It really feels like they're punting on 3rd down. If they don't get Keller extended, they might as well trade him, Bednar as well. I don't want either traded for the sake of trading them but if they don't upgrade at a few of the holes they have they are still in the never ending rebuild.
Again I really don't want them traded, I want a few reasonable additions that would still leave them in the bottom 5 teams as far as payroll.
2 pitchers you can count on to eat innings, 1 of them preferably mid rotation.
A first basemen that is league average
A good defense CF, that can hopefully get on base a bit.
Sit tight, you know we are a January FA team.......pick over the 1 WAR guys that are left.
While there's Bob bashing going on the board, my take is that this is not BC's last gig. He's still a young guy and he "should" be motivated to improve this team, if only to pad his resume to return to a big market gig like he used to have. That's my spin.
Feels like Ethan has prepped us for what they finally admitted in the Mackey article the other day. They aren't going to make any substantive effort to increase payroll and use the TV deal as the reason.
These assholes printed money for four years by tanking through the most prosperous economic period in the history of the sport only to end up on the other end of the "build" with a worse economic outlook. Absolute f*cking morons.
Completely absent from Travis Williams as a means of funding the team was using a single f*cking dime of profit they raked in over the tanking phase of the rebuild. You know, the exact strategy that Pittsburgh media lined up *for them* as means of fluffing their corrupt rebuild to fans.
The most bat-shit crazy, out of touch take Tim Williams ever had was that Pittsburgh is a hard market to work in. Christ, it could not be easier. Just imagine the media in any other major market literally lining up to carry water for an owner who has never once given the slightest indication he'd ever do what they assured fans he would, this time around. Complete bootlickers, all of them.
The two institutions I turn to for some kind of tribal community - the pirates and the Democratic Party - are both run by some of the dimmest people on earth*.
Nutting could swap jobs with whatever dingelberry is running the DNC and the quality differences would be indiscernible under an electron microscope (is that a thing?).
In both institutions, what is valued most are timidity and affinity for perverse incentives.
I'd vote for NMR no matter what position he ran for. President of a country or of our second grade student council. Always look forward to read what you write dude. Keep it up.
Your last point couldn’t be more timely. RN, the local media is lining up to excuse the refusal to invest in 2023’s late-season progress.
I’m more dumbfounded daily at how low the bar is set for the Nuttins. Even here, where folks generally take a hard look at things, there’s a remarkable willingness to accept moves that aren’t upgrades. Marco Gonzales is the latest example. Yes, he’s been on a pitchers mound before, but he absolutely is not an upgrade. He’s yet another placeholder, another guy to help coast into assurances about next year being different.
Peanut vendors for major league teams face more pressure and scrutiny than the owner and FO in Pgh.
I don't think Marco is an upgrade either.......but this was a remarkable get for a cheap team that dropped in their lap somehow, getting a $12M guy and paying only $3M. Gotta give some credit to the finance guys on this one! They didn't need Sarah to spin the analytics.....they'll always jump at a bargain like this.
But this is my point -- it's not a bargain if it's not an upgrade. It's like needing a new car and getting a broken wheelbarrow for $0.99. That's not a bargain, it's an irrelevancy. But we're supposed to admire BC's brilliance for getting something the team doesn't need on the cheap.
What’s the difference between Gonzales & falter? Really nothing. This is the cheapest version of trying hard to find an arm that they already have. Lateral move I suppose
One thing I like about what the Padres did is that they gave up some very good prospects to go all-in with Soto, but when that didn't work out they were able to turn around and get some very prospects and young players back. They probably came out slightly behind in net talent but of course that is the cost of getting a player like Soto for a pennant race and the following season (though because pitching is in such demand I might like their return as much as what they gave up).
All to say, it's a good model that even a lower revenue team like the Pirates could follow--when you're in a race, trade top prospects for a superstar with 2+ years of control knowing that you can recoup much of the prospect capital later if it doesn't work out. Those opportunities don't come up often as it takes a superstar on a team that has decided to rebuild, but I hope that we'd be open to that kind of trade in the future.
I 100% agree if a team has prospects and wants to get a star, they can. If it doesn't work, then trade your star to someone else for prospects.
Currently, Soto's value has dropped. As great as he is of getting on base, he can be a) pretty inconsistent, b) a badp baserunner, c) a below average fielder, d) has the perception that he doesn't gel with his teammates, e) the Padres were worse with him and f) he already turned down a 14 year $440 million dollar contract with the Nats 2 or 3 years ago. Let's just say there was no bidding war for him and the Padres got in return what the market would bring.
