Something to watch for: BA is starting a podcast series of "deep dives" for each organization. So far they've done the Braves and Cards. I haven't listened, but judging from the index for each, they seem to be going a good bit further than the usual top prospect list. No schedule, so I don't know when they'll get to the Pirates.
Sorry if this has been posted, but I just saw in the PG that Michael Chernow has been promoted to "farm director" replacing John Baker, who was previously promoted. Chernow had been Baker's assistant. This article also gives a summary of the many FO changes:
Without knowing anything about them, I am encouraged that our new vice president of research and development, Kevin Tenenbaum, is coming from the Guardians, and our new vice president of professional evaluation and strategy, Michael Voltmer, is coming from the Dodgers.
I am somewhat encouraged by the major front-office shakeup this offseason. I don't know the details of all these peoples' resumes, but on the whole they seem better than the people whom they are replacing. Voltmer, Tenenbaum, and Kwan seem to be major upgrades. I always thought that Baker was a bad hire as farm director. I am not sure that Chernow will be much better, and I wish they had gone outside the organization to fill that position.
Yeah I didn’t get the Baker hire either, but I agree it’s been nice to see an influx of new blood. Voltmer and Tenenbaum in particular seem to have real solid resumes.
Once they got beyond the fastball academy thing, there simply wasn’t some overarching heavy handed general approach. It came down to quality of coaching. Media struggles with that level of depth so you tend to see them pontificate about “philosophy“.
More from "Baseball Wit and Wisdom", as we push the dogs off the bed after a three-dog night, and pull on two pairs of sweat pants, a hoody and a jacket, just to make the morning coffee while we (less) patiently wait for signs of spring and spring training:
"Baseball is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the squibbers go for base hits. It's an unfair game."
-- Rod Kanehl, Mets infielder (career BABIP of .262).
That's wonderful. I have the miniature version. Used to read aloud from it in the stands at County Stadium on opening day, way back when. Also had a book of baseball poetry (since lost).....one was "Shall I Compare Thee to a Triple Play."
Just taken at Face Value, the Santander signing by Toronto is worth about $18.5 mil per year. Paying a signing bonus of about $5 mil could have dropped the annual average by another mil/year. I think either way it would have kept the Pirates under that $100 mil mark that the other 4 teams in the NL Central have already passed. MLBTR thinks the Jays could take that annual average down around $14 mil/year. Another missed opportunity by a Pittsburgh Pirate team that could be a playoff contender with the pitching already in place.
Gaps in the batting order and the worst Manager in baseball?
Anthony Santander is projected to drop below a 2 WAR hitter in the third year of this contract, 2027, the same year in which the Pirates will already spending $30m on extensions for Keller, Reynolds, and Hayes will also paying arbitration for Cruz, Skenes, and Jones.
It doesn't take much anxiety to see that as a very bad deal for the club.
If he can give this Pirate club 2 years of the offense he provided to B'more the last 3 years, I'd be happy to face projected negative issues in 2027 - that will also be the time we'll be facing the reality of losing Paul Skenes.
We are projected to be the only team in the NL Central below $100 mil in player salaries in 2025. Behind Cincy by about $21 mil, behind the Brewers by about $26 mil, and nowhere near the Cardinals and Cubs. How do we make that up?
Salamander seems like a perfect fit for a team projected in that mid 80’s area of wins who puts that team in a more comfortable position to make the playoffs. These Bucs are not that team.
I'd even be comfortable enough to put the Pirates in that mix if not for the tacit understanding that you're accepting a year or two at least of dead money on contracts of this length for the player type in question.
"ZiPS is rather lukewarm on this signing, suggesting Santander is worth five years at $70 million. There are obvious reasons why ZiPS is a bit lower on Santander: Less-than-elite sluggers who are more or less one dimensional tend to decline sharply in the early 30s."
I’m sure Toronto isn’t real high on anyone’s list, but I can’t imagine Pittsburgh is either. These guys want to win, and Toronto’s spending and willingness to trade prospects arguably offers a better chance of that.
