The other thing that Bloom didn't do was take some of the short term assets to generate more minor league depth. It appeared that his strategy was going to be short term deals and then decide at the deadline whether to be a buyer or seller. Basically acquire tradeable assets as free agents so that if that asset has value mid-season on a team that isn't going to make the playoffs the asset can be traded. He didn't do that anywhere near enough.
yea that's fine but I doubt you'll find someone on this board that is lower on Verdugo than me, so being 15% better is lipstick on a pig. For $330m you better be absolutely positive he's a 5 win player going forward for the long haul. I am very skeptical of that.
If he was a 5 win player each year of his contract he'd be a $495m player, not even factoring in inflation.
Steamer has Tatis as the 14th best hitter in baseball next year https://x.com/joeorrico99/status/1721279158544711722?s=46&t=1Z2_Xz2artz1_IpyD1F4_A
Exactly. That’s why he was #3 in the fangraphs trade value chart in July 2022.
You can also just watch a few games or sportscenter before parroting the usual “defensive metrics are flawed” line. His range is incredible. And I’m sure the Sox (who were putting stopwatches to Yoshida’s outfield play in Japanese league games) would do plenty of research to confirm.
Im sure its a bit of hyperbole, but "absolutely positive" is a threshold unlikely ever to be satisfied.
I thought he said he was done riding after the second accident. I really hope he is not dumb enough to keep riding with everything he has on the line.
Yep. I was a Bloom guy but this was baffling. Not sure if he was hedging against pressure to win now, or if this is where the rumored “can’t pull the trigger” stuff happened. But if they weren’t all in, then they should have capitalized on the seller’s market, even if he didn’t get a total home run return.
I think it’s very likely he felt the pressure to win now and hoped of too much health at the deadlines.
I'm going to be cautiously optimistic about Breslow. It's not like he's been out of the game for the past number of years. He's been work and will know the players
I watched probably 80% of the Padres games this year. His defense was as good as the metrics showed, in his first full year in the OF. I don't know how much the offense bounces back, whether it was PEDs or the wrist, but his defense was fantastic all year. His range to the gap and to the RF line was really impressive, he was surprisingly good at charging fly balls/line drives in front of him and his arm is elite. And his defense should only get better with more experience. The RF defense is elite.
Padres trading Soto to a team that's not the Red Sox for a whole ton of cost-controlled pitching, when they are letting Snell, Wacha, Lugo, & Martinez go, makes a ton of sense.
Never understand this position (not just from you), this way has fans refreshing Twitter all winter.
All 3 think Verdugo will be traded.
I have no vested interest in Twitter's metrics. It just forces moves into a window so you know what your team will be, and your hope isn't high goin into the next year only to find that your team has no actual plan.
Baseball teams are making moves all year long, during the season, after the season, before the season. What you want forces all 30 teams into making almost instantaneous moves, it kills trades, kills changing evaluations (for instance PHI was not going after Bryce Harper until late in the winter), and would make it so that very little of consequence would happen for months, instead of keeping fans intrigued all year long. For instance, literally today is the deadline to put guys who are eligible to be minor league FAs onto the 40 man or risk them opting out and losing them for good.
Considering baseball teams make far more money on local ticket sales than other sports, lengthening the amount of time you have hope helps the sport.
I was going to say that isn't right...but it is right...just not really that important of a deadline in reality is it? The MLFA timeline is 2 years after the normal Rule 5 timeline, so most people who are going to MLFA are not going to be strong 40-man candidates. The Red Sox strongest candidate for that is probably Ronaldo Hernandez, but I don't see that happening.
I was more referring to the "driving traffic" argument of the extended off season. Don't think too many people are f5'ing on their Minor League free agents. I don't think it would be bad to contain the free agency period to a certain window & leave another window for trades & such. I think the Player's Association has pushed for that because it isn't really good when teams can string them along & they don't have the ability to get settled in their new locations in advance. But there are pros & cons to most things.
Yeah, I’d be fine with it too. I like him, but he’s not irreplaceable and I’d have no compunctions about freeing up that money and maybe getting a ticket or two in return.
Absolutely. Was just pointing out it's a really weird way for Morosi to word that Tweet. RHF elaborated a bit more on the politics behind why it was worded that way.
A 25-year-old pitcher who costs only money, not prospects? We have to go Dombrowski/Price-style and land him.
If he chooses his preferred place to live, and it isn't Boston, it may not matter. We do have good seafood though.
If those numbers are even close to what the deals end up being, it would be a shame not to land one of Yamamoto, Nola and Montgomery.
You could bowl him over with money, that's how you get him to choose Boston as his preferred place to live. You offer him enough cash and he'll be telling everyone how much he loves the Freedom Trail, the Pixies and Sam Adams.
Yeah some folks look at this as a year to spend $$$ and they wouldn't be wrong, but there comes a point when you have to do something with prospects and IMO a deal to fill one of the top two needs at starter would be a good use of some prospects. You're not going to be able to hang on to them all because there isn't going to be room for them all at the major league level nor will you be able to protect everyone on the 40 man roster. Part of the reason that having a strong farm system is to provide a team with talent that can be used to fill needs from outside the organization.
Situations that you describe can be remedied by involving a third party. Easier said than done and requires the right partners, but if he is as advertised I'm guessing that Breslow is carrying a portfolio of players he's targeting from other teams and has familiarize himself with their excesses and needs.
Mariners: we have money too. And it's six hours closer to Japan. And Black Francis lives in Portland now.
Honestly, if (and it's a big if) we can get Yamamoto for 9/$225 and Montgomery for 6/$150 - I don't see why we shouldn't try to land both of them.
Ohtani? I mean, there's a lot of (speculative sounding) stuff out there about how the club who signs him will make money hand over fist, selling stuff in Japan or licensing its logo in his ads or whatever. Obviously the team that does this has to take the good (sweet, sweet cash) with the bad (get out your CBT calculators) if they also want to win, which would be the point of signing him. But if these ancillary benefits keep piling up, then the tax won't really matter.
