2018 MLB Thread

[Gabriel]

5 minutes ago, Meacon said:

What's the latest on Dalton Pompey? When's he gonna be ready? I had high hopes for him a couple years ago. 

He suffered a concussion a while ago and did not play for the Jays major league team at all in 2017. He played less than 30 games in the Minors last year as well. Pompey is going to need some time to bounce back from the concussion issues. His batting average last season was shit, so at this point, he needs to be seen as a more long term project. A lot of guys in the system have leap-frogged him on the depth chart due to the concussion and his sub-par performance in his limited outings last season.

[Meacon Keaton]

On 1/9/2018 at 09:19, Meacon said:

The Astros are sniffing around Gerrit Cole and they need to just BACK OFF.

Aaaaand it sounds like Houston got him. Damn it.

[Maxx]

6 minutes ago, Meacon said:

Aaaaand it sounds like Houston got him. Damn it.

[Meacon Keaton]

...I hate you, Maxx.

[Toe]

Sounds like Starlin Castro wants out of Miami before playing a single game. Can't say I blame him.

https://www.tsn.ca/report-castro-wants-out-of-marlins-1.964129

[Meacon Keaton]

There's this guy in my Strat league that just flat out refuses to admit that he needs to rebuild. He has Carlos Carrasco on his team, a pitcher that I could use as I'm likely going to be in the wildcard hunt this year. I've offered him Josh Bell, a draft pick, and a prospect or two. He still won't budge. I mentioned the fact that if the season started right now, his best hitter would be either Freddy Galvis or Sandy Leon, pointing out that Bell would instantly be his best hitter, and he could use the draft pick to find another one. But instead he's going to ride out the season with his one good player being Carrasco. 

My roster has taken shape quite nicely, I think.

1B - Eric Hosmer & Josh Bell

2B - Jonathan Villar/Pat Valaika (attempting to upgrade this position)

3B - Eugenio Suarez/Wilmer Flores

SS - Elvis Andrus

LF - Andrew Benintendi

CF - Matt Kemp/Carlos Gomez/Mallex Smith (attempting to upgrade here too. ugh)

RF - Corey Dickerson 

C - Mike Zunino, Chris Iannetta, & Tony Wolters

My rotation as of this minute

Alex Wood, Aaron Nola, Jake Odorizzi, Taijuan Walker, and my fifth spot will be a mix of Ivan Nova/Lucas Giolito/Carlos Rodon

I need an upgrade at centerfield and I definitely need bullpen help, including a closer. I have the first pick of the draft and Corey Knebel is available, but I'm not sure I want to use the first pick on a closer, despite really needing one. I have a guy offering me Zack Efflin, the #6, and #17 pick for the #1. I may take him up on it, and hope Knebel falls to #6. I dunno. 

 

EDIT: At 9:00 PM EST I traded away a late round draft pick for Tommy Hunter. So there's one piece of the bullpen puzzle sorted. Woohoo.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

Jay Bruce to the Mets. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/01/mets-to-sign-jay-bruce.html

Actually a bit relieved. The Jays have been linked to him for years and I just worry about what his drop off will look like, especially in the field. 

[Meacon Keaton]

Bruce's contract is for 3-year $39 million I think I saw.

Yu Darvish has narrowed his list down to six teams: Rangers, Cubs, Yankees, Twins, Astros, and a mystery team, which I'm assuming is the Dodgers? That'd be kind of weird for him to not name them, but why wouldn't they want him back? I know he stunk it up two games in the World Series, but still. 

Angels, maybe?

[Gabriel]

7 minutes ago, Meacon said:

Bruce's contract is for 3-year $39 million I think I saw.

Yu Darvish has narrowed his list down to six teams: Rangers, Cubs, Yankees, Twins, Astros, and a mystery team, which I'm assuming is the Dodgers? That'd be kind of weird for him to not name them, but why wouldn't they want him back? I know he stunk it up two games in the World Series, but still. 

Angels, maybe?

It's the Jays!

No, it isn't. But I am glad that Jay Bruce is off the market for the same reason stated earlier. His drop-off is probably going to be immense, and we literally just got out of paying someone way too much money to be on the wrong end of their career. His power may have been fun to watch, but I'd rather experiment with the prospects in the outfield than get tied down again to another guy who is only getting worse.

[gunnar hendershow]

I would wager the mystery team is the Dodgers. They would gladly want him back and try to work with him on tipping his pitches. Since the Gerrit Cole trade actually didn't happen I wouldn't be shocked if Darvish wound up in Houston. Seems they'll either sign him or trade for Cole.

[The Buscher]

Bruce isn't an ideal fit because it guarantees that Michael Conforto is gonna have to be a career center fielder - but they desperately need help offensively and Sandy's mantra has always been that defense is irrelevant if you put up a lineup that can outscore defensive deficiencies.

Plus Bruce can also play 1B in the event that Dom Smith isn't ready to handle the job full-time.

I'm just glad that they ponied up some cash and did something.  Still need at least one more bat, if not two. My gut tells me they bring back Jose Reyes which will make it even more apparent that the roster is gonna be the 2017 Mets plus Anthony Swarzak. But at this point I'd like Moustakas or Frazier.

[Meacon Keaton]

2 minutes ago, Buschoru Suzuki said:

Bruce isn't an ideal fit because it guarantees that Michael Conforto is gonna have to be a career center fielder - but they desperately need help offensively and Sandy's mantra has always been that defense is irrelevant if you put up a lineup that can outscore defensive deficiencies.