I'll tell you a funny story. I have a friend who had his heart set on moving to Canada to be a truck driver. Finally freed up from his contract with the police with a modest pension after a 20-year career as a detective. He comes over to my house every day to learn English. We get him through, kicking and screaming, the English as a Foreign language exam. We get him through all the Canadian point-system immigration paperwork. He moves to Canada 2 years ago (after spending 5 months living with my mother in the U.S. and working odd jobs waiting for his visa and everything else). He works as a truck driver in Canada for 9 months and finally realizes what I had been telling him from the beginning: that the taxes and cost-of-living in Canada make it impossible to live on his salary as a truck driver. He left Canada after several years of hard work to get there, abandoned his dream of 20 years, and moved to Spain, where he now works as a truck driver, making a living wage.
No one, not even Argentines (who lived with the highest inflation in the world and with a 45% poverty rate for years) wants to move to Canada. The taxes are murder. Also, keep in mind that all these players signing with the Dodgers have to pay a 13% state income tax on their salaries. The whole "the Pirates can't compete with big-market, big-budget teams for any free agent" is nonsense.
An interesting observation in light of the fact that Canada has had their political leadership overthrown explicitly due to allowing massive influx of immigrants moving in. Seems like somebody wants to live there!
It's a complex (and a little humorous, to me at least) situation. Having been involved now (on behalf of my friend) with the Canadian immigration system and situation and getting weekly first-hand reports of the situation in Canada. The Canadians are behind the times. Most Latin American immigrants are leaving Canada. I have first-hand reports from several Latins on this. They just cannot make ends meet there. Also, there is real culture conflict with the Indian immigrants, who compose the bulk of the immigrants there. They just do not use toilets properly, and this drives the Latins (and Canadians, I guess) crazy. All my Latin acquaintances in Canada just cannot abide the Indians.
To understand this feeling, remember that there are places in Latin America that do not have functioning sewer systems or septic tanks. The site of raw sewage has a profound effect on many Latins, because they have all seen neighborhoods like this, and hate it... with great passion. The site of feces on the floor on in the street just creates nightmares for them.
The taxes question is an interesting one, because PA obviously isn’t Florida or Texas, but we rank better than a lot of these places where guys sign. Wallet Hub has us ranked 25th ahead of places like Colorado, Ohio and the usual suspects like NY, California and Massachusetts.
But, rightly or wrongly, I still think guys are going to be leery to come here by reputation. Sure the taxes are more onerous in Canada, but it’s not like Santander, at $18 MM is going to be starving.
So you end up with a situation where you’re going to have to overpay guys to come here, regardless of the taxes situation, and an owner who doesn’t to pay anyone, overpay or not.
And talking about taxes hahaha. Such an offseason discussion.
A guy like Conforto, for example, will lose almost $2 million dollars of his salary just to California income taxes. I get it, that Conforto is comfortable and will live comfortably for the foreseeable future with his earnings in baseball, but $2 million is $2 million, even for a guy like Conforto.
Simeon Woods-Richardson was also in the trade with Austin Martin. Jordan Groshans and Otto Lopez were some of their better rated prospects when they were traded. Their top prospects are pretty depleted, as they might not have one until you reach the nineties.
Agreed, but I think there’s this general sense that the Pirates don’t trade prospects or spend money because historically they haven’t done much of either.
True. Although Pirates haven't been in a position to trade prospects. I guess they were last year at the deadline and this off-season trading for Horwitz.
You don't really trade prospects when you are tanking.
I guess we will never know. I know that guys like Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller, and the rest of our boatload of high quality Pitching would like to know the answer to that question also.
It’s either that or get better at preventing runs. The young arms and gloves are certainly a cheaper way to go in that regard. I just wish they were better at assessing which gloves should play where.
Or they could become elite at run prevention like your Braves--we only scored 39 fewer runs than they did but we gave up 146 more runs!
You're right, though, in that all of the other playoff teams scored at least 95 more runs than we did (Padres were the next lowest after the Braves, scoring 95 more runs than we did) while also being better at run prevention (Padres gave up 70 fewer runs).
