JoeBrady

Look at Cincy. 20% when they made the playoffs, and had 85 Py wins instead of 83. If Burns lives up to his reputation, they can win that division.

And having IKF as a super-sub will add a lot.

I'm cool with letting Bregman walk at that price, but the difference between him and Devers brought a smile to my face. I mean, with a guy on 1st, a hard grounder to 3rd should make you happy. Not cause you to clinch your stomach.

Just on the L/R issue, the only platoon I see is Mayer/Romy. So I generated the following analysis. The two disclaimers are that 1) because we have such a young team, we have 8 small sample warnings, and 2) these are not park-adjusted. v Righties v Lefties Duran 0.837 0.620 Anthony 0.903 0.770 Story (25) 0.743 0.734 Abreu 0.827 0.589 Contreras 0.791 0.871 Durbin 0.722 0.717 Narvaez 0.724 0.712 Rafaela 0.701 0.642 Mayer 0.739 Romy 0.872 0.776 0.725 League Average 0.725 0.704 These are all career numbers except for Story, since I wanted to exclude his Rox stats.

It's a pure hypothetical since I think they always intended on making Mayer a FT starter. If we signed Bregman, I think there is no chance we trade for a short-side platoon player. That said, the answer is no. If, for discussion purposes, Gray + IKF = Bregman, then Bregman becomes a $124M/4 guy at age 33. I wouldn't do that.

It might depend on our LH RPs are doing. If Samaniego and Moran bomb out, Sandy might be our default LH RP. In the past three seasons, he's allowed 2 HRs in 262 ABs v lefties.

I'd say that was the crux of the disagreements in here. Some in argued for more offense, several argued in favor of a #2 SP, and a few of argued in favor of two SPs. IMHO, the regular season is won by having 5 good SPs. But I have NP with someone wanting to upgrade the lineup at the expense of the 2nd SP I wanted.

It's an amazing journey. I complained about every strategy long before they adopted it. Among my favorites: Age doesn't matter. The one constant was the age of their acquisitions. Pujols (32), Hamilton (32), Upton (30), Cozart (32), Rendon (30), Soler (33), Wells (32), Hunter (32). The aging decline curves have long been known, but LAA refuses to acknowledge the science. Ks don't count. They have 8 guys in their lineup that will K at least 150 times if they play the full season. Minors don't count. Between Schanuel, Neto, Adell, Moore & Paris had about 212 AAA ABs, collectively, before they got promoted.

But both are high quality players.

Read enough stories, and you'll hear Anthony and Crochet's names being mentioned.

Why is the FG projected 3.3 Suarez "high quality", but the 3.4+ Gray not?

Story at $23.5M AAV is by no means a problem.

Fair enough. Just obtain a RH bat instead of Masa.

It always works out poorly, yet they continue to do so. Moore is the latest. He was on roughly a 200-K pace in AA & AAA. That almost never works. So they promote him, and he has a 230-K pace, almost exactly what you would expect. So they come 4th in HRs and 25th in runs scored. And seemingly don't understand that that was because they struck out more than any team in BB, by a lot.

They picked higher.

Or we play the long game and eat all the salary to get a better prospect. But the key would still be getting the righty equivalent of Masa, with a better glove.

But except for Duran dropping a fly ball and a baserunning gaffe, we'd have swept the Yankees.

Some of these writers don't even follow baseball. The RS and TO tied last year at 4.9 rpg. The Orioles had one of the worst offenses in BB last year. They will improve, but still scored 108 less runs than us last year.

Refsnyder was a bit of an illusion with his BABIP. Good bench player, but who does he realistically start over? And he is 35.

I've mentioned this before. We finished 22nd in OPS at 1st, and 17th at 2nd. Those should be improved. Bregman will hurt, but I think Duran's all-around offense will be similar to Devers' hitting.

IMO, we won't lose a single game. We have 8 teams that will definitely go over, and maybe 3 teams that might go over. Will those 11 teams vote for a cap? We have 11 teams that don't spend much. Will any of those teams vote for a floor? Of the 8 in the middle, some have fairly successful results. I'm not seeing it. The union just kicked the crap out of the owners on the 3rd year arbitration change. That was a huge win, after a huge loss 10 years ago. I think we'll see the usual whinging about how the owners will go broke if they have to pay one more dollar, and the players whinging about feeding their kids, but they will settle one week before the start of the season. IMHO.

The recent lockout was a result of the players strike. Leaving the WS decision up to the players was incredibly stupid. With a lockout, the owners won't mind losing a 1/2 season, so long as they have a WS.

I wouldn't be at all concerned about Duran being the DH, provided they can move Yoshida for a RH DH/OF. I'd have given the RS a B+ pending that move, but still had to round it up to an A.

Welcome to the MLB. You have to get use to the fact that players want as much money as possible.

Not at all. I like rooting for the same guys each year, but free agency has made that difficult. And I have been spoiled. I would like another WSC or two before I move on. Keeping good players at a huge cost won't do that. The three B's are likely on the downhill slide, and have another 23 years combined years left on their contracts.