Plus Bruce can also play 1B in the event that Dom Smith isn't ready to handle the job full-time.

I'm just glad that they ponied up some cash and did something.  Still need at least one more bat, if not two. My gut tells me they bring back Jose Reyes which will make it even more apparent that the roster is gonna be the 2017 Mets plus Anthony Swarzak. But at this point I'd like Moustakas or Frazier.

Something I was wondering about is why not keep Conforto in right field and sign one of the millions of first basemen on the market like Logan Morrison or Lucas Duda? I get that Bruce was there and must've been liked, but Duda had been there too. I'm sure they looked into at least bringing Duda back.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

4 minutes ago, Meacon said:

Something I was wondering about is why not keep Conforto in right field and sign one of the millions of first basemen on the market like Logan Morrison or Lucas Duda? I get that Bruce was there and must've been liked, but Duda had been there too. I'm sure they looked into at least bringing Duda back.

I thought I read they'll want to play Bruce at first a fair bit, especially if Dominic Smith struggles. Better to sign a guy who you can have play in the field or at first if need be rather than a guy who can only play first. 

[Meacon Keaton]

4 minutes ago, Ms. Canadian Destroyer said:

I thought I read they'll want to play Bruce at first a fair bit, especially if Dominic Smith struggles. Better to sign a guy who you can have play in the field or at first if need be rather than a guy who can only play first. 

A quick look at Baseball Reference tells me that Duda hasn't played outfield since like 2013. For some reason I thought he had been used out in the outfield more often and recently than that. That makes sense. 

[The Buscher]

In a perfect world, the Mets would be stacked from 1-7 which would allow them to bat Juan Lagares 8th and have him man spacious center field.  That was what was envisioned when they inked him to a long-term deal after his Gold Glove season.  Unfortunately though, the Mets don't have that luxury and Lagares simply isn't good enough to play every day in a lineup short on bats.  And given that he makes $6.5 million this year and $9 million next, that's a ton to pay for a guy whose usefulness on the current roster is limited to platooning against lefties and being a late-game defensive replacement.

[Draevyn]

Off topic but not off topic, I read somewhere that people often say that +1 WAR should equal a salary of 8M per year. How accurate is that statement? This is of course in a perfect world.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

18 minutes ago, Forever Forky said:

Off topic but not off topic, I read somewhere that people often say that +1 WAR should equal a salary of 8M per year. How accurate is that statement? This is of course in a perfect world.

Here's a good Fangraphs article that breaks it down: https://www.fangraphs.com/library/basic-principles-of-free-agent-contract-evaluation/

Quote

In a lot of our contract analysis, we use something called $/WAR. Sometimes that gets ridiculed as an overly simplistic and meaningless metric we use because we are the kind of fans who like thinking about teams as puzzles rather than as athletic opponents who like to win. But I think it’s important to state what is implied when $/WAR is used.

$/WAR is basically a measurement of how much teams are paying for players on the free agent market according to how many wins they will add over replacement level players. Right now, we think teams are paying about $8 million per every WAR they add to their roster. For example, a 2 WAR player signed for three years would theoretically provide his team with 6 WAR, so a team might want to pay him anything up to $48 million. If the team pays less than $8 million for each expected WAR, we call this a “good deal” and if they pay more, we say they “overpaid.”

There are a couple of important things to know about this type of analysis that is easy to miss because we tend not to spell them out over and over again. First, that $/WAR of $8 million is an average number we estimate based on all players and some basic projections. It’s not perfect. Neither are our estimates of player performance. Something might look like an overpay to us simply because we misjudge a player’s talent. Second, each team has different incentives to spend on players. A team that is very close to a playoff berth might be incentivized to overspend because that specific, extra couple of wins could be a giant deal.

But most importantly, $/WAR is not an end in and of itself. I think sometimes people think we treat it that way because we don’t explain why it’s so important each and every time we cite it. There is no prize for being the team that spends its money most efficiently on the free agent market. If you sign a bunch of 1 WAR guys for $6 million per year, you’re going to get a lot of good marks on $/WAR, but your team probably won’t win a lot of games. Rather, $/WAR analysis is about alternatives. If you overspend on your left fielder, you have less money available to spend on your second baseman. We don’t care if teams set fire to a pile of money, we care about them burning that money if it means they can’t afford to do something else and it hurts their overall success.

Think of it this way, your team needs two corner outfielders and you have $25 million in yearly salary available to sign both. Roughly speaking, that will buy you 3 total WAR. If you sign a 2 WAR outfielder for $20 million, you are getting a good player for slightly more money than he’s worth. That leaves you with $5 million to spend on the other guy, and that $5 million will only buy you a 0.6 WAR outfielder. That means you have 2.6 WAR for $25 million. That’s an inefficient use of your money based on what teams are paying players on average.

This doesn’t matter if you have an unlimited amount of money because you could just sign the best available guy at each spot and wind up with the best team, but if you have a fixed budget, making deals for market or below-market rates means that you have money left over to spend elsewhere. If you have one spot to fill, a 1 WAR guy for $4 million is efficient, but a 2 WAR guy for $16 million contributes to more success. The question you have to ask is if you could sign the first guy and then reinvest that $12 million in an additional player worth more than 1 WAR. It’s not about winning economics class, it’s about using the money you do have to make the best team. Spending efficiently helps you do other things that will help you win.

 

[MDK]

Who are The O's?

[MalaCloudy Black]

Orioles.

[Meacon Keaton]

Disgusting birds.