100+ million deal. Although if you think about it, Nimmo is basically the position player version of Zack Wheeler. Both from the Mets, both with injury histories, both 30 years old going into FA, both going to cost around the $100-120 million range. The Sox were willing to go that far with Wheeler, but I'm not sure they see the same potential in Nimmo.

I'd imagine he has doesn't have a ton of trade value since $12 million a year for him might actually be a slight overpay.

I mean all Engel was good for was playing defense late in games. And he even kinda sucked at that. It's kind of sink or swim time for Cespedes. He's going to be 26 before the end of next season. He's not the worst option to have as a 4th OFer/defensive replacement.

Oh wow it literally just happened lol. Kinda surprised they picked it up considering how they were looking to dump salary.

Benintendi at 3 years $42 million ($14 million AAV) to play LF now that Pollock is out of the picture Quintana/Manaea at 2 years $22 million ($11 million AAV) Kolten Wong at 2 years $15 million ($7.5 million AAV) I took at look at the 4th OF type FAs and most are lefties. None of the righties are really better than Engel nor can they fill in in CF. Benintendi, Wong, and Colas would remake this team offensively. As they go from having just 3 left handed bats (including switch hitters) to 5. Wong and Benintendi both had a wRC+ above 130 agains RHP.

Didn't Kimbrel have a similar situation? They also got traded for each other.

You're probably gonna see Sheets out there now with Pollock off the roster. Hopefully they can sign a left handed corner OFer and Colas will cover RF in early May.

The Pollock money probably ends up going to a 5th starter. That means you got about $25 million to figure out 1 OF spot and maybe address 2B.

He was gonna get $13 million had he stayed here. I don't see him getting $8 million from another team, but you never know I guess.

Spotrac had us at $171.5 million projected payroll before Pollock declined the option. Subtract $8 million from that and we're at 163.5 million. If we stay at around the $195 million payroll mark, that leaves us about $33 million in space for FAs and trades.

It honestly seemed that way when I saw his first interview here. The fact that he straight up turned down $8 million when he probably doesn't get more than that anywhere else tells you how much he didn't like playing here.

I don't know. Kimbrel didn't exactly work out well, but the writing was already on the wall with him. Also, there's not exactly a lot of elite relievers in FA and available in trade right now.

I think there could be an argument had that the Dodgers need premier bullpen arms after what happened to them in the playoffs. They had nobody that was elite. All their relievers were good and that's fine for the regular season, but they collectively choked in the playoffs. Jansen or Efflin does nothing for them. They already have a handful of those types of relievers. Hendriks is a clear upgrade in the 9th inning.

A Conforto/Gallo and Pollock platoon doesn't seem so bad. However, you can probably throw in Tyler Naquin to that platoon and it'd work out similarly.

I was thinking you could try Lopez as closer. He actually had better peripherals than Hendriks last year.

Good thing Harrison isn't back. That guy would be a nice utility player, but he is not a full-time 2nd baseman.

I never thought I'd see Fields this good at running the ball after seeing how slow he seemed last year. Dude was getting tripped up by d-line men last year behind the LOS.

Lux is coming off a 3 WAR season with 4 more years of cheap control. Hendriks is owed $28 million over the next 2 years and is coming off a decent season where he didn't look as elite as he has in the past. If a trade like this were to work out, the Sox would either have to eat money or include another prospect with Hendriks.

With Diaz getting $20 million a year for 5 years, does that make Liam's 2 years $28 million remaining seem...cheap? In all honestly, Liam's arm issues scare the s%*# out of me. There were certain games where it looked like his arm was about to fall off. He's getting older and he's a guy who's getting by on velocity. I don't think his margin of error is real high if he isn't throwing 98+. The problem is that maybe a team like the Dodgers would take him, but his luxury tax hit is $18 million this year because of that stupid guaranteed option we put during the 4th year of his contract. So to a team like LA, who is near the top threshold of the luxury tax, Liam costs them a lot more than $13 million. So which team needs an elite closer? The Phillies? The Yankees? The Blue Jays? Boston? Every team there besides Toronto is also near the luxury tax threshold. Maybe the Phillies don't care coming off a WS appearance. This would also more or less be a salary dump so you can go sign a mid-tier SP or another OFer. You have to ask yourself if those guys are worth it over one of the best closers in the league. Assuming his arm doesn't fall off over the next 2 years.

He's got back and knee problems. The only thing that'll help him is some HGH so his injuries can recover.

The lack of an exaggerated shift will help Gallo a decent amount. And maybe that'll be enough to make you forget about that 40% K rate. He has been an effective player before despite having a K rate near that number. FWIW, this is Gallo's spray chart last year on pulled/straight away grounders/liners that were either barrels, solid contact, or flares. Let's just say he gets 9 extra hits from that (just from eyeballing). And I think that's being kind of generous. His batting average improves from .160 to .186. His overall OPS, assuming those hits are singles, goes up to .690. Better, but that's still pretty bad. I did a similar lookup for Grandal and it looks like he would gain about 10 hits from the lack of a shift. That would have brought his average from .202 to .232. That would have brought his slugging up to about .300. While the shift should help Grandal, it won't lift him out of awfulness until he finds his power again. The same could be said about Moncada. All 3 of these guys get about 10 extra singles from the shift going away. It's not a bad improvement on batting average, but it will not change who they are as hitters.