bill hAll Star

Nicasio and McCalister (somewhat backs up your theory that they had to be moved to the bullpen to stay successful) are good relievers and Chatwood - we'll see how good he is this year.

I'm guessing many of those betters anticipate us adding a SP. I wish I had a line on betting something like that and could have gotten in on that 81.5 win mark. The initial line I saw was also from covers. It's possible that Bovada opened closer to 84.5.

The Brewers' line got bet up from 81.5 pretty quickly, which I can buy.

LOL. You may want to double-check the definition of "fair value"...as there is no way you can call what he negotiates for his players fair value. There's a reason none of his players are signed, dude needs a reality check. There are fewer and fewer boneheads like Dombrowski in the league for him to prey on and tank their ability to compete with his ridiculous contracts. Look, man. I agree that Dombrowski and Boras' methodologies are either not ideal or rub people the wrong way. I've really just not seen such a chip on one's shoulder about these things where they can't be discussed realistically. Boras gets a ton of money for his clients. Always has. He's a douche and maybe it's a huge downfall for him this year, but he's trying what has worked for him in the past. He could very well relent at a small cost to his clients down the road. Dombrowski has won at several stops. I get that we as small market fans like to pat ourselves on the back and talk about how bad large contracts are, but he's done very well signing some. I'd take Friedman, Epstein, etc. any day over him, but a market inefficiency can also just be taking known potential huge losses/risks if the salary structure allows it. Dombrowski literally traded Cameron Maybin (pre-good Andrew Miller) and random stuff for Miguel Cabrera. He acquired Max Scherzer for less than he gave up. He probably won the Chris Sale trade. He's brazen and ballsy and has his share of Pablo Sandoval contracts but he also wins majorly for star talent.

Yeah, and that's fine. I'm just addressing the bat expectations. Vogt is a really bad defender and if he is still that bad, then I would trust the team's decision to go with someone else.

Vogt has a track record of being a pretty good hitter and it is possible that his numbers looked worse in Oakland. I'm not disagreeing that I'm a fan of Pina and he should be the guy. Plays good defense, but I'm more confident in Vogt's bat than I am Pina's. I'm OK with rolling with the platoon where Pina is still the primary guy but Vogt's days that he gets off are against RHP.

Well, sure. But that trade doesn't make much sense for TB. TB gives up half of their current and their not-too-distant future core, so where do they stand? Santana/Aguilar/Arcia/Woodruff is barely enough for Archer, much less those other guys. If TB really made that trade, what's the motivation? They're not winning right now anyways, so trade for some guys with only 4 years of control? Aguilar is throwaway.

That was Tommy John, which most pitchers have. Obviously you assess how much he's bounced back from it and if he even might be underpriced since this year will be his 2nd year after his comeback or if he never will recover...but Tommy John is no longer a kiss of death and one can hope that his 2nd surgery won't be anytime soon. It's another thing that can happen to almost anyone.

Jeremy Hellickson has not aged very well for a changeup pitcher, and has struggled to come back from his injury in 2014; 2016 was good, but 2015 and 2017... not so much. And he's only a year older than Cobb. I'm more concerned about Cobb's inability to stay healthy enough to start 30 games in a season during his physical prime than his pitch types. One of Cobb's major injuries was getting hit in the face by a line drive. Are we going to worry about that with all of our pitchers?

Of course Cobb is better than Suter or Wilkerson, but not on a 4 year deal at age 30. Garza's age 25-29 seasons: FIP (weighted): 3.90, K/9: 8.0, BB/9: 2.9, HR/9: 1.0; slightly, but not significantly, worse than Cobb's career so far. You also missed one critical factor with Cobb - he's only started more than 30 games in a season once, and that was back in 2012. Garza started at least 30 games in a season six times through age 29. Garza through age 29 looks a lot like Cobb through age 29, but was much more durable. At this point, unless I can get a TOR guy (and Darvish really was the only one - CURSE THE CUBS!), then I'll stay out of the free agent market except to re-sign Walker and add Lucroy, then try to work a deal to bring a TOR guy to Milwaukee, probably centered on a package consisting of one of Santana/Arcia and one of Davies/Woodruff, with Ortiz and Nottingham (or some other prospects along those lines). I love the penny-pinching people do when adding a FA that is a risk, yet only $/1 draft pick addition that could be very good to the team. But when a trade for a pitcher is mentioned, "won't be a problem at all throwing away half of our supporting cast."

