DSG indicating they are basically leaving baseball broadcasting next year. 11 teams without a local television deal should make for an interesting free agent offseason.
The eleven include the Brewers, Cardinals, and Reds which should only help our chances of contending in the division. Williams and Nutting can feel good about their TV deal, but they need to take advantage of this relative certainty of revenue
1. The Padres are fun and I love the way Preller changed their identity by acquiring King and following that up with acquiring Cease (a deal which included part of the return from the Soto trade).
2. Someday I hope we have a manager like Brian Snitker. I dislike the Braves yet was so impressed with how he handled the postgame. No defensiveness and genuine transparency, treating reporters (and by extension fans) as intelligent. (This is not meant to compare him only to Shelton because Shelton may be more the norm and Snitker the exception.)
Ethan’s initial payroll estimate has them around $80m heading into next year. Can trim it to $73m by cutting Joe and BDLC. That MIGHT leave ~$25m to go shopping this offseason. Need 1-2 RP, at least 1 OF & another OF/1B/SS.
They had a 6% attendance increase, so that would put them around $90 millionish assuming they allocate the increase. I certainly don’t see more than that obviously, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran out the same exact payroll as you state.
Cutch will be back if he wants to be back. That's BN's power PR move....
I doubt BC will have the stones to non tender BDLC after trading two prospects (albeit lottery tickets) for him, even though BDLC absolutely deserves to be non tendered.
Thats 12. I non-tender Joe. I think I bring Cutch back one more year. I scan the FAs hard for a 1B/RF. If I don’t get one I give Hank a 1B mitt and either he or Cook or both make the roster. If you want a more versatile 14th, Bae and Alika are still there.
That was a great trade and then they really leaned into the chance to have a strong rotation by signing Lugo (5.3 bWAR this year) and Wacha (3.5 bWAR), both likely aided by the outstanding defense put behind them.
It took committing $45MM/3 for Lugo and $32MM/2 for Wacha, not huge amounts but at least some eyes were raised that they'd make these kind of commitments after a 106-loss season.
But this seems to be a great illustration of what a fully functional small market team looks like--there's a plan (pitching and defense), there's skilled evaluation to find the players to carry out the plan (who saw Lugo and Wacha combining for nearly 9 WAR?), and there's an owner willing to take a risk and spend when it's not obvious that the team is ready to contend. Hard not to be envious.
Either that, or good candidate to boom from other players progressing, on top of having Witt. The nice thing for the Royals is that, presumably, Witt is so good that a "regression" is likely still a 6+ WAR player. Who knows, maybe he's a "bad" 5 WAR player lol
Guess I should say position player. With full season of Skenes and company, I think they can mimic Royals pitching staff; Royals 20.2 fWAR and Pirates 14.8 fWAR. Position side though, Royals 20.1 fWAR and Pirates 6.9 (nice) WAR.
Easy answer is eliminating as much negative value as possible, whether through acquisition upgrades or developmental progress; Bae, Davis, Jack, Eddie O, and BDLC combined for -4.5 fWAR. If you were even just to get 0.0 replacement fWAR, that's 11.4 fWAR, and still basically a Bobby away from Royals total.
Good point about eliminating the negative WAR. If all Cruz, Reynolds, Bart, Gonzales, Triolo and Cutch do is repeat their performances from this year, that's 9.1 fWAR. Get Hayes back to a 3 WAR player, get a couple of WAR from our other catcher (as Grandal provided this year), 3 WAR from 1B/LF (wherever Reynolds isn't) and 3 WAR from RF, we're right there with the Royals. Lots of ifs though.
This is a tough one for me because that trade was the antithesis of how we do business.
1.) we’ve shown a real reluctance to trade relievers when they could net a large return.
2.) they took the risk of tying up their trade return in what they felt was a quality player, as opposed to quantity. Guaranteed we would spread our return out to minimize risk.
3.) there was a level of aggressiveness to that move. They went out and made a rare early trade.
I’d also add, Chapman was far more inconsistent for Pittsburgh in the first 3 plus months of the season than he was for KC in 2023. So even if they dealt him, expecting a Ragans return is too ambitious.
I don't think expecting a Ragans return in itself is the ambitious component. The ambitious part is expecting the Pirates to identify an under radar prospect like Ragans. He was a 40 FV projected 5th starter.
Maybe back when he was a first round draft pick, but after two TJS, he was seen as a fringe 5th starter. Even just went back to read his reports from Pipeline, FG, and BA. No one saw this coming, except maybe the Royals lol they were probably surprised themselves
You can't reason with Aurorus...he has these inane takes and will never under any circumstance admit he's wrong. No sense in talking to someone who behaves like him. You're good to engage with because we can both admit when we are wrong.
