SoxProspects News
|
|
|
|
Legal
Forum Ground Rules
The views expressed by the members of this Forum do not necessarily reflect the views of SoxProspects, LLC.
© 2003-2024 SoxProspects, LLC
|
|
|
|
|
Forum Home | Search | My Profile | Messages | Members | Help |
Welcome Guest. Please Login or Register.
Recent Posts
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 25, 2024 7:37:10 GMT -5
Yeah, I think the rule is dumb, but I don't think looking like a shaggy bum is a matter of principle either. My hair is too long and I'd cut it for way less than $300 million dollars.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 22, 2024 11:10:43 GMT -5
Anybody else surprised to see this? If 2024 plays out as projected, the Sox will be alone on top here: They went 78-84 in three of those six seasons! For comparison's sake, the Rockies have won 78 or more games three times in that 14-year stretch. Like, I know that last place is no fun, but that's also just not very meaningful. Also, there is only one team that has won more World Series in that stretch.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 20, 2024 15:50:53 GMT -5
It's also important to remember that the Jimenez hype happened:
A) During a time when there was no baseball, and B) During a time when the farm system was as barren as it had ever been. I think we all kinda needed someone to be excited about.
For context's sake, despite how high he climbed in our rankings, he never made a top-100 list and (if my memory serves) never really got much consideration. In normal times, he probably would've been ranked like 8-10 range and been exposed a bit more quickly.
Bleis has all of those physical attributes, but also had exit velocity and hard-hit numbers that were off the charts for his age during his FCL stint. He's also a much more natural defender. He's still a high-risk guy, but he's a much, much better prospect than Jimenez ever was, even if their SP peak ranks are so similar.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 20, 2024 11:43:27 GMT -5
No indication they'd used an IP minimum. Crawford was 50th in fWAR last year, 48th among starters.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 20, 2024 10:31:03 GMT -5
I don't take issue with him being outside of a top-50. Braxton Garrett ahead of him seems at least in the "reasonable people disagree" category. Referring to everyone south of a legit 2/3 as a JAG is nuts though.
EDIT: The way they've formulated these rankings, Bello is definitely not in the category 3 group: the six pitchers in that tier are Glasnow, Kirby, Gallen, Gausman, Snell, Castillo. And I think his risk is too high for the category 4 group in the way they've defined it, though there are guys listed there who I'd consider putting Bello ahead of.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 20, 2024 8:09:15 GMT -5
Congrats to Bello on being named the 2024 Opening Day starting pitcher. First homegrown starter on Opening Day since Clay Buchholz took the ball in 2015. Youngest Opening Day starter since Aaron Sele in 1995. Let’s hope this squad is surprising and fun like that insane 1995 squad of Canseco, Hit Dog and Willie McGee. Very much down for Trevor Story in the "John Valentin, secretly the best player in the American League" role. Hopefully Bello's 2024 goes better than Aaron Sele's 1995 though. He got shut down with shoulder tendonitis after six starts.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 19, 2024 10:09:37 GMT -5
DFAing an injured Chris Murphy because you want to get out from his $749,000 would be extraordinarily bad form.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 18, 2024 12:48:43 GMT -5
I think I'd rather have Soto-Grisham-Judge than Soto-Judge-Verdugo. Even if the latter is a little better in a vacuum, the bump from Grisham to Verdugo isn't worth the increased injury risk to Judge. In fact, if they think Verdugo is that much better a fit for the lineup then they really should just be playing him in center. Just crazy to me. Especially since Judge is a much better right fielder than Verdugo. That's an important position in its own right!
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 18, 2024 8:40:18 GMT -5
I wonder to what extent logistics for the first two weeks of the season have on the bullpen composition. Like if they stash Cooper Criswell in AAA to start the year and need an emergency starter, getting him from Worcester to Seattle, Oakland, or Anaheim is not a quick commute. The team often brings an extra pitcher who is not on the roster out west for this reason.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 17, 2024 12:10:00 GMT -5
I mean, that's all a risk. The opposite end of this is that they don't add a pitcher in order to keep the payroll flexibility to keep Bregman... and then fail to resign Bregman anyway, effectively slamming the window shut on this core. I agree that Snell is a relatively high-risk player. I referenced a few times how lucky he was in 2023, how it was basically the left-handed version of Daisuke Matsuzaka's 2008, which was Matsuzaka's last season as an effective pitcher.