The only thing that's hogwash is suggesting that a lineup with that many players 26 or under has somehow plateau'ed. It's ridiculous. Way to ignore Heyward, too. And the growing pains for Schwarber are a pretty big deal considering he's got Prince Fielder like hitting pedigree. Heyward's been bad offensively for 2 years. Career-wise he's got a .756 OPS and a .412 SP. Those are well below the standard for corner OF. I'm not saying the Cubs lineup is bad, but I'd give the Dodgers, Nationals and Rockies a slight edge not to mention the Brewers who've made the most significant offensive moves of any team in the NL. I notice you don't even mention they no longer have John Jay and his .374 OBP. Jay was a key cog in their lineup getting deep in counts. His replacement? Looks to be Peter Bourjos who hasn't posted a .700 OPS since 2013 and has a career .298 OBP. This is my job on this board to point out any Colorado-related inaccuracies, but I don't know if the Rockies offense is really that good. Half of the NL teams are tanking so they'd have to be in the upper half or so, but I'd take the Brewers' offense, the ones you mentioned, and maybe a few others over the Rox.

A steal? Garcia gets 10 million and he hasn't been good since 2015. I'd call it reasonable value. Only a 1 year commitment and the going rate for 1 WAR is somewhere around $8 million and he's probably in the 1-2 WAR range this year. Maybe trends toward good value/steal since it is only a 1 year commitment.

You'd have someone like Broxton getting a decent amount of ABs vs. the LHP or some cheap FA or Perez. Depending on Phillips' defense or ability to hit against LHP, maybe he'll eventually see a lot of LHP, but for now, they'll have someone to take some LHP ABs away from him.

My only guess as to why you quibble with him is that it's possible behind closed doors that Stroman cold've kept bumping it up and up and up if the Blue Jays didn't dig in. I'm not 100% sure of how things go leading up to arbitration, but it's possible that when they talked settlement prices, it was around $6 million and then he just kept going up and up and up knowing the PR hit of battling with your star player until they said "let's settle this in arbitration" and they presented the most recent numbers they were at, which the Blue Jays won. Anyways, I agree that you don't really quibble over that much with one of your star players, just searching maybe for a reason why.

The Orioles have this thing going the last 4-5 years where half of their own guys (Tillman, Miguel Gonzalez) and the majority of their acquisitions (Hellickson, Gallardo, Jimenez, Miley, now Cashner) somehow defy low K numbers and ERA compared to WHIP, xFIP, FIP. Every guy they sign or acquire, I roll my eyes at because the guy is on a downard trend or has terrible peripherals, but in general, they find a way for that pitcher to just be below average instead of terrible.

His FIP/xFIP was mostly in line with the rest of his career. This will happen in any system. Even if it truly was a bad move, teams should be able to sign stupid contracts. Sometimes they end up being really smart or sometimes they're the piece that gets a team over the hump. In the end, Miley made about $25 million bucks. He produced that much more more in his career. Miley was literally 2 years removed from being an All Star when he got that contract. And the beginning part of the extension where he was getting $6 million or $9 million is fair value for a league-average pitcher. They bought out a year of free agency with an option basically. They could've been betting that he was still a 4.35 ERA AL East pitcher, which is worth that. He ended up falling off a cliff at certain points (by the way, he had stretches with Washington/Baltimore/Boston that were still good. The bad was just really bad for him).

No, it really doesn't. That $12 million option was brokered to buy out his arbitration years when he was a young, promising, underpaid pitcher. There will be a problem or loophole or market inefficiency and overpaid players in any system the MLB implements. The NBA has a hard cap and harsh penalties for going over it and there are hilariously overpaid vets. That's how things go. Miley's contract was one that bought out arbitration. Miley made $500k when he made the All Star game at age 25 and threw 200 good innings at age 26. He got a free agency buyout/arbitration buyout contract around then. That's what we want "smart" small markets to do. Miley struggled as the contract went on. I don't understand why people need to see every player compensated 100% fairly for the production that the player has at that millisecond of time. Why does it bother people so much? The system can be improved but Matt Garza was recently overpaid, Travis Shaw is underpaid. It evens out and for the most part those guys have their production get evened out over time and it evens out on most MLB rosters.

I generally tend to agree with your take, but one of his issues is that all of the big markets are out. Maybe he can talk the Brewers or Twins into near-Darvish money, but unless one of the big markets jumps back in thinking they've got an opportunity here, the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Giants, Angels, Rangers, Nats (though they're rumored to still be in it) all are either afraid of the luxury tax limit this year or are trying like heck to get under it to go bonkers next offseason. The Cubs were the one team that had a slot for a big contract pitcher if that was their goal and they used it. The Rangers and Angels were listed and technically have room, but the Rangers seem to be sitting it out right now anyways and the Angels' room is razor thin if they want to go $20-25 million on Arrieta and also add other players. This could all change in a week. Maybe a bunch of these teams jump back in and go over the limit again. For now, though, it appears they don't want to. So Arrieta can't really create much of a bidding war.