Fair enough. I don’t really have an issue with the free agent signings prior to this year, if that’s how the post came off. I’ve just disagreed with the lack of urgency in moving guys in some instances and with the way their dilute their returns in trades.
What is more, the Royals signed Chapman for the express purpose of trading him, knowing that he would likely hold real value to a contender at the trade deadline. In 4 years of rebuilding, Cherington failed to sign a single free agent that brought any real return, except maybe Vogelbach. If you are going to rebuild, you need to be signing one or two quality guys every year that you can, almost certainly, move at the deadline for a nice return. Instead, the Pirates signed players like Rich Hill and Heath Hembree. Hill is not going to be pitching a playoff game for anyone, so his value was, obviously, not so significant. What return they did get for their players was, as you say, divided among 3 players all of whom were highly unlikely to ever reach the majors.
I don’t love the free agent signings critique because when you’re playing at that end of the free agent pool all these guys are risky… and especially relievers. A lot of times I think their risk aversion could prevent them from lucking into a Chapman like signing, but let’s be honest, there’s a healthy amount of luck here too.
And in fairness, Quintana did return Oviedo, and it’s possible that they might get something for Santana and Rich Hill as they received a couple of lotto tickets back.
That is sort of my point though. Chapman is not at the same end of the pool as Quintana, Hill, Hembree, etc... . Chapman is a big name reliever with a mountain of high leverage, post-season experience. He is the type of guy most likely to bring a solid return from a team with World Series aspirations.
Chapman signed with the Royals for 3.7M & he was coming off the worst season of his career. There wasn't demand for him when he signed with KC.
You're acting like he was some huge $ signing. They got lucky & he performed, then they got lucky again and was able to parlay that into Cole Ragans. Sometimes luck happens. The odds all these things happening are astronomical.
He was also entering his age 34 years season, in his decline years, coming off a -.2 WAR season, and is a reliever, which carries a risk profile all its own. Bearing that in mind, it’s understandable that team recoiled at giving him a sizable guarantee, to where he made it to the Royals on their budget salary offer.
Now, he still possessed swing and miss stuff to where the upside was palatable. But that doesn’t diminish the risk.
I have to say, baseball seems a bit unimportant in light of what's going on in the Carolinas and E TN as well as the whole Middle East thing. At the same time, it's too bad the regular season is over since it could provide a little distraction from all that. Pray for those Appalachia folks. The devastation is horrible. The media will stop covering this in order to get attention and continue dividing the country but these poor folks are just trying to survive right now. Imagine just trying to get water for your family!
To keep it short and sweet, as we don't want another day long debacle of political fiasco.
I couldn't imagine all the unsuspecting families having to deal with the aftermath of Helene. Said roughly only about 1% had any sort of flood insurance on their homes. I've now been through three hurricanes in last 4 years, and kind of know what to expect. To those families, it was essentially just another "rain storm", until it wasn't.
It had been so long since this part of Appalachia had this kind of flood that no one acould have been expected to appreciate the danger. Just very sad when you hear about the personal stories. The lead story in the Knoxville News Sentinel yesterday was about workers at Impact Plastics in Erwin losing their lives after management told them it wasn't bad enough to evacuate yet. Just one of many examples that go beyond the death toll number--as the saying goes, the loss of a life is a tragedy, the loss of many lives is a statistic.
And of course it was so random like weather events are--I live within an hour of some of the devastation but all we experienced was some mild wind and enough rain to close sports fields for a couple of days.
Still waiting for power. Have to give it to the linemen and women. they are definitely putting in shifts. No where near wnc destruction where I live but it looks like tornado hit all over. Still have a tree on a power line in my pasture. Outdoors store down the road has portable showers and washing machines. Plus people are out there all day grilling out free food. A lot of it donated from farms, hunters and food companies. All free. It's like a tailgate party. It's amazing to see people pulling together. Makes me proud to be part of this rural community. My kids don't want power to come back.
Next time you flush your toilet feel lucky you don't have to lug a bucket from a pond to do it.
MLBTR has arb estimates for each team. If we use their estimates, the Bucs clock in at $24.1M for Santana, Bednar, Heller, Joe, Oviedo, BDLC, Bart, Holderman, and Falter. Adding in the guaranteed contracts (Hayes, Keller, Reynolds, IKF, while declining Gonzales’ option), brings the total is 66.3M. This is IF they tender all the arb eligible players. Given those numbers, I wouldn’t tender contracts to Heller, BDLC, or Joe-the three of them come in at $8.1M.