This also may be the Astros' last year as a contender. Bregman's going to be expensive, and it's kind of hard to see how they piece a WS-level contender without him. They're the right team to be making a play for a short-term upgrade. And, even considering Snell's risk... how many other guys give you that upside with only a two-year commitment?
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 17, 2024 10:19:39 GMT -5
He might be for a team that's on the later end of its window of opportunity. That deal would make no sense for Boston, but for Houston--yeah, I think I would do that and not look back. Snell's durability concerns make him the sort of guy I'm particularly nervous about in his mid-30's, but on a short term deal? For a team that's a legitimate title contender and really could use a starter?
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 16, 2024 10:23:59 GMT -5
This whole roster would have a payroll of about $130 million in 2026 even without trading Yoshida. The first luxury tax threshold will be $244 million. Wonder what they'll be able to buy for $100+ million? In theory they could splurge on, say, two aces, a couple of elite bullpen arms, and an everyday bat without breaking a sweat. Also Roki Sasaki will be homegrown on a technicality.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 15, 2024 10:06:39 GMT -5
I think Littell was more a last-in/first-out scenario - they picked him up when they had a spot open and then cut him when they needed that spot back. And it's not like him having success is completely out of nowhere, he'd been a very good pitcher in 2019 and 2021.
I do take some issue with a couple of the guys they chose to keep at the margins, though.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 14, 2024 22:54:18 GMT -5
Feinsand says 10-12 weeks. Slight discrepancy there…. Sounds like they're just using different starting points. If he's back in 10-12 weeks, then he'd miss 8-10 weeks of the season.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 14, 2024 13:28:30 GMT -5
Maybe not ideal relative to his perfect-world projection, but he's always profiled better in the role.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 14, 2024 10:58:37 GMT -5
I saw someone tweet that if you combined the Juan Soto trades and Dylan Cease trade, it would amount to the Padres trading: ~ James Wood ~ CJ Abrams ~ MacKenzie Gore ~ Jarlin Susana, Robert Hassell ~ Jairo Iriarte, Samuel Zavala for: ~ 214 games of Soto (109-105) ~ 2 years of Cease ~ Michael King ~ Jhony Brito, Randy Vasquez I mean, the Cease trade by itself looks perfectly fine for the Padres. But I’m not giving applause out for Preller doing the GM equivalent of driving drunk and landing his car in a ditch, merely because he was able to get the car out. Also, the idea they have to be all in now because they have some aging core pieces under contract… Preller paid Machado, Xander and Darvish while they still had an early 20’s Juan Soto two years from free agency! Right, but the fact that he traded a king's ransom for Soto in the first place doesn't change the needs of this offseason. Coming off a 92-win Pythag season, Preller made a move that keeps them close to the same for 2024 (and possibly better, given the roster balance) and really unquestionably better in 2025. If you think the the 2023 record was bad luck then they've kept themselves in great position to bounce back. If you think the 2023 underachievement was because of bad roster balance, they've gone a long way toward fixing that. Also, using the team record in the Soto bit is a little misleading - he was worth 7.3 bWAR in those 214 games! He clearly did his part.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 14, 2024 7:53:04 GMT -5
Preller is nuts. He basically traded Soto for Cease along with receiving King but sending out some prospects as well. He sure does a lot of running in place without getting anywhere. I think if healthy Thorpe is going to be pretty damn good and Cease will either rebound, play out a year or so and get traded again or leave as a free agent or will be lousy. Either way the Padres aren't going to get much out of this. So he traded one year of Soto for two years of both Cease and King, saving $20 million in the process. People seem primed to be like "lol Preller" but for a team that had no pitching depth at all and for whom the payroll reduction was a mandate, that seems like a pretty good series of moves. Actually a pretty good offseason for them, I think, considering the difficult situation they were in, though they should probably get around to adding an outfielder at some point.
