moonslav59

There were a lot of options the winter we traded 4 prospects for a RP'er making close to FA market money.

I've always been very high on Hembree- maybe undeservedly so. I agree on C Smith. He's no sure bet, even if he gets himself 100% healthy.

At today's relief pitcher prices, Kimbrel's $13M option should be a "no brainer", unless he really sucks this year or get hurt badly. Kimbrel's luxury tax raise will not be as significant as Sale's. Kimbrel's lux# goes from $11.5M to $13M. Sale's lux# goes from $6.5M to $12.5M in 2018 and $13.5M in 2019. Together, it's $8M more in 2018. Add the arb raises, and we'll see all of the $14M money saved by losing Young $6.5M, Moreland $5.5M & Abad $2M eaten up pretty quickly--and then some! Hence the strong need to reset the tax rate this winter. Trading HanRam and/or Pablo next winter may become an option.

Lots of arb players about to get started or start making serious money in raises: winter 2017-2018: Betts: 1st of 3 Bogey: 2nd of 3 JBJ: 2nd of 4 Pomeranz, Kelly & Ross: 3 of 3 Thornburg, Holt, Rutledge: 2 of 3 C Smith, ERod, Swihart, Wright and Vaz: 1st of 3 or 4

Yes, Craig gets $11M this year plus a $1M buyout next year. None of this counts on the luxury tax budget, because he's not on the 40 man roster. Castillo still has $11.7M due for three more years and then a $14.3M final year- also not on the 40 man roster. When people say they wonder why Henry is trying to avoid paying a luxury tax, one could look at these two guys and see it as already paying $25M for the "luxury" of having the funds to take a chance on them. Losing Castillo's $11M should make paying a luxury tax next year a little easier, especially if we can, indeed, reset the tax rate this season.

I do think Pablo will rebound. I remember catching flack for just mentioning his name as possible 3B competition for 2017 back in late fall/early winter 2016.

I said the same about HanRam after the 2015 season. Trade him while his stock is high (assuming he had a good 2016 season). I don't feel that way anymore, but part of me still thinks HR may suck or get hurt this year. His recent ups and downs are concerning. I do like Devers much more than Travis, so we may have a better result trading Pablo. I doubt Travis outplays HanRam in 2017 or 2018.

Certainly the lefty-righty aspect is a major factor, and I suspect good fastball hitters will usually do better against mainly fastball pitchers. There are certain specific skills that tweak the "randomness" to some extent.

Even if he looks average or slightly below, we're still stuck with him, but we'll have to cross our arms and legs too. If he sucks... Oh NOoooooo!!!!!

Actually, it did this once anyways. Papi hit 31 in 448 PAs year 1 and went over 40 the next 3 years.

Maybe pie-in-the-sky, but what if Pablo looks good in ST'ing? Would SFG take him off our hands, if we paid $10M of his $19M a year? Word is the CWS are willing to pay part of Robertson's contract in a trade. With the $9M saved on Pablo, maybe we could trade for Todd Frazier (est $12M arb) and David Robertson (pay enough of his salary to stay under the limit). The problem is, what prospects do we have left that the CWS would want without giving up Devers, Groome or Travis? Also, who plays 3B in 2018? Maybe this is more like mud-in-the eye than pie-in-the-sky. Never mind. Just useless boredom surfacing.

His injury will help keep his arb costs down for a while.

I remember looking at his numbers at MN over his last 2 seasons and thinking 38 HRs in 715 PAs was damn good, and maybe in Fenway, he could hit 40 in 650 PAs. I was hopeful he could be more than a platoon DH/1Bman, but I certainly didn't foresee what was to come. All 4 of his season in MN with over 345 PAs saw him have an OPS at .799 or better. 6 seasons or partial seasons in MN was a long time.

cots has the same info.

Makes you wonder how many players were cut due to poor initial performance, but might have gone on to have good or great careers.

I try not to put much stock into a player's first 200-600 or so PAs in the bigs. It's a big adjustment to go from the farm to MLB. He always had enough BBs to compensate for a rather high K rate in the minors, so I always felt that would improve or "get fixed". It might have taken longer for JBJ than many other players brought up at age 23 and 24 after 1000 or so farm PAs, but I was never really that worried about his offense. I wasn't expecting some of the flaming red hot numbers he's put up for various stretches over the past 1.5 seasons either. I suspect he will become more consistent from month to month. His season OPS has been almost equal over the past two years (.832 and .835). His early struggles caused his career OPS to be .726, and I feel pretty safe in thinking his seasonal OPS should never dip below .725 until old age kicks in, but I also see his hot streaks as a "window" of what might occur more often and maybe a couple or more .900+ OPS seasons await us in the near future.

