2023 Game Thread

[fish16]

Hope we save so many runs for tomorrow but knowing we won’t is so fucking painful

[fish16]

Tomorrows double header is so enormous now

[fish16]

Let’s go jazz!!! We got the 1. Save some runs for tomorrow

[fish16]

Tomorrow is huge. Give us 1
and that’s all we need. Give us both and we severely take advantage of a huge gulf in our situation

[Nick]

Baseball is weird sometimes.

[fish16]

Same thing tomorrow skip. Don’t get dumb. These are 2 playoff games

[TheMendozaLine]

Wow

[sports24/7]

Ah man that really sucks! No way to pull off the doubleheader?

How long have you lived in LA? I was born in the San Fernando Valley.

I’m gonna miss most of the game tonight. I have to wake up at an ungodly hour to help my girlfriend move her daughter into a UF dorm

I doubt I can pull off the double header. I'm taking my 3 year old, and that would be a crazy long day with the games being split. It would probably be a lot of fun though (assuming Miami wins at least one of the two).

I moved out here after college, so something like 13-14 years. I love it out here, for the most part. I lived in the valley on a couple different occasions, but I'm in the South Bay now.

[lou]

So Soler has an .850 OPS and his expected OPS is even better, .886. Statcast has him 12th overall, not percentile, in xwOBA right now which is one of the better predicators of actual performance. He's legit one of the best hitters in baseball right now.

Question here is, should they give him a qualifying offer? He'd probably be forced to take it ala Joc as who is signing Soler to a 2-3 year deal over $15-16m a year and losing draft picks versus Soler just having to take the $19-20m. I mean performance wise screams yes, but he's a little older, volatile, and the team has money issues with Bruce.

If they did that, that sets up this as a roughly $101m team

_____, Fortes
Bell
Arraez, Edwards
_____, Amaya
Burger, Berti
DLC, Soler
Jazz
Sanchez

Sandy, Cabrera, Eury
Luzardo, Garrett, Rogers, Weathers
Chargois, Brazoban (Meyer and Bender looming once healthy)
Scott, Puk, Okert, Nardi

Dead money - Garcia, Cueto, and Barnes (over $16m of that $101m I might add)


If they cut Soler loose that drops to $81m, so they could apportion that a bit easier over three offensive spots (Rosario, Grichuk, whatever at C is probably doable?) if he did decline and go for it in FA. But he's better then all of them by himself right now.

There isn't much other money to cut here. Bell will be unmoveable when he opts in, Arraez, Sandy, and Luzardo are going nowhere, guys like Jazz, Berti, and Scott will get over $3m but that's not much needle moving anyways if they trade them and they'd have to get big replacements, and guys like Rogers, Okert, Chargois, and Puk will be just under $2m or so, so they are cost effective. Everyone else is club controlled. If you move anyone but a reliever, you'll also have to get a replacement which costs money.

Basically here, Soler becomes the entire offseason, they can't afford other pitchers so they can't trade the major ones because of this (but practically that is fine as that is a great staff above, maybe they swap one of the lefties for a righty in a 1-1 trade to fix that imbalance), the team's backup OF situation is not great when combined with the RHP splits of Jazz/Sanchez and DLC/Soler's defense, and the team is taking a cheap approach at C and SS via smaller moves (unless Bruce opens the wallet), Rule V, etc. to try and get that done.

But is Soler so good all of that is worth it, Edwards and Berti are just going to play a combined 100+ games in the OF, Amaya is going to play a lot of SS, and who cares about that?

I think this is an interesting one. I am leaning towards give him the qualifying offer because he is so awesome right now it's worth having a more unproven bench and wonky OF defense (something that can be fixed in the summer, etc.), and they are just going to have to move some guys to try and find some gems at SS and C.

[lou]

Frankly the best I can come up with is:

-Threaten Soler with the QO, and offer him a 2/$32m deal, but it's paid $12m in 2024, $15m in 2025, and comes with a $5m buyout in 2026 to shift some bucks around. That gets you down to roughly $93m above. I think Soler would have to take that to guarantee him another $12m or more.

-Trade Rogers and Okert (and whatever secondary arm) to Baltimore for a Joey Ortiz package. That would decrease payroll at least another $1.5-2m once he and a club controlled reliever (Soriano, Hoeing, etc.) is added to the roster.

So this becomes roughly $91m:

_____, Fortes
Bell
Arraez, Edwards
J. Ortiz, Amaya
Burger, Berti
DLC, Soler
Jazz
Sanchez

Sandy, Cabrera, Eury, Luzardo, Garrett, __________
_____, Chargois, Brazoban, Soriano/Hoeing (Meyer and Bender looming once healthy)
Scott, Puk, Nardi, Weathers

Dead money - Garcia, Cueto, and Barnes (over $16m of that $101m I might add)


If they cheap out on the last reliever (which they should here with the big names rehabbing), they might be able to sign a $7-10m SP and C and round this out for not much over $105m. Basically a small payroll increase. But that all goes back to now a Soler extension and shifting some bucks, and moving out some minor payroll with Rogers/Okert and actually being able to get a SS.


This is going to be tough for them unless Bruce says $120m, but just saying here. The first determination here on out is what to do with Soler and I'm not sure what everyone's temperature is on that.

[Namaste]

It’s called a reverse jinx

Sure it is

[fish16]

Wow, blue jays already dfa Paul dejong

[Todd]

I really want the Marlins to buy the Florence Y'alls and make them their Midwest League team.

[fish16]

Phenomenal outing by eury. Need to finish this off. Gonna need more than 1 run it feels like

[Namaste]

Robertson kinda sucks, huh?