If they cut bait with those three, they’d have $58.2M tied up in 10 players, before you get to the pre arb numbers. Theoretically, plenty of dough to spend. Whether that happens or not…
Was reading about the Impact Plastics story, and that could lead us down a whole other path of awfulness. But even in recent years, cities like Houston or Baton Rouge weren't prepared, and once again most homes weren't insured against the likelihood of potential hurricane type damage. I know people here have said that now they specifically keep an axe or some sort of tool to break through the roof in the event of worst case scenario.
DSG indicating they are basically leaving baseball broadcasting next year. 11 teams without a local television deal should make for an interesting free agent offseason.
The eleven include the Brewers, Cardinals, and Reds which should only help our chances of contending in the division. Williams and Nutting can feel good about their TV deal, but they need to take advantage of this relative certainty of revenue
My two thoughts/cents from yesterday's action:
1. The Padres are fun and I love the way Preller changed their identity by acquiring King and following that up with acquiring Cease (a deal which included part of the return from the Soto trade).
2. Someday I hope we have a manager like Brian Snitker. I dislike the Braves yet was so impressed with how he handled the postgame. No defensiveness and genuine transparency, treating reporters (and by extension fans) as intelligent. (This is not meant to compare him only to Shelton because Shelton may be more the norm and Snitker the exception.)
Ethan’s initial payroll estimate has them around $80m heading into next year. Can trim it to $73m by cutting Joe and BDLC. That MIGHT leave ~$25m to go shopping this offseason. Need 1-2 RP, at least 1 OF & another OF/1B/SS.
I’d say that figure will be closer to $20 MM.
I'll be pretty stunned if there's a dime of increase.
Nutting has flat-out said they will spend *once* revenue increases, and I can't imagine the projections will be rosy for 2025.
They had a 6% attendance increase, so that would put them around $90 millionish assuming they allocate the increase. I certainly don’t see more than that obviously, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they ran out the same exact payroll as you state.
Cutch is another $5mil
Cutch will be back if he wants to be back. That's BN's power PR move....
I doubt BC will have the stones to non tender BDLC after trading two prospects (albeit lottery tickets) for him, even though BDLC absolutely deserves to be non tendered.
he canned eddie O mid season
bdlc and eddie o are the same failed experiement
I would say that Forrester and Shim was a much greater prospect cost than Deivis Nadal....
Can save some dough on the bullpen by backfilling with Burrows and Ashcraft.
Hitters. For next year I go:
C - Bart
C/1B - Endy
2B - Gonzales
SS - IKF
3B - Hayes
UT - Peguero (out of options)
UT - Triolo
LF - Reynolds
CF - Cruz
RF - BDLC
RF/2B - Yorke
DH - Cutch
Thats 12. I non-tender Joe. I think I bring Cutch back one more year. I scan the FAs hard for a 1B/RF. If I don’t get one I give Hank a 1B mitt and either he or Cook or both make the roster. If you want a more versatile 14th, Bae and Alika are still there.
Grandal could play first base for $1mil for the year
That’s running back the same lineup hoping everyone does better. No thanks.
would rather Joe over BDLC, but i’d non-tender them both
Cole Ragans. Acquired for Aroldis Chapman.
That was a great trade and then they really leaned into the chance to have a strong rotation by signing Lugo (5.3 bWAR this year) and Wacha (3.5 bWAR), both likely aided by the outstanding defense put behind them.
It took committing $45MM/3 for Lugo and $32MM/2 for Wacha, not huge amounts but at least some eyes were raised that they'd make these kind of commitments after a 106-loss season.
But this seems to be a great illustration of what a fully functional small market team looks like--there's a plan (pitching and defense), there's skilled evaluation to find the players to carry out the plan (who saw Lugo and Wacha combining for nearly 9 WAR?), and there's an owner willing to take a risk and spend when it's not obvious that the team is ready to contend. Hard not to be envious.
Hitting on TWO mid-30s free agent starting pitchers having career years AND getting a career year out of Sal Perez back from the grave is insane.
And like 0.3% chance it carries over.
But the point still stands, this is why you take the shot!
Right! Take the chance. If those guys flop next year, it’s not a huge long term loss.
Pirates also just need to somehow unearth a 10+ WAR player lol
Cause truthfully, outside of Bobby, the Royals recent large collection of top 100 prospects haven't really panned out too well.
Yep. I think they’re a good candidate to tumble hard next season.
