jd98

OK. His stats have been terrible. Nothing personal against the kid. Obviously they like his potential, or they wouldn't have drafted him 7th overall. Actually I may go watch him sometime, I only live about 30 minutes from Greenville.

Trey Ball. He's been terrible so far

And two months ago, he was hitting .130. It's been overlooked how well he's hit the last two months. No power, but lots of hits

Luxury tax threshold is $189 million so that leaves $89 mil. Salary for luxury tax purposes also includes stuff like health benefits, bonuses, etc. which is usually around $10 million. Also you have to include everybody on the 40-man roster so subtract about 500k for all those, which would be $9-10 million, so the $70 million looks about right. This article is from 2012, but it's interesting and I assume still applicable.http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/phillies_zone/understanding-payroll-and-luxury-tax.html Edit: the others on the 40-man roster won't necessarily make 500k, so that 9-10 million number is too high, but the $10 million in benefits and stuff looks understated. So maybe in the lower $70 millions left.

No way they have $80 million left. Maybe not even $70, but if not, it's probably close. You can assume Koji is getting $15 million. Tazawa and Nava would get a few million if they want to keep them. Still leaves enough to pay two aces, and they can still cut some salary with a trade. I'm thinking Napoli may get traded, and Craig plays 1B, or maybe Craig gets traded. They will spend that money and acquire at least 2 SP, one or two of which will be an ace type.

Take him out.

or make 2 outs. Nice start though. Don't blow it Buch

JBJ's stats are amazing(ly bad). Coming into today, there are 153 hitters with enough plate appearances to qualify for rate stats. JBJ is 10th in K% (28.1%) and 148th in HR% (0.3%). If he continues to play at that rate, it may be the biggest difference between HR% and K% in the history of baseball. I actually checked back thru 1980 and the closest I found was Gary Pettis in 1985 with 24.2% and 0.2% He had 56 SB and .670 OPS, while JBJ currently has 7 SB and .596 OPS (ranks 150th out of 153). There are plenty of players to do worse, but they don't continue to get playing time. With that said, he's sure to hit 2 HR tonight. Edit: There are others with a bigger pure difference in HR and K rate, such as BJ Upton this year at 30.2% and 1.6%. I was just looking for people over 20% and under 1%.

Free Mookie!! Seriously Farrell, wtf. Betts is still learning a new position. It would help if he actually, umm, played. He's better off in AAA playing every day, than once every 2 or 3 days in Boston. And of course the best option is playing every day in Boston where he can continue to learn OF and get experience against MLB pitching. Even more so since he'd be replacing somebody who doesn't currently belong in MLB anyway.

I looked at a few of those guys on baseball-reference and Springer has a WAR of 1.8 and Castro has a 1.0. Those are huge differences from fangraphs and shows one of many reasons not to treat WAR as gospel. Not saying you specifically are doing that, just talking in general, because I hate how WAR is overused now. I wonder if it had a less cool sounding acronym, if it would be as popular.

In case anybody misunderstood, I meant I would take Buchholz as a pinch hitter over Bradley, and I was only half joking.

I'd take Buchholz over Bradley

Free Mookie!!

Steven Wright

Yep, and he's actually pitched very well in AAA this year. 2.80 ERA, .934 WHIP in 70.7 innings. 51 hits, 15 BB, 56 K

Where were you when I was trying to make that point a few days ago. I also agree with you about Cespedes, and I started to post the same thing yesterday. Although his K rate was 23.9% last year, so his career K rate is 20.6%. That's still just barely over league average, and much less than Napoli, Gomes, Ross, JBJ, Bogaerts, Drew, Middlebrooks....

I'm concerned about him too. I'm not saying he's gonna hit .300 with 25 HR, just that before this season, that's the type of player he has looked like. I didn't notice his drop in power last season when I made my first post on the topic, so that concerns me more. I have no idea which Allen Craig we will get. I don't see the Cards enough to even guess as to what is wrong with him. The potential is there for a really good hitter or he could be a huge bust.

