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BornOrange

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Posts posted by BornOrange

  1. Here's an SB Nation article about Dallas Keuchel.

    MLB Daily Dish - The Tricky Part About Signing Dallas Keuchel

    Spoiler

    Dallas Keuchel is still on the open market. Today is March, 15th, the season starts on March 28th, and one of the best pitchers (two, actually) in this year’s class is still unsigned. That’s not great.

    This isn’t unprecedented of course. It was almost a year ago, March 20th, 2018 that Alex Cobbreached his deal with Baltimore. Keuchel is most definitely hoping for a Cobb-like outcome. Despite waiting about as long as physically possible, Cobb still ended up getting a plenty respectable 4 years/57 million from the pitching-desperate Orioles. Keuchel would take that deal and sprint out the door at this point.

    But there’s a tricky aspect to a potential Keuchel contract. It’s certainly not unique to just him as other pitchers have found themselves here, but it is worth noting because of the conundrum in which he and his potential suitors find themselves.

    Keuchel wanted a 5-year deal. That’s been reported enough by enough sources that’s it probably safe to call truth. It’s also safe to say, at this point, that isn’t going to happen. Most teams have very little interest in giving any pitcher a 5-year free agent deal, much less those who reside on the wrong side of 30.

    So the conventional wisdom says take a shorter term deal. Keuchel most likely has a few different 2-year deals to choose from but this where the tricky part comes in. If Keuchel isn’t going to get the long term deal he wants, then a 1-year deal makes more sense for him than a 2-year deal. He can bet on himself to have a good year in 2019 and hit the open market next year and still only be 32. Where a 2-year takes him to 33, and makes it that much harder to get the multi-year deal he seeks.

    So you might be saying, okay why doesn’t he just take a 1-year deal then? Well, teams might not be offering a 1-year deal. You see, Keuchel has draft pick compensation attached to his free agency. That means teams are giving up a draft pick to sign him. And because of how the system is set up, those teams lose the same pick regardless of whether they sign him to a 1-year deal, 2-year deal, or 5-year deal. It’s easier to stomach the loss of that pick knowing the player you gave it up for is going to be around for more than 1-year.

    So 1-year deals don’t really make sense for the teams. 2-year deals don’t really make sense for Keuchel. And anything over 3 years most likely isn’t happening. You see the dilemma. There’s a very small sweet spot that can potentially make sense for both parties.

    I’ve said a few times, something around 3/50M makes sense for everyone but, there are teams who don’t even want to go to 3 years. Now he could still sign a 2-year deal if he concedes or a 1-year deal if a team concedes but a contract for him is a bit trickier than it seems.

    We’ll know soon enough.

     

  2. 13 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    No kidding.  For a supposedly elite defensive catcher he was pretty shitty at catching the ball.  That seems like it would be a pretty important skill for a catcher to have.

    I think a lot to do with that is the current emphasis on pitch framing.

    Catchers are trying to avoid excessive glove movement in order to improve on framing, but it is costing them in terms of surrendering more passed balls.

  3. I wanted a grad transfer or a true RB1 even before Brown's medical issue, so now I think it is almost a necessity.

    However, part of me wants to go into the season with what we have now.  The optimist in me sees Ingram becoming the feature back we all hope he can be, Young proving last year was a sophomore slump and proving to be a useful RB2 and short-yardage back, Johnson overcoming injuries and winning the Gaskamp award, and Whittington being the reincarnation of Ramonce Taylor.

    If two or more of those situations come true we could have a special season. I wouldn't put any money on Johnson being able to stay healthy at RB, but he did seem to stay healthy on special teams. Maybe his injury problems are behind him, hopefully for at least one more season. Young wouldn't be the first to have a disappointing second season compared to productive seasons as a freshman, junior and senior. The term "sophomore slump" has been around for a while for good reason.

    We really need at least two guys to play to their potential. The QB is always going to be an option to run in Herman's offense, but if we can get the RB room up to our standard they should take a lot of the running game responsibility from the QB. We want to run Sam (or any QB for that matter) as little as possible throughout the season to save him for the really important games.

    If we can get two good players out of Ingram, Young, Johnson, and Whittington that would be great.

    Adding a fifth player to the group through grad transfer would make finding two good RB's a more likely result though.

  4. 6 hours ago, Sleepygrad said:

     


    Do you even thread title bro?

     

    He was referring to a scene from the series.

    There was a book of all the kingsguard and their accomplishments. Joffrey mocked Jaime for only having half a page, with the last mention being that he had killed the king he was supposed to be guarding. Some other guy had four pages about him.

    • Like 1
  5. Yuli being fully healthy would be a good start. Another thing that will help is having everyone else healthy too. Yuli is very effective batting 5th or 6th in the lineup. However, when he has to move up to 3rd or 4th in the lineup his numbers are not as good.

  6. I really like the proposal to expand the roster. With all the specialization, rosters need to be at 26 or 27 players.

    Also, that would be a pro-active move for the owners to help placate the players union. There are a limited few who are affected by the lack of the huge multi-year contracts that are disappearing, but there are a lot of rank and file union members who would love to see an extra roster spot or two on each team.

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