bill hAll Star

This arms race for international signing bonus money is hilarious.

My head is spinning from all of these moves that I didn't realize happened (I'm generally on top of this stuff). Didn't realize they had Healy now.

Gotta think he's moving to SS. Not sure on the return yet. EDIT: I'm an idiot and forgot about Segura. Maybe Seager is moved and Segura goes to 3B or Cano goes to 1B.

Weeks ago. What is the hold up then? You'd think if teams really wanted these guys they'd be flying off the shelves especially Maitan. The Angels already signed Maitan. I'm assuming with everyone else there is a bidding war or negotiations.

I don't think they were targeting those guys, but I disagree with that. With this signing, and depending on the per year payout, the Cubs will be roughly $140 million payroll for 2018. Plenty of room left under the luxury tax threshold for Arrieta/Lynn plus a closer, bullpen arm, backup catcher and backup CF. I agree, though the extent depends on their motives. They've been a ~$170 million team the past few years. Will they still be? Arrieta would put them up near $170 alone. They probably want to be in the Harper/Keuchel/etc. race next year. They probably won't go over the tax threshold this year, but if they sign all of these guys to multiyear deals, they'd have to go over the tax by far to sign Harper and probably remain there for the foreseeable future, increasing their penalty each year. Again, do they want to do that? I don't know. In the end, I agree, though. They are not done. How much more they do depends on motives.

Ugh. They got a relatively cheap, middle of the rotation starter.

Ugh.

The Padres did similar deals with the trio of Cahill, Chacin, and Richard last year, but all 3 of those guys had much much better form the prior year than Peralta. Frankly, any time Peralta entered the game, I just hoped none of the shots he gave up hit him in his head. Minor is not a good comparison either. His issue was injuries. He missed 2 full seasons. Peralta's never had any arm issues. Mike Fiers is the kind a guy you give a deal to like Peralta's. Miguel Gonzalez who was at times pretty good for the White Sox is another. There are others. Most of those guys get signed in late January at the earliest. It's shocking a team would sign Peralta at this point in the offseason. It's a million bucks, basically. All of the other guys you mention got at least $5 million and some got multiple years.

Maybe last year, but signing a guy like this for 2018 would not be a smart move. And which stretch are we talking about? His 2014 that was only above average and looks so good because of a few good months? He's progressively put up worse numbers as his career went on. We could sign Garza to a cheap one year contract too, doesn't mean it's a good idea. Sure, he got worse and there’s a 75% chance he’s either just as bad or just average as he was prior to that. What if they find a mechanical issue to fix and it improves his control? He’s got something to work with unlike the 2018 version of Matt Garza.

If Quintana does not recover a bit or Lester does not, you could be right. I think you're severely underrating Contreras, Baez, Rizzo, Happ, Bryant, Almora, Schwarber, Russell. Not all of them are MVP candidates, but that's a very very good team all smack dab in the middle of their primes right now. They may not be the top World Series contender due to lack of ace pitching at this point, but I'd put them as the division favorite for each of the next 4 years, pending the Brewers and maybe Cards roster makeup going forward. Obviously plenty can change halfway through that span of time. They can just overpay for pitching. It'll still be an Achilles heel, but it'll be good enough to get them to the playoffs each year. What does Quintana have to recover from? He posted the best FIP among their starters last year of 3.25 and I'd argue put the final nail in the Brewers coffin with his performance on the next to last Sunday of the season. They'll land a couple of starters either via trade or free agency and are the team to beat. The Cubs pockets are deep but they don't have an unlimited budget. They are still in the midst of putting a lot of money in and around Wrigley. Eventually that will add to their revenue stream but not for a few more years. His season on the whole was uninspiring but that’s beside the point. I would expect him to be closer to career norms next year. You are right, though. FIP wasn’t much worse than normal.

It all comes down to what you think of a player. I thought there were some issues with Wily from the get-go, even when he was pitching well. Body language was terrible, no resilience or ability to handle adversity. Suter strikes me as the opposite, a guy with less talent who will adjust really well to expectations and a demanding professional life. I wouldn't advocate for him just based on his numbers last year. It's more than that. Yeah, there's a chance some guys bomb and they end up using Wilkerson, Jungmann, and Guerra. I can live with that. The odds of winning 86 again aren't great anyway. I'm okay with upgrades too, but there are certain regression candidates I'd like to give a chance next season even if it's against conventional wisdom or fangraph projections. Sogard, Villar, Broxton, and Suter are examples of guys who could be good next year, and I'd like to give them a chance because you've then got the upside of paying so little for a 2-3 WAR player, not to mention possibly developing a trade asset. I guess my issue with your below paragraph is a good, yet also bad thing built by Stearns. He built this roster without tanking and from not a ton to trade away. Here we are with likely a good pipeline of solid depth behind a bunch of late prime players with 3, maybe 4 years left on their deals. I'm OK with one more wait-and-see year, but I think that we'll basically be churning out the exact same base roster every single year for the next 5-10 years if we just stay the course. There is a slight reboot period in 2020/2021 where 75% of our contributors right now will either be past their prime, impeding free agents, or both. That's why I wouldn't mind spending now on Lynn, Arrieta, someone like that. You may be saying the same thing but just keeping Suter and spending big on the bullpen. So I guess is that if we don't spend on another starter or go heavy bullpen spending as you say, we'll "figure more stuff out" this year about our young guys...but the clock will tick one notch further towards the exodus of our prime contributors in 2020 or 2021. Now, a good organization will trade and plan through that, but I guess once we have all of our answers in 2019 or 2020 if we wait, we'll suddenly have to reshape the entire roster a year later.

