sveumrules

If you get the Bader from last year that put up a 122 wRC+ over 501 PA it would be an improvement on Perkins for sure. But if you get the Bader from 2022-24 that put up an 80 wRC+ over 1,094 PA you just dished out a multi year, eight figure contract for a redundancy. Cost controlled bats theoretically on the market could be guys like Jarren Duran or Wilyer Abreu with the Red Sox outfield surplus, CJ Abrams (not sure he’s up to the Brewers defensive standards though), Zach Neto (doubt LAA has any real interest in dealing him no matter how much Brewers fans try to wish it into existence on the internet), or maybe Brendan Donovan (imagine STL would prefer to send him outta the NLC).

For whatever it is or isn't worth, after a 105 wRC+ in 2024 then a 67 wRC+ last year, Steamer projects Ortiz to rebound for a 95 wRC+ in 2026. A 95 wRC+ with his defense and base running from last year would be something like a three win shortstop.

Welcome to the site.

Struggled both offensively and defensively in Wisco. I'd guess he starts 2026 back in Appleton playing primarily SS since he's still young, but it's sounding like his glove is probably destined for 2B/3B/OF down the road even if Pratt and Made weren't ahead of him in the SS pecking order.

Professional Innings Totals for Ashby... 2018: 57 IP 2019: 126 IP 202: N/A 2021: 95 IP 2022: 107 IP 2023: 7 IP 2024: 112 IP 2025: 74 IP (Guess they could try to squeeze 140 IP or so out of him in more of a starter's role, but he's been so good as a reliever I'd probably just leave him out there.) Professional Innings Totals for DL Hall... 2017: 10 IP 2018: 94 IP 2019: 80 IP 2020: N/A 2021: 31 IP 2022: 98 IP 2023: 71 IP 2024: 84 IP 2025: 59 IP (Think the ship has probably sailed on DL Hall as a starter. Hope he can stay healthy enough for 50 to 60 decent IP out of the bullpen at this point.)

MLBTR predicted 5/90 for Naylor. Ben Clemens at FanGraphs came in at 4/100 versus 4/80 as the median crowdsource there. Sounds like this reported deal is in that neighborhood. If Hoskins hadn't torn his ACL in 2023 and instead put up another full season with around a 125 wRC+, he probably would have gotten something similar, yes.

Yeah, feels like a situation where a veteran stopgap will be brought in to start the season so Jeferson can get regular reps in AAA with a chance to see MLB later in the summer if his performance at Nashville warrants a promotion.

Woodruff has thrown 131 IP the last three years and is headed into his age 33 season. Severino had thrown 373 IP the previous three seasons and was headed into his age 31 season when he signed. No doubt Woody has been a better pitcher when available, but that’s a big edge in health / age for Luis. Believe Severino also got some extra juice on his deal because the A’s had to overpay to get him to come pitch in their rinky dink minor league park. I wouldn’t be surprised if Woody gets three guaranteed years, but I still think with his age / health scenario that two guaranteed (with some kind of option tacked on) is where his market ends up if the QO isn’t accepted.

Freddy finishes fifth. As was mostly expected Skenes received all 30 first place votes and Sanchez received all 30 second place votes so the rest of the field was left fighting for 3rd place.

Kinda disappointed he couldn't find room for a wild pitch in there somewhere too. Oh well.

November 18th, so one more week.

Since we know the Brewers cleared their projected win total easily (again) I thought it might be interesting to look back at some of the individual preseason inputs versus what actually ended up happening. I had posted some areas that might be ripe for extra wins before the season began so I will quote from those below... Brewers position players ended up with 50.4 batting runs, +15.0 BsR, and +21.7 fielding on the end of season FanGraphs team leaderboards. That's an extra 45.6 runs or about four to five wins there. Brewers rotation came in at 807 IP of 3.56 ERA | 4.07 FIP. Their actual -0.51 ERA/FIP gap ended up much closer to the last two years than the projection. At 17.2 rWAR that is another five wins or so. Brewer bullpen ended up with (drum roll please) 6.8 rWAR, which is another three to four wins over the projections. Obviously a lot of offseason left, but the way too early look at the FanGraphs Depth Charts has the Brewers batters regressing from 28.2 WAR last year down to 23.1 WAR projected for 2026. On the pitching side they have the Brewers projected for a 4.02 ERA | 4.14 FIP | 15.4 WAR next year compared to a 3.59 ERA | 3.91 FIP last year which shook out to 24.0 rWAR | 18.6 fWAR. So quick and dirty (& again way too early) it looks like somewhere around a projected loss of eight to fourteen wins depending if they are showing rWAR or fWAR (more likely since its FanGraphs) on their pitching Depth Chart pages.

