I think it applies just fine…. but last year’s fWAR for guys who all over performed is not the # that people are paying for. Teams aren’t that dumb.
Yes.
I looked at Fangraphs, sorry, which has him as average, or fringe average, when accounting for positional adjustment. I guess that's because they use UZR.
And I have enough faith that one of Campbell and Grissom will hit to think that we don't really need to balance the offense as much as people are thinking we do.
The answer is likely that once they see how things shake out, they ship off a subsidized Yoshida to someone desperate for hitting. And there is almost always someone desperate for hitting.
Ultimately he is not a free agent and I don't think the Cubs will trade him so we will probably never know how teams value a 30 year old Suzuki. Obviously 4/80 is more in total dollars but the AAV is almost the same. I tend to think of it like every FA has a "natural" term and AAV value (5 years, $20M for Suzuki IMO) and if a team wants to lower the term then the AAV has to go up, but not dramatically so.
It seems pretty disingenuous to post Steamer projections for those 4 as proof they are not 3+WAR players and not post Suzuki's Steamer projection of 2.0 fWAR.
I'm not talking about Suzuki. Simply that your argument based on last year's fWAR to somehow show $/fWAR doesn't apply to DHs is strange. Those guys over performed, but they don't have the age or track record to get paid based on those seasons alone.
Ok, I understand your argument now but disagree. Mostly because using Steamer projections as any kind of evidence of a players future value is shaky at best.
i suspect I’ll be saying this a lot but the whole point of major league talent is it’s major league talent and though I’m not as bullish on Duran as some, it severely underrates the steps he took towards development and flourishing in the majors. Jackson Holliday looked like a can’t miss and he’s still far too young to write off and will deservedly have a long leash, but prospects are just that until they’re not.
It has to keep being pointed out but if Campbell is not going right into the starting lineup, he's not getting added to the 40-man roster. He's not a guy you start the clock on and then put on the bench. They have Hamilton and Romy and Sogard and Rafaela that can fill that role.
That's why I said maybe he starts out in AAA and then comes up. I should have been more clear.
This will likely be sorted out in ST. I think 2B is Grissom's job to lose. If he completely face plants and Campbell rakes, they'll find a 40 man spot for him. If they both tear up the Grapefruit league, Campbell may well be the opening day LF, with Rafaela the super U guy and either Romy or Hamilton opening at AAA.
The exact opposite, IMO. The Sox business plan seems to be to make sure they’re getting surplus value from contracts or at least limiting their downside risk. That leads them to put a lot more stock in younger players, who are controllable, but will also have extra value. They’re also more likely to be healthy, which I think is a big part of their strategy. They haven’t gone after big, old names, despite the media linking them to these players (which to me is just lazy reporting); if they had then we’d be looking at Bergman or Arenado on the team.
I’m thinking a full-strength version of the 2025 team will look something like this and will be pretty damn good:
I guess your argument is that your personal projections are better than the ones on Fangraphs? OK... maybe? My default response would be that's unlikely but perhaps you are really good at this.
I'm not severely underrating the steps he took. I'm just saying these guys had much better and more impressive track records at a younger age. That can lead to early success of the sort a lot of young guys are having.
I expect it's his handedness and foot speed, especially as a compliment to Grissom (or Campbell) if a 2B platoon is the way they want to go. I have both Romy and Hamilton on my projected bench to start the year. But I'm also not expecting Campbell or Anthony to break camp with the big club, so Rafaela will be starting in the outfield rather than fulfilling a bench spot.
Do you care to make any kind of argument as to why you believe Teoscar Hernandez will not continue to be a 3 WAR player or why you believe Steamer projections are an accurate predictor of the future? I have spent some time laying out an argument and for you to respond with essentially "Nope, Steamer is right" is dismissive and not really furthering the conversation.
I never once said defense gets paid better than offense. I said players that provide value with only their bats typically get paid less than players that provide value with both bat and glove. Players that only provide value with their glove get paid peanuts.
