Still a HUGE ceiling on this roster with what’s still available out there if things break right. Moves: Acquire C Sean Murphy for Hunter Brown, Jake Meyers, Forrest Whitley, and Colin Barber Sign Brandon Nimmo $125M/4yrs with vesting player option. Sign SP Corey Kluber $34M/2yrs Sign RP Taylor Rogers $42M/3yrs Sign OF Michael Brantley $14M/1yr with vesting option 2B Altuve SS Pena DH Alvarez 3B Bregman RF Tucker 1B Abreu CF Nimmo C Murphy LF Brantley Bench: Maldonado, McCormick, Hensley, Dubon