Brandon Barker and Trevor Belicek for Brian Matusz and 2016 Competitive Balance Round B Pick
The noteworthy piece was the competitive balance B pick that would later turn into Brett Cumberland. Cumberland was traded along with Jean Carlos Encarnacion, Bruce Zimmerman, Evan Phillips, and international bonus pool money for Kevin Gausman. So for taking on the bulk of Matusz’ $3.9M commitment (he was traded in May), the Braves got a piece that then became, say, 30% of the trade value to get Gausman.
Dario Alvarez and Lucas Harrell for Travis Demeritte
This one looked really good in the beginning but is beginning to crater. Since last year, Demeritte has grabbed an outfielder’s mitt and is looking to break the bigs as a utility player. But a .222/.316/.416 line in his second go around at AA at the age of 24 isn’t promising.
Max Povse and Rob Whalen for Alex Jackson and Tyler Pike
We traded some prospects for their prospects, but we were getting the player with the most upside: Jackson. But since, Jackson has been unable to develop his hit tool, and defensively, he seems to have made minimal improvement. Pike looked interesting as a sleeper pitching piece, but his age-24 season saw him moved to the bullpen and not pitch well at AA. We didn’t trade much, but we didn’t really get much back as its unfolded.
But catchers take a long time to develop at times, so Jackson has a spot on the 40-man for now, and they’ll probably stick with him if he shows any improvement. It’s really hard to find catchers who can hit and at least field the position passably, so Jackson will get every opportunity to be successful. He’s certainly not going to make it as an outfielder the way things are going now.
Luke Dykstra, Chris Ellis, and John Gant for Jaime Garcia
As you know, Garcia pitched for us for a half-season, and was then traded for Huscar Ynoa. Ynoa made 18 starts at Rome this year with a high strike out rate (9.82/9), but struggled with command at both Rome and then Florida. But he’s only 20, and his swing-and-miss ability still makes him a significant prospect. He’ll be allowed to pitch deeper into games this year, and he’ll probably repeat A+. The person who has given his team the most value has been John Gant Gant threw 114 IP for St. Louis this year, providing a 3.47 ERA/4.07 FIP while making 19 starts in 26 appearances. He dropped his funky hitch in his delivery, and now he just looks like a nice little piece for a contending team.
Shae Simmons and Mallex Smith for Thomas Burrows and Luiz Gohara
As a point of update, Shoe Simmon’s arm is still Swiss cheese. Luiz Gohara had a disappointing season, with his father passing away in his arms in January and then his mother shortly after falling ill. He then suffered a leg injury in Spring Training, and he never got in a rhythm at AAA. It was his first full season at AAA, and he never got more than about 7 weeks of continuous starting at AAA all year. He spent some time going back and forth in Atlanta’s pen, and it would seem he should be given some time in Spring Training and AAA to continue to develop. He’s only 22 years old, younger than Kyle Wright, Max Fried, and within a month of Touki Toussaint. And none of them have been through as much as Gohara has. There’s a lot of competition for what seems to be one open spot currently in the rotation, so we shall see if he can earn a spot.
You didn’t think I was going to refrain from talking about Rock Smith, did you? Mallex Smith had a season most closely reflective of what he skill set seems to be. He contributed a .296/.367/.406 (115 OPS+) line to the 90-win Rays, stealing 40 bases in 52 chances, playing centerfield in what graded at is average-to-slightly-below-average. B-Ref liked him to a 3.5 WAR with Fangraphs at 3.4 fWAR. And he’s pre-arb, so he did all of that for about $600K. So for this trade to work out, we will need Gohara to emerge and give us some really good production.
Phil Gosselin for Touki Toussaint and Bronson Arroyo
Around $7M in 2015 payroll money for Touki Toussaint. Wow, still as crazy as it seemed at the time. Touki took the next step he had the talent to do. He had a breakthrough performance at AA, and then got even better at AAA: 1.43 ERA, 10.01 K/9, 3.04 BB/9, no HR in 50.1 IP. He came up to Atlanta and flashed his strikeout ability (9.93 K/9) and held his own to a 4.03 ERA/3.78 FIP in 29 IP. He’s already pitched in Atlanta and still has a TOR upside according to almost anyone evaluating him. He was and will continue to be considered a heist for years to come.
USA Today gets it right here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/nletter/morning-win/2019/01/28/mlb-owners-payroll-luxury-tax/2698621002/
MLBTradeRumors has a current poll on this subject as well:
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/01/mlbtr-poll-have-teams-become-too-conservative-in-free-agency.html
I’m a little shocked to see so many people supportive of the owners.