The way the roster is constructed, it’s probably hard to improve at run prevention over what they have? The only open position is RF, and that isn’t really a premium defensive position at PNC Park.
Nope, for the reasons Catch said. As much as it pains me to say it, the full season and internal improvement from the young arms is easier than getting five new position players.
Yes, I think they will be better at run prevention this year. If I think our only path to the playoffs is scoring 100+ more runs, I'm pretty skeptical. If I think we can make it by being better at limiting runs and, say, scoring 60+ more runs, I'm more optimistic.
Right. The Bucs scored 665 runs last season, 24th in the league, roughly 50 runs below the average. With runs allowed, they’re at 739, about 30 over the average.
Looking at the rest of the league, there are far more teams who were in the top five in run prevention (Atlanta, Cleveland, KC, Detroit), who clustered more around the league average in runs scored. I think that’s their most likely path to the playoffs: bump up a bit towards league average at the plate, and betting big on the arms. It’s risky, but it could work.
Put another way: no playoff team from 2024 allowed more runs than the league average. The Bucs can get there if they get some bounce from internal players offensively (Cruz turning into a franchise player would go a long way towards that, maybe Hayes got a new back for Christmas), and full seasons of the young arms and a bounce back with the bullpen. They need more still (I’d like more in RF and the bullpen), but the framework is there to make some noise.
They should see some modest improvement in run prevention just from more depth at starter. The bullpen will probably be a little better, but will need another significant upgrade at the back end to see much improvement there. They could have used some defensive upgrades this off-season since offense seems too expensive for them, but they have their hearts set, it seems, on IKF at SS. 40 less runs allowed and 60 more runs scored is possible with the current roster construction, but highly unlikely. They really need to add 2 more quality players (bullpen and OF).
If we look at Fangraphs batting and base running combined measure, Tellez, BDLC, MAT and Olivares combine for a -51.8. It’s hard to overestimate how awful that collective was. Just swapping out those 4 for replacement level guys, let alone league average production gets you more run production. Of course, losing MAT puts stress on the run prevention, I didn’t want to overlook that. So they are going to need internal improvement to get to 100 no doubt, but they could be in better shape than we think if they get anything at all from Yorke, Hayes, Jack, Cook etc.
Just so I’m clear, I don’t think they are a bad defensive as currently constructed, I just don’t see a lot of room for improvement with additions at this point. RF isn’t moving the needle much. Defensively their fate rests on guys staying healthy and Cruz growing in CF.
Skenes, Keller, Jones, Falter, Oviedo, Chandler, Harrington, Burrows, Ashcraft (do we still see him as a starter?)--is that enough depth to avoid a German- or Woodruff-type start here and there? I think so, but I've been burned before thinking that we had enough pitching depth to get through a season without relying on a AAAA starter.
I'd like to see us bring in a veteran starter. With the Padres wanting to reduce payroll while not giving up on the season, perhaps they'd be interested in Falter or Oviedo plus a pitching prospect other than Chandler or Harrington.
I get it. But you’d think someone like McCutchen would realize that 15-30 additional wins don’t just appear like magic. There has to be a talent upgrade.
AM - define "just a little", and I think we have already established that this management team does not want to play with the other kids who are BUYING players or pitchers to fill gaps. If Hayes has another 2023 year, Horwitz continues to hit, and Reynolds and Cruz continue to slug like they did in 2024, and Jack comes back to hit 20+ HR, and, and,. . . . . . .
Yeah, that’s the issue. Those probabilities drastically decline when they are dependent upon one another, and for this team to get a 10-win improvement, particularly the hardest 10 wins to get in MLB, I would presume that ALL of those things have to happen PLUS several more on the pitching side.
Horwitz definitely helps. They need to sign a RF, and I’d imagine we will see some type of budget move. Bringing in someone like Grichuk, Hays or Canha helps. Beyond that, further improvement from Cruz/Nicky G, a bounce back from Jack.