"Vowel" or "Bowel"?

In 2016, our pen finished .... 14th in WHIP at 1.28 (just 0.02 from 16th place) 12th in xFIP at 4.03 (just 0.08 from 16th place) We lost: 47 IP Uehara 0.96 WHIP/ 3.42 xFIP 30 IP Ziegler 1.25 WHIP/ 3.11 xFIP 50 IP Tazawa 1.23 WHIP/ 3.79 xFIP That's 127 IP out of 407 relief IP in 2016 (31%). We added Thornburg: 67 IP 0.94 WHIP/ 3.28 xFIP We may get some IP from a returning Carson Smith, but does anybody really feel confident about our 3-5 RP'ers? 3) Kelly (Smith when he returns) 4) Ross 5) Barnes These guys would look real good as our 5-6-7's or maybe 4-5-6's, but I'd like to see us find a solid #3 or 4 by opening day without losing a big chunk of our flex spending saved for a deadline move, if needed.

Maybe he made a mechanical adjustment after missing him in the first inning.

Or, he's just an overly streaky hitter that will always have short to long ups and short to long downs.... like Mike Napoli.

I think a lot of our evaluation of the pen depends on Carson Smith's return. Without him, I see the need for a number 3 or 4 pen arm- not a 5-6-7 type. Pushing Ross, Kelly and Barnes to the 5-6-7 slots instead of 3-4-5 or 4-5-6 would be a big plus. If we got a Holland type, I'd put him as our #3, at least until Smith returned and showed he was capable of being a 7th/8th inning set-up man. I'm not saying getting one of these guys is a must, especially if their price tag is over $4-5M, but as of right now, I view our pen and 3B as our clear weakest links. While other teams also have weak pen depth, some don't. Look at the Guardians, for example; not only are they strong at the closer and set-up roles, but they are deeper than deep. 1.2 Cody Allen 2.7 A Miller .5 D Otero .4 B Shaw .4 Z McAllister .2 C Anderson Swingmen: .7 Clevinger .5 T Cooney .3 R Merritt That's 9 pen guys with a projected WAR of over 0.2! 8 over 0.3 7 over o.4 We have 7 over 0.2. 6 over 0.3 5 over 0.4 1.6 Kimbrel 1.1 J Kelly .4 Thornburg .4 Ross .3 Smith .2 Barnes Swingmen .9 Wright .1 Elias .0 Owens & Johnson I'm usually not one to suggest we need to copy the most recent successful teams' winning strategy, but building a deep pen seems to be a wide trend for winning teams these days, especially with 2-3 strong set-up men. We lost Ziegler and Uehara (plus Tazawa) and added Thornburg (and maybe C Smith). Our pen really hurt us last year, until the end, so getting worse at an area of need is usually not a way to get better. .

Agreed, but I still think the bottom of our pen is questionable, at best, but I guess it doesn't hurt to let things play out and see what we need mid season. The problem with mid season is that we can't always expect a Brad Ziegler to come to us at such a "low" cost. We can, in theory, afford about a $4-5M FA and then still be able to trade for a $4-5M remaining contract at the deadline. I'm not sure any of the RP'ers listed below can be had for $4-5M, so waiting is likely the solution. I just hate to have a plan that involves trading away even more of the farm later.

Baseball is not roulette, otherwise everybody would hit about the same BA given a large enough sample size. Skill is involved but so is luck and randomness to a large degree. Leon's season was not all luck. His good season does not prove he "made adjustments" or suddenly became a much better hitter. Was he "in the zone"? Why did he leave the zone in September? His much higher LD% and hard hit% does show it was not all about the luck of more grounders finding their way through the holes. LD% 2014: 18.6% 2015: 18.8% 2016: 24.7% Hard% 2014: 20.9 2015: 14.1 2016: 31.3 These numbers have something to do with his better BAbip. 2014: .209 2015: .244 2016: .392 (career .257 before 2016) His small sample size numbers before 2016 were: LD% 17.7% Hard%: 16.2% He hit the ball "harder" about 15% more in 2016 than his prior career norm. His BAbip was about 14% higher than his career norm. Hmmm...

You should read more!

Agreed. And that ton of talent amounts to 1 more hit every 18-24 ABs.