Last year Brewers' outfielders posted a 109 wRC+ (6th) | +10.2 BsR (3rd) | +2 DRS (10th) | +13 FRV (4th) | 10.4 WAR (5th). Over the three years with Arnold at the helm they are at a 105 wRC+ (12th) | +39.6 BsR (2nd) | +59 DRS (4th) | +52 FRV (2nd) | 29.8 WAR (5th). I think we can all agree that Chourio (1,139 PA | 115 wRC+ | 6.8 WAR) and Frelick (1,317 PA | 101 wRC+ | 6.4 WAR) are penciled into two spots while Perkins / Collins might be best served as luxury fourth outfielders, and Mitchell is hard to count on with his various health issues over the years. At the same time, I was curious how those last three stacked up relative to the rest of the outfielders around MLB. Since Mitchell debuted the earliest, and has the least amount of playing time on account of those injuries, I thought I'd use him to set the parameters for the player pool. So, going back to Garrett's debut in 2022 it looks like there have been 184 players with at least 400 PA playing outfield. That works out pretty nicely to just a hair over six outfielders each for all 30 teams, which is pretty much the minimum you need to carry on the 40 Man at any given point for coverage. Let's go chrono and start with Mitchell. Here are some of his pertinent rankings on the above linked leaderboard...414 PA (184th) | 34.3 K% (179th) | 9.4 BB% (55th) | .369 BABIP (1st) | 103 wRC+ (71st) | +5.0 BsR (47th) | +6.0 DEF (37th) | 2.7 WAR (90th). Pretty insane that despite having the least playing time on the list Mitchell has still managed to put up production above the halfway point. The K% and BABIP are just added layers of volatility to go along with the limited availability. Perkins comes in at 753 PA (117th) | 10.2 BB% (44th) | 82 wRC+ (157th) | +4.7 BsR (49th) | +14.2 DEF (17th) | 2.8 WAR (89th). Blake has the double whammy of not much playing time, plus some of the worst overall offensive production on the leaderboard, yet the walks, base running and especially the defense are enough to get him in above the halfway point too. Lastly there's Collins with 424 PA (178th) | 13.0 BB% (12th) | 121 wRC+ (25th) | +1.1 BsR (93rd) | -1.8 DEF (64th) | 2.4 WAR (97th). Isaac doesn't quite have the speed or defensive chops of Blake or Garrett but he takes the walks to a whole other level, and again manages a production ranking way over that of his playing time. I think most would agree Isaac isn't a true talent 121 wRC+ kind of guy going forward, but his 24.2% line drive rate is 5th on that same leaderboard which gives him a pretty solid foundation along with the walk rate. Putting that all together, I'd never say never when it comes to the Brewers front office and wheeling & dealing, but I'd be kinda surprised if they gave up a bunch of future value to go out and try to acquire a more proven starting calibre OF for that third spot over mixing and matching with some combo of Mitchell, Perkins, and Collins to open the season then adjusting from there if needed on account of injury or under performance.

I believe in the industry they refer to this as "getting Nightengale'd".

Arizona. Surplus value on five years of Marte (even at $91M) is way more valuable than one year of Peralta at $8M. If the Dbacks are serious about trading Ketel, I'd imagine they'll be looking for multiple MLB prospects and/or young players with near full complements of service time remaining. Probably something like three of Patrick, Henderson, Pratt, Quero, or Pena.

Pretty interesting splits for Patrick indeed. League average this year was 703 OPS bases empty | 740 OPS runners on | 745 OPS RISP Patrick went 698 OPS bases empty | 701 OPS runners on | 498 OPS RISP Chad also had pretty divergent strikeout & walk rates with bases empty (21.9 K% | 10.3 BB% | 2.13 K/BB) versus with runners on (29.9 K% | 4.7 BB% | 6.30 K/BB). Will be interesting to see if he can keep that up in year two.

Coming into the season ZiPS projected Durbin (1.2 WAR over 411 PA), Collins (1.1 WAR over 474 PA), Patrick (0.9 WAR in 115 IP), Misio (0.0 WAR in 83 IP), and Logan Henderson (0.7 WAR in 87 IP) for something like four wins over a combined 885 PA and 285 IP. At the end of the year those five rookies ended up at - Durbin (2.6 WAR over 506 PA), Collins (2.6 WAR over 441 PA), Patrick (2.6 rWAR in 119 IP), Misio (0.7 rWAR in 66 IP), and Logan Henderson (1.2 rWAR in 25 IP) for just shy of ten wins over a combined 947 PA and 210 IP. Obviously a lot goes into the end results of 162 games played, but that is six extra wins from five relatively unheralded rookies (and the only one that really was heralded had the worst projection) for a team that won their Division by five games. Pretty fun stuff (until the NLCS).