I don't rank Hamilton ahead of Romy. I see Hamilton as a 2B only guy and I'm semi-bullish on Grissom sticking there. I like how he looked after getting healthy finally towards the end of the year and if he doesn't stick there, I'd way prefer to see Campbell there. Hamilton IMO should be traded for some more pitching depth/relief arm. Romy also has played some 3B, SS and 1B so for short term, he's a good corner backup IF and Rafaela as MI backup.
Because I tend to favor people who do this for a living over random internet posters who think they have figured out a better way? Feels a bit like a patient Dr. Googling his or her way into the doctors office and thinking they know best. Perhaps I'm biased.
It’s hard to take a projection system seriously that predicts that Wilyer Abreu will defend like Jose Abreu in RF next year..
I'm oblivious here: is there a human touch to projections at all? I thought they were just plugging all of the numbers into a spreadsheet and printing the results, and the calculations are trying to get the league as a whole closest to replicating past results without much attention paid to individual players. Surely no fangraphs employee was involved in projecting Story to play a full season while putting up a lower defensive counting value than any of his three Boston seasons, or Duran losing three quarters of his baserunning value over the winter.
I mean, a human makes that spreadsheet originally and the results end up close to meaningless, if you keep an eye on how reality compares to projections.
They very well could be the most improved team of the winter (at this point in time). Going from a rotation of Houck, Bello, Crawford, Pivetta and I'll say Criswell with FItts in AAA to Crochet, Houck, Bello, Buehler, Giolito, while still having Crawford, Criswell, Fitts and adding Priester to that is massive. It's almost like something changed and the Red Sox realized that starting pitching is an important part of baseball again, or something.
I do. He just put up 3.4 bWAR as a rookie while earning a Gold Glove in the most challenging RF in MLB. He makes a paltry $750K and is under team control for 5 seasons. Trading him for a MiL catcher makes the ML roster worse.
Someone is going to get traded. They have too many good players and not enough great ones.
Sure. That doesn't mean you short-change yourself by trading a very valuable major league piece for minor league spare parts.
I don't think anyone is talking about trading Abreu for "minor league spare parts." People are talking about trading him for a high-end catching prospect like Drake Baldwin, i.e., to replace Teel as the catcher of the future.
I’m in no way suggesting trading him for spare parts. I’m suggesting an upgrade to the catching situation in a creative way. Here is my post about it from a few days ago.
He doesn't have Anthony's ceiling of everyday star or Rafaela's floor of useful utility.
Can you point me to the too many good outfielders they have? Feel free to use the entire system.
I understand your use of "utility" here, but Abreu seems to have established a floor well above Rafaela's.
Honestly, I think they're both fairly fungible MLB players. Not meaning they're not worthless, but they're another 2 players on the roster that have demonstrated no ability over the course of their MLB careers in their entirety to handle both LHPs and RHPs, meaning in my mind they're just kind of interchangeable depth options. I don't think either one should be starting for a big market team. The roster isn't big enough to platoon everyone - you need some guys that are useful against both sides of the mound and neither Gonzalez or Hamilton are.
While I tend to agree with this, I'm admittedly leery of players that kind of stink in AA and then take off in AAA. It's seemed for a while (at least to me, and I admit to not having the data to back this up) that AAA has become more and more just a place to stash guys that aren't really good enough to be in the majors but in many ways not real prospects either. Which I think is why you see some incredibly gaudy numbers - as well as the fact that the PCL is basically hitting on the moon, and the IL has been trending more and more that way.
"High end minor league catcher" doesn't automatically evoke "top catching propsect" to my eye, and having to remember every post everyone ever makes is a tough way to have a conversation. Baldwin is interesting. Thing is, Breslow trading Teel away suggests to me that he didn't see him as a vital piece and/or he has confidence in Wong's ability to be a long term solution at catcher. Either way, I don't imagine he's going to trade his starting RF for a new catching prospect. I suspect Baldwin can be had for less than Abreu.