Eh, I just can't wrap my head around why we would want Suter to pan out to be a mid 4's ERA guy with a 1.5 WHIP, walking over 4 batters. There were a couple outlier seasons in there for Davis but he really wasn't good. We might as well resign Wily Peralta if that were the case. But at what age did Davis have those outlier years, and how old is Suter now? It's no fluke. Age 27 and 28 are overwhelmingly the most likely ages to have your career peak. I'm not suggesting a 5-year extension but considering what he did last year, I think it would be incredibly foolish to not give him a chance to be that kind of pitcher for another year or two. I stand by what I said because I think there's a great chance he has a Doug Davis prime while they wait for Burnes and Nelson. Check out what Wily Peralta did at age 27 and 28. I agree with your super bullpen plan and I think the Brewers will attempt to improve it, but I doubt that Stearns goes fully into the heavy bullpen plan you've laid out. Friedman seems to be one of the few that is willing to get close to it. Maybe Cashman as well. With that being known, that we are willing to use the bullpen but not to the extent that you are suggesting, I hope that Suter is our 7th option as a starting pitcher. There's a chance he can flame out as a starter as the league figures him out, and then we're down to Junior Guerra or Jungmann as starters with probably needing a heavy bullpen presence with them. The best teams in the league still had 5 well above replacement starters and the loaded bullpen. I'm not confident that Suter will be. I understand that maybe if he's normally capped at 4 innings that maybe he could be, but I'd rather have another option in the mix.

I never understand why anyone laughs at these moves. Sure, they don't work out all the time, but it's absolutely worth the risk, especially for a rebuilding team. The Royals literally just did almost the same thing with Mike Minor, who didn't have the complete collapse that Peralta did and has a bit more of a diverse pitching repertoire to work with, but also did not set the world on fire with the Braves and basically needed to have his arm rebuilt over a 2 year absence from the majors.

I'm assuming sarcasm in this. It seems your point would be something like, guys need to earn their way to the top/middle of the order and it won't be given to them? I think his point is 1. You can't ignore all of the bad years Sogard had when evaluating him and 2. We can't keep using the antiquated "let's get guys that can move the runners over at the top of the lineup" thing. We should be getting our best hitters the most at bats. That means Thames (against RHP), Domingo, Shaw, and Braun should be at the top for the most part.

I personally don't have much use for Doug Davis in this rotation, though. The only teams that had guys with a mid 4s ERA (yeah, Davis had 2 years where he was better than that in his long career) in the playoffs traded to fill those slots in the rotation...and those teams probably had higher-end pitchers carrying their rotation as well. Of the guys that were at the back of those rotations like Porcello, Fiers, Tanaka, most had pedigree of being better pitchers. Point being, I know we're not dead set on winning a title this year. That said, I'd rather aim higher and overpay a pitcher and have Suter as my 7th option rather than my 4th or 5th. If Suter is actually lefty Kyle Hendricks instead of Doug Davis, then we can admit we're wrong and either trade the free agent pitcher or literally just turn Arrieta or Lynn into a $15-25 million dollar reliever as they begin to decline 3 years from now for all I care. It's been rehashed a lot, but I'd rather throw 8 or 9 things against the wall to to see if we can get a 5 man rotation that is all good pitchers. Right now people are too comfortable with exactly 5 options and "if not, we've got a few prospects coming in the future." I would absolutely love to have too many pitchers.

Yeah, similar to what CHL noted in the pitching thread. We've got the data in front of us. Maybe teams even knew it but got away with it back in the 80s because "everyone else did it" and just threw their average starting pitchers into the 8th regularly or put Tony Gwynn Jr. at leadoff...but you have to keep up with the Joneses now. Sure, if one of your best hitters can still "hit runners over" that is nice and put him at the 2 spot...but otherwise you basically just order your lineup to get your best hitters to the plate with OBP and slugging being a huge factor. If Sogard is truly a .370 OBP guy, I would not totally hate him batting near the top, but he should probably be in the lower half of the lineup. Domingo Santana is arguably our best hitter. Let's get him the most ABs. If not, it's like pitching your ace in the 4 spot of your rotation and sometimes skipping him because you want to be "the losing streak stopper." None of the final 4 teams had a "traditional leadoff hitter" batting leadoff other than maybe the Yankees...but they had an extremely nontraditional hitter batting #2 (Judge) and Gardner at #1 had plenty of pop and OBP skills.

