IheartLA

We've tried to go into every season with some kind of platoon: '15 - Joyce/Cron - remember that? This was when Hamilton was still an Angel. '16 - Nava/Gentry - LOL '17 - Valbuena/Marte - didn't work, won't work next year. I'm not saying get rid of Valbuena, but we can't have him starting. He needs to earn his at bats. If we run a 3 man bench: Perez/Graterol Valbuena Corner INF Hermosillo - he's on the 40 man, they protected him. I think they'll roll with him. Calhoun, Upton, Trout when they've been healthy the last 3-4 years have been playing avg. 158 games. No 4th outfielder will get that much playing time, 12 games over 6 months is 1 game every 2 weeks. If one got injured we'd probably swing a trade w/ our free cap space for a Bruce/whoever on the market. If we signed two of Headley, Nunez, Cozart, Frazier for 1b/3b on 1-2 year deals we would increase our flexibility and create more of a team culture. Teams like the Indians/Astros/Dodgers/Yankees have guys playing everywhere and not complaining/showing any ego. Kike/Forsythe/Taylor - Springer/Maybin/Gonzalez - Hicks/Headley/Frazier - Kipnis/Ramirez/Urshela all sacrificed for the team. If you are a professional baseball player you should be at the service of the team, you shouldn't be able to pick your day offs, when you get to DH like Pujols.. The yanks put Ells/Holliday on the bench, Dodgers put Gonzalez/Grandal there. You have to do what's best for the team. No contending team would start even a 1 war player that isn't a catcher, let alone a negative one. Their benches also have 1+ WAR guys ready to fill in, do whatever the team needs.

How long into the season before Fletcher/Scioscia are defending Pujols? Maybe even Spring Training?

This is literally one of the funniest threads in any forum. It will be needed once the new season starts so I'm giving it a bump. But just for some positive energy he did hit .290/.333/.390 in September. He hit .231 combined every other month.

Pretty much, these are the same dummies in the FO that wanted to platoon Cron with a LH. Every year he's been better against RH's than LH's. He's either marginally the same or slightly better against RH vs LH, that's the only way you can read the stats. And no reason to platoon when he's better against RH's than the LH hitter.. Valbuena can't hit and he was playing more than him against RH's until Escobar got hurt, it's literally so sad sometimes.

Honestly as long as Pujols is on the team we can't bring Moustakas here. Once he tries some of his wife's arroz con pollo we're screwed. I could see them enabling the other and we could be looking at -5 WAR after one offseason "diet". His favorite dish is quinoa w/ chicken & rice. How to eat like a professional baseball player, according to Mike Moustakas http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/04/mike-moustakas-royals-food-diary

i'm shaky evaluating talent? you literally put one of the reasons for signing him because he wanted to be here and he was a local kid. If you don't want just one year, over the last 4 years Moose put up .258/.313/.459 --- 7.2 WAR over 1825 PA. Roughly 2.35 WAR over full season (600 PA). About in line with last year's 2.2 WAR. He's not some fit athlete like Donaldson/Beltre who will age well. He's about to turn 30 like Sandoval when he signed his big deal.

If Cozart halves his WAR he's still more valuable than Moustakas was last year. Moustakas would need to maintain his 2.2 WAR while moving to a worse hitter's park. He's also the same age that Sandoval fell apart, similar body type. Cozart will bring defense/OBP at least even if his home runs fall. And Espinosa was a local kid as well, does that mean we should have kept him? I don't see how that matters. Freese wanted to stay here as well, a lot of players would be allured by SoCal. Doesn't change their skillset.

I agree, Valbuena increased his home runs 1st to 2nd half but he was still bad. We'd have been better off keeping Freese at half the price. I really don't want us to count on him AND Pujols as part of our starting non-Ohtani lineup. We might even have three with Cron in there too... We would be wasting the prime talent that we DO have if we have three hitters that can't hit plus a defense first catcher.

Eppler's exact words were that obp is the biggest correlation with scoring runs. If Moose regresses a little he becomes Valbuena, if he falls apart like other big bodied players then he's Pablo Sandoval. We have too light a farm system to risk our present/near future with two potential 1.0 WAR players (pujols/moose). That would be $40M tied up, I'd rather get Cozart even and move one of Kinsler/him to 3rd base before Moose.

I made the Cron analogy, but yea Cron/Trumbo/Mousatakas All could easily be negative war players if they regress some hit skill since their secondary skills are so bad. Cron was negative in '14 and barely above 1 the last three years. Trumbo is an empty 30 home runs a year. Pujols/Bautista are in the same boat. Matt Adams/Lucas Duda are available for nothing. No need to pay anything for these type of players.

I'd counter we have a 18 foot wall in RF that will lower the HR total, and baseball prospectus has us as the 6th hardest park to homer for lefties. KC is at 13th.

