I'm still fucking on tilt this morning. I need someone to talk me down off the ledge. A serious ballclub that is interested in winning simply cannot run it back with this same offense next year. Look at what we have under contract:
Seager, $31.5m: Fine, he's great
Semien, $26m: We're fucked on this one. Defense is still fine but the bat is well below average at this point and it ain't gonna magically come back for a guy that is 35 years old.
Pederson, $18.5m: LOL, might as well light this money on fire
Adolis, arbitration (probably $8-9m?): Might be the rare guy whose salary actually goes down in arbitration. 2023 was a fluke. We absolutely cannot continue giving this guy 600 PA every year.
Higashioka, $6.7m: This is fine. League average bat. Has yet to surpass 300 PA in his career though.
Heim, arbitration: Below average bat. Again, 2023 looks like a fluke.
Burger, arbitration: Will be cheap, but has not been good.
Jung, arbitration: Will be cheap, but has not been good. Decent defense I suppose. Hitting all downhill since 2023 (see a theme?).
Smith, arbitration: Hooray! A useful utility guy with an above-average bat. Not exactly fearsome at the plate, but useful.
Langford, arbitration: I'm down on him. We're almost 1000 PA into his major league career. At this point, I don't think something will click and he becomes the offensive force we all dreamed he might be. Looks likely to end up as a solid regular that occasionally has scorching hot months. That's very useful, especially while cost-controlled, but a bit disappointing.
Carter, arbitration: Even more down on him. He'd be fine as a 4th OF/platoon bat, except he cannot stay healthy, which is kinda what you need from your 4th OF. I think it's likely that his rookie season ends up being the high point of his career.
So you have 11 hitters under contract. One star (Seager), two that are above average but not killers (Langford, Smith), a league average but part-time C (Higgy), a guy that you can squint and maybe see league average (Jung), and six(!!!) fucking black holes (Semien, Adolis, Heim, Burger, Pederson, Carter). If we go into next season with our main strategy being the hope that those 6 guys will improve, I'm going to rip my fucking hair out.
Edit: Adding more, still pissed. I feel like the mantra this past offseason was "basically all our hitters regressed last year (2024), so the pendulum will swing back the other way". Which, OK, fine, that makes some sense. But now we're in year two of these guys sucking ass. At some point 2023 becomes the outlier, not 2024. The black holes are 34, 32, 30, 29, 33, and 22 years old (the 22-year-old has an extensive history of back injuries). They are not going to magically improve at this point in their careers.
There is absolutely nothing in the minors anywhere close to helping, either. If there were, they'd have been called up this year. Justin Foscue is probably the closest, I'm serious. He's 26 and has been...decent in AAA this year? Not incredible, but fine. Walcott is 19 and has been mostly outmatched at AA this year. He's still at excellent prospect but nowhere close to helping.