ChosenOne21

Elias must have liked the spin rate. Given the strength of our bullpen, I doubt we hang on to him

I'm fine with Bassitt, but I'd prefer Rodon or Senga. Can't say the rest of the names excite me much

I think someone, somewhere posted something about how the Orioles weren't considering Maverick Handley as the MLB backup catcher out of spring training, and I can't for the life of me figure out why not. Can he really hit that much worse than Bemboom and Chirinos? People were saying Handley was the best defensive catcher in the system when ADLEY was still there. That's got to count for something, right?

I think Beltran deserves to be in there. 70.1 career WAR is nothing to sneeze at. K-Rod probably not.

I love Hardy, but he's not a Hall-of-Famer

Seth Johnson and Darrell Hernaiz feels right here, though I can't articulate why

Tony, I love everything you do. This is in no way a criticism, but why list out raw power as a second grade? Isn't raw power basically how good of a show you can put on in BP, or what we think your power would be in a perfect world where you put it all to use? Doesn't it only matter what you can get to in a game? Why not raw speed and raw arm as well?

Sure, someone could believe Holliday is a 7 win SS and Rodriguez is a 6 win pitcher. But that's nearly pure speculation about Holliday (he'll almost certainly be good, but projecting 7 wins for a guy who barely got his feet wet in low A and didn't dominate is quite a hot take), whereas with Rodriguez we have years of data and he's producing in AAA. I think you have to value that increased certainty more than an (albeit good) lottery ticket.

Dropping Rodriguez to 3 would be absolutely nuts, IMO. People are dinging him way too much for a non-throwing arm injury that caused him to miss two months and not being quite as sharp when he came back. No reason to believe that is a long-term issue. #1 and #2 have to be Henderson and GRod. Henderson has done nothing to drop him as low as #3, and Basallo is good, but not #4 in a loaded system good. I'd be shocked if #3 wasn't Holliday and I have a hard time putting Hall all the way down at #11. It pretty much has to be Holliday and Hall.

I'm wondering why you think he won't go more than 3 years. Is it because you think he doesn't think any of the FA pitchers are worth more years? I'm pretty sure the Angelos rule about not signing pitchers long-term is long gone

There's no way Cowser and Ortiz are this low. 9 seems aggressive for Basallo and 10 for Povich, so I'm going with Norby and Kjerstad

Someone is going to give Abreu three years

I can't imagine Ohtani will sign here. DeGrom might if we put the biggest offer on the table

Why does everyone think Abreu is signing for 1-2 years? He just put up a 4 WAR season

If they think he can still start, I'd put him in AAA. If they think he's a reliever, I'd keep him in MLB

33/58. Should have probably had a few more. Apparently I blocked out the fact that Tyler Nevin played nearly 60 games for us

The only hitters who really disappointed this year were Hays and Mountcastle, and if you look at Mounty's batted ball data, he's probably going to improve next year. I don't have a problem with the current hitting coaching

If Urias was worth 3.6 War in 118 games, I'd see if any team is interested in trading for a player who's "good for 5 WAR over 162 games, can play multiple positions, is in his prime, and inexpensive."

It's not that Urias is bad, but if the 3 WAR at 3B was defense, I doubt he'll be a 3 WAR 2B. It's possible, I guess, but we picked the guy off the scrap heap, and it wouldn't shock me if someday soon he turned back into a pumpkin. Defense can be highly erratic year to year and it falls off a cliff fast. I'm not sure the bat is good enough for him to be a regular if that happens

1B Mountcastle 2B Urias SS Mateo 3B Henderson Not the starting infield I'd want, but I'll bet that's opening day. Maybe Vavra gets the nod over Urias, but I doubt it. I sort of doubt Westberg makes the OD roster

Or we could just let Grayson pitch all season and not worry about innings limits. The Verducci effect was disproven, wasn't it?

It's possible he didn't want to run all out on wet grass after a rain delay, too

It really looks to me like Vespi's future is the last guy or second to last guy out of a good bullpen, or random middle reliever in a mediocre one. It wouldn't shock me if we could claim a better reliever than him off waivers at some point. Heck, we did it a couple of times last offseason.

So baseball is a horrible product this year, but if there were 1.5-2% more hits baseball wouldn't be boring? We're talking about maybe one more hit per game here.

4th round picks dream of having a career like Matusz's. If he turns into Matusz, I could be okay with that