I’ll offer what I’d imagine is an unpopular opinion: the team is already better than they were last year. Horwitz alone is > than Rowdy/BDLC/MAT/Eddie O. Some addition with Horwitz and a lot of subtraction with the others. Now it’s just getting someone who can play RF who can offer about 1fWAR and 100 wRC+.
And another back-end bullpen piece. They really have none. Ferguson can do some high-leverage work against lefties, and they will need Bednar to be Bednar. That still leaves them short in the backend, even if both these guys work out.
Fully, fully in agreement for the need for another Chapman-like signing.
Also equal parts hope and logic that one of Holderman or Mlod pulls one of those random high-end campaigns that relivers of their quality often deliver out of nowhere. Even Santana was a 1 WAR guy in less than a full year.
Something to watch for: BA is starting a podcast series of "deep dives" for each organization. So far they've done the Braves and Cards. I haven't listened, but judging from the index for each, they seem to be going a good bit further than the usual top prospect list. No schedule, so I don't know when they'll get to the Pirates.
Would love to listen to this when it comes out so please share if you don't mind Wilbur
Of course. Hoping I don’t forget myself.
Sorry if this has been posted, but I just saw in the PG that Michael Chernow has been promoted to "farm director" replacing John Baker, who was previously promoted. Chernow had been Baker's assistant. This article also gives a summary of the many FO changes:
https://www.post-gazette.com/sports/pirates/2025/01/20/michael-chernow-front-office-hire-cherington-nutting/stories/202501200089
Without knowing anything about them, I am encouraged that our new vice president of research and development, Kevin Tenenbaum, is coming from the Guardians, and our new vice president of professional evaluation and strategy, Michael Voltmer, is coming from the Dodgers.
I am somewhat encouraged by the major front-office shakeup this offseason. I don't know the details of all these peoples' resumes, but on the whole they seem better than the people whom they are replacing. Voltmer, Tenenbaum, and Kwan seem to be major upgrades. I always thought that Baker was a bad hire as farm director. I am not sure that Chernow will be much better, and I wish they had gone outside the organization to fill that position.
Yeah I didn’t get the Baker hire either, but I agree it’s been nice to see an influx of new blood. Voltmer and Tenenbaum in particular seem to have real solid resumes.
individual development, maaaaan.
Seems to mis the entire point of "coaching."
Precisely!
Once they got beyond the fastball academy thing, there simply wasn’t some overarching heavy handed general approach. It came down to quality of coaching. Media struggles with that level of depth so you tend to see them pontificate about “philosophy“.
amen.
More from "Baseball Wit and Wisdom", as we push the dogs off the bed after a three-dog night, and pull on two pairs of sweat pants, a hoody and a jacket, just to make the morning coffee while we (less) patiently wait for signs of spring and spring training:
"Baseball is a lot like life. The line drives are caught, the squibbers go for base hits. It's an unfair game."
-- Rod Kanehl, Mets infielder (career BABIP of .262).
I enjoy reading your quotes so much, I finally ordered the book.
That's wonderful. I have the miniature version. Used to read aloud from it in the stands at County Stadium on opening day, way back when. Also had a book of baseball poetry (since lost).....one was "Shall I Compare Thee to a Triple Play."
Glad you enjoy the quotes!
Just taken at Face Value, the Santander signing by Toronto is worth about $18.5 mil per year. Paying a signing bonus of about $5 mil could have dropped the annual average by another mil/year. I think either way it would have kept the Pirates under that $100 mil mark that the other 4 teams in the NL Central have already passed. MLBTR thinks the Jays could take that annual average down around $14 mil/year. Another missed opportunity by a Pittsburgh Pirate team that could be a playoff contender with the pitching already in place.
Gaps in the batting order and the worst Manager in baseball?
Anthony Santander is projected to drop below a 2 WAR hitter in the third year of this contract, 2027, the same year in which the Pirates will already spending $30m on extensions for Keller, Reynolds, and Hayes will also paying arbitration for Cruz, Skenes, and Jones.
It doesn't take much anxiety to see that as a very bad deal for the club.
