smg58

Starts the year at St. Lucie, spends the summer getting to know Coney Island backwards and forwards, nice work if you can get it. Doesn't crack the top 50 in any 2022 top prospect lists, but comes close enough to keep the team optimistic about him.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Good grief. If he was so bad at hiding it then obviously a lot of people were looking the other way. What do you do though, if you have a co-worker who outranks you and is behaving badly? I know what the right thing to do is, but it's not at all an easy thing to do. I'm worried that people who DID outrank Callaway knew.

Pretty hard for the commissioner of baseball to ignore or forget who employs him. Because if the commisioner had the power to make unilateral changes to the way service time is calculated to thwart the way the owners can delay a player's free agency by a whole year by simply manipulating less than one month's worth of service time, that commissioner would be fired the moment those thoughts entered his head. The unspoken words are that a baseball commissioner isn't hired to be neutral and impartial in matters between the union and the owners. This is true, unfortunately, but a savvy commissioner could advocate for the fans at the next CBA in a way that doesn't alienate the owners. He could say something like "The game will benefit if you give a little on this, and I'll get the players to give on something else."

The controversy comes from whether the owners are acting against the team's interest in holding back a player back and getting an extra year of control when he's already better than their other options. The players and owners are never going to be objective about this -- it costs the players money, and the owners are saving money in a way the rules clearly don't prevent. From the fans' perspective -- and the commissioner of baseball, regardless of who employs him, should put the fans' interests first -- they want to know that their team is playing their best players and giving themselves the best chance to win right out of the gate, when every team starts tied and every fan has some hope. You don't endear yourself to your fans when you wait until your team is out of contention to give a potential star (and a potential ticket-seller) the call. (Circumstances were at least a little bit different back then, but I remember how frustrating it was in 1983 to wait to see Darryl Strawberry.) I think the players union needs to demand the service time to be 5 1/2 years instead of six. That eliminates the issue at the start of the season, and if a non-contending team waits until August instead of June to call somebody up, it's less controversial (and the player still starts the next season with the team).

Does this mean that Dominic's nickname is The Bull? Because I'd be 100% for that.

I've got no problem with seeing if he can handle it. Right now the bar is JD Davis, which is not high. It's worth pointing out that The Fielding Bible has Smith in left field going from -5 runs saved in 90 innings in 2018, to -2 in 219 innings in 2019, to 0 in 161 innings last year. So I don't think getting him out of the outfield is a matter of need; he hurts the team quite a bit less in left than Davis does at third.

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: No they didn't have to win the world series, just the one play in the regular season that resulted in the largest percentage increase that they could win the world series. I also suspected the Ball on the wall play but wasn't precise enough. Look at the video-- and I'm shocked what a terrible center fielder Willie Stargell was. Geez Louise I'm not old enough to remember Stargell as an outfielder. Given how slow he clearly was, I'm amazed he played out there at all. But I think he was playing left and they were pretty heavily shifted on that play. You have to figure 90% of outfielders at least get under that routinely.

I'm kind of curious to know what Kazmir has left in the tank. I doubt he could hold up to a full season of starting, but good lefty arms out of the pen aren't so easy to come by.

The vibe I get from Bauer is that he would make life difficult for everybody, but he'd be particularly difficult towards Stroman and Stroman wouldn't sit there quietly and take it (nor would I want him to). In hindsight, I could have written what I said much better.

Are they still on the hook for the $1M? And if it was their intent all along to sign two right-handed centerfielders with more upside, why did they bother tendering Heredia a contract in the first place? Or maybe they simply overestimated the market for that type of player?

If I'm the manager I'm already calling a moratorium on responding to Bauer in any public way. Take the high ground and focus on baseball. I have to think that putting Bauer and Stroman in the same rotation would have been toxic from day 1. It's possible that Bauer and Syndergaard could have come to an uneasy truce, but even that is not a guarantee. And we're three days into spring training. And there is no way Bauer could avoid (assuming he'd even try) getting in the spotlight of the New York media. It would have been a circus. Hell, it could still be a circus and he is not even here.

Two years at $20M and, oh great, another player option!

And we were all against it at the time. So much of successful GMing comes down to knowing which prospects (both yours and around the league) are overvalued and which are undervalued.

The Padres just gave Fernando Tatis Jr. a 14-year, $340M extension that will keep him in San Diego until he's 35. The deal is completely unprecedented for somebody with as little experience as Tatis, but I don't think there is any doubt that it's a win for San Diego IF he stays healthy. I'm sure Jean Soto and Ronald Acuna are following this story closely. And I know the Mets have taken a lot of public flack for trading Jared Kelenic, but I really hope the White Sox enjoyed their 2 1/2 seasons of 0 total WAR they got from James Shields.

I'm going to go with Franklin Kilome inheriting a bullpen spot by default and running with it.

Maybe I'd be in for a year on Walker, but BMLs point on his health is a very valid one (and he wasn't all that durable before then, either).

Oh great, we gave Pillar a player option. He's still available a week before spring training, and he needed a player option.

They're better but they could have done more. They needed more bullpen help before Lugo's injury, and that's embarrassing given the resources that have been devoted to the pen, but it's still true. I don't understand why Rosenthal isn't here already, to be honest; I don't think there is anybody out there at this point who'd help the team more. I think Lucchesi or Yamamoto can hold down the fifth spot well enough until Syndergaard is ready, so I see less urgency there. The Lindor trade was great -- especially getting Carrasco thrown in at a total price that would have been acceptable for Lindor alone -- but they still had the resources to do much more in the free agent market than they did. In particular, they seemed to zero in on Bauer to the point where there was no plan B. That is frustrating and disappointing, and will be a bone of contention if we come up one player short.

Have we now officially employed every mediocre glove first righthanded centerfielder in the league? Guys who lose their defensive value when they reach 30 generally don't get it back. Last year's stats were inflated by a high BABIP. He's a good bet to regress. But I guess if you corner the market on mediocre CFs, it increases the chance of having one who exceeds expectations.

There is value to be had in relief pitchers right now.

Jay Bruce signs a minor-league deal with the Yankees. If his criminally bad BABIP from the last two seasons normalizes, he could make a positive contribution for them.

There are a lot of guys in the pen that I don't trust enough to justify sinking Brach's cost before Spring Training. And that was true before Lugo got hurt. Now granted, the logic of giving somebody like him (or even Betances) a player option totally escapes me, but the bottom line is that he's already been paid for. Unless somebody is offering us something for him, we might as well see what he has.

Lugo was the only reliever I didn't have apprehensions about. (I haven't seen Trevor May pitch, Diaz has as much talent as anybody but I still don't trust him further than I can throw him, and the rest are AAAA at this point.) The good news is he'll likely still play most of the season, and our small army of questionable relievers might sort itself out in the meantime with a couple outperforming median expectations.

Neither Lindor nor Arenado were traded at a cost that the acquiring team would consider painful, so who knows? Chapman is the one third baseman in Arenado's league in terms of defense. And his OPS+ values are only a little bit behind Arenado's. On the other hand, I really don't like the way his walks were way down and his strikeouts way up last year. His ISO was up, and he may have been overswinging, but that is not a good look. Perhaps his mechanics were off (which can in principle be corrected), or perhaps pitchers figured him out (which would be a problem). But I'd need some reassurance that we aren't getting a .276 OBP with a deadened ball in Citi Field. There are some drop-offs that look like injuries or a small sample size, but I'm worried there is a red flag here.

I guess both teams decided the centerfield grass was greener on the other's field.