2023 Game Thread

[lou]

He hit a ball to dead center on Sunday that probably had a .900 expected batting average and some dude made the catch of his life. It would have been a triple.

.680, but that should still be a hit.

Dane's expected slash is .309/.316/.399 BTW. Maybe he grows into something and just needs some more time. Every day PA in the farm seems fine if they trade for guys.

[fish16]

My dude, I hope you can appreciate the irony of what is actually happening here going back hundreds of posts on a Weds. night and posting out of context blurbs to try and bolster yourself. This is sad. I wanted Andrus because he historically hits lefties enough with his defensive ability. You are just misconstruing statements at this point. I maintain the organization needs another everyday infielder (you know, someone like Edmand and Candelario) and sorry, but my opinion is I would take a bet off a long standing solid vet with typically a high floor defense coming off a 3.5 WAR season for $3m every time. Berti and Wendle are also really solid players and produce a lot of defensive value. Berti additionally (historically) on the bases. There is the reasons the Marlins are "alright" this year because these collection of role players do have value you know. There is also a significant difference between having a 4+ WAR 2B and a 3+ WAR 1B, especially with what one can sign in FA where corner bats are typically more available, but I'm not going to keep repeating myself just to be ad hominem attacked. I remind you my first instinct after the Arraez trade was to sign him immediately for 5 years, even if there was the inevitability coming he would have shift defensively.

He never historically hit lefties, that was my entire point. They needed an offensive upgrade and you advocated for a guy with a career .718 OPs against lefties. He never had the ability to hit all that well. He's a career 86 OPS+.. Outside of last years 43 games with the white sox, he had not had an OPS+ of above 78 since 2017. Him completely shitting the bed this year was completely predictable. IT's also not hard to go back and look at posts from the offseason. Just go to the offseason thread and click a random page. Took about a minute.

I admit when im wrong all the time. I have no problem with that. We're all giving our opinion. You dont. You wanted to trade pablo for the main piece of Rosario who just got traded for a guy with a 7 ERA, and then you wanted to pay him 15+ million a year despite the fact that he is a below average hitter for his career. You gave me shit for saying Arraez's bat would play anywhere and he's been one of the best hitters in baseball all year.

All i'm saying is you act like anyone who doesnt buy your evaluation process of made up subjective numbers of 45, 45+, 50, etc has no idea what you are talking about and couldnt possibly be right with no reflection ever about how consistently terrible your ideas are after the fact.

[lou]

He never historically hit lefties, that was my entire point. They needed an offensive upgrade and you advocated for a guy with a career .718 OPs against lefties. He never had the ability to hit all that well. He's a career 86 OPS+.. Outside of last years 43 games with the white sox, he had not had an OPS+ of above 78 since 2017. Him completely shitting the bed this year was completely predictable. IT's also not hard to go back and look at posts from the offseason. Just go to the offseason thread and click a random page. Took about a minute.

I admit when im wrong all the time. I have no problem with that. We're all giving our opinion. You dont. You wanted to trade pablo for the main piece of Rosario who just got traded for a guy with a 7 ERA, and then you wanted to pay him 15+ million a year despite the fact that he is a below average hitter for his career. You gave me shit for saying Arraez's bat would play anywhere and he's been one of the best hitters in baseball all year.

All i'm saying is you act like anyone who doesnt buy your evaluation process of made up subjective numbers of 45, 45+, 50, etc has no idea what you are talking about and couldnt possibly be right with no reflection ever about how consistently terrible your ideas are after the fact.

A .718 OPS against lefties with a + defender is a good player in modern heavy RP usage baseball and what a cheap franchise can afford. It would have been a vast improvement to what Hampson, Yuli, and friends are doing if they got even half the 2022 production. You are having a struggle between process and performance, or maybe you are just a bottom line guy to an extreme. But I know you aren't because you complain about things like Berry I agree strongly with you with. Good process - signing players that make sense - is extremely important to me. Segura and Cueto both made sense, but aren't working out. That is just sad for us, but you understand the moves and I don't fault them for them. I don't fault them for Realmuto or S. Marte or Stanton - each were the right moves at the time even if one of those is a complete mess. The same would apply to signing a big SS, Nimmo, trading for Rosario, Andrus, and the litany of other guys who would have made sense for this team even if they tanked as players. If it were easy, the Guardians would have won a world series last 70 years and Cubs not have a 100 year gap. Signing guys like Garcia when you really needed a CF or SS, Berry when you should be drafting position players, and running out Yuli and Hampson when you really needed another legitimate infielder is bad process. Soler was bad process, but that has kind of worked out, so sometimes shit happens and good luck occurs and you just stumble into it. But, I still fault them for putting themselves into the position where they had to sign Soler ultimately as that is what a bad franchise does as they had no other choices. Yelich was bad process, it was an undersell and that's what happens when you make objectively dumb decisions. Although I never dreamed it would be that bad.

