Malike

That's fair, I'll bring the Kahlua.

I mean, this sounds great, but you never let someone spend whatever they want. That's a terrible business plan.

If this deal falls through, I will find you, and I will unalive you, Moose.

Inasmuch as every team has a front-end starter because someone has to start game 1 of the season.

I can't believe that Hector Neris is being called an elite back of the bullpen guy. His FIP last year was 3.83 and xFIP 4.45. In 10 years in the bigs he's been worth 7 WAR. In which multiverse does that suggest elite back of the pen pitcher?

I'd recommend you go back and read the thread about Teixeira, Mark.

Me neither, though, it's not his fault, he should have been given a real chance. It's not like he's been bad in MiL.

What's even more hilarious is a few weeks ago they kept saying that Ortiz wouldn't even be in the top 100 when the list came out. Of course, they'll never eat crow, but they aren't that sharp over there.

I think the hangup is trading Henderson for a SP. Strider and Kirby are both frontline starters, but they play once a week. It's a tough pill to swallow losing a guy that can help you every day for a pitcher.

Being the 14th ranked MLB prospect for all of 2023 is pretty highly regarded.

Let's not forget the guys who were mediocre who might improve. There are too many variables to say that the "studs" from last year might regress, there also might be improvement from others.

I get that Cowser looked bad for all of 61AB in 2023, but the dude had a .937 OPS and slugged .520 with an OBP of .417 at 23 years old. He gets an awful lot of shade on the Hangout. I think he's going to be an above-average ML player both with the bat and glove and I was as hard on him as anyone while he was on the big team.

I do agree they would benefit greatly from another back-end RP.

We can't even act like Bautista was a sure thing to replicate 2023.

To the Sox fans here, I do think it's funny that they think Mayo isn't even enough. They clearly have no idea about our prospects. Not that I think Elias would ever entertain Mayo for Cease, rightfully so. They just think our prospects are bad, lol.

I don't know even if he was healthy this year, that Bautista replaces Bautista. He had an incredible year, it would have been a hard act to follow and he did blow 8 saves.

They are doing what they do. They use these projections for O's pitchers, but when used against Cease they want to look at FIP and fWAR and other metrics instead. Clown show.

The one that got away!

Sure, Diaz deferred nearly 27M dollars until 2042, the Mets love paying players for decades. Hader comes out ahead by 1.5M dollars or so. He thought he was getting 100M+ according to talking heads on the radio for the past couple of months. Still, 5/102 looks better than 5/95.

I'm sure it mattered, the market wasn't paying him Diaz money. He'll fit right in with that team, I'd rather not pay 95M to a prima donna who doesn't want to take the ball when he's asked.

Hader got less money than Diaz. I hope his ego can recover, I heard he wanted more by even a dollar according to MLB Radio chatter.

Given in this scenario we win the WC series, the 2nd option would be a no brainer for me, and probably the team. If you win the division and take the ALDS to game 5, that's all you get. You have the potential for 8 games with the latter option. My definition of a successful season is making the playoffs and shooting your shot there. I suspect the D-Backs fans think they had a successful season winning 80-something games last year.

I'd probably opt for a minimum of 5 playoff games vs. 3, personally.

Cease clearly has value and would upgrade the rotation, but don't buy the nonsense that he's a number 1 starter. He's not.

I think the 89/90 win threshold for that to happen is out of reach this year. Even with the best pitcher in baseball, Dylan Cease, anchoring the rotation.