bill hAll Star

I think if you can search through the 46 pages here, I speculated several times about arm issues. Throwing that many innings for that many years at 95+ with a hard slider is a near lock to need Tommy John at some point. There were not serious signs of it (even the September time off may not have been terrible) but you don't want to be caught holding the bag when he needs it if you've given up half of your farm system to acquire him.

Their bullpen has been good. I still think their starters will turn the corner. Pitching in Colorado this past weekend wasn't the best place to get right for Darvish and Quintana.

I'll obviously echo that was incredibly stupid not to trade Machado earlier, but they're now the Tigers, circa 2016 or so. They tried one more free agency bonanza to see if they could make something in the final years of Davis (around for a while), Machado, Trumbo, Britton, Jones, etc. which was dumb, but that's what they tried. Now their hand will be forced. Barring a miraculous run over the next few weeks, their deadline is going to be very interesting. Machado, Britton, Brach, Tillman (meh), and Jones are free agents. Schoop, Trumbo, and others will be gone the year after that. Britton and Trumbo obviously need some healthy games logged before dealt. I can't imagine they'd be dumb enough not to have a firesale this deadline and next offseason. Some of these guys are not very valuable anymore, but I could see them dealing 10+ players in the next 10 months. The roster will probably just be Davis, Cobb, and a bunch of AAAA players early next season similar to how the Tigers have Miggy, V-Mart (1 more year), and Zimmermann rotting during the tank/rebuild.

Let's repeat it one more time as we do every time Broxton comes up in trade discussions: Keon Broxton has very, very minimal practical trade value around the league given how we value him. Competing teams before the season can pay $3 million for 1 year of Jarrod Dyson or Austin Jackson for a stopgap. Rebuilding teams want to aim higher and younger. There are not many situations where a team values Broxton's decent ~1WAR/year potential at a "cheap" rate as much as the Brewers do. He's valuable to the Brewers as depth for several years. Most other teams are not going to pay for all 4 years of remaining control in trade value. Imagine this situation: Next year, the Brewers seem poised to compete again. However, Hiura is injured, Villar flamed out, Sogard flamed out. Before the season, do we want to pay decent prospect value for Carlos Asuaje, a fringe major league player that has 4-5 years of control left, or do we want to just sign the equivalent of Howie Kendrick for 1 year and figure it out the next year? That's the Broxton paradox. The Padres have minimal motivation to deal someone like that unless someone offers full value, but nobody's going to offer value for all 4-5 years of team control. Couple that with the fact that Broxton is probably best suited as a platoon hitter from the lesser side of the platoon and he probably doesn't even have everyday value for a competing team. I get that Lowrie's value is depressed for several reasons, but the A's will likely want a young lottery ticket if anything. They don't want a guy that can platoon for them to win 76 games instead of 74 for a few years, as twirly said.

I think at this point, the Marlins are pretty set on the shedding contracts unless somebody wants to take on Chen. Other than Stanton, I don't think they were ever really motivated to give guys away and to take cost/money as the only motivation in the trade. Their longterm outlook is pretty good now in terms of player contracts. Taking a few million bucks off their hand wouldn't be of zero value, but I don't think it's a motivation really as shady as they seem at this point. They do eventually want to win again in a few years. True, but I still think they are trying to put as much to bottom line as possible. Agreeing to take back one or even both the guys I mentioned maybe means you don't need to give up Burnes and could get away with using only Woodruff or even Suter (if they like him) as the main pitcher in a package. Something like Woodruff, Villar, one or two of Erceg, Lutz, Dubon, Ray, a lower level lotto ticket and like Broxton for some major league filler could conceivable do it with taking back salary. Throw in Bandy or something too if they want a catcher replacement. Not everyone can take on $5 million (or whatever one of those relievers' prorated salary is at that point of the year), but if the whispers around the league are, "you can pull a major prospect out of your package if you take on Tazawa or Castro's contract" (none of which are bad deals), I think you'd see a flock of teams which would then create a bidding war and force you to put those prospects right back in the package. "All we have to do is take on a fair value reliever or pay a fairly-paid Castro for 1.5 years?" I think GMs would be flocking to that. Taking on Chen or Prado are different stories, I guess, but I think the Marlins are past the point of trying to attach one of those guys to a trade. They will have a basement ledger book the next few years no matter what.