If he can give this Pirate club 2 years of the offense he provided to B'more the last 3 years, I'd be happy to face projected negative issues in 2027 - that will also be the time we'll be facing the reality of losing Paul Skenes.
We are projected to be the only team in the NL Central below $100 mil in player salaries in 2025. Behind Cincy by about $21 mil, behind the Brewers by about $26 mil, and nowhere near the Cardinals and Cubs. How do we make that up?
Salamander seems like a perfect fit for a team projected in that mid 80’s area of wins who puts that team in a more comfortable position to make the playoffs. These Bucs are not that team.
I'd even be comfortable enough to put the Pirates in that mix if not for the tacit understanding that you're accepting a year or two at least of dead money on contracts of this length for the player type in question.
"ZiPS is rather lukewarm on this signing, suggesting Santander is worth five years at $70 million. There are obvious reasons why ZiPS is a bit lower on Santander: Less-than-elite sluggers who are more or less one dimensional tend to decline sharply in the early 30s."
Would he have wanted to sign here instead of Toronto though?
Nobody wants to sign in Toronto…
Toronto is the most diverse city in the world and the 4th largest city in North America.
That isn’t a selling point to most players. That’s why they rarely land anyone they have interest in.
I’m sure Toronto isn’t real high on anyone’s list, but I can’t imagine Pittsburgh is either. These guys want to win, and Toronto’s spending and willingness to trade prospects arguably offers a better chance of that.
I'll tell you a funny story. I have a friend who had his heart set on moving to Canada to be a truck driver. Finally freed up from his contract with the police with a modest pension after a 20-year career as a detective. He comes over to my house every day to learn English. We get him through, kicking and screaming, the English as a Foreign language exam. We get him through all the Canadian point-system immigration paperwork. He moves to Canada 2 years ago (after spending 5 months living with my mother in the U.S. and working odd jobs waiting for his visa and everything else). He works as a truck driver in Canada for 9 months and finally realizes what I had been telling him from the beginning: that the taxes and cost-of-living in Canada make it impossible to live on his salary as a truck driver. He left Canada after several years of hard work to get there, abandoned his dream of 20 years, and moved to Spain, where he now works as a truck driver, making a living wage.
No one, not even Argentines (who lived with the highest inflation in the world and with a 45% poverty rate for years) wants to move to Canada. The taxes are murder. Also, keep in mind that all these players signing with the Dodgers have to pay a 13% state income tax on their salaries. The whole "the Pirates can't compete with big-market, big-budget teams for any free agent" is nonsense.
An interesting observation in light of the fact that Canada has had their political leadership overthrown explicitly due to allowing massive influx of immigrants moving in. Seems like somebody wants to live there!
"Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded!"
It's a complex (and a little humorous, to me at least) situation. Having been involved now (on behalf of my friend) with the Canadian immigration system and situation and getting weekly first-hand reports of the situation in Canada. The Canadians are behind the times. Most Latin American immigrants are leaving Canada. I have first-hand reports from several Latins on this. They just cannot make ends meet there. Also, there is real culture conflict with the Indian immigrants, who compose the bulk of the immigrants there. They just do not use toilets properly, and this drives the Latins (and Canadians, I guess) crazy. All my Latin acquaintances in Canada just cannot abide the Indians.
To understand this feeling, remember that there are places in Latin America that do not have functioning sewer systems or septic tanks. The site of raw sewage has a profound effect on many Latins, because they have all seen neighborhoods like this, and hate it... with great passion. The site of feces on the floor on in the street just creates nightmares for them.
The taxes question is an interesting one, because PA obviously isn’t Florida or Texas, but we rank better than a lot of these places where guys sign. Wallet Hub has us ranked 25th ahead of places like Colorado, Ohio and the usual suspects like NY, California and Massachusetts.
But, rightly or wrongly, I still think guys are going to be leery to come here by reputation. Sure the taxes are more onerous in Canada, but it’s not like Santander, at $18 MM is going to be starving.
So you end up with a situation where you’re going to have to overpay guys to come here, regardless of the taxes situation, and an owner who doesn’t to pay anyone, overpay or not.
