a700hitter

Colon, Gee, or Niese. Thumbs down on all of them IMO.

I saw Marrero at the end of some spring training games last season and he made a few sparkling plays that drew big crowd reaction-- and that is not easy to do in the late innings in Fort Myers, because everyone is looking to beat the traffic out of the lot.

It is less likely.

Agreed. Sending Price away is not high priority for thr Tigers. They would need to be overwhelmed with an offer. I don't think there is a glut of top pitchers that will be traded. If some get traded, it will be for very high prices.

Nelson Cruz to the Mariners means no Iwakuma for Cespedes as some had hoped.

If XB is going to be a productive major leaguer, he will have to learn to handle the slider from righty pitchers. That pitch ate him alive last season.

so what are the plans for Marrero?

I keep reading about XB s 2 good months that sandwiched 3 not so good months. June and July were bad (.426 and .595 OPS, respectively). August was putrid (.360 OPS).

Marrero is a far superior fielding SS than XB who will need to earn his spot with his bat. Plus, we have a pretty good 3B for the next 5 years, so if he can't develop his game at SS or hit much better than last year, he will be squeezed out.

What do you think it takes to land Cueto, Price or Hamels?

I think there is a combination of wishful thinking and overestimation of the value of our prospects at work. Last offseason, if I had suggested Bradley, WMB and Barnes for 1 year of Cueto, people would have scoffed at it as mortgaging the future. It would have turned out to be a steal. I really like Betts and would hate to lose him. We do have Marrero waiting in the wings to play SS and he is a superior fielding SS. XB is not. Marrero played winter ball in AZ and hit quite well.

Lackey is not close to Cueto in impact. Plus, we did get an established major league pitcher in return. Lester was a two month rental, not a full year. Price did fetch young major league talent. I think people are underestimating Smyly. I agree with the author of the MLB traderumor report that top prospects in addition to Cespedes will be needed to land Cueto.

So you would interpret top prospects as Webster, Ranaudo or Barnes?

Cueto would cost Betts or XB.

I think that is a pretty good return for Cespedes straight up. He's a solid back of the rotation guy. If we want to upgrade from Porcello, we will have to sweeten the pot.

I am not really in disagreement with this. I can live with occasional last place finishes. I was at game 6 in 2013. I told my friend that i was going to soak it all in, because i told him that i expected a 4th place finish in 2014. I was okay with that. What was really bad about their 2014 strategy wasn't the bad finish but the utter failure of breaking in 3 kids into the lineup. They blew up 3 prospects for which they could have received a king's ransom prior to 2014. What I am saying is that boom or bust strategies are not viable strategies. It' s like being a fan of a bad football team at the end of the season, you find yourself rooting for the team to lose to get the #1 pick. Sometimes you might even get mad at your coach if they win a meaningless game at the end of the season. The players and coaches go out to win and if you have built your team to compete for a playoff spot, you have to have made a lot of bad bets to come in last place. I will distinguish that from rebuilding years where the FO isn't going all out to win but with a gosl of changing over the roster. I get that, and good GMs can still field a competitive team while rebuilding. In 2012, the FO interceded half way through the season to gut the team and rebuild it. 2014 wasn't a tear down and rebuild year IMO. They tried to work 3 new guys into a veteran lineup, but it failed miserably. I just don't think it was the FO strategy to build a wire to wire last place in 2014.

Big trade.

You are a great baseball fan, but such a business model would be improbable because executing it would require that the FO take action to tank the team's chances part way through a season. If they put together a roster that they thought would be competitive, those players will continue to try to win throughout a season. If they see that the team will finish out of the playoffs, the players will not stop trying because that would endanger their own careers and diminish their own market value. Such a strategy by the FO would require that the FO sabotage the team's chances. I don't see that as realistic. If the team finishes last, it will be because the FO built a last place team going into the season.

I think he stays because he has options and he is cheap.

Yep, that is s the reality.

winning isn't the business model, but utilizing available resources to put out the most competitive team within their very ample budget is surely what they try to do.

Agreed. Good post. With the resources at their disposal, they should field a competitive team every year.

Yes, I am sure that the FO will adopt a business model where they don't care if they finish last if they can't make the post season. If Cherries proposed that at a meeting, he would be fired at that meeting.

Has Franconia ever been accused of not being stupid? I don't think he could make that argument himself with a straight face.

Fair enough. If you consider both the Division Championships and the last place finishes as aberrations, you are being consistent. I don't think either are aberrations. Our difference on this point is purely semantic. If we called the failures an aberration, but not the division championships that would be somewhat logically inconsistent.