Trout - 1st Upton - 2nd Calhoun - 15th (but previous years was top seven-ish) Simmons - 5th (bbrWAR has him 1st btw) Maldonado - 27th (I'm putting him with the guaranteed starters since I think he is in their minds b/c of defense and the fact that catcher is treated differently from the other positions). So we have: 1b - 26th out of 30 2b - Kinsler (low babip, could bounce back, but getting to age where decline could be a steep cliff) but we were 28th out of 30... 3b - 21st out of 30 DH - Dead last.. 17th out of 17 The three teams that won 100 games had beast up the middle combos: Lindor/Ramirez Correa/Altuve Seager/Taylor (I think they'll move him since they have 6 outfielders) Nationals, Yankees, Cubs had stacked teams, almost everyone was top ten. Twins have a phenom coming up to play SS with Dozier. It's going to be hard to compete without elite talent. The thing is WE DO have elite talent, but our black holes are SO bad. To have half our lineup being below 100 wrc, 1 WAR is a disgrace.

I think we agree more than we both think, Throwman was the Moose lover now that I'm rereading the posts. He downvoted me because I said I didn't think Moose was a good signing. The top teams have top five talent at half the positions. And the other are top ten-ish. They also have almost no black holes. We have Trout, Simmons, Upton who are all top 5, Calhoun was top 7ish the two years before last. But We are literally in the bottom ten percentile for DH, 1B, 3B. LF/2B were huge problems but i'm confident in the moves made there. My point is our mindset as an organization should be making our own young talent first, but since we're so behind we can't just sit there and draft for 5 years and wait. So we need to sign the elite talent out there in the intermediate rather than sign guys like Moose/Frazier. The value of $/WAR goes down as you marginally higher on the WAR table. Plus Scioscia/Eppler might not be around after this year, signing Moose would seem like a huge panic buy to win a couple more games now, since they might not be around to sign the better players next year.

I meant Donaldson at $30M a year till age 38. Not $30M total. I was just making the point we had massive payroll flexibility to sign an elite player. Top 5 according to WAR 3B: Rendon, Bryant, Arenado, Turner, Donaldson SS: Lindor, Seager, Correa, Cozart, Simmons 2B: Altuve, Ramirez, Dozier, Murphy, Schoop Almost all the elite infielders play for the top teams. Yet we're supposed to run out 22nd ranked Moose and a 35yr old at 2B AND huge black holes at 1B and potentially DH. We're also 27th at C, even with the outstanding defense.

My point was people want Moose because he's left handed and hit 38 homers. Well if you pro rate Cron's at bats he'll hit 30 homers too, adjust for park effects and he's effectively a 1B Moose. Slow, stone hands, bad body, low OBP. Valbuena had a 94 WRC, you can't count on him/pujols/plus the dh. That's potentially 3 black holes, we can easily compete for a WC berth this year. But Valbuena needs to be a bat off the bench or if Pujols is putting up negative WAR again you can put him in. If he's in a platoon with Marte at 3B, Pujols/Cron at 1b/DH that's a huge problem. If you get Headley you will move Valbuena to a backup 1b/3b role which is a better look. Big teams like the Astros, Dodgers utilized their bench. We got rid of Maybin and he played a key role for them off the bench/defense. We can't have our entire bench being trash like Featherston/Cowart/Valbuena/Marte all with below 100 WRC.

If Richards gets hurt again he's gone, this year is a huge question for our pitching. We have so many guys that we just don't know what we are going to get, basically our entire starting rotation. I also never said Harper..we already have the highest paid OF. and LOL at Maldonado for $10M, he put up a 1.1 WAR. Suzuki put up 2.7 WAR and got $3.5M. Maldonado was 27th in WAR among catchers, he will get maybe half that. Cabrera got AAV $31M, Trout $34M, Cano $24M, Stanton $30M. Harper/Machado will not want to be free agents at age 35+, I think they'll prioritize "years" over annual value, kinda like Cano did. Maybe $25M but no way they get 15 years at $35M. And besides I'd rather sign Donaldson for 5 years at $30M, if Kershaw isn't going to resign with the Dodgers his next choice would probably be us since he's so invested in the community/his family. He's not taking less than what Scherzer/Greinke/Price got and I don't think the Dodgers will give him that so I think Arte might pounce. Look at the Yankees, they made Stanton work by getting rid of a solid player in Castro , if we got Donaldson/Kershaw and we were near the luxury line like your post suggests, then they would probably flip Calhoun. Our top prospects are all OF's and by this time next year one of them could be in AA knocking on the door like Gleyber Torres is for them. You make it sound like it's dumb to want to sign elite talent, the dumb thing to do would be to sign a 2 WAR player that has no secondary skills for $18-20M. Are you Moose's real life friend or something?