My problem is they spent how many years losing and building up draft picks and they traded away 3 guys that were all top 10 prospects plus one that I think was a top 20. Then they got him for only a year and a half.
I just can't imagine how exciting it would have been if the Bucs got Soto. Just did what the Padres did like you said. I can't think of the last time they acquired anyone I got excited about. Not counting draft picks and an older Cutch.
I still hold that Huntington's demise was that he quit after the Archer trade, not that he made it. Better GM's than him have made shitty moves, you just gotta push through it and adapt. He stopped.
I like the point of trading prospects for a superstar, but then you have to hope that the Superstar will not fall from the skies like Chris Archer. BTW, remember who the No. 2 SP was when all of the experts thought that Chris Archer was the best available? He was pitching for B'more at the time, and is still one of the better SP's in baseball. Possibly one of the only times the Pirates went for the best guy rather than a lesser entity, and it cost that GM his job!
Archer was good from 2013 to 2015. ERAs were 3.22, 3.33, 3.23
Archer had a drop off with the Rays from 2016 to 2018. ERAs were 4.02, 4.07, 4.31
In 2018 with the Pirates, he pitched closer to his previous 3 years with a 4.30 ERA
The wheels pretty much fell off after that.
The Pirates and Ray Searage had a pretty good track record of turning pitchers around, I think everyone expected Archer to go back to the pitcher he was. There are a lot of free agent pitchers currently out there that fall in that category.
It’s always hard to say with prospects, but I wasn’t overly impressed with what they got back reading the write ups on the guys. The two big guys they got are King and Thorpe. King looks mighty interesting but is injury prone. Thorpe looks like a mid-rotation guy at best. In terms of what they gave up to get Soto, James Wood alone might be more valuable than the entire package they received from the Yankees. This is to be expected though when you trade a player with 1 year of control who is really expensive in arbitration. The surplus value just isn’t there.
Two of the players SD gave to the Nats to get Soto are active in MLB - Abrams finished his first year with a 2.1 fWAR and Gore pitched a full season (27 Starts) for his second year of service and posted a 1.3 fWAR. Both totaled 3.4 and Soto was 5.5 fWAR. OF's James Wood, and Robert Hassell III are still about 2 years away from MLB.
King did well in 2023 for the Yankees and Thorpe was A+/AA, so not really very much for a talent like Soto, who could be on his way to a 30-30 year with the Yankees, and he will sign an extension in NY! Is Gerrit Cole still a Boras client?
Thorpe and Hassell are both 45s according to FG so that's more-or-less a wash (I'd probably rather have the pitcher but of course they carry more risk). The major league players the Padres received totaled 4.4 fWAR, so purely based on fWAR that's a wash too. So the Padres got 1.5 years of Soto and then $30MM salary relief for the cost of Wood, in a sense. It would obviously look a lot better had they made the WS in '22 or the postseason in '23, but all a GM can do is provide the talent to make that possible and the Padres clearly had the talent.
SD has had plenty of positional talent and pitching talent, but they just do not seem to have "IT" - even without Soto, I think they have enough talent showing up every day to win the NL West, which right now is a toss-up between 4 teams - all looking pretty equal.
They got a pretty impressive haul for 1 year of Soto. King & Vasquez will slide into the middle of the rotation for SD. Thorpe is a top 100 prospect and should debut this season. They also netted a nice defensive catcher.
The initial Soto trade netted a nice SS and Wood, who appears to be on his way to stardom. Hassell looks like he might wash out in AA.
Pretty incredible how much talent they've traded - over 10 Top 100 prospects! - for only David F'n Bednar really coming back to bite them so far. Wood may be the first real stud to get away.
I think a part of it is their early promotion of prospects to higher levels. It tends to inflate their prospect standing, some definitely deserve the promotion and ranking though.
It really feels like they're punting on 3rd down. If they don't get Keller extended, they might as well trade him, Bednar as well. I don't want either traded for the sake of trading them but if they don't upgrade at a few of the holes they have they are still in the never ending rebuild.
Again I really don't want them traded, I want a few reasonable additions that would still leave them in the bottom 5 teams as far as payroll.
2 pitchers you can count on to eat innings, 1 of them preferably mid rotation.
A first basemen that is league average
A good defense CF, that can hopefully get on base a bit.
Perottos new thing out has then interested in clev, lugo, and keller i believe
Sit tight, you know we are a January FA team.......pick over the 1 WAR guys that are left.
