Eminor3rd

There’s no domestic pitcher on the market right now that is good enough to warrant a significant, market rate free agent deal by the White Sox right now. With Corbin gone, they’re all mid rotation starters benefitting from a thin pool. Eovaldi is being massively overrated by his postseason performance. If he puts up a 4 WAR season, it’ll be the first time. The only guy that makes sense to me is POSSIBLY Kikuchi, and only if the uncertainty that comes with him causes teams to be nervous enough to keep his price down. There will ALWAYS be a Nathan Eovaldi on the market available for a median free agent salary. We should get that guy when we are a mid-rotation starter away from being a real contender. Otherwise, you’re spending a ton of money with the only good outcome being that things have to go almost as well as they possibly can.

If the Yankees had signed Corbin at this price, they’d have been out on Machado.

Thanks, this article clarified it greatly. Essentially this is like the hitter equivalent to xFIP. It’s like wRC+, except it normalizes BABIP in the same way that xFIP is like FIP except that it normalizes homerun rate. It also appears to treat park effects differently, though it wasn’t clear to me exactly how. My quick is that this is definitely useful, but very much not a replacement for wRC+. This metric would have been really useful when we were arguing about Avisai Garcia’s one good year. Instead of looking at his wRC+ and just noticing that his BABIP was sky high, we could have looked to DRC+ as an estimate for what he “should have” been given neutral “luck.” I take issue with using it as a WAR component though. While BABIP is certainly heavily luck-dependent, it is not SOLELY luck dependent, so this metric is going to underrate guys that consistently run high BABIPs (like speedy slap hitters and line drive machines) and overrate TTO monsters (like Gallo or Trumbo who do nothing hit hit homers and this have low BABIPs). Also makes sense why it like Frank Thomas so much.

I haven’t seen anything close to a decent summary of the differences yet, so I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. It sort of seems like they’re just using drastically different linear weight constants?

JP is nice kid who I will always root for. But this is just a fantastic deal for the Phillies. They had one of the worst defense in recent history last year. Not only do they improve offensively AND defensively at SS, but they get to move Hoskins out of LF back to first and stick and actual OF there. They essentially traded a couple years of Crawford's control to morph him into an 85th percentile outcome version of himself. And they get two useful relievers, as well. I cannot understand what the Mariners get out of this for even a moment. If it was a short-term money thing, I get it. But it isn't and so I just don't understand. I feel like they could have moved Segura for a better prospect package WITHOUT taking a bad contract back. And without giving up Pazos. Extremely confusing.

Well it’s interesting because it sounds like this one might actually be salary neutral after they include a reliever.

Better late than never ?

As the OG Avi hater, literally since the Peavy trade thread, this has been a long time coming for me. That said, even I can see the logic in giving him this last year to see if he gets hot and is tradeable, to salvage SOMETHING from the frustrating dumpster fire that was his time here. To me, this means that the Sox aren’t terribly confident about the health of his knee, or that they have plans for that 8 million bucks.

Im into this. He may not be a whole lot better than Engel, but if you have two of them, you increase your shot that one works out.

Definitely a surprise. But, he definitely had his chance. I’m way lower on Palka than the rest of the board, though.

Yes, but relievers consistently cost twice as much at the deadline. It’s the largest marginal premium of any position. Also, the Sox have shown a willingness to pay contracts down a bit in trades lately, which the Mariners were obviously not doing here.

Yeah the more it’s marinating, the more I’m okay with it. Narvaez is a useful piece, but I’ve said before I’d rather have a defensive specialist with our rookie staff than an bat-only catcher. And while the bat is useful, it’s not likely to be fantastic. But yeah, colome? I guess if they move him, he’s far more likely to net some talent with upside than Narvaez himself would have been. I guess it’s just that we talk about how important it is to give fringe guys a chance to develop during the lean years, and it seems like we were in a Good position to give Narvaez one more year to see if he could keep the bat and improve the defense before the prospects pushed him.

I don’t know how to feel about this.

Eh, yeah probably. Unless I was afraid of his medicals or attitude or something. Which the Mets very well may be, given that his agent is now their GM. And, since they're shopping NS but making DeGrom untouchable, it makes you wonder.

Of course, but if those two elite guys aren't available, as Heyman is suggesting, there is enough quality In their second tier that you could still make a good quantity deal. And with the Mets system as bad as it is, I don’t know, it might be a unique opportunity to infuse a lot of talent.

The Padres have SO much solid prospect depth though. I think there’s a potential for a trade like that to make sense for the Mets that includes like 6 prospects.

The Mariners will absolutely not attach Haniger to a Cano deal. They are not planning on a full scale rebuild. They may attach a relief pitcher, but not a 4 win pre-arb position player.

Look, I think society is too sensitive too, and none of us are saints, but the long-term physical and emotional abuse of your wife/mother of your child is pretty fucking easy to put on the “definitely not okay for anyone to ever do under any circumstances” side. You don’t have to be a perfect person to never cross that line — and stay over it for literal years. There are plenty of examples of destructively over-zealous Social justice. This ain’t one of them.

Frank is my all time favorite, and he absolutely aged better, but to be fair, he would have played five to seven extra awful years too if he had that kind of contract.

Negative. I want to win, but I'm not ousting all-around great guy TA for a chronic wife-beater who is, at best, marginally better.

Which actually kind of sounds right up Boras’ alley. However, the pending free agency of Mike Trout may essentially guarantee this condition.

Then they’d better be ready to guarantee $400-500M.

Bob Nightengale

That's not the problem -- it's the net gain. I would agree that Haniger is better than Moncada right now. But if you believe Moncada will improve, he's probably only a year behind him. That still makes Haniger better but, does it make him $100M albatross better? I think you're losing as much as you're gaining by giving up that coveted financial flexibility. If our young guys bust, it won't matter anyway -- we need to operate as if most of them will turn out useful.

Right. I’m not saying I wouldn’t take him there if that’s what I came down to. I just mean he is significantly more valuable if he adds his five wins to an organizational weak point instead of one where he’s replacing an average, cost-controlled player.