OK then. A 22 HR hitter. In 469 AB. And he hit 3 in 28 minor league AB's that year, so that would be 25 HR still in only 497 AB. I didn't notice he only had 13 last year in 508 AB, so that is worrisome. The 25 HR estimate is based on a full season of AB, which he hasn't really done yet. In his major and minor league career before this season, he has 26.45 HR per 600 AB. So yeah, I think saying he has 25 HR power isn't so outlandish.

That .291 is including this current terrible season. Before this year he was .306/.358/.492 in 1420 plate appearances. He was .308/.369/.518 in 2209 minor league plate appearances. I don't know what's up with this season, but he's been a consistent .300+ hitter with 25 HR power before this year. Just gotta hope this year was a fluke.

I was going to mention that in my last post, but forgot. Apparently they wanted to keep him and offer him the qualifying offer, which will be around $15 million, and he almost surely would accept. I love Koji, but that's an overpay, and I would have traded him for a top prospect, and tried to resign him after the season.

I'll give him a generous C-. I didn't really like any of the trades, but I know he's not done yet, and I don't know what the other offers were and probably had my expectations too high. The offense is improved for next year, but that's all I can say for now. Here's my long assessment of the trades. You've been warned. Lester trade -- Gomes is probably worth the essentially 3rd round draft pick, so it's Lester and cash for 1 year of Cespedes. He's probably overrated by the casual fan because of his good first season and the last two homerun derbies, but he's a good player and a definite upgrade with potential to be even better. My problem is it's only for 1 year. If he was under contract for 3 years for the $10-12 million per year, I'd be ok with this deal. Lackey trade -- the Lester trade shows they are building for 2015, so this one is a head scratcher. If Lackey pitches for 500k next year, then this trade is dumb, and I'd drop my overall grade to D. Assuming that Lackey is being a dick, then this trade hinges on Craig. His 2014 is baffling. Is he struggling with minor injuries this year? Anybody know? If they get 2014 performance then this trade is still really bad. If he bounces back to pre-2014 form, then I'm ok with this one. I'm not liking Joe Kelly at all. It's possible he figures something out and suddenly becomes good, like Jake Arietta this year, but his stats so far look like he's been extremely lucky. A career WHIP of 1.38 with a strike out rate of 6.1 per 9 innings. He had a WHIP of 1.398 in the minors. That's a lot of base runners and will likely increase in the AL, and with a low K rate, that's not a good recipe for success. In 38 starts he's pitched 7 innings twice, and never more than 7. That's really bad. Miller trade -- Eduardo Rodriguez is rated as high as #3 prospect for Orioles, but that's all based on potential rather than performance. He was really good in rookie ball (big whoop), then solid but nothing special in A ball, and has been rather bad in AA. I'd prefer a top prospect that has a more proven track record of success. I'm not going to hold out hopes that he ever amounts to anything in the majors. Drew trade -- a salary dump which just saves enough money to pay what they are sending Oakland and St Louis, which they shouldn't have had to do in the first place. At least Bogaerts can move back to SS now and we'll see if that helps him.

If that's true then Lackey is a huge jackass and f*** him and good riddance. He was literally the worst starting pitcher in MLB in 2011 and got paid over $15 million. Then he didn't pitch at all in 2012 and got paid over $15 million. And now he's not going to honor the last year on his contract that he willingly signed. It almost has to be true, or otherwise that trade makes no sense, and it's still not a great trade. If Craig doesn't rebound, then they basically gave Lackey away. I'm not counting on Joe Kelly to do anything except maybe be a mediocre bullpen arm.

Last year, that would have been the 70th overall pick. Hell, they probably could have traded just Gomes for that.

Too bad this didn't happen two months ago. Oh well, I guess it saves them enough cash to pay what they're sending to Oakland and St Louis.

Compared to this year, assuming they are going to offer Koji a qualifying offer which he would surely accept, I think they would still have around $40-45 million left to spend on next year.