Either that, or good candidate to boom from other players progressing, on top of having Witt. The nice thing for the Royals is that, presumably, Witt is so good that a "regression" is likely still a 6+ WAR player. Who knows, maybe he's a "bad" 5 WAR player lol
Cruz + Reynolds + 1? COULD be better than or equal to what the royals have with bobby + sal + vinnie... a competent GM has a lot of pieces in place...
Skenes was on a pace for 7+ WAR over a full season, so there's a bit of a parallel there.
Guess I should say position player. With full season of Skenes and company, I think they can mimic Royals pitching staff; Royals 20.2 fWAR and Pirates 14.8 fWAR. Position side though, Royals 20.1 fWAR and Pirates 6.9 (nice) WAR.
Easy answer is eliminating as much negative value as possible, whether through acquisition upgrades or developmental progress; Bae, Davis, Jack, Eddie O, and BDLC combined for -4.5 fWAR. If you were even just to get 0.0 replacement fWAR, that's 11.4 fWAR, and still basically a Bobby away from Royals total.
Good point about eliminating the negative WAR. If all Cruz, Reynolds, Bart, Gonzales, Triolo and Cutch do is repeat their performances from this year, that's 9.1 fWAR. Get Hayes back to a 3 WAR player, get a couple of WAR from our other catcher (as Grandal provided this year), 3 WAR from 1B/LF (wherever Reynolds isn't) and 3 WAR from RF, we're right there with the Royals. Lots of ifs though.
Yeah that’s basically everything going right. Risky, but they need to make changes and take some chances anyway.
Glyebar Torres also acquired for Chapman
good buy low candidate
This is a tough one for me because that trade was the antithesis of how we do business.
1.) we’ve shown a real reluctance to trade relievers when they could net a large return.
2.) they took the risk of tying up their trade return in what they felt was a quality player, as opposed to quantity. Guaranteed we would spread our return out to minimize risk.
3.) there was a level of aggressiveness to that move. They went out and made a rare early trade.
We just don’t make moves like that.
Cherington genuinely thought he had a playoff team at the deadline, if not Chapman would've been gone.
He acquired guys like Tyler Anderson, Jose Quintana, Carlos Santana, Daniel Vogelbach, etc with the sole intent of flipping them at the deadline.
You're trying too hard with these takes, when the simple answer is right there.
or its that Chapman and BC havea. gentlemen´s agreement to pay him $500k more than the highest bidder in 2025 as well
I’d also add, Chapman was far more inconsistent for Pittsburgh in the first 3 plus months of the season than he was for KC in 2023. So even if they dealt him, expecting a Ragans return is too ambitious.
Definitely think at points we could have acquired a Ragans type talent if we had traded some other relievers was my point.
Our Ragans type talent might be Billy Cook and/or Nick Yorke
Here’s hoping.
I don't think expecting a Ragans return in itself is the ambitious component. The ambitious part is expecting the Pirates to identify an under radar prospect like Ragans. He was a 40 FV projected 5th starter.
Bingo.
That's right he was never a big prospect.
Maybe back when he was a first round draft pick, but after two TJS, he was seen as a fringe 5th starter. Even just went back to read his reports from Pipeline, FG, and BA. No one saw this coming, except maybe the Royals lol they were probably surprised themselves
Are you responding to me or Borealus? I ask because your response seems more in context with what he was saying?
Responding to you.
You can't reason with Aurorus...he has these inane takes and will never under any circumstance admit he's wrong. No sense in talking to someone who behaves like him. You're good to engage with because we can both admit when we are wrong.
Fair enough. I don’t really have an issue with the free agent signings prior to this year, if that’s how the post came off. I’ve just disagreed with the lack of urgency in moving guys in some instances and with the way their dilute their returns in trades.
That's the thing, prior to this season, he moved guys at the deadline.
The only reason he didn't trade away this deadline is because he thought he was a contender.
What is more, the Royals signed Chapman for the express purpose of trading him, knowing that he would likely hold real value to a contender at the trade deadline. In 4 years of rebuilding, Cherington failed to sign a single free agent that brought any real return, except maybe Vogelbach. If you are going to rebuild, you need to be signing one or two quality guys every year that you can, almost certainly, move at the deadline for a nice return. Instead, the Pirates signed players like Rich Hill and Heath Hembree. Hill is not going to be pitching a playoff game for anyone, so his value was, obviously, not so significant. What return they did get for their players was, as you say, divided among 3 players all of whom were highly unlikely to ever reach the majors.
I don’t love the free agent signings critique because when you’re playing at that end of the free agent pool all these guys are risky… and especially relievers. A lot of times I think their risk aversion could prevent them from lucking into a Chapman like signing, but let’s be honest, there’s a healthy amount of luck here too.