I agree here - getting two years of Cease plus King, Brito, and Vasquez for one year of Soto and two higher-risk prospects is pretty good business. Solving the outfield problem by convincing themselves Jackson Merrill is ready seems crazy to me, but the Soto/Cease maneuvering is sensible.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 13, 2024 14:55:38 GMT -5
It's a meaningful kind of thing if towards the end of the contract he's worth <19M/year but could be looking for a multi-year contract. Both sides can walk away happy. There is also a world where he pitches 160 innings with a 5+ ERA and the Red Sox are forced to give him another $1.5MM when they decline the option. That would make the Red Sox total investment into Giolito equal $39.5MM for 160 innings of 5+ ERA baseball. Your insistence to let us know that every baseball player has a downside is admirable.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 13, 2024 9:20:02 GMT -5
Leiter is a heavy ask for a third piece (pun intended), but it does feel like there's a match here, right? And if there are a couple teams involved, the Rangers do have the best pieces to get this done if they're motivated to do so. The Rangers have injuries all over their infield right now. Duran certainly seems like an important cog there, but not necessarily one they can’t part with. He also seems like the guy it'd be hardest to replicate though, right? If he's the guy who makes it possible to get Cease without giving up Carter/Langford/Walcott, I think you do it.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 13, 2024 8:13:30 GMT -5
Rosenthal says White Sox asking for Brock Porter, Jack Leiter and Ezequiel Duran from Rangers That sounds like a price they could accept Leiter is a heavy ask for a third piece (pun intended), but it does feel like there's a match here, right? And if there are a couple teams involved, the Rangers do have the best pieces to get this done if they're motivated to do so.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 12, 2024 10:32:30 GMT -5
Peak is definitely important, but without a few more decent-to-good seasons to build up the counting stats, is he more like the position player version of deGrom? Obviously peak seasons in line with Hall of Famers, but is the overall value there?
400 homers has never been a HOF marker, there are quite a few guys there who aren't in. Without 1500 hits then he won't get the traditionalists (it's very tough to get in with less than 2000), and without 60+ WAR then he's less likely to get the statheads.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 12, 2024 10:06:29 GMT -5
I'll echo a couple of the previous critiques - I guess my concern is that I'm not sure how you reached the conclusion that stamina was the variable here. I think it's a reasonable hypothesis, but there seem to be other factors. Your control group, as it were, is the guys who continue to succeed from the fourth inning onward, meaning that you're kind of pre-selecting your sample of guys who are going to have both strong stamina and stuff. Like, Spencer Strider holds his stuff well, but his slider is also baseball's best pitch. If the theory was correct, then high-stamina players who are more average-ish would hold their results better into the games, but you've filtered that group out of the sample.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 12, 2024 9:42:05 GMT -5
Not speaking to his HOF candidacy, but one big difference between Juan Gonzalez and Aaron Judge is that Judge deserved those MVP awards. Gonzalez winning in '96 was a dumber result than Pudge over Pedro in 1999. Judge is also a much better defensive player than most of the three-true-outcomes types. It won't help him if he finishes with like 1200 hits, of course. He probably needs like three more good, full seasons to have a real case.
I'm not sure its born out that the writers want Yankees in the Hall of Fame more than other teams, at least not recently. The guys who got in (Jeter, Rivera) were slam dunks. Guys with borderline cases, like Pettitte and Posada haven't done particularly well.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 11, 2024 14:57:13 GMT -5
I guess the problem with Davis is that, if you don't love him as a starter, his lack of platoon splits don't make him all that desirable as a backup. Like if I knew I needed 500 PA and significant time in the field, I'd take Davis over Cron without much question. If I need 175-250 PA of someone coming off the bench in a left-mashing role... I could see the argument for Davis over Cron with all else being equal, but not at that price.
|
|
|
Post by James Dunne on Mar 11, 2024 14:48:39 GMT -5
Can I just issue a Manfredian Proclamation of Admirable Perseverance for Lucas Luetge? He made the bigs first in 2010, and has appeared almost every season since… yet he’s never reach 11 innings in a season. 82 total games, 87.2 total innings… and here he is, chugging along, age 36. I am not sure if you've somehow filtered to his spring training stats? Or some sort of split? Because he threw 129 2/3 between 2021 and 2022 with the Yankees.
|
|
|