Yeah, the Rockies reside in a level of despair far removed from even the White Sox and Pirates of the baseball world. As if having to contend with Coors Field and the Dodgers weren't enough you've got Monfort fouling up that sliver of a chance before the games are even played in the summer.

The Bucks defense is 3.5 points per 100 possessions worse when Green is ON the floor (119.3) versus OFF the floor (115.8), but their offense is 13.7 points per 100 possessions better when Green is ON the floor (125.1) versus OFF the floor (111.4). Add it all up and AJG's +10.2 ON/OFF is 2nd on the team behind only Giannis at +16.3 after the first ten games. The guys who have been killing the Bucks so far in their minutes are Amir Coffey (-9.5) and especially Gary Trent Jr (-19.8).

Thought I'd start a thread for offseason miscellany from around the league and what better way to kick things off than with the Rockies hiring Paul DePodesta to run their baseball operations. You may remember DePodesta as being portrayed by Jonah Hill in Moneyball, or more recently for trading a bunch of draft picks then handing out a huge extension to noted massage enthusiast DeShaun Watson.

Woody put up 1.5 rWAR | 1.8 fWAR last year with the team going 10 W - 2 L in his 12 games started. What kind of production would he have needed to put up to break even on that $17M (spread out over multiple years and payments to reduce the actual value) in your eyes?

Looks like Kiley's 4/90 at ESPN is the high bid on Grisham with MLBTR at 4/66 and FanGraphs at 3/54. First guy that came to mind for me was Profar as someone with a track record of mostly blah before putting up a big walk year and he got 3/42 going into his age 32 season as a poor defensive LF. 18-23 Profar (2,905 PA) 97 wRC+ | -46.4 DEF | 4.8 WAR 2024 Profar (668 PA) 139 wRC+ | -10.6 DEF | 4.3 WAR 19-24 Girsham (2,250 PA) 95 wRC+ | +23.4 DEF | 9.6 WAR 2025 Grisham (581 PA) 129 wRC+ | -6.0 DEF | 3.2 WAR Trent is three years, eight months younger and has played almost exclusively CF his whole career (even if his metrics did take a hit this past season), so I'd guess that gets him at least an extra year and a higher AAV than Jurickson. But yeah, feels like Grisham will end up closer to the MLBTR and FG predictions than to Kiley's number. Also, didn't see it mentioned elsewhere upthread but looks like MLBTR has the high bid on Woodruff at 3/66.

Out of 156 batters with at least 100 PA in the Arizona Complex League this year Fielder's 137 wRC+ ranked 17th so he at least put up some numbers to go along with the last name. Things working against him are that he was old for the league and already primarily a left fielder so he's going to have to keep hitting all the way up to have any kind of shot. Also worth noting in a "read between the lines" kind of sense is that despite being the oldest player on the team, Jadyn spent the whole season on the Complex while a number of younger position players got the bump up to Carolina throughout the summer.

Woody is six months older and obviously is coming off injury, but their ability as pitchers is pretty far apart. 2019-23 Woody (595 IP) 69 ERA- | 72 FIP- | 86 AVG+ 130 K+ | 72 BB+ | 81 HR+ 2024 Imanaga (173 IP) 72 ERA- | 93 FIP- | 92 AVG+ 112 K+ | 49 BB+ | 125 HR+ At their best both pitchers run prevention ended up in the same neighborhood, but Shota's peripherals (especially that elevated HR rate) portended likely regression. 2025 Woody (64 IP) 77 ERA- | 77 FIP- | 77 AVG+ 147 K+ | 65 BB+ | 108 HR+ 2025 Imanaga (144 IP) 90 ERA- | 119 FIP- | 89 AVG+ 94 K+ | 55 BB+ | 167 HR+ Even coming off injury with diminished stuff 2025 Woodruff was on a whole other level than 2025 Imanaga. Small sample, but Brandon somehow managed to improve his K and BB rates coming back form the shoulder with only an elevated HR rate causing his FIP to backtrack slightly from his 2019-23 mark. Meanwhile Shota's HR rate exploded while his K rate cratered in his second MLB season. I'd rather roll the dice on Woodruff staying healthy over Imanaga figuring out how to keep the ball in the yard, but I guess we'll see how MLB front offices view the two of them soon enough.

Ben Clemens at FanGraphs predicts 2/34 for Woodruff, while the crowd was split between two and three years for Brandon (2.59 average) with a $22M AAV.