While there's Bob bashing going on the board, my take is that this is not BC's last gig. He's still a young guy and he "should" be motivated to improve this team, if only to pad his resume to return to a big market gig like he used to have. That's my spin.
You're probably right, just seems there's a lot of the excuse making and vague innuendo why they can't spend more this year.
Feels like Ethan has prepped us for what they finally admitted in the Mackey article the other day. They aren't going to make any substantive effort to increase payroll and use the TV deal as the reason.
God I hate this organization. They’re just so incompetent.
These assholes printed money for four years by tanking through the most prosperous economic period in the history of the sport only to end up on the other end of the "build" with a worse economic outlook. Absolute f*cking morons.
Completely absent from Travis Williams as a means of funding the team was using a single f*cking dime of profit they raked in over the tanking phase of the rebuild. You know, the exact strategy that Pittsburgh media lined up *for them* as means of fluffing their corrupt rebuild to fans.
The most bat-shit crazy, out of touch take Tim Williams ever had was that Pittsburgh is a hard market to work in. Christ, it could not be easier. Just imagine the media in any other major market literally lining up to carry water for an owner who has never once given the slightest indication he'd ever do what they assured fans he would, this time around. Complete bootlickers, all of them.
The two institutions I turn to for some kind of tribal community - the pirates and the Democratic Party - are both run by some of the dimmest people on earth*.
Nutting could swap jobs with whatever dingelberry is running the DNC and the quality differences would be indiscernible under an electron microscope (is that a thing?).
In both institutions, what is valued most are timidity and affinity for perverse incentives.
Haha I feel this so hard.
I'd vote for NMR no matter what position he ran for. President of a country or of our second grade student council. Always look forward to read what you write dude. Keep it up.
"Ask not what the owner of your favorite ballclub can do for you, ask how you can further enrich them. I have a dream."
Your last point couldn’t be more timely. RN, the local media is lining up to excuse the refusal to invest in 2023’s late-season progress.
I’m more dumbfounded daily at how low the bar is set for the Nuttins. Even here, where folks generally take a hard look at things, there’s a remarkable willingness to accept moves that aren’t upgrades. Marco Gonzales is the latest example. Yes, he’s been on a pitchers mound before, but he absolutely is not an upgrade. He’s yet another placeholder, another guy to help coast into assurances about next year being different.
Peanut vendors for major league teams face more pressure and scrutiny than the owner and FO in Pgh.
I don't think Marco is an upgrade either.......but this was a remarkable get for a cheap team that dropped in their lap somehow, getting a $12M guy and paying only $3M. Gotta give some credit to the finance guys on this one! They didn't need Sarah to spin the analytics.....they'll always jump at a bargain like this.
But this is my point -- it's not a bargain if it's not an upgrade. It's like needing a new car and getting a broken wheelbarrow for $0.99. That's not a bargain, it's an irrelevancy. But we're supposed to admire BC's brilliance for getting something the team doesn't need on the cheap.
What’s the difference between Gonzales & falter? Really nothing. This is the cheapest version of trying hard to find an arm that they already have. Lateral move I suppose
I wouldn't mind having 3 RH and 2 LH in the rotation. Just to keep teams off balance.
Wheelbarrow reference was a nice touch. Made me laugh. But can that wheelbarrow eat miles and fetch something toward the end of summer?
Sure it can. It just does it badly.
May have to get a dozen more accounts so I can upvote this more.
Those bootlickers need a good ol' Judy Chop.
Word is we might get Ohtani news today
As long as it's not the Cubs. That would tag us with a couple more losses in the NL Central as we regress in 2024.
Blue Jays
An hour+ ago, MLBTR posted that his decision was "imminent". I guess that word doesn't mean what it used to ;)
Update: Five hours later I'm still waiting for this imminent decision. It reminds me of the last time I took my car to the shop.
Weve all heard of Arson Judge, so who knows how many times we will have imminent news lol
One thing I like about what the Padres did is that they gave up some very good prospects to go all-in with Soto, but when that didn't work out they were able to turn around and get some very prospects and young players back. They probably came out slightly behind in net talent but of course that is the cost of getting a player like Soto for a pennant race and the following season (though because pitching is in such demand I might like their return as much as what they gave up).
All to say, it's a good model that even a lower revenue team like the Pirates could follow--when you're in a race, trade top prospects for a superstar with 2+ years of control knowing that you can recoup much of the prospect capital later if it doesn't work out. Those opportunities don't come up often as it takes a superstar on a team that has decided to rebuild, but I hope that we'd be open to that kind of trade in the future.
I 100% agree if a team has prospects and wants to get a star, they can. If it doesn't work, then trade your star to someone else for prospects.