I think at this point, the Marlins are pretty set on the shedding contracts unless somebody wants to take on Chen. Other than Stanton, I don't think they were ever really motivated to give guys away and to take cost/money as the only motivation in the trade. Their longterm outlook is pretty good now in terms of player contracts. Taking a few million bucks off their hand wouldn't be of zero value, but I don't think it's a motivation really as shady as they seem at this point. They do eventually want to win again in a few years.

Well, their bullpen has been fine and/or good. We'll see if the likes of Darvish, Chatwood, Lester, Quintana all continue to be much worse than career norms. This may be about where Chatwood ends up, wouldn't be a surprise. The rest I think will get back on track, even if Lester is a bit more of 2017 Lester rather than previous years. Some of the starters like Lester have some tough BABIPs that will even out soon I'm sure.

I think you nailed it. We already have a younger, cheaper version of Ozuna in Santana, and they spent the whole offseason trying to dump him. I somewhat get the point, but Santana is at another level from Ozuna. The question is whether or not one believes Ozuna's season from last year being a new version of him. I'm using FanGraphs' defensive numbers just as a hand-wavy rating, of course they are not perfect: Santana has always been really bad. Yelich has basically been around average his whole career except for one bad year on FanGraphs. Ozuna was a really good defender his first 2 years and now is just OK (a 0 Def rating on Fangraphs, give or take). Career batting average Santana: .262 (trending up) Yelich: .291 Ozuna: .277 (trending up) BB%/K% Santana: (11.5%/31.5%) Yelich: (10.6%/20.6%) Ozuna: (7%/22.1%) There are some aspects of Ozuna that are definitely trending toward Santana, but he's probably a bit closer to Yelich than to Santana. All of that said, I'd take Yelich even with cost/control taken out of the scenario.

Don't know about that. There definitely weren't as many guys who threw heat, but Walter Johnson and Smoky Joe Wood were known to at least have upper 90s heaters. I was joking but I have doubts that they threw in the upper 90's. Probably low 90's but not for long as they were complete game type pitchers. Huge difference to today's game is that these guys paced themselves to pitch a complete game, every time out. That and it's pretty clear nowadays that after hitters have seen pitchers 2-3 times, they begin to hit them better. Might help success rates in the 8th and 9th inning when you've seen Walter Johnson's curveball in several at-bats already.

They've been playing in 35 degree weather with winds gusting in in Cleveland the past 3 days plus out in some cavernous western ballparks before that. Nobody's bat has gotten going for Cleveland yet. They will. I could see them being interested in 1 of the 2 players but I wouldn't chalk it up to this rough start just yet. They won't be sending Zimmer down if they trade for Broxton. They'd be platooning them in CF as Broxton is a right-handed version of Zimmer.

Well, we had to give up several key prospects to acquire him...

Gives him a raise this year, pays $21 million for 3 years, a 4th year option for $21, and a 5th year option for $10. I think this is fair on both sides. I think Blackmon had some market uncertainty given his age and the fact that people may have not paid him for anywhere near what his offensive stats show. The Rockies got him before he went to free agency but might be paying their 5th OF $21 million in 2022. Also a bit misleading since this year is counted in the "6 year extension" headlines.

Or you are reporting what BW is saying I know that is a parity account, but that doesn't stop it from being incredibly stupid, in my opinion. There are many equal or peer accounts to Brewer World out there so I agree with your assessment on parity. One may say that HighHeat was a parity account to Brewer World.

On top of the fact that he's gotten into some ventures that are good for PR, he's also extremely natural in the booth or on set. He's really good.

Well, that may explain why he's a AAA signing in early April (if this is true).

Holland got rocked 4 times in August and then did great in September and October (his best stretch of the year in terms of OPS against). Sure, his 2nd half was "bad" but I would be more concerned if he continued to not pitch well and it wasn't probably just a little blip or bad stretch.