And talking about taxes hahaha. Such an offseason discussion.
A guy like Conforto, for example, will lose almost $2 million dollars of his salary just to California income taxes. I get it, that Conforto is comfortable and will live comfortably for the foreseeable future with his earnings in baseball, but $2 million is $2 million, even for a guy like Conforto.
what prospects are toronto trading?
In the past they’ve traded Gabriel Moreno, Austin Martin, SWR, the list of guys they traded for Matt Chapman, Spencer Horwitz for Gimenez.
Simeon Woods-Richardson was also in the trade with Austin Martin. Jordan Groshans and Otto Lopez were some of their better rated prospects when they were traded. Their top prospects are pretty depleted, as they might not have one until you reach the nineties.
Agreed, but I think there’s this general sense that the Pirates don’t trade prospects or spend money because historically they haven’t done much of either.
True. Although Pirates haven't been in a position to trade prospects. I guess they were last year at the deadline and this off-season trading for Horwitz.
You don't really trade prospects when you are tanking.
I guess we will never know. I know that guys like Paul Skenes, Mitch Keller, and the rest of our boatload of high quality Pitching would like to know the answer to that question also.
Pirates need to score approximately 100 more runs this year to be viable contenders. How do you think they do it?
Scott, before I forget, great question. Spawned a lot of fantastic discussion.
It’s either that or get better at preventing runs. The young arms and gloves are certainly a cheaper way to go in that regard. I just wish they were better at assessing which gloves should play where.
Or they could become elite at run prevention like your Braves--we only scored 39 fewer runs than they did but we gave up 146 more runs!
You're right, though, in that all of the other playoff teams scored at least 95 more runs than we did (Padres were the next lowest after the Braves, scoring 95 more runs than we did) while also being better at run prevention (Padres gave up 70 fewer runs).
The way the roster is constructed, it’s probably hard to improve at run prevention over what they have? The only open position is RF, and that isn’t really a premium defensive position at PNC Park.
I think you're too focused defense when you're hearing "run prevention".
Simply reverting to the 2018 club's bullpen performance, hardly elite, would save them *60* runs right off the bat.
In terms of getting that 100 runs, there’s many ways to crack the egg.
Better be, because nobody on this roster today, tomorrow, or likely ever, is worth 100 runs single-handedly.
Nope, for the reasons Catch said. As much as it pains me to say it, the full season and internal improvement from the young arms is easier than getting five new position players.
Yes, I think they will be better at run prevention this year. If I think our only path to the playoffs is scoring 100+ more runs, I'm pretty skeptical. If I think we can make it by being better at limiting runs and, say, scoring 60+ more runs, I'm more optimistic.
Right. The Bucs scored 665 runs last season, 24th in the league, roughly 50 runs below the average. With runs allowed, they’re at 739, about 30 over the average.
Looking at the rest of the league, there are far more teams who were in the top five in run prevention (Atlanta, Cleveland, KC, Detroit), who clustered more around the league average in runs scored. I think that’s their most likely path to the playoffs: bump up a bit towards league average at the plate, and betting big on the arms. It’s risky, but it could work.
Put another way: no playoff team from 2024 allowed more runs than the league average. The Bucs can get there if they get some bounce from internal players offensively (Cruz turning into a franchise player would go a long way towards that, maybe Hayes got a new back for Christmas), and full seasons of the young arms and a bounce back with the bullpen. They need more still (I’d like more in RF and the bullpen), but the framework is there to make some noise.
Well thought out and stated response. One which I agree with.
I have my moments…
They should see some modest improvement in run prevention just from more depth at starter. The bullpen will probably be a little better, but will need another significant upgrade at the back end to see much improvement there. They could have used some defensive upgrades this off-season since offense seems too expensive for them, but they have their hearts set, it seems, on IKF at SS. 40 less runs allowed and 60 more runs scored is possible with the current roster construction, but highly unlikely. They really need to add 2 more quality players (bullpen and OF).