That makes no sense, Moose isn't depth. He can't play any position well. He's a DH, corner infielder. Depth is Chris Taylor, Kike Hernandez, guys that can play multiple positions and give you flexibility. "Flexibility" is a word Eppler was using at his presser earlier. The last thing we need is a third base Cj Cron. If you give Cron 650 at bats he'll hit 30 homers but have a low OBP/bad defense/baserunning. If you add the RF wall we have it's unlikely Moose hits 38 homers here. Eppler has stressed OBP and defense versatility, which Moose doesn't fit AT all.

He's been the best pitcher of his generation, but I get the trepidation. If Price/Greinke/Scherzer got signed through age-38 some team will give the G.O.A.T 8 years. Now it doesn't have to be us, BUT we will have the cap room IF we want to. Plus get an elite 3B. Moustakas was 22nd in WAR for third baseman, he had a .314 OBP, negative Bsr/Def and had +4.6 Off. Rendon/Donaldson/Machado are all far superior options. Headley is a fine stop gap, his WAR was 1.9 to Moose's 2.2. I'd rather hope for a contract year revival from Kinsler/Headley then sign a top player next offseason. But that's my opinion.

I had a post before that where I LIKE the Kinsler/Headley signings. There is elite talent available next offseason in Machado/Donaldson/Kershaw. We will have plenty of space to pursue two of them. I don't think the Dodgers will offer more than 5 years for Kershaw, doesn't seem like their M.O. Kershaw could stay in So Cal and would be a huge coup for us. Donaldson/Machado could sign, or Arenado would be 1 yr from FA and after seeing the deals the other two get could be potentially traded to us/extended. I'd like to see us get 5-7 WAR players for top money, then sign a bunch of 2-3 WAR players for 18-20 million. I want no part of Moustakas or Hosmer.

Throwman why did you downvote my post?

To add: Moustakas is not good...a 2 WAR player is not someone to pay a lot of money too. Plus he's one of the slowest, 413 out of 451, and a terrible defender. Big, fat, power hitters with no OB skills who can't defend never age well. Fielder/Cabrera/Pujols - these guys fall apart by their early 30s. At least Cano/Arod you could argue held up fairly well. Arod's WAR was 21.8, Pujols is at 7.6 , if we're being generous and put 1 win at $7M for Arod, $8M for Pujols (inflation b/c he started 4 years sooner) then Arod was worth $152.6M and Pujols is at $60.8M. Cano is actually outperfoming his deal so far. Pujols would need to put up like 3 WAR the next four years to even match Arod. LOL.

Getting Headley/Kinsler is a great move. No serious contending team would count on Valbuena/Pujols after the years they had. The only reason they're on the team is because of their contracts. We couldn't seriously take Pujols at bats away last year because the other options were not credible. We need to have a full lineup w/o Ohtani since at most going to DH half the games and we have no idea how he's going to hit. And I think it will be even less than that. Maybe 1/3, because it will be rest, pitch, rest, dh, dh, dh, IF he dh's every game outside of the usual schedule. I think he'll dh twice out of the six days. Every player we bring here seems to hit worse then ever, our stadium is a tough place to hit. We had a full rotation's worth of players on the DL, I'm not counting on any of them staying healthy. We need to keep all of our starters. Richards/Ohtani/Skaggs/Shoemaker/Bridwell/Heaney/Barria - until Tropeano/Ramirez throw I'm not going to count on them. You can count on two of those first seven being hurt at some point. The reason I like Headley/Kinsler is because they are only here one year. I would hate for them to Valbuena someone and then we're stuck with them another year or longer, like Moustakas.. Look at the Indians/Astros/Dodgers they have ELITE talent, not a bunch of average players. Next offseason Machado/Donaldson/Kershaw will be FA. I honestly think we could sign two of those, the Dodgers played hardball with Greinke/Stanton, I don't think they'll offer Kershaw a 7/8 year deal. It's his last chance to get paid and he could stay in So Cal. We will be >$60M under the cap, more if we don't resign Richards, who by the way is also on his last chance here.

here's the thing with pujols, he hasn't been worth his contract except for maybe his 1st year here and that's caused a lot of scorn to come his way. But he's never been THIS bad. When Scioscia or whoever defended him from '12-'16 you could at least say we don't have anything better and he at least did above average. His WRC has been 133, 112, 123, 114, 110, and then 78 last year. His WAR has been 3.6, 0.6, 2.8, 1.8, 0.8, and then -2.0 last year. He was literally awful, we have been complaining about him since the beginning but last year reached another level. Usually you're looking at a ST invite at BEST if you were negative WAR the previous year. There are just too many good bats out there. Duda, Adams are available for nothing, even L. Valbuena didn't really have a market until we signed him. A. Pagan was actually ok in '16 but didn't get anything, D. Murphy retired after '15 with us. J. Bautista/Cargo are not going to get anything other than a ST invite. We can't go through another year counting on Pujols, if he was just playing like the other 5 years then I think they would just put up with him. But after last year, if he hits like he did in Sept then you can keep playing him, if he hits like the first five months then you have start seriously thinking about Arod/Fielder-ing him.