jacksonianmarch

Matsui was great. His career started late. 29 as a rookie. He played with the Yanks for 7 seasons and lost two seasons to injury. His Yankee BA was close to .300. His second season was his best with a .912 OPS and 31HR. He knocked in over 100 4 times. His OBP’s were always high and he had strong slugging percentages in all but one injury shortened season. When you consider all of this came in a seven season stretch while he was 29-36, it was great. His biggest knock was that his defense sucked and he couldn’t run

This exchange is classic. Every team has its max. The penalties for going over the thresholds are no longer menial. The penalties for going over the upper threshold are crippling. The sox aren’t going over $239 mil

He’s not a contact hitter, but when he makes contact, it’s hard contact. I don’t think his K rate stays as ridiculously high as it is, although I never expect him to get under 150 K’s in a season. I do think he can hit .300 in a season just based on his exit velocity. When he was healthy and going well, he either struck out, walked or hit a ball hard. Also, once the umpires actually call his strike zone, we should see some drop in the strikeout rate too and he either can see more walks or a higher contact rate. Judge is different from Dunn as Judge has shown a significant proclivity to go the other way. Also, Dunn never had a season like Judge. Judge hit for a higher average in his rookie season then Dunn ever did. His OBP would have set a career high for Dunn. His SLG would have been a career high. He bested Dunn’s HR high water mark by 6. Judge has 21 more runs scored and 7 more RBI than Dunn’s career high. For all the crap Judge got for his second half, his second half OPS would have been Dunn’s fourth best season by OPS. Judge is a far better fielder and base runner as well. Oh, and he did all this as a rookie!

The Mariners just acquired over $1 mil in INTL funds from the Twins yesterday fueling speculation that Ohtani might be headed there

I don't think this should fuel speculation of a signing, but maybe a trade. Signings usually take place and the player is added to the active roster weeks later.

I’m not sure SCM. There were lots of well respected candidates not considered. I’m not sure what the ultimate motivation was. It seemed the conventional choices were shunned for a new age approach. The undertones I’ve gleamed on Girardi seem to point towards an underlying issue with multiple players, a fair amount of them Latin. This is why I anticipated Beltran. One of the concerns I have with Boone is if any players take umbrage with some of his criticisms when he was in the media. Regardless, this isn’t the typical “steady hand” approach that I expected. I think Cash wants a players manager who incorporates analytics. We have the talent for sure. Who knows if this is the right move

Yes they did, but they plan to use him as a starter

Yeah, I don’t believe that. You saw in the HR derby and basically all season that his power isn’t normal. He’s got more natural power than Giancarlo. He’s got the most natural power of anybody in baseball. In the minors, he showed some inconsistency with the strike zone. He was never a contact hitter, but he was prone to chase away. In 2016, he was chasing sliders away and was essentially an easy out to anyone who could locate. Come 2017, he learned to lay off the slider away and pitchers had to come into the zone. He goes on a ridiculous pre ASB tear and heads into the HR derby on fire. He does his HR derby thing but somewhere around the ASB, he injured his shoulder. With the shoulder injury, he reverts to being pull happy and starts pulling off the outside pitches and worse, starts chasing the sliders down and away again. By the time mid August rolls around, he was an easy out for a month. He eventually gets benched to figure things out (really to get a cortisone injection) and comes out with a swing once again that elicits power center-right and he goes on a tear. He goes to the playoffs and the umps start expanding his zone and he slumps again. By the third ALCS game, the media starts picking up the umps low zone and he starts to hit again He’s never going to be a contact hitter. But he’s a deadly power hitter with his best power to center and RF. His problem is when he slumps, he gets pull happy. When he does this, he nails out and pulls off the ball and becomes very susceptible to down and away breaking balls. It’s an adjustment for sure. I think he ends up hitting for a better average than last year over time. He’s got a .300 hitters capability, especially as he stops getting a rookie strike zone and starts getting the zone afforded his size, maybe smaller. We shall see how the shoulder responds post surgery. They didn’t repair the cuff, just remove “loose bodies” which usually entails a smooth recovery. His production in 2018 is going to be an interesting storyline to follow for sure. Even with his month long slump from mid July to mid August, he still OPS’d .939 in the second half. He’s a monster

Lol. Troll!

Hey, you guys are seeing the cliff. One thing you also must remember is that its about to be 2018. For 2018, your team should be in contention for a title. It is a good feeling for sure to know, going in, that your team is loaded for bear.

Anyone bidding or pining for Giancarlo is also in on JD and to a lesser extent, Santana. The other guys are low enough on the totem pole to wait out the losers of the big boppers sweepstakes. In terms of the pitchers, they're waiting on Ohtani. Once he signs, that might leave one less suitor for a top of the rotation arm and hence increase demand for a guy like Arrietta. The big FAs are playing their cards right. Sit back, wait for something outside their control (trade for GS and post/sign for Ohtani) to happen before kicking their negotiations into high gear.

I know right, maybe Ugey wouldn’t have lit his servants on fire!