I agree with trying to get the Wild Card. I don't agree that the Cubs' offense is pedestrian after Bryant/Rizzo. A lot of guys had down years, and regression to the mean is in their favor in a big way. Plus they have Quintana, Chatwood, and Darvish for a full season, instead of having Quintana for just half a season. They're going to be a nightmare. I'm fine with buying low, but make sure the future is your priority. The Yelich trade is fine. Signing Cain is okay. But don't be too stubborn to punt on the season if you muddle through the first 3 months. Having two MVP level players his huge, so yea their offense is good. But other than C they have no other + hitters at their positions. Sure, some are still young and could take a leap but after being up for a couple years already we'll see if that happens. This could also change drastically if Schwarber lives up to the hype rather than being a Mark Reynolds/Chris Carter type. But as of now that's a big question. That's all I meant by it, take out one of Bryant/Rizzo for a big chunk of the year and that lineup is just like any other ok team. I'd assume MKE would need a break of that nature to give them a really good shoot at the division rather than the outside shot they'd have now. Like you said, they fixed their pitching big time now. Happ and Baez have some strikeout issues (and Schwarber, of course), but all 3 of those guys could be either considered "plus" hitters now or in the future at their positions. I get what you're saying, though. If one of their studs is out, unless one of those guys really breaks out, the offense may just be solid/good instead of really good.

Nobody is moving anywhere. Yankees and Mets stay as they are. The numbers were completely made up, I don't know what those actual numbers would be. What I DO know, is that even the smallest markets in MLB are currently large enough to be viable--and yet the discrepency between the largest markets and the smallest markets is too big. Thus, the large markets are too large. Solution would be somehow breaking into those large markets with expansion. Put up a stadium in the Meadowlands, and another one around the new football stadium/entertainment complex going up in LA/INglewood for the Rams and Chargers and add 2 more franchises. The infrastructure is already in place in those locations. It seems like there should be a couple bored multi-billionaire baseball fans out there to make this happen. How many Yankees fans that live in NJ would suddenly tune in regularly and root for the New Jersey franchise? Seems like something that may shift 30-40 years down the road if the Jersey franchise is lucky. And, again, this is TV-based (currently). The TV infrastructure is the same in Inglewood as it is in Anaheim. I don't believe that the cable/dish companies would break it off just to break it off to make this strange baseball division of markets happy.

We still have the majority of our pitching farm and there are still good OF prospects in the minors. Cain could start at a high level for 3, maybe 4 years and you can still have a window after that.

It would take a lot more than Broxton even if Sims is not at peak value.

It's even wilder that we defend the pocketbooks of billionaires over the millionaires (and tons of guys playing for league minimum) who actually perform on the field for us. I don't think fans are defending the pocketbooks of billionaire owners. I think fans want their teams that they root for to build good teams. Spending willy-nilly on overpriced veterans when there are cheap and younger and often better options available is what's good for the team and a lot of fans understand that. It's not so much choosing a side, it's fans that understand what's best for the team in terms of wins and losses in the long run. I understand what's best in the long run as a fan also. It involves building a team with a lot of younger, cheaper players and then using the savings to bring in veterans to complete the team. The way it is currently constructed, all of the 2nd tier free agent list is "overpaid" but still very well worth it in the context of a team competing for a championship. If your take is that all of these guys like Darvish, Arrieta, Cobb, Lynn, etc. are not worth it, then we should all be siding with the players and wholeheartedly cheering for all of the bigger markets to pay for these guys in the current system. There are going to be market inefficiencies in almost any system. In this one, it's that veterans are generally overpaid. That doesn't mean they don't have a place on rosters where owners/GMs deem fit.

Could be, but you'd have to think it's more of a 1-year contract guy since they'd be paying in trade value for 4 years of Broxton when they really only need someone for 2 months.

For me its that the choice of picking the side of the owners and players is a false dichotomy. I choose the side of the fan. I want my team to be able to be competitive and be able to go to a game without taking out a mortgage. Paying aging free agents exhorbinant amounts of money does not make either of those possible. Is funneling Jake Arrieta's age 35 salary into Alex Bregman's current earnings really going to make it so that a family can afford a game?