Doctor Gast

OK, I vented. I'll give this FO the benefit of the doubt. FO fetish of hoarding big bats and focusing on "moonshots" has killed Simmons and Sano careers offensively with Jeffers on the way. Yankees has the same theory and it spoiled Gallo, we aren't going to help him. It absolutely make no sense to have 6 LH hitting corner OFers. Are we trading 3 of them? Kepler, Larnach and Kiriloff we'd selling low; Gordon we absolutely need to sub Buxton (don't be deceived Gallo can't play CF); That leaves our Wallner. There's a lot of interest in Kepler is there any way we can recoup his projected value? Still that makes Gallo very redundant, especially at $11MM. It otherwise makes no sense and it better be one heck of a trade. FO good luck because I can't fathom any such trade.

We need MLB INF depth desperately, we don't even have an INF utility player yet. I was hoping that this FO would pick a SS to platoon with Farmer via trade. Farmer would then be utility/ SS platoon. But gauging by their last action I wonder if they really know what this team needs. I'm afraid that what happened in '21 where we had very little OF proven depth. Quickly everything became unraveled where they threw Celestino into the fire long before he was ready and got burnt. The same scenario could appear in the INF this season & Lee could very likely come unto the scene long before he's ready with similar results. Under the ideal situation, Lewis should be the 1st to enter the '23 season because he is the future leader of the team and I'd like to see Lee to be seasoned a little more in the minors. Lee, Martin & Lewis could make a pretty good future trio

Bingo

He can play CF? that's BS. You can stick anyone in CF, that doesn't mean he can play there. So FO please burn this out of your mind, so you don't make this disaster worse. I have to say this FO is clueless. They can't make a good deal unless someone comes & slaps them along side the head and hand it to them & hope they don't drop it which sometimes they do.

I think that you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not piling on the FO for anything that they have done recently or what's rumored. I'm just saying how ridiculous these rumors are that Dan Hayes is reporting about. I have no idea where he's getting his stuff from. I absolutely hope that there isn't an once of truth in what's he has been saying and that this FO will do a good job this off season.

When I read Dan Hayes, my eyes rolled. Because he's the one who scooped that Gray & Maeda are drawing interest headline. I was wondering what he was coming up with next. JT, Gallo, Pollock and Klingenbeck are really winners. Where is he getting his info? If there is any truth to what he's saying then IMO this FO has lost it.

Thanks Jack, I agree with you that discipline is very important in FA & extentions. LAD has a lot of money but they are very disciplined when it comes to FA, this off season they did sign any big name FA, This year was very crazy with the # of years & total salary, maybe Judge set the mood. On the other hand if you look at CO a few years back, they had a very good MLB team. They extended their core with very generous contracts & signed mediocre players to very generous contracts. The following offseason when it was time fill their holes, they had 0 money to spend. For one Arenado was very put out. The team has floundered since then with no hope in sight. IMO player evaluation in drafting, promoting & trading should be our foundation along with player development. FA should be considered only as supplementary, being responsible when we are amidst of negociations. I don't want to end up like CO.

Swanson isn't Correa, so we shouldn't think he unattainable. There's a lot of team that could be in on him. Most of them don't want to enter the bidding war but when things settle down. Braves, Dodgers, BOS, LAD, Cubs, Twins and maybe even the Yankees could be in the hunt. And there are teams that have a SS but want to upgrade and those that want Swanson as a 3B or 2B, that have the $ to spend.

Drawing interest is floating out offers. No offers were mentioned because they weren't any worth mentioning. Quoting DJL44 "Gray is eligible for a qualifying offer. Any trade for him has got to be pretty highly priced. Maeda will likely be worth more at the trade deadline than he is right now." Me saying saying "slam the phone down", should not be taken literately because I don't encourage rudeness. I'm saying that we need pitching so why do we want to trade 2 SP at their low value for a bunch of lottery tickets? Maeda has negative trading value, do you know what that means? That means if you want to trade him in exchange you receive one poor lottery ticket & pay the other team around $5MM to take him. In this scenario this FO should have absolutely no interest what so ever in trading these 2 SP, there is no way a trade involving these 2 can benefit us. Those are the facts. Also I'm not interested in trading Kepler for a bunch of lottery tickets either.

Looking back a year ago, we were much worse with a lot of holes. OF- about the same but with less experience INF- Polanco, Arraez, Donaldson & Sano Catcher- Garver, Jeffers & Rortvedt (we later lost Garver & Rortvedt ) Rotation- rookies Ryan, Ober + Bundy BP- Rodgers, Alcala, rookies Jax & Duran (we lost Rodgers for Pagan & Alcala to IL) This year our biggest hole right now is finding a platoon SS w/ Farmer to hold down the fort until Lewis is ready.

I was thinking more Carlos Carrasco & Luis Guillorme + $3.5MM for Emilo Pagan

Absolute idiotic terrible rumor, Makes absolutely no sense in any way, It makes me wonder where Hayes got his info. Most likely from teams that want to pick them up on the cheap. FO should slam the phone on any offers like this. That garbage should not have been printed.