We may have graduated Frazier and Wade, but they should be added back in as they’re both likely to start 18 in AAA

I’d almost rather let the fat man walk. We have kids ready. Sabathia is nothing but a place holder, albeit a steady one. Severino Tanaka Gray Montgomery Sabathia Adams, Sheffield and Acevedo in the wings. I can live with that.

So Ohtani isn’t happening. So it looks like Sabathia may return as our #5

He wants a small market? What a weakling

Yanks out on ohtani

Ding ding ding! You cannot pay top dollar for everyone. Betts right now would be an easy $25 mil per year open market FA. Bogey has probably hurt himself a bit but still looks like a $15-$18 mil per year player. Bradley probably similar. Sale is a $30+ mil per year player. Kimbrel likely $18-20 mil per year. Pom $20 mil per year if he repeats his 2017 performance. Add this to the $45 mil committed to Pedey and Price and you’ve got a ton committed to a small percentage of your team. Without cheap talent surrounding these guys, you won’t have a good team and you won’t have a team under the final lux tax. Every long term penny committed this offseason adds to that total and likely represents saying goodbye to one of your younger core players

St Louis has a good farm and a lot of OF depth with close big league proximity. Abreu is a monster. His return should be massive

I guess the question becomes, after 2018, what do you do? Do you re-sign Pom and Kimbrel? Do you let them walk and sign one of the other FAs out there? The sox are headed for being over the lux tax this season with Pomeranz and Kimbrel being underpaid likely by a $16 mil per annum margin. (Pom expected to get $10 mil in 2018 and Kimbrel $12 mil). I anticipate that if they repeat their 2017 levels of performance that Pom is looking at $20 mil per year and Kimbrel at least at $18 mil. When you add in the arb raises plus $16 mil for re-signing plus whatever else the sox do, things start to get sticky after 2018. After 2019, things get outright bonkers. After 2020, the cliff appears

A mediocre team doesn’t mean a team in true playoff contention. Yes, there are mediocre teams who get hot at the right time and win it all, but really, that’s not truly the case. The 85 win Twins this year were still 8 games over .500 and they were the worst team to make the playoffs or be second in the wild card race since the 08 Dodgers who won an awful NL West with 84 wins. Realistically, the second wild card (or first runner up in previous seasons) won at least 87 games and most seasons 88-93 games. When I say mediocre, I’m talking a team that wins anywhere from 75-85 games. That’s typically not enough to make the playoffs and on the bottom side of that, not enough to be in the conversation going into the heat of summer. It also entails the sox re-signing some of their core, leading to a still high team salary without having the bread and butter of a contending club, which is cheap good talent coming up from the minors. You’ll be a top heavy roster with the replacement level players filling in around a few expensive veterans. That’s not a way to build and something that will eventually trigger an all out rebuild. Listen guys, enjoy now through 2019-2020. This is why Dombrowski is here. You’re loaded for bear right now.

That’s revisionist. He was at the helm for the disastrous Lackey deal. He bought Rusney who sucks. His deals for Hanley and Panda were disastrous. He could build position player depth but couldn’t develop pitching to save his life. He was no saint

At the end of the 3 year window, without either a previously unseen financial investment or insane luck in developing a currently barren farm, your team will slip into mediocrity

I’m no Cherington fan, don’t get me wrong. What he was trying to do was build as a small market team and then buy players like a large market team. The problem for Ben was that he thought you could just reach into FA on a random year and fix the problem. It doesn’t work that way, some years the FAs are awful, others they’re great. A plan leading into FA and predicting which years to go for it would have been a good start

You won’t extend everyone. And every long term dollar handed out this offseason makes re-signing those players harder. Hey, I don’t begrudge DD’s approach. The Yankees employed that approach from 02-13 and it got us to the playoffs all but two of those seasons and won us a title in 09. The problem now is that players are getting paid at much higher rates due to revenue sharing and more competition for talent and the lux tax cap has a much harsher penalty. This is why NYY went through a dry spell as we fell after 2012 and really didn’t rise (sans a 1 game playoff in 2015) for 5 years. The Yankees did it really the right way. We sold off assets for prime minor league talent. Our farm was hitting its stride at the same time. We also got insanely lucky. Gary Sanchez went from a malcontent with enormous potential to a leader with a bat unseen at that position at that age really ever. Aaron Judge went from 50% K rate in his brief cameo to a juggernaut runner up MVP candidate. Severino went from a scared pup with an ERA north of 8 to 3rd in CY voting. Part of building a long term successful franchise is luck. I do think Cherington was building a model for long term success, but his inability to pull the trigger on the right moves (both FA and trade) sealed his fate in a large market. DD knows how to make the big trade and it got you back on top. But his philosophies require big pockets and his sustainability under this new CBA is nearly impossible. You need a strong farm AND deep pockets to be a long term force or a “dynasty” per se. Dave wasn’t brought to Boston to build a dynasty. He was brought to Boston to win now as the fan base was getting apathetic. Big difference. His win now approach nearly guarantees a cliff, with a low chance of a “lucky” find in the minors like Chavis turning into a Jeff Kent type player or something akin to that.