That’s MLBTR for you. Thousands upon thousands of wannabe GMs constantly refreshing the page.
Well, then, it seems the majority of fans fall into either the group that thinks the organization has moved forward by resigning guys like “Kakes” or the other group that thinks we’re on the bleeding edge for getting value like “Kakes.”
Freaking hopeless. 🙂
The Dodgers TV contract pays them 280M per year. What’s ours like 25M?
This is incredible…
@3 That’s a bit stunning.
I can see supporting the owners in regards to not wanting them to do 10 year type deals, because I’m that way. History has proven that your team **might** be good for half of that, but you’re also likely pulling for you team to be hamstrung and non-competitive on the back half.
On the other hand, I feel like players should get as much as they can get over 3-5 years, and owners owe it to fans to put every drop of revenue taken in from a ball team back into the ball team.
I guess the truest answer is they’re probably opposing economic forces, yada, yada…
It’s not going to change until you change how young players are compensated. There’s just too much of a disparity between a young player and a veteran, and that was negotiated in arms length. Until that changes, no one should be mad.
I just don’t want them to change it right when the Braves are poised to finally take advantage of it and be good. That would be their dumb luck, ie. having wave after wave of phenomenal talent and suddenly be in a tail spin on how to compensate all of it because things change and crap happens.
Just about every team in baseball would be utterly devastated by that, from the Nats (Soto and Robles) to the Yankees (Torres and maybe Sanchez) to the Rays (lol). There is probably nothing that the owners would fight harder than preserving the years of team control, which is their only last remaining vestige of the horrible old reserve clause.
It ain’t going away any time soon. I think they’ll keep offering to raise the minimum wage. Odds are that the players will try to target the free agent draft pick compensation that they so stupidly allowed.
I was talking through the problems with baseball free agency with a friend the other day, and making changes to improve pay for younger players would definitely be the most impactful (and fair) thing to do. If you can’t reduce the team control years, the next best thing is to improve compensation that players get during the team control seasons.
My proposal would be to increase the minimum salary in a meaningful way (start at $1M or something) and accelerate the process by which players get paid a salary approximating their free market worth – change from 3 years minimum salary + 3 years arbitration to 2 years min + 4 years arb (like Super 2 players get now). Along with that, baseball needs better rules to reduce the team incentive to play service time games with players.
1) It wouldn’t change until the CBA expires, which I think is 2021.
2) I would think there would be a period of time until we actually see the effect. For instance, amateurs starting in 2022 would be signed to a new compensation structure. Then I think you would start seeing some sort of ripple effect in the market.
So I don’t think it would change things any time soon and presumably past our Window(TM) to Contend(TM) and go All In(TM). But I definitely think we’ll see subtle changes, like changing the QO, as mentioned.
RE: the MLBTR support for ownership; it’s pretty simple. Fans have always sided with management over labor. God knows, local sports star should be loyal and submissive to The Team and never actually get paid fair market value.
It’s not a matter of not wanting players to get paid market value. Definitionally, that helps every time a player signs. You’re saying you want players to be paid the way they were previously, which they actually are per year, but not for length. Why does it always default to “the owners are doing something wrong”? Why is it never that the guy with a high school education is getting paid $100M to hit a ball? You can say, “Yes, but it’s really, really hard to hit a baseball, and he should be paid really well for it”. Agreed, but it’s also really, really hard to become an owner of a major sports franchise, so why is there a cap on their earnings and not the players?
I used to be one of those jerks who hated the thought of my team spending money “unwisely.” But really — it isn’t my money, and it IS my team, so I think it’s only fair to ask the incredibly rich man who decided to buy the team to spend some of his cash on it.
It’s really hard to be an owner of a major league baseball team because the 30 existing owners like it that way, and their antitrust exemption allows them to rig the market exactly the way they want it.
If Mark Cuban was a baseball team owner, like he has always wanted to be, he’d spend a ton of money on free agents and make the penurious current owners look bad. They don’t want that. They want skinflints.
@14
I just meant in terms of net worth and liquidity.
I do agree that we’re probably not going to see human owners like Cuban because they would indeed make the other owners look bad. With that said… is that a bad thing? Unless you can find 30 Mark Cubans, that means some teams are going to have one and some won’t. How would you like it if the Nationals had Mark Cuban and we obviously didn’t? It’s bad enough that New York has the Wilpons who right now seem to really want to spend money.