Crawford could be an option, if SF pays down his salary, He had a great '21 but it seemed like the only one he had in his career so far. Maybe being his contract year he'll be motivated to try to regain that '21 year. Who knows? Crawford wouldn't be my 1st option but he is an option. We should be open to all viable options

LOL, You hit nail on the head, Nick. Quite a gamut of reactions that fans expressed to deal with this news. Thank you for giving us that platform to do just that. Hopefully most of us (including FO) will get thru the process pretty quickly to face reality & deal with the problems that lie ahead of us.

We had a chance to get Rowson back but they chose not act on him. Now he's some assistant hitting coach for DET. We don't want to coach players how to hit, we want to coach them to try to hit moonshots. I think that's what they think what people want to come to the games to see, not win games.

I'm glad you didn't say, sign a FA SS short term as a pivot option. We had a much better chance to sign Correa than Swanson. FAs are too expensive I'd rather go with Lewis long term. That means I'd like to pivot on trading for short term SS. As I've stated a few times before., my choice is Luis Guillorme. Now pitching? I agree with some that say we have enough, but with our present philosophy we are far short. Can we land Rodon? Do we want to land Rodon? Is Rodon already on his way to NYY? Not crazy with what's left. FA SPs contracts are ridiculously high. Trading for SPs? I'm in favor of trading for Lopez. As I've stated before my 1st choice is a Kepler/ Marquez trade, CO is difficult to figure out even if this is a win/ win deal, they may balk. So Lopez may be our best option. With the extra $ burning a hole in our pockets why not find a RH OFer power bat?

Here I'll admit that I was wrong about the Met rumor. It was strictly a bunch of smoke to get SF to ante up

Now we need to pivot, Swanson? if you think we had a chance with Correa we have 0 chance to sign Swanson. Royce Lewis needs to be our long term SS. So we need a place holder, FA isn't the answer. Right now with Farmer as SS, we have absolutely zero 3B, SS, 2B depth. Do you have any idea what that means? We had a taste of that when Polanco was on the IL where we had Gordon & Arraez subbing, that was terrible! And that's having Correa & the "shift" to help us, this year we have no "shift", no Correa and no Urshela. That is a gigantic hole. Those who say "we have Farmer, we're good", have no understanding of the ramifications of their statement. Miranda has very little MLB experience at 3B, we don't know how he'll hold up. Let's say he doesn't hold up or he gets hurt, who do we have to sub him? Arreaz? Maybe if he gets a ton of work in ST to improve his hands (if he's around). Farmer? He's above avg. fielding & mashes LHPs but sucks against RHPs (which would be 70% of the time). If he gets hurt who do we have to sub him? Polanco? then we have Polanco at SS & Gordon (or Arraez) at 2B, being well below par at SS & 2B. Polanco a stalwart at 2B, at SS his ankles can't support the position which show up in his offense & makes his defense worse. As you can see we not only have 0 3B, SS 2B depth but also our core is fragile. Our situation could very easily become disasterous & sabotage our season, if not dealt with. The hole that Correa was suppose to fill is still there. Who can fill it? I have 3 options, I'll give you my top choice, that's Luis Guillorme (NYM). Guillorme is a utility player who plays behind Lindor. He's profiled as a SS, he has a slick glove, good hands & good baseball sense and has proved that if given a some what chance to play regularly he can hit. As a frustrated SS, I'm confident that if he's given an opportunity to start regular at SS, he'll rise to the occasion much like Hoerner & Kim have done (my other 2 choices). He'd be a true platoon to Farmer that should at least start 70% of the time. He'll be cheap & should be easy to obtain. Yes, a RH power hitting OFer would be nice and a frontline SP (under current philosophy) is a necessity and Guillerme can wait but he should be our #1 priority.

Not surprised, I would have been more surprised (&elated) if he had signed with us. But we had high hopes that he would, that is what makes it disappointing. With all the creative contracts that were offered, I still say they should have offered him an inflated contract, loaded with incentives. Where he could max out at $40MM (in any case he'd earn it) and realistic he could earn $35 on the top end of the contract & $25MM at the bottom with a safty net of $20MM if something serious happened. For $400/ 10 yrs. Then he could save face for taking a realistically lesser contract & keep his & Boras egos inflated like the contract.

3 teams serious about Correa- MN, Cubs, SF, are not contenders. LAD & NYY didn't make sense, NYM don't make sense because of the tax & no SS need, I have heard Mets rumors for some time now. It seems that Cohen is crazy enough to do it. I am more concerned about the Mets because they are a contender and IMO that's what Correa has been waiting for.

tough to do with a pitch clock

IMO with Vazquez superior game calling & controlling the baserunners, they'll all want to pitch to him instead of Jeffers.

Wished we had him last year. Vasquez wants to be the main guy, which is great, Less Jeffers catches the better.

I believe that's a possibility

Wow, I love it when a FO sees a need & goes out there makes it happen when there seems to be no way. Yeah with so many teams looking for catchers, the supply just got a lot smaller. The Twins needs to wake up! The price on the rest of available catchers just went up! If they had set the floor with Narvaez and got an upgrade from Jeffers. They could've made a killing on Jeffers.