If we look at Fangraphs batting and base running combined measure, Tellez, BDLC, MAT and Olivares combine for a -51.8. It’s hard to overestimate how awful that collective was. Just swapping out those 4 for replacement level guys, let alone league average production gets you more run production. Of course, losing MAT puts stress on the run prevention, I didn’t want to overlook that. So they are going to need internal improvement to get to 100 no doubt, but they could be in better shape than we think if they get anything at all from Yorke, Hayes, Jack, Cook etc.
Full seasons of Skenes, Jones, Hayes. Cruz in CF, IKF in SS, Horwitz at 1b should help prevent runs.
Add in Chandler, and now we’re talking!
Really excited to what this kid can do.
Just so I’m clear, I don’t think they are a bad defensive as currently constructed, I just don’t see a lot of room for improvement with additions at this point. RF isn’t moving the needle much. Defensively their fate rests on guys staying healthy and Cruz growing in CF.
Not having pitchers like German and Woodruff make starts should help.
Skenes, Keller, Jones, Falter, Oviedo, Chandler, Harrington, Burrows, Ashcraft (do we still see him as a starter?)--is that enough depth to avoid a German- or Woodruff-type start here and there? I think so, but I've been burned before thinking that we had enough pitching depth to get through a season without relying on a AAAA starter.
I'd like to see us bring in a veteran starter. With the Padres wanting to reduce payroll while not giving up on the season, perhaps they'd be interested in Falter or Oviedo plus a pitching prospect other than Chandler or Harrington.
Only a 15% increase on last year's total of 665 Runs?
Only..haha
Two ways, 1) just a little here or there could mean 15-30 more wins, and 2) they really want to win 🤷🏻♂️
Based on the Pirate Fest quotes, you can tell that the average player is not into analytics.
Most people aren’t into analytics. Not just baseball players.
Do we really need 15 wins though? Ideally yes, of course. But 10 more wins puts them squarely in the playoff race, and possibly into the playoffs.
Those 10 wins are probably the hardest 10 wins to get in baseball, that’s the issue. It’s not just 10 more wins.
I get it. But you’d think someone like McCutchen would realize that 15-30 additional wins don’t just appear like magic. There has to be a talent upgrade.
AM - define "just a little", and I think we have already established that this management team does not want to play with the other kids who are BUYING players or pitchers to fill gaps. If Hayes has another 2023 year, Horwitz continues to hit, and Reynolds and Cruz continue to slug like they did in 2024, and Jack comes back to hit 20+ HR, and, and,. . . . . . .
Yeah, that’s the issue. Those probabilities drastically decline when they are dependent upon one another, and for this team to get a 10-win improvement, particularly the hardest 10 wins to get in MLB, I would presume that ALL of those things have to happen PLUS several more on the pitching side.
Horwitz definitely helps. They need to sign a RF, and I’d imagine we will see some type of budget move. Bringing in someone like Grichuk, Hays or Canha helps. Beyond that, further improvement from Cruz/Nicky G, a bounce back from Jack.
I’ll offer what I’d imagine is an unpopular opinion: the team is already better than they were last year. Horwitz alone is > than Rowdy/BDLC/MAT/Eddie O. Some addition with Horwitz and a lot of subtraction with the others. Now it’s just getting someone who can play RF who can offer about 1fWAR and 100 wRC+.
And another back-end bullpen piece. They really have none. Ferguson can do some high-leverage work against lefties, and they will need Bednar to be Bednar. That still leaves them short in the backend, even if both these guys work out.
Fully, fully in agreement for the need for another Chapman-like signing.
Also equal parts hope and logic that one of Holderman or Mlod pulls one of those random high-end campaigns that relivers of their quality often deliver out of nowhere. Even Santana was a 1 WAR guy in less than a full year.
Haven’t the Dodgers already signed all the good back-end bullpen guys?
Word is yates is going to the dodgers so yet another back in arm off the market
*flips desk*
It's about time the Dodgers did something to help their ball club.
Their AAA club doesn't even have an allstar on it yet, real shame their ownership doesn't want to win