To follow up on that point, if you did have a handful of Mark Cubans (you’re never going to find 30), then you would have a competitive balance situation similar to the NBA where a couple-few teams are going to dominate the league, and the most Mark Cuban of all the Mark Cubans is going to have the Golden State Warriors.
If the Nats shamed us into spending more, I’d consider that no bad thing.
But they wouldn’t. My follow-up comment is what I think would be the result of that.
It’s interesting that MLB, with no historic salary cap, has, compared to the NBA and NFL, actually tended to have more parity (measured as the number of different teams who reach the playoffs over a period of time, rather than the league being dominated by the same team or same couple of teams).
That said, I don’t think it’s quite as hard to find Mark Cubans as you’re saying. After all, there’s always some tech billionaire — whether it’s Paul Allen or Steve Ballmer — who wants a fancy new plaything. And there are so few teams to buy that there will always be hundreds more available billionaires than teams for sale.
@18
The NBA’s competitive balance issues have almost nothing to do with baseball’s competitive balance issues, first of all.
Second of all, the positions of the owners and the players are not even remotely equivalent enough for you to be able to pull the Well, There Are Issues with Both Sides thing you just tried to. Players wanting to maximize the amount of money they get paid individually doesn’t potentially injure the fabric of the game severely. Owners as a whole trying to siphon off as much revenue as possible from their teams rather than spending what it takes to win does.
Who suggested a cap on ownership earnings. All I suggested was a contractor with a rare skill set that carries huge investment value for a hiring management firm actually earn their market value for their services.
Players aren’t worth millions because they can do a hard thing like “hit a ball.” They’re worth millions because their skills at “hitting a ball” translates in the entertainment industry into BILLIONS AND BILLIONS in profit, and as the primary providers of the services generating those profits, in a free market economy, they should, you know take in a rather large share of those profits.
The current problems of the current MLBPA is due almost exclusively to hiring ex ball players to manager their labor negotiations after Marvin Miller died. They need to fix that. As for fighting about who should gather the majority of the earnings generated from a professional sporting enterprise, the players who create the actual product at a level worth watching, or rent seeking ownership groups who are scraping profits off of the top of other entreprenuerial wealth generation, well. You side with the rent seekers if you like. I prefer to side with the people building the product.
The NBA’s “super team” problem derives from the fact that without a top-5 in the league talent, you’re not winning a basketball championship. That leads to people flocking to the three or four teams that have such a top-5 talent.
Baseball doesn’t work that way.
To combat service time manipulation, one could base arbitration eligibility and free agency on age. This creates an incentive to bring younger players to the majors earlier. One would have to figure out how to get accurate age information–probably a potential problem for international players.
Perhaps one could have a situation where all players not under contract at the end of their 28-year-old season would be declared free agents.
Flowcann™ helps relieve the symptoms of BPH…
You’d think the league could have figured him out by then if he was going to be susceptible to an adjustment period.
https://twitter.com/mrbriankenny/status/1089910246544412672?s=21
Brian Kenny has Ender #9. It’s crazy to think how good he could be if he could hit lefties and more successfully steal bases. Obviously that’s probably due to a lack of foot speed.
He’s a good player, guys.
If you choose to believe this.
I’d like to see someone recap the “big” deals of the rebuild and how they worked or didn’t work for the Braves.
Working on that.
Anybody think there’s a possibility the Reds could trade for Realmuto and flip him to the Braves for what the Braves would send MIA? If what the Reds really need is more SP and a CF then a trade to the Braves for Newcomb, Pache, and Flowers might be a pretty sweet deal for the Reds. The Reds could trade India, Barnhardt, and whatever for Realmuto then flip him. The Reds have extra 3B and the Braves have extra SP. This just makes too much sense.
Another idea might be Newcomb, Ender, Flowers and Gohara or some bigger prospect for Realmuto and Puig.
If the Braves have to pay more because they’re “in division” then why wouldn’t an out of division team want to benefit from the bigger payout?
Alternately, the Braves could find a pairing to include Realmuto and Iglesias. Either way, the Braves and Reds could each win, while the Marlins get what they want, too.
Cincinnati isn’t looking to flip Realmuto any more than they were looking to flip Puig or Wood or Gray. Rightly or wrongly, they’re in it to win it.
Ender’s good, but do you want him getting the most ABs of anyone on the team?
Salty retired.
