bill hAll Star

Brad Miller at SS. No Cain. No Shaw.

You're giving Arcia, of all people, credit for hard hit balls? His LD% at 17%, and he's consistently hitting 0-2. Funny thing is (and I agree with those who say to get rid of the whole lot for better players), we have very good hitting 2B at AA and AAA (Hiura and Orf) that just might be better than most mentioned. Orf is not an MLB baseball player. I'm convinced of this. We have a front office that consistently has our team exceeding projections every year and apparently have zero intent on ever calling up Orf and there is probably a very good reason for this. Yes, there is always the Scooter counterexample but I really have a hard time finding any hitter of Orf's ilk that has ever made it in the majors. He doesn't have the skillset to make it in the majors. He's a poor man's Sogard IMO. It's possible that his hitting style could come up and outhit Sogard or Arcia for a while because the bar is so low but I think between superior defense and upside of Arcia finding his way back to a .700 OPS is worth just sticking with all of these guys. I'm not completely familiar with Orf, but unless he's a wizard in the field I'd rather just go with Saladino, Arcia, Sogard, or even Miller at SS. Miller is an average/above average hitter if platooned for a SS even if his defense could be very questionable.

I would argue that k rate is very important when considering a leadoff guy. Which for me, rules out some of those guys. Often you'll have the pitcher bunting a guy over and have guys on 2nd, 3rd, or both. You don't want someone that strikes out close to 30% of the time up there. As far as targets, SP and a rental that plays a good SS. I'm not sure how much longer Suter, Guerra, and Chacin can keep putting up solid starts. At best, those guys are back end starters. We should definitely explore the SP market, but at the same time I'm not willing to trade Hiura...so that likely limits the ceiling of what we can obtain. The SS rental piece should be very cheap in prospects, I'm assuming we won't be targeting Machado I'm not concerned about Suter, Guerra, and Chacin, really. Davies may come back and we've got other similar guys in the minors plus maybe something from Nelson. I'm not expecting it but he may provide something late. Those pitchers are all pitching to what we'd expect if they're only asked to go 5 innings, 6 if conditions are right. Guerra is a bit over his head but it's probably because he's off of last year's injury. Velocity up, locating pitches better, etc. If we're going to trade for a pitcher, I'd want it to be a clear upgrade. 90% of the names out there would be very marginal upgrades, if that. Obviously depends on cost. If a team wanted to give us yet another ~4 ERA/FIP/xFIP guy that can go 5-6, sure, I'd take him for free I guess. Back to the leadoff hitter thing: You run into strikeout situations with almost every spot in the order. I get the pitcher bunting thing but it must not be a huge enough concern. I'm not saying the analytics are always perfect, but it appears that generally they're OK with high strikeout guys at the top. Pederson seems to be improving his K-rate and Springer did in years past. It's probably more on the player recently improving, but I wonder if being in the leadoff spot has helped a bit. The other team is afraid of loading the bases for Christian Yelich or Altuve so they'll give you something to hit. And I realize that it's been Cain most of the year for us, but I don't mind Thames there.

I would not bat him leadoff. He'd be a decent upgrade but I would probably put him 6 or lower. Get our best hitters the most at bats. Harrison doesn't even check the box of a good OBP. I think Villar is basically as good as Harrison at this point other than striking out a bit more often so I'm not even sure I'd bother with it. But I'd rather, if Thames hits a home, he has a good chance of hitting it with someone on base. Harrison's a good fit for that slot. He has too much power to head off. Guys like Thames, Joc Pederson, Dozier, Springer, etc. are the ideal leadoff man for teams these days per the analytics. Springer has turned into an OBP stalwart and Dozier has fallen off this year, but you get the idea. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/baseballs-new-leadoff-hitters-dont-need-to-be-speed-demons/ I'm assuming it's that they see a lot of fastballs and are good on-base guys. Also, you generally have 2 outs when it swings back around later in the game and they act as a cleanup hitter later in the game. And regardless, Harrison doesn't get on base enough. About as much as Villar, so I'll pass.

I would not bat him leadoff. He'd be a decent upgrade but I would probably put him 6 or lower. Get our best hitters the most at bats. Harrison doesn't even check the box of a good OBP. I think Villar is basically as good as Harrison at this point other than striking out a bit more often so I'm not even sure I'd bother with it.