This is a results oriented business, but I simply believe in the tenet that sound process produces better results and I want to see them make sound decisions over and over and over again and I'm fine if ultimately guys don't work out as that happens. But with a smart basis to moves, more will work out than not in the long run and that's the goal. Andrus? Looks like a bust this year, but I'll take the bet making that same decision 10 times results at least 6-7 hits. That's what I believe anyways. I think Segura or Cueto works out 6-7 times out of 10 and we just got an unlucky bust occurrence. The Rays, the gold standard, have made PLENTY of mistakes (they undersold Adames and Cronenworth (for Edwards! and maybe Edwards is another miss for them coming up god willingly) for some instances), but they make so many good decisions you forget about those as they just routinely turn Yandy, Paredas, Siri, H. Ramirez, no name relievers into contributors. Also, I believe in respecting the opinion of experts. It's why I am not going to say I am smarter than Fangraphs, Baseball Savant, the analytics community, scouts, and team doctors. Aggregating expert opinions I suppose can be construed as "my" evaluation process, but I think looking to expertise is important in life and extremely probative of basing opinions. If you want to take issue with analytics, go post on the Fangraphs comments. Those folks will argue with you all day to an exponential level. You probably would enjoy it.

[fish16]

we have interest in gleyber torres again apparently. They are scouting our DSL team. Like him as a player but unless they are dealing cooper and moving arraez to 1b, i dont see the fit. i dont think he can play SS. If he can i love it. good, solid player. Last year of arbitration next year so he can help next year as well. Would make sense. Id guess it would happen in the context of the yankees making other moves to add salary with his salary offloaded.

I think with ohtani clearly staying we will start to see the market pick up.

[lou]

we have interest in gleyber torres again apparently. They are scouting our DSL team. Like him as a player but unless they are dealing cooper and moving arraez to 1b, i dont see the fit. i dont think he can play SS. If he can i love it. good, solid player. Last year of arbitration next year so he can help next year as well. Would make sense. Id guess it would happen in the context of the yankees making other moves to add salary with his salary offloaded.

I think with ohtani clearly staying we will start to see the market pick up.

These are the kinds of posts that interest me.

And yes, we have discussed the NYY need to clear money to stave off luxury thresholds and he was the likely top target as they *love* Volpe and Peraza and Peraza has always been a dream scenario. Gleyber doesn't have the arm for SS (7th percentile!), he's a 2B for sure. Kicking Cooper to the bench and partial DH is fine. Frankly, Soler may have to play some OF if Jazz and Sanchez are hurt and Myers needs more time. OF defense will be exceptionally ugly but what else can they do? I'd take the offense with Gleyber, they need anything. This is the kind of smart now and later move I support. Guys with control. Gleyber in his prime free agency year next year is I think a player you want to have. .272 BABIP (career .299), decreasing K rate (career 20%, current. 14%), solid statcast, turning 27. I'm in if the price is right, but it is going to cost some guys we like. I'd say two FV45/FV40+ and another 1-2 FV40 guys. Maybe one of the lefty relievers is being floated TBH.

I think an interesting corollary to this is, this "blocks" Edwards at 2B for at least 2024 (I think we all agree Arraez does have to move and makes sense). Not that it matters that much as they have him controlled forever, but I think Edwards needs 450+ PA next year at the MLB level and they are going to have to find a lot of those in the OF as he too, is likely not a SS an Segura/Berti are really going to eat up all of 3B. So we're penciling in Edwards for 80+ in CF next year? So then Jazz is doing the rest and getting some DH time to mini-Buxton him? These will be interesting decisions but they should be pretty flexible to figure it out. Gotta get Edwards going soon and see what's going on with him.

[fish16]

These are the kinds of posts that interest me.

And yes, we have discussed the NYY need to clear money to stave off luxury thresholds and he was the likely top target as they *love* Volpe and Peraza and Peraza has always been a dream scenario. Gleyber doesn't have the arm for SS (7th percentile!), he's a 2B for sure. Kicking Cooper to the bench and partial DH is fine. Frankly, Soler may have to play some OF if Jazz and Sanchez are hurt and Myers needs more time. OF defense will be exceptionally ugly but what else can they do? I'd take the offense with Gleyber, they need anything. This is the kind of smart now and later move I support. Guys with control. Gleyber in his prime free agency year next year is I think a player you want to have. .272 BABIP (career .299), decreasing K rate (career 20%, current. 14%), solid statcast, turning 27. I'm in if the price is right, but it is going to cost some guys we like. I'd say two FV45/FV40+ and another 1-2 FV40 guys. Maybe one of the lefty relievers is being floated TBH.

