Warfarin

Well .. I would love to keep Ohtani and hope this team can go on a run to convince him to stay. But I think they have to definitely gauge his feeling mid-season and if he truly does not sound interested in returning, or it seems doubtful, you absolutely have to trade him. The worst case scenario is to keep him, not make the playoffs, and watch him leave for nothing. Even for 2 months of Ohtani, we could probably get a few top 100 prospects for him. Combine those prospects with signing one of the top FA SPs, and I think we could be fine.

I don't know if Quijada is exactly our closer, but it seems like it is matchup based such that either Quijada or Estevez closes, while the other absorbs another key late inning time frame based on who is due up. As the season wears on, you start to get a better gauge of which relievers you can trust for that given year. Right now, it appears that Quijada, Estevez, Moore, and maybe even Wantz are the relievers we can trust with a lead in the late innings.

Very exciting to see how he has started. He has a lot of potential, but is quite a ways away. There is a lot of SP talent in our farm system. I can't remember the last time I could say that.

Yeah. Like @Inside Pitch, I have somewhat resigned myself that this is probably his last season here, barring a deep run in the playoffs, which seems unlikely. This team does seem to have a lot more talent, and the growth of the farm system since Minasian has taken over has been really impressive. There's a lot of talent coming up soon, and we're even seeing guys promoted now and having some success (O'Hoppe. maybe Neto, as he has surprisingly held his own so far). I feel like had Minasian taken over a few years prior, and been able to grow the farm system a few more years, we'd have a good core of young players, which would have likely helped us in retaining Ohtani. But, that said, I think this team CAN recover if Ohtani does leave. I do hope that Arte permits Minasian to trade him if we are out of contention. Given the Dodgers seem like his preferred destination, maybe we could work something out where they can negotiate a contract with him prior to trading him, which would enable us to get a really good return of players who are MLB ready (a top pitching prospect, a really good LHH to replace Ohtani, and so on). And then use the money to sign either Nola or Urias to replace Ohtani. If the above happens, while it would suck to lose Ohtani, I think this team could probably recover well enough, especially with the farm system developing as it has been.

Quero has played 9 professional games above A ball. There is no way he should be called up. Of all the positions that you should take your time with in terms of player development and staying in the minors, catcher is probably #1. Quero's bat looks great, but most of the value of a catcher comes from his defense, and his reportedly needs considerable amounts of work.

I think Lamb is just a place holder. We had Walsh, Drury, and Urshela as primary coverage options, but Walsh is out, Drury has underperformed, and Urshela has been needed elsewhere. Flint in AA might be worth keeping an eye on. He's being split as a RF/1B so far, it seems. That doesn't solve the problem now, but I think we have some 1B options on the horizon, just no one imminently. If we DFA Lamb and promote Cabbage, but Cabbage shows he isn't MLB ready, then we'd truly have no one. I think teams err on the side of caution when it comes to having some degree of depth. Lamb is okay. He isn't good but he should, hopefully, be adequate enough to buy time for Walsh to get healthy/return, or someone else to emerge.

Given how heavily the bullpen has been used the last few days, they could certainly use another arm for tomorrow. It won't happen, but this would seem to be a convenient moment for Suarez to be "hurt," which would enable us to add a reliever to take his place until the next time a 6th spot is due in the rotation.

And we even have Quero, who is looking really good in AA. So it's quite possible we might have two really good young catchers.

While Quero is playing in a hitters' ballpark, his start has definitely been impressive. He's doing this at age 20 which is remarkable. What I'm curious about is how is he grading out defensively, in terms of pitch calling, framing, etc? All that said, I think we can optimistically hope for an O'Hoppe / Quero combination in the future.

I see a lot of people pushing for Cabbage, but I think it's too soon. His K rates in the minors have been terrible, which suggests he'd be destroyed in the big leagues. He's off to a better start so far this year in terms of making contact, but I think we need a larger sample size before making any move on that front.

Exactly. Renfroe is performing just about as well as Marsh, and we got him for virtually nothing. As said in this same thread - it is very difficult to find good quality catchers. O'Hoppe is a young, solid catcher. As alluded to upthread, we'd likely have a Thaiss/Wallach catching duo right now if we didn't trade for O'Hoppe .. YIKES.

I didn’t realize they still had taxi squads. How many players are on that squad now? Did we have one for the Boston series?

So it appears the player whose playing time has been reduced the most with the promotion of Neto is Rengifo. Urshela is playing daily and Drury close to it. Rengifo, so far, seems to be riding the pine a bit more in comparison.

Right. I'm not saying that they moved Fletcher solely because there's someone they want to add in particular. I agree that they likely removed him simply because they can - nobody was going to claim him, and they didn't really have a need to keep him on the roster. But likewise, I think they could potentially use that extra roster spot to add a useful player, too.

Most teams usually keep their 40 man roster filled. Given that we are now at 39 players, and that we have some team needs (better backup catcher, better relievers, etc), it would seem to behoove the team to use that spot to add a useful player. Combine this with the fact that Minasian is rather aggressive in terms of how he promotes players, it would seem likely that another move is coming.

I think you are moreso trying to reference players that the Angels released/cut, moved on, and had much better success elsewhere. Those instances are very frustrating. In this case, we flipped Marsh for one of Phillies' top prospects - so we were trading one asset for another. This team needed catching depth a lot more than it needed an OF. It hurts to lose a good young player, which we did, but we also gained a good young one back, too, at a position in which we needed a lot more help in. This is likely one of those trades in which both teams do well and are happy with the end result.

With Fletcher, it wasn't really so much the 16 games, but rather the two years before those 16 games, too. He's been so bad offensively for so long now. I think they wanted to give him another shot this spring and see if he improved, but when it was clear he hasn't, I think the team decided it was best to move along. Now he will play regularly in AAA, and who knows, maybe those reps will help him figure something out, although that seems doubtful.

Given it is early in the season and they are in a long stretch of consecutive games, they probably assumed that they would need an extra arm at some point during this stint. But all that said, Minasian is ultra aggressive when it comes to promoting prospects. I wouldn't be shocked to see an out-of-the-blue promotion occur.

What's cool about this too is Perry is basically admitting his mistake rather readily. He was the one who signed Fletcher to his contract extension, and 2 years later, he is basically pulling the plug and admitting his mistake. It is not that often you see GMs move on that quickly from their own mistakes.

Yeah, that could be possible. Still - I think generally, teams don't make a move to clear a 40 man roster move unless they have a subsequent move in mind that they intend to make thereafter. I think teams generally keep their 40-man rosters full.

Perhaps Thaiss could be “injured”? I see teams somewhat creatively use the IL to stash talent, etc..

It’ll be interesting to see what happens, but based on Perry’s trend, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another aggressive prospect promotion. I think the most obvious need for an upgrade is backup catcher, but I likewise wouldn’t be surprised to see a reliever IL’s and someone who isn’t currently on the 40 man roster get promoted.

Yep. Fletcher clears the 40-man spot, but someone on the 26-man roster has to be IL'd (or optioned) too.

Maybe it’s to create space for Wallach after Saturday’s debacle with Thaiss. Or for a reliever. Probably one of the other. Props to Perry though. I give him credit for being proactive and making moves/changes, and moving on from guys when he feels they aren't working.