I attended an Indians game recently. Terry Francona is the absolute worst in this category. I believe I sat through four pitching changes in one half inning. You could see it coming, and the thought in my head was, I could probably stand grab a beer at the stadium bar, finish the beer, and miss no action. I'm thankful that Counsell has gotten away from that approach this season. Hopefully it starts a trend. I'm just guessing here, but my guess is that Counsell makes less changes because this bullpen is loaded with pitchers that can get anyone out. All he has to do is work backward with a lead or close game and most of them are coming in to start an inning and finish said inning. Put Hader in when it's important. Take him out when he hits a pitch count. Go to Jeffress after that if it's mostly righties coming up. A lefty in-between isn't going to make him take Jeffress out because he's probably good enough to get that lefty out and you want him for the righty on deck. So on, so forth. Counsell also generally uses his offensive depth/versatility to make a double switch so that Hader or someone else can go 2 innings if the order was near the pitcher spot. Cleveland has an uncharacteristically terrible bullpen this year. Tito is probably trying to get every edge/matchup he can. I'd say in general, the game is trending a bit toward what Cleveland is doing this year...but I can also see it trending the other way depending on how you look at it. Relievers are getting used more and more and the matchups are played even more and more...however, games may be pitched in a 3-2-2-1-1, 4-2-1-1-1, or 5-2-1-1 (innings pitched) format of pitching in a lot of cases. At the very least, a team is putting a guy in for an entire inning and making the change between innings. Since they are using them more often earlier in the game, it takes out a bit more of the micromanaging later in the game. Back to Cleveland, they've got guys like Kluber and Clevinger going 6+ innings a lot. You've got a completely full bullpen to micromanage every at bat after that if the game is close.

Your approach pisses people off. Maybe not everyone, but definitely a large percentage. You're wasting their time. That's entirely untrue, especially considering MLB GM's are involved in negotations in pretty every aspect of what they do. I'm not saying you offer Sogard for Machado. That was an extreme example that someone else came up with. Obviously you should make at least a decent offer. From a housing perspective, if a house is listed at $200k, I'm not talking about offering $20k or even $80k. Maybe the max you are willing to pay is $180k, so you start at $165k or $170k and see what happens. Maybe that house is a hot item and goes for $250k in a bidding war(in which case the $165k offer gets balked at), or maybe your offer is good enough to entice them and you get it at $175k because they are worried the value will go down in a year. That example can surely be translated into prospects to some degree, though that translation is a bit more tricky because every player/prospect is valued differently by every mlb team. My main point, there's a massive gap between an insultingly low offer and a decent offer that can be added to to get a deal done. I don't think Burnes + Peralta as headliners in a Degrom deal is insultingly low. Maybe the Mets demand Hiura and you replace him with one of the pitchers. Or maybe the headliners are good enough but they need a couple good secondary prospects(Ray). Or maybe the Mets don't even bother talking to us because we don't have 5 top 50 prospects and that's the only way to start a conversation for either pitcher. We all get this. When you make a trade, you generally start low and work your way to the middle. Of course you can get lucky and make an initial offer and the seller of the house or the other baseball team could inexplicably just say, "OK, deal." At the very least, it helps you start on the extreme end toward moving to the middle. OK, we all get that. I don't understand why you're even talking about this in the deGrom/Thor trade. Almost every discussion of a trade on these boards involves what it may cost. You came in and noted a borderline insultingly low offer and many people bristled at it...and then you said, "well yeah, that's just a starting point." When I would be talking about a Realmuto trade on this board, the discussion generally would revolve around what the eventual trade may have to be to trump other teams' offers. We don't say, "well I'd call and offer them Gatewood and Nottingham first." There would be 20 pages of meaningless drivel about which B and C-level prospects to start the offer with.

I don't see the point in wasting time on making an offer you know is going to be rejected. Have you ever negotiated for anything before in your life? Your first offer definitely shouldn't be your best offer. Start low and work your way up. Even if the Brewers were willing to send Hiura, Burnes, and Peralta in trade for Degrom...opening with that offer would be dreadful negotiation. Generally MLB forums discuss the reality of a final trade. I mean, sometimes we'll discuss the back-and-forth of negotiations but I don't spend much of my time going, "I'd call and offer Sogard for Machado and go from there" on this board. That just seems like a waste of time (as if these boards aren't already) and odd.