I think an interesting corollary to this is, this "blocks" Edwards at 2B for at least 2024 (I think we all agree Arraez does have to move and makes sense). Not that it matters that much as they have him controlled forever, but I think Edwards needs 450+ PA next year at the MLB level and they are going to have to find a lot of those in the OF as he too, is likely not a SS an Segura/Berti are really going to eat up all of 3B. So we're penciling in Edwards for 80+ in CF next year? So then Jazz is doing the rest and getting some DH time to mini-Buxton him? These will be interesting decisions but they should be pretty flexible to figure it out. Gotta get Edwards going soon and see what's going on with him.

For some reason, i think Cooper is not on this team come tuesday after the deadline. I really think Sherman is going to "add" payroll, and by "add" payroll, I mean take on some money and get rid of some money at the same time. Maybe we end up increasing the payroll a little in the aggregate, but he's not keeping it as it and out of nowhere adding 15 million to the payroll. I think Cooper and Wendle and Stallings specifically have a very good chance of not being here after the deadline and we mix things up a little bit. The 3 of them combined are about 13-14 million, so they could dump them, add 20 million in salary in other trades, and only add about 6 million in the aggregate, and with only 2 months left in the year, that is realistically only a couple million.

Specifically, i think Arraez will be at first and we add either a 2b or 3b. I wish Segura could play SS because id love to add Gleyber and Candelario, ship out wendle and Cooper, and roll with an infield of Arraez at first, Gleyber at 2nd, Segura at SS, and Candelario at 3b.

But i agree with you that im interested to see how they balance edwards future with our current need to improve the lineup. Something tells me they arent in love with edwards and will use him as a trade piece before next week. I dont see how he isnt up here yet, so that would make sense to me that they just dont view him as a long term starter for some reason.

[fish16]

Or maybe there is something around Anderson and Segura and just swapping struggling guys for a change of scenery. Get Anderson, Gleyber, and Candelario. Arraez at first, Gleyber at 2nd, Anderson at short, and Candelario at 3b. Realistically it's too much because it doesnt even begin to address the pitching, but that fixes the lineup and you can go get a C for cheap and pray jazz can stay healthy for more than a week when he comes back

[fish16]

torres looks the most appealing to me from a trade perspective, but i feel like we have to improve SS before next week, no? Torres is really good, but he is just a cooper replacement essentially with Arraez moving to 1b. I suppose adding Candelario and a C like Yan gomes as well would be good enough to keep Wendle and Berti as the SS combo. I just dont know how they are going to address all these different holes. CF i guess you can just hope for jazz to stay healthy. He started swinging this week so it shouldnt be too much longer. That would leave 3b, SS, 1b, and C, plus a SP and 2 more relievers. That's a lot to add. Interested to see what they choose to address and what they choose to leave as is.

FWIW, torres has by far the lowest K% of his career this year at 13.9%. His career is 20.7%. healthy walk rate too at 9.2%. How much is improvement and how much is destined for regression?

[fish16]

pirates get a guy outside the brewers top 30 for rental Carlos Santana. Almost same contract as candelario but obviously a worse player at the other corner infield spot.

[sports24/7]

A counter to the notion that Gleybar doesn’t have the arm for SS:

https://twitter.com/hoodieoswald/sta...20aHSerShpIYqw

Apparently his arm strength was more than fine at SS. I think if Miami is looking at him, it’s for SS or 3B. Unless they’re adding a real impact bat, I doubt they’d go for a 2B right now.

[geemoney]

Per Jon Heyman: Marlins are getting P David Robertson from the Mets for two Rookie league players, IF Marco Vargas and C Ronald Hernandez. Vargas was a May 2022 signing and was an all-star in the DSL last year. Has an .899 OPS in 120 ABs this year. Hernandez was signed in January 2021 and has a .916 OPS in 104 ABs this year, .752 OPS in 378 career ABs.

[sports24/7]

This has to mean more is coming. This could be a good move if that’s the case. But just trading for one RP, even if that RP is very good, isn’t going to get you to the finish line, and I would think the FO knows that.

[fish16]

Good move. Vargas is 5 years away. I would bet he never plays in the majors . Good get for the Mets though. Worth the risk.

robertson is a huge addition to the bullpen

[fish16]

This has to mean more is coming. This could be a good move if that’s the case. But just trading for one RP, even if that RP is very good, isn’t going to get you to the finish line, and I would think the FO knows that.

Of course more is coming. I think they still maybe need 1 more righty reliever but if not Robertson should help a ton. Possibly becomes our closer if puk continues to scuffle.

id guess they still get 2 bats, a depth starter, and maybe 1 more middle reliever bullpen arm.

[Lee Stone]

Just a great trade for the Mets. In order to get the Marlins two best FCL players (by a mile), I assume the Mets are also paying Robertson's full salary (about $4 million) for the remainder of the season.

P.S. I was wrong about that ... Marlins are actually going to pay the $4 million. Just an even greater trade for Mets.