Currently, Soto's value has dropped. As great as he is of getting on base, he can be a) pretty inconsistent, b) a badp baserunner, c) a below average fielder, d) has the perception that he doesn't gel with his teammates, e) the Padres were worse with him and f) he already turned down a 14 year $440 million dollar contract with the Nats 2 or 3 years ago. Let's just say there was no bidding war for him and the Padres got in return what the market would bring.
My problem is they spent how many years losing and building up draft picks and they traded away 3 guys that were all top 10 prospects plus one that I think was a top 20. Then they got him for only a year and a half.
I just can't imagine how exciting it would have been if the Bucs got Soto. Just did what the Padres did like you said. I can't think of the last time they acquired anyone I got excited about. Not counting draft picks and an older Cutch.
Yes dude! Love this observation.
I still hold that Huntington's demise was that he quit after the Archer trade, not that he made it. Better GM's than him have made shitty moves, you just gotta push through it and adapt. He stopped.
I like the point of trading prospects for a superstar, but then you have to hope that the Superstar will not fall from the skies like Chris Archer. BTW, remember who the No. 2 SP was when all of the experts thought that Chris Archer was the best available? He was pitching for B'more at the time, and is still one of the better SP's in baseball. Possibly one of the only times the Pirates went for the best guy rather than a lesser entity, and it cost that GM his job!
Archer was good from 2013 to 2015. ERAs were 3.22, 3.33, 3.23
Archer had a drop off with the Rays from 2016 to 2018. ERAs were 4.02, 4.07, 4.31
In 2018 with the Pirates, he pitched closer to his previous 3 years with a 4.30 ERA
The wheels pretty much fell off after that.
The Pirates and Ray Searage had a pretty good track record of turning pitchers around, I think everyone expected Archer to go back to the pitcher he was. There are a lot of free agent pitchers currently out there that fall in that category.
It’s always hard to say with prospects, but I wasn’t overly impressed with what they got back reading the write ups on the guys. The two big guys they got are King and Thorpe. King looks mighty interesting but is injury prone. Thorpe looks like a mid-rotation guy at best. In terms of what they gave up to get Soto, James Wood alone might be more valuable than the entire package they received from the Yankees. This is to be expected though when you trade a player with 1 year of control who is really expensive in arbitration. The surplus value just isn’t there.
Two of the players SD gave to the Nats to get Soto are active in MLB - Abrams finished his first year with a 2.1 fWAR and Gore pitched a full season (27 Starts) for his second year of service and posted a 1.3 fWAR. Both totaled 3.4 and Soto was 5.5 fWAR. OF's James Wood, and Robert Hassell III are still about 2 years away from MLB.
King did well in 2023 for the Yankees and Thorpe was A+/AA, so not really very much for a talent like Soto, who could be on his way to a 30-30 year with the Yankees, and he will sign an extension in NY! Is Gerrit Cole still a Boras client?
Thorpe and Hassell are both 45s according to FG so that's more-or-less a wash (I'd probably rather have the pitcher but of course they carry more risk). The major league players the Padres received totaled 4.4 fWAR, so purely based on fWAR that's a wash too. So the Padres got 1.5 years of Soto and then $30MM salary relief for the cost of Wood, in a sense. It would obviously look a lot better had they made the WS in '22 or the postseason in '23, but all a GM can do is provide the talent to make that possible and the Padres clearly had the talent.
SD has had plenty of positional talent and pitching talent, but they just do not seem to have "IT" - even without Soto, I think they have enough talent showing up every day to win the NL West, which right now is a toss-up between 4 teams - all looking pretty equal.
That’s a fairly incorrect take all the way around.
Hassell has had his ass handed to him in 2 years @ AA. K rates of 29 & 32%
They got a pretty impressive haul for 1 year of Soto. King & Vasquez will slide into the middle of the rotation for SD. Thorpe is a top 100 prospect and should debut this season. They also netted a nice defensive catcher.
The initial Soto trade netted a nice SS and Wood, who appears to be on his way to stardom. Hassell looks like he might wash out in AA.
Pretty incredible how much talent they've traded - over 10 Top 100 prospects! - for only David F'n Bednar really coming back to bite them so far. Wood may be the first real stud to get away.
Scott White of cbs currently has CJ Abrams ranked as the 8th best fantasy shortstop in baseball.
lol, well with that kind of authority...
I think a part of it is their early promotion of prospects to higher levels. It tends to inflate their prospect standing, some definitely deserve the promotion and ranking though.
Amen!