My thoughts were that you’re catching a guy before he hits his prime. It wasn’t a knock on Aguilar or Thames but achieving that young controlled talent. Bell is only 2 years younger than Aguilar. They are both under team control for the same amount of time (until 2022). Thames is 31 but has the perfect amount of control: Next year + a team option for 2020. I've always been a skeptic of Aguilar until recently assuming that he's maybe improved his launch angle to move into being a very good MLB hitter, but I'd probably wager that Aguilar is more valauble than Bell over the next 4.5 years. He's already a better defender.

Let me guess, this is a Bleacher Report or some other fan-generated content article.

What the heck? I'll grant you that I think Bell probably is a bit better of a HR hitter than shown this year, but he's not a great defender and nothing special as a 1B hitter. I'd argue that he'd be in AAA for the Brewers. So other than the annoyance of having to move Thames/Aguilar around a bit to bad defensive positions to get their bats in the lineup, they are way, way better than Bell.

The Marlins would have very little interest in Aguilar. Their window is 3 years from now. It's a stretch to say that Aguilar can play 3B well at this point, but by 2021, Aguilar will be 30 and on the back end of arbitration. I've been a fan of Aguilar maybe taking the next step this year with some assumed launch angle improvement, but he may be back on his way down to 2017 - a masher of lefties and a guy that is decent against RHP.

You cannot compare any trade that's ever happened in baseball to that. Pure desperation to maximize their chances of ending 108 years of losing. I have a hard time believing 2 months of Mike Trout would cost more in prospects. We're about a month away from desperation setting in with multiple teams. If you're going to trade one of the top relievers in baseball and possibly your most valuable trade chip at this time of the season you better be getting quite a haul back. If this was the best offer available on July 31, then so be it. But if it's the middle of June and you're offered a potential 4th outfielder and a fringy 3B, you gotta hold out for something better. I'm going to make a guess that the Royals' front office, while this move completely could backfire like any other move, huddled and decided that they trust their analysis of these players and therefore thought this was the best value they'd get. I can't imagine they called a meeting and decided that while they were pretty certain that other teams would come in with a haul of prospects in return, they are just gonna do this one...just because. They must like what they see in these prospects - even more than a potential comp pick. The only other aspect that I guess one could say is that it helps them tank a bit. But I would imagine that any fan or front office person would call that a very small detail because trading him now instead of late July probably is the difference of 1-2 wins if any. I'm not suggesting that they traded him now because of that.

The Adam Lind trade is calling on line 1. Not every bag of magic beans is the same, but I think one needs to always consider that a team may prefer upside over ranked prospects that may have a low ceiling.

Supposedly Cabrera is very hobbled and is not looking full strength but is kinda toughing it out because they have such little depth and so many injuries given their extremely old set of position players. Might just be short-term and I'd consider him, but I don't value him a whole lot higher than Miller/Villar/Perez in some sort of platoon at 2B and I honestly do not know what would be at SS, so I pretty much agree there. As a sidenote, I do enjoy the theme that creeps into every post, even if unrelated to the point made in the post: 1. There is a big market bias from the media in baseball. 2. The Cubs have a bad farm system from recent moves (and hence are stupid). 3. Free agents/30+ year old players/large contracts are really, really bad and everyone knows it now. Personally, I don't think I'd deal for Thor but I guess I'd trust Stearns if his opinion was that the offer was worth it similar to the Yelich deal. I'd prefer deGrom slightly more given that he may (?) cost a little less but I still don't think either happen.

If the Tigers want to just give Iglesias away, sure, I'm OK with that. I may be too optimistic on Arcia and I understand he may have something fundamentally wrong with his swing/approach, but I'm too stubborn to take a deal on a guy who is hitting right to his career baseline (Iglesias) and give up on a guy that is having a terrible year at the plate but in his short career, was probably a better hitter than Iglesias. And Iglesias may be a slightly better defender, but it's basically elite vs. really good there.

Bahahahaha, plug him in at SS...we'll be just fine defensively. Well the beautiful thing is that we'll have a handful of weeks to decide if after getting his feet back under him at the position if he can get back to being passable/not terrible at SS as he was early in his career.