The Braves finally announced another free agent signing:
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/01/braves-sign-rafael-ortega.html
“Ortega, 27, appeared in 41 games with the Marlins in 2018 and hit .233/.287/.271 with three doubles, a triple and five steals in 143 plate appearances.”
I’ll just be the first one to say it:
DOOOOOOOMED.
This whole offseason makes me think Anthopoulos doesn’t really believe in this team, that 2018 was a fluke. All the bargain hunting and 1-year deals seem more reminiscent of something you’d see of a rebuilding team not expecting to compete.
For whatever reason, I don’t think they believe in these young pitchers the way that fans… do.
I wonder if its because they understand TINSTAAPP?
Plus Liberty Media is sub-optimal.
They don’t believe in the young pitchers because they… aren’t trading them?
@ 29,
I think the more interesting thing would be to do “tiny moves of the non rebuild” and analyze every time Kelly Johnson was signed, then traded, Emilio Bonifacio signed, then released, Cade Svickque, whomever. Kind of like the tiny house movement.
36 – Or conversely, AA saw a 90 win team and added a former MVP and perennial 7 WAR guy to it, all while keeping a top ranked farm system intact and allowing the kids to build on their success and take the next step, like Folty did.
@35: Here’s a great comment and response to it on the MLBTR post regarding the Ortega signing:
“This was reported in November, wasn’t it?”
“I’m guessing it wasn’t official. They were waiting on the Nick Markakis discount deal to be finalized to ensure they had the financial flexibility to make this happen.”
@35 – Ortega looks like the kind of player you can build a team around. He’s only a few years removed from an ops of over 1000 with Colorado.
Actually, maybe you could build a church softball team around him. He had his 1000 plus ops in 4 at bats for the Rockies in 2012. Otherwise his hitting has been in Corky Miller territory.
“Or conversely, AA saw a 90 win team and added a former MVP and perennial 7 WAR guy to it”
Who he only was able to sign because he was looking to “rebuild value,” and who almost certainly ain’t coming back in 2020 if he succeeds in doing so. Let me know when the team signs a big name player coming off a spectacular, DL-free season.
Triple A filler.
@43 We have 3 MVP candidates in the lineup.
Your definition of Trying to Win(TM) is “sign Bryce Harper or Manny Machado or bust”. You do realize you’re a JT Realmuto trade away from being dead wrong in your tracks, and any reasonable person would at least say that not trading for Realmuto is not an indication that we’re not Trying To Win(TM).
Sheesh, people. 28 teams are not going to sign Harper or Machado.
Some interesting NRIs. Obviously I don’t think any of these players are candidates to make the roster.
@40
Also, we might simply have some short-term value issues with our pitching prospects, largely making them more valuable to us than they are to other teams. And before a regular season baseball game occurs, it could all change. Gohara, Soroka, and Fried are coming off injuries. Allard’s velocity is down, and you’re sure as heck aren’t going to want to trade him right now unless you’re convinced it’s not coming back. Anderson and Wright are unproven. Touki had peripherals issues. Wilson has a minimal body of work against major league hitters. And of course, all of those situations are not uncharacteristic of pitching prospects (TINSTAAPP and all), and there was an inherent vulnerability to taking this approach to rebuilding. But by the end of ST, some of these issues may easily be alleviated.
If the Braves and Gohara are telling the truth, and he’s indeed lost 30+ pounds and is in The Best Shape Of His Life, 6 weeks of looking good is going to change the organization’s view of the pitching staff. Same thing with Soroka. Same thing with Fried, though he will probably always have concerns over his blisters until he goes at least a year with reoccurrence.
And if they get to the end of Spring Training, and these guys are throwing well, that you indeed have 8-10 pitchers worthy of a rotation spot somewhere. I’m sure one or two at least will be ineffective or injured. I think then AA will be comfortable 1) actually being willing to deal off a really good arm because he knows what he has otherwise and 2) teams will value some of the previously mentioned pitchers more highly.
None of these endeavors to be cautious or get max value for your prospect says “they don’t care about winning because they haven’t signed Bryce Harper on January 28th”.
According to DOB:
“From what I hear, they plan for payroll to increase a little this season (if not at beginning of season then by end) and then move up to middle of MLB payrolls (above $140M) in 2020. We’ll see if that transpires.”
So whatever they do prior to spring training, there’s an intent to raise payroll even further during the season. He can be wrong about that $140M in 2020, but that’s at least a nice figure to expect.