He'll jump back on the bandwagon once this tanking excursion gets them back into contention in 4 years.

It's spring training. Who cares about their numbers. In the case of Thames, if I was GM, I would. I don't think he has enough of a book to just assume what his production level is going to be. I would like to know how much, if any, of last April I could expect this year. If you assume you are going to get May-August Thames, with his defense, I don't think he has any positive value over his contract. His September was very good, but I believe he was also more platooned. And that is the way I would look at him - the heavy side of the platoon that I would match up with a righty bat that had more defense that I could also sub in at the end of games. Thames was less platooned over a lot of the 2nd half. He mashed lefties in his first month in 25 PA. He got 25 PA in June/July each and then got 10-12 ABs for each month after that. I think they basically just left him in later in the game less as the year went by. He also had a good July. I think that even if he's a .240/.330/.460 type of guy like we saw in the 2nd half with random hot streaks, maybe he's not worth exactly $5 or $6 million that we're paying him per year, but I'm not really sure how much better you could do given what we currently have unless one wants to gamble on Choi being this good. I'm willing to keep Choi as a bench bat and eventually make him more of the regular if he continues to be a good hitter and Thames continues his 2017 2nd half.

Not to quibble too much, but if I had my pick of the litter, I'd probably take Moss, Lind, maybe even Napoli over Reynolds. Regardless, I'd probably would just make one of those signings if I'm the Yankees.

Their situation changed. If they can't find a taker to give them a good deal on a trade, they could get Lind right back. EDIT: Unless my timeline is wrong and they cut Lind after they already knew that Bird was out for a while.

At this point of the year, the contract only matters to Attanasio. Thames has an affordable year next year and an option, which are a bonus, but if the Brewers got a good pitcher or prospect back and truly believed that Choi is not a huge dropoff from Thames, then I'd make a trade.

I don't think the Yankees would have much interest in Aguilar. I guess they could make Walker a primary 1B and platoon him with Aguilar, but I can't see Aguilar going for anything of note given that we probably are bordering on having to cut him anyways. Aguilar simply isn't that good when exposed to a lot of RHP. If they think they want a full time 1B, then it's Thames platooned with somebody else. I'd give them the Thames/Aguilar platoon for the right price.

Regarding "not their type" with Santana (and Phillips), it seems as though the Astros went through a philosophical and coaching change. -Springer struck out 25% of the time before last year and dropped it to 18% -Gattis went from ~22% prior to 2017 to 15% in 2017. -McCann didn't change a ton, but did drop his to close to his career low. There were a handful of other guys that pushed it toward their career low. The Astros used to have strikeout problems, so you're right, going away from Luis Valbuena, Pena/Singleton, Castro, etc., they did seem to do some roster changes to take their strikeout problem to basically the best in the league but it seems like there was a philosophy change as well. I wonder if they'd work some magic on Santana as well. Maybe he cannot be worked with at this point, who knows.

There have been other attempts to do this. I recall George Springer getting an offer before he came up. I don't think it'll be too much more common because you'll have to find the right player to find it or you'll have to offer an unreasonable amount. A few guys like Kingery or Singleton may value the financial security, but a lot of guys like Acuna will just take the $600k/year for 2-3 years and hit arbitration in an attempt to get the $300+ million contract as quickly as possible. Of course they could bust or just get $50 million, but in most cases, these guys would be smart to take the risk. Kingery has made a huge leap in the past year in the minors so it's hard to really pin his projected majors path, but I don't see it happening often because you've got your Acunas that will not take a deal like this unless it is massive (a risk the team likely won't make) or you'll have lesser prospects like a Brett Phillips for example that the team will be perfectly fine just not offering something like this and playing out the arbitration process (or at least play a few years before offering). Kingery and Singleton are the sweet spot that get deals like this. Both guys could (in Singleton's case 'could've') be all stars or superstars, but they're most likely just "pretty good" and are happy with the security.

I have been paying less attention to the day-to-day goings on of Spring Training, but what was the drama on this? Seemed like the logical thing they'd do, but Aguilar's status is the one mystery of all of this.