I'm not expecting much from Nelson and will be pleased if we get more than that. That said, the point about our pitching remains: Barring more injuries to the bullpen or various starters, we're gonna make it to September pitching with new-age baseball tendencies. This makes Jhoulys Chacin or Brent Suter backed up by Josh Hader basically as effective as 7 innings of Cole Hamels. And by "make it to September," I mean that once we get to September 1, we'll have even more available arms to finish the season playing the bullpen game and there are enough off days in the playoffs to do what we've already done. Point being from all of this: I think the only true upgrade would be having deGrom or Thor throw 6-7 innings and still have Hader, etc. in the bullpen. I don't think I want to trade for them given the cost to do so. So I think the most likely course of action is to pick up a Swarzak-type cheap acquisition to bolster the bullpen depth if guys like Albers remain out. Beyond that, I think we may just be throwing prospects away to get the same value that we already have in our rotation.

Well, Ohtani has gone from great pitcher and good hitter to just "good hitter" for the next 2 years most likely. Garrett Richards is on the mend and Zack Cozart just left with an injury yesterday with Simmons already on the DL. The Angels also have this uncanny ability to have replacements waiting in the minors that I've never heard of (that's saying something) and all of them seem to have the batting line of .270/.320/.410 with 3 HR in the hitter-friendly PCL [edit: OK, some of the guys they've brought up are actually hitting well in the PCL but also are batting 9th in their very top-heavy order so probably don't have much potential]. Some of the guys they've put in their lineup the past few days aren't going to help much. We're only approaching the halfway point but I think the Mariners may have buried the Angels (especially given their injury situation) earlier this week. Trout is approaching HGH Bonds territory in the season he is putting up and the Angels are 7.5-8 games out of the 2nd Wild Card spot/the division and the injuries just got worse.

On top of Simmons being one of the most valuable players in the game, the Angels have an extremely, extremely defined window of Mike Trout's contract which also ends in 2020. This trade would only be possible if the Angels decided that they've again blown it and are blowing the entire thing up, which I don't think they'll do until the deadline of 2020, maybe 2019 deadline if it looks really bleak and yeah, we'd have to add a lot more to it to make it happen.

What about Hiura's arm? Tommy John seemed somewhat inevitable so does he just try to time out getting it later this season so that he can return by early/mid-2019?

Somebody else can probably trump that offer. I know that Ray is turning it around but he still has a ceiling of Brett Gardner maybe with a tad more power. That's a nice piece, but the Mets are gonna want more unless they really covet Burnes. Of course the Mets keep moving closer and closer to the rental phase for deGrom so if the league keeps lowballing, they may be forced to take something like this. But I think one of these AL teams in tight races may be desperate enough to put 2 top 100 prospects in there. Right, most teams can beat that offer if seriously inclined. It's not solely about the player though, $30 million for 2+ years is a lot. And age is a consideration. It's still a good value contract but should definitely all be considered. You could always try to include a guy like Phillips or Ortiz instead of the flier. Burnes + Ortiz/Phillips + Ray + Supak. That's probably a bit too much but I doubt any team would offer 4 solid prospects like these for 2+ years of a pitcher at that cost. I understand that we're kinda inching towards our upper cusp of salary but the salary is zero concern for me. If the Mets were desperate enough to take that lowball trade we've offered and deGrom bombs, the salary barely matters. He's not going to cripple us for 5 years. We're probably screwed regardless if he gets hurt or is somehow terrible.

I'm much more inclined to target Degrom, in part due to acquisition cost. Let's all keep in mind we are probably paying close to $30 million for 2+ years of Degrom should we target him, though we could always trade him or take the comp pick when the time comes. We'd also be getting age 30-32 seasons. All are simply considerations. I would try to send Burnes and/or Peralta as the centerpiece in a trade for Degrom if we go that route. I suspect they'd demand Hiura, but that guy is so stinking good I'd try really hard to keep him. Burnes or Peralta, Ray, Supak, and a flier or 2 for Degrom, I feel like that's reasonably close. Somebody else can probably trump that offer. I know that Ray is turning it around but he still has a ceiling of Brett Gardner maybe with a tad more power. That's a nice piece, but the Mets are gonna want more unless they really covet Burnes. Of course the Mets keep moving closer and closer to the rental phase for deGrom so if the league keeps lowballing, they may be forced to take something like this. But I think one of these AL teams in tight races may be desperate enough to put 2 top 100 prospects in there.

Thor's out for a while as well, FWIW. Could be one of those things that lingers all year.

My concern here is this: Hader is probably almost as valuable as Thor in the majors right now and very well could be just as good if transitioned to a starter. You're robbing Peter to pay Paul on the MLB roster, maybe missing the playoffs, and basically giving up 3 good prospects to probably not upgrade a ton. I'm not sure that's enough for deGrom. If it is, I guess you maybe do that trade.