If Corbin Clouse isn’t able to make the team out of spring training, he can always go back to being the lead singer for every band at the Vans Warped Tour.
Barring any more roster moves, there isn’t much competition for the Opening Day roster outside of the last spot in the bullpen. They have 2 off days the first week so they only need 4 starters the first time through the rotation. The position players are set barring Adam Duvall being released.
So any non roster free agents are almost certainly Triple A filler barring injuries.
CF Inciarte
3b Donaldson
1b Freeman l
LF Acuña
RF Markakis
2b Albies
C McFlowers
SS Swanson
bench
UT Camargo
C McFlowers
UT Culberson
OF Duvall
Rotation
1. Folty
2. Gausman
3. Newcomb
4. Teheran
Bullpen
RHP Vizcaino
LHP Minter
RHP O’Day
LHP Venters
RHP Winkler
LHP Biddle
RHP Carle
LHP Freeman
RHP Jackson (out of options)/Sobotka/Toussaint/LHP Fried
When they need a 5th or 6th starter Soroka, Fried, Touissaint, etc. will shuttle back and forth and it will probably happen in the bullpen with guys who have options.
Is it too early to place bets that Teheran will, in fact, be the 5th starter and not the 4th?
I think now is the right time to work in a young pitcher at #4. They’re likely going to spread the innings across 6 or 7 starters, but I can’t see any valid reason to hand starts to Teheran that could go to a future TOR starter.
I don’t see Snitker taking Teheran’s job unless (or until) he’s bad and one of the young starters proves he is better. He’ll start the season in the rotation because he is a Proven Veteran ™.
Perhaps the hope is that Albies takes a significant step forward OBP-wise and plays his way into the leadoff spot. It’s an uninspiring strategy to me to roll with Inciarte and hope for the best. Meanwhile Acuna, who thrived there, is moved down to 4th.
Against righties, I think Ender is a perfectly cromulent lead-off hitter. I also don’t place a ton of importance on who happens to hit first in the game up and above the fact that they’ll get a few more PAs a year.
Against lefties, he’s unplayable anywhere in the order, so unless he improves his career ~.650 OPS against lefties, he probably gets platooned against lefties. And then the concern over him leading the team in PAs is mitigated. Remember, AA was so aware of and concerned with Ender’s production against LHP that he traded future Cy Young winner Matt Wisler to address the problem. He’s not going to mess with this.
I’d roll with Ronnie and Fredward 1-2, Donaldson 3 and Flowcann 4. Then the rest almost doesn’t matter — Albies 5, Outciarte 6, Neck/Camargo 7, Swansby 8, Pitcher 9.
Rob, you are using the word “perfectly” — I do not think this word means what you think it means.
@45
Except neither of them are signed yet, so it’s pretty clear that if we really wanted either one, we’d go get them. This “not everyone can sign them” line of thinking is left over from the days when teams…you know, actually tried to sign players.
@48
Yeah, so they’re already starting in on the “next year we’ll spend money…we promise” bullshit after having already claimed that about this year last year. Anybody who doesn’t look at that as an utter crock needs their head examined.
@56 Emphasis on “cromulant”. 😀 If he can conjure up his .350 OBP against righties but also make sure he doesn’t get thrown out before Freddie gets up, I think that’s fine.
I suspect that vs LHP that Snit may flip Albies to leadoff and Inciarte to the bottom of the order. (Or play Acuña in CF and Duvall in the lineup)
I can’t see how they’re not going to try to get Camargo in a corner outfield spot. It makes no sense not to. Otherwise Camargo just won’t get the PAs. I hope we see Camargo in the OF at some point in the first few Spring Training games. What a weapon.
Plus, why not Camargo in the lead-off spot? .349 OBP lat year. Extra-base power. Or Kakes.
I suspect that Camargo will get time in the corner OF as well.
But didn’t we snub Teheran from making any starts in the playoffs? We already know we’ve got four starters proven to be more effective than Julio. Yes, I’m counting on Soroka, and at this point it’s better to reserve Teheran for eating innings rather than blocking superior arms coming up from the minors.
I’m not saying what I would do. I’m saying what Snitker will do.
And they didn’t start a kid in Game 4. They brought back Folty on 3 days rest.
I wonder if we’ll ever find out what that “70% done” trade deal was.
I guess we won’t know until we see, but I’ve seen some scouts reports cited that say Camargo lacks the foot speed to play the OF.