And in fairness, Quintana did return Oviedo, and it’s possible that they might get something for Santana and Rich Hill as they received a couple of lotto tickets back.
That is sort of my point though. Chapman is not at the same end of the pool as Quintana, Hill, Hembree, etc... . Chapman is a big name reliever with a mountain of high leverage, post-season experience. He is the type of guy most likely to bring a solid return from a team with World Series aspirations.
Chapman signed with the Royals for 3.7M & he was coming off the worst season of his career. There wasn't demand for him when he signed with KC.
You're acting like he was some huge $ signing. They got lucky & he performed, then they got lucky again and was able to parlay that into Cole Ragans. Sometimes luck happens. The odds all these things happening are astronomical.
Absolutely true.
He was also entering his age 34 years season, in his decline years, coming off a -.2 WAR season, and is a reliever, which carries a risk profile all its own. Bearing that in mind, it’s understandable that team recoiled at giving him a sizable guarantee, to where he made it to the Royals on their budget salary offer.
Now, he still possessed swing and miss stuff to where the upside was palatable. But that doesn’t diminish the risk.
Derek Lowe and Jason Varitek from the Seattle Mariners in exchange for reliever Heathcliff Slocumb.
I lived in the Boston area when that trade was made. An all-time classic. And it took awhile, but Varitek finally got a ring.
I have to say, baseball seems a bit unimportant in light of what's going on in the Carolinas and E TN as well as the whole Middle East thing. At the same time, it's too bad the regular season is over since it could provide a little distraction from all that. Pray for those Appalachia folks. The devastation is horrible. The media will stop covering this in order to get attention and continue dividing the country but these poor folks are just trying to survive right now. Imagine just trying to get water for your family!
To keep it short and sweet, as we don't want another day long debacle of political fiasco.
I couldn't imagine all the unsuspecting families having to deal with the aftermath of Helene. Said roughly only about 1% had any sort of flood insurance on their homes. I've now been through three hurricanes in last 4 years, and kind of know what to expect. To those families, it was essentially just another "rain storm", until it wasn't.
It had been so long since this part of Appalachia had this kind of flood that no one acould have been expected to appreciate the danger. Just very sad when you hear about the personal stories. The lead story in the Knoxville News Sentinel yesterday was about workers at Impact Plastics in Erwin losing their lives after management told them it wasn't bad enough to evacuate yet. Just one of many examples that go beyond the death toll number--as the saying goes, the loss of a life is a tragedy, the loss of many lives is a statistic.
And of course it was so random like weather events are--I live within an hour of some of the devastation but all we experienced was some mild wind and enough rain to close sports fields for a couple of days.
Still waiting for power. Have to give it to the linemen and women. they are definitely putting in shifts. No where near wnc destruction where I live but it looks like tornado hit all over. Still have a tree on a power line in my pasture. Outdoors store down the road has portable showers and washing machines. Plus people are out there all day grilling out free food. A lot of it donated from farms, hunters and food companies. All free. It's like a tailgate party. It's amazing to see people pulling together. Makes me proud to be part of this rural community. My kids don't want power to come back.
Next time you flush your toilet feel lucky you don't have to lug a bucket from a pond to do it.
Def in the market for a better generator.
Apologies, my very non-important commentary on the Pirates money situation wasn’t supposed to be a reply to you.
I was reading that story on Tennessee as well. I have no words.
I just thought you meant to reply to my comment on WTM's list of arb estimates in the previous thread. No worries at all.
MLBTR has arb estimates for each team. If we use their estimates, the Bucs clock in at $24.1M for Santana, Bednar, Heller, Joe, Oviedo, BDLC, Bart, Holderman, and Falter. Adding in the guaranteed contracts (Hayes, Keller, Reynolds, IKF, while declining Gonzales’ option), brings the total is 66.3M. This is IF they tender all the arb eligible players. Given those numbers, I wouldn’t tender contracts to Heller, BDLC, or Joe-the three of them come in at $8.1M.
If they cut bait with those three, they’d have $58.2M tied up in 10 players, before you get to the pre arb numbers. Theoretically, plenty of dough to spend. Whether that happens or not…
Was reading about the Impact Plastics story, and that could lead us down a whole other path of awfulness. But even in recent years, cities like Houston or Baton Rouge weren't prepared, and once again most homes weren't insured against the likelihood of potential hurricane type damage. I know people here have said that now they specifically keep an axe or some sort of tool to break through the roof in the event of worst case scenario.