Given the weight of the Cabrera's (6 years, $184 million) and Zimmerman's (3 years $74 million) contract plus a bottom 5 farm system, the Tigers are likely entering a long rebuild. Selling major league roster talent at this point is probably a good move. But why would you sell low on Norris? Why not wait to see if you can bump his value up? If the gamble fails, all you missed out on was a weak package probably being offered for Norris right now. Cabrera's contract will be annoying for them for sure, but assuming Chris Ilitch wants to spend somewhere near what his dad did, they could start spending big again pretty soon. It would not be smart for them to do so, but they've already cleared a lot of the huge contracts and Zimmermann's will be over soon enough. They could go on a free agency bonanza after 2018 and be fine if they really wanted to. I agree, though. They probably go with a 2-3 year rebuild and then start spending big while their newly acquired/drafted farm system starts to arrive in the majors in 2021.

He may have gotten starting pitcher money. His velocity ticked way up (as it usually does for a reliever) but I could see them asking him to throw harder than he used to as a starter and if he makes it through the 5th inning...great. If not, we are in the day in age where teams adapt to that. He's got 4 pitches. He might succeed this time as a starter. I think it might be a shrewd move by the Rangers. The fly ball rate in that park is a bit of a concern. This deal will tell me more about how attainable Chatwood is. League GMs are smart and will either take a chance on starting Minor as I stated above or obviously know Chatwood's splits. I think there were rumors of maybe 4/$30 for Minor, so Chatwood could be in that ballpark, with maybe a shorter number of years.

I know it's basically a one year sample, but why not have Thames at #2 and Santana at #5. -Thames hit .180 with RISP, but he got on base at a .359 clip. -Domingo hit .300 with RISP, which a similar OBP of .371. Again it was only one year, but I cringed when I saw Thames up with runners in scoring position. Both will strike out a fair share, but I trust Domingo to come up with a clutch hit more than I would for Thames. That's why I'd hit Domingo 1 or 2 if that's your argument. He may not get up with RISP the first time around but it's more likely that Domingo will get more ABs with RISP later in the game because he'll be hitting more often.

That makes some sense. We've got a new TV deal coming which will at least be somewhat appealing since we signed a long deal at the bottom of the market. That said, we get out of it right as the TV deal market is going right back down.

If this is truly Sogard's new norm of getting on base, I don't completely mind him being leadoff. That said, I'd like to maximize the ABs of our best hitters. We're starting Santana because he's got arguably the best bat on the team so get him the most ABs against lefties and nearly the most against righties. I know that if Sogard is truly a .380+ OBP guy that he's up there, but I'd go: vs. L 1. Santana 2. Braun 3. Shaw 4. Aguilar (if Braun moves to 1B, RH corner OF could maybe go here or move everyone up a slot) 5. Brinson 6. Pina 7. Arcia 8. Sogard (let him still get on and turn the lineup over) 9. Pitcher vs. R 1. Thames 2. Shaw 3. Santana 4. Braun 5. Phillips (if not confident yet, move him down to 8 and everyone up) 6. Sogard 7. Vogt 8. Arcia 9. Pitcher

Just spitballing... ESPN is in a major free fall and obviously losing money with the massive layoffs over the last few years. Factor in that ESPN doesn't give a crap about anything that happens outside of New York/Boston, Chicago, and LA or really anything outside of the NFL and I can't see them wiling to offer anything than the bare minimum for the rights to broadcast Brewer games. I don't think it will make a difference. ESPN is in a freefall for different reasons. They got into too many national TV deals while the market was falling. Fox's national sports channel (like ESPN) is a disaster as well. That just doesn't really sell today. Nobody cares about highlight shows unless they are live look-in or pregame shows. I think it'll be pretty similar on the local scale. I don't see why ESPN would run any different of a local broadcast than FOX. You may be convincing yourself that ESPN only cares about bigger markets because ESPN has crappy national contracts now. Nobody cares about Sunday Night baseball anymore because they have 1000 games at their fingertip if they want it on mlb.tv or MLB Network. So I don't blame them for putting on Red Sox/Yankees 20 times/year because they'll draw 2 million viewers instead of 1 (totally guessing at those numbers).

I'm not too familiar with his pre-Japanese work, but I'd have probably taken him at that.

Herrera's velocity ticked down a notch in '16 into '17 (he was still doing pretty well in '16) but he had a lot of nights where he felt tingling/lost feeling in his lower arm/hand in '17. I probably would pass on giving up value for him for that reason.

But if they land Stanton AND Otani... they will be a beast for those 2 seasons. Yes Pence comes off the books after this season and others fall off the books after 19 & 20. If the Giants play their cards right, they might not completely collapse after 19... Forgot about Ohtani. Agree. If I'm a big market team, I'm always in favor of going all in, even with hilariously long/risky contracts. Look at the Tigers right now. When it finally all collapses, you can still clear half of them and just sit on the bad ones and be in decent shape when you come out of your rebuild. The Giants' empty farm system will make it really hard to contend again after '19, but they could definitely spend big around then and try to keep the ship afloat for another year or two and maybe they'd finally have a farm system to help out in the 2020s.