I honestly don’t know that it matter much what they run out defensively in RF when you have Acuna and Ender covering the two spots. However, if you’re taking Ender out against lefties, Acuna’s going to be flanked by Nick and (under this scenario) Camargo.
Camargo appears to be terrible at using his speed on the basepaths, per this TC article:
https://www.talkingchop.com/2018/9/18/17866544/atlanta-braves-sprint-speed-and-baserunning-value
But playing below-average corner outfield doesn’t require a ton of foot speed, with Inciarte in center and Acuna in left. The real question I have is whether his bat is actually worth the defensive hit of playing him out of position.
Here’s a stupid question: should we consider going after Adam Jones? His bat is still pretty good, and most of his negative value comes from being played out of position in center field when he really doesn’t have the range for it any more. He’d be good in right field. Weirdly, he has a strong reverse platoon split over the course of his career — he hits righties better than lefties, and so does Neck Kakes, so he’s not a perfect platoon caddy. But I don’t believe in Neck as a starter at all. I buy Jones as a starter.
To address your real question, I don’t think anyone can know the answer to that except those who’ve seen Camargo try to play OF. I notice the Braves played him out there twice (ever) for a total of 2 innings. It would indeed seem that it has not been worth it, especially with Culberson available.
Camargo is a bat I would hate to see relegated to the bench because he was better than half our lineup. Unfortunately, I think he’s a defensive downgrade at those positions.
@66 Yyyyeah, Adam Jones doesn’t look like a great fit for the Braves. He is a vet and would presumably like to play more or less every day, and he doesn’t hit either lefties or righties particularly well.
As you note, Jones is not a lefty-masher… .291/.314 /.400 vs. lefties last year and .277/.313/.427 vs. righties. Kakes produced .284/.343/.422 vs. lefties and .304/.379/.450 vs. righties, better across the board than Jones. Kakes has also rated better defensively than Jones the last two years, believe it or not.
If the Braves want to run out their best lineup in the OF against a lefty starter, that may be Camargo or Duvall in place of Ender and/or Kakes.
It’s an assumption without evidence that you can take an infielder and slap them into the OF and assume they’ll be just fine. Even really good defensive infielders who are fit and athletic. It’s a completely different instinct.
@69 That’s definitely true, but we really need it to work, so I would think he’s going to be given every opportunity to do it. It would seem their built their roster around this by signing Markakis and Donaldson, wouldn’t you think? And we don’t need him to be a Gold Glover. It wasn’t that Chipper wasn’t a great LF; it was that Vinny Castilla had a terrible year at the plate.
By the way, look at Vinny Castilla’s stats. What were they thinking? He’s already in decline before he leaves Colorado, he craters in Tampa Bay, recovers slightly in Houston, so at age 34, yeah, let’s sign him and stick our Hall of Famer in LF. I guess his recovery in Houston the year before as a league average hitter in a park that favors right-handers must have really been the compelling reason to do all that.
Vinny Castilla was an elite defender at 3B. They thought he would hit enough to balance it out. Also, we didn’t have a LF anyway.
As for what we’ve “built our roster around,” I will tell you what I think is the case sometime around the final week of spring training. I think when AA describes Camargo as “our Marwin Gonzalez,” that’s what he means. Gonzalez started 65 games in the OF last year for Houston, by far his career high off the INF.
I would think the team will do quite well if Camargo got as many as 65 games in the outfield. That would signify that he could competently handle the OF, but that means Markakis and Ender see as little LHPs as possible, and Markakis probably doesn’t clear 400 PAs. That would be great and in line with what I’m thinking will happen.
Remember, this team was 10th in runs scored. They’ve added Donaldson. They’ll add a full year of Acuna. Dansby will have to get better or hit the bench, and he’s at least healthy right now. Camargo is right there. Markakis will get less PAs. Ozzie is a year older. Culberson will get less PAs (I doubt he replicates 2018). No Joey Bats or Ryan Flaherty. We lose Suzuki, the only real detriment. Those are quite a few net wins.
I still think we’ll have a solid relief pitcher and either a starting pitcher or outfielder signed by May 1. I’m not ready to start estimating the games and plate appearances until I’m convinced that we have completed our major moves.
Fredi’s getting his learn on:
Maybe they’ll teach him how to double-switch.
[Insert joke about Fredi trying to solve math problems based on gut feelings and always picking “b” on multiple choice questions because it has “the hot hand” here.]
New post.
If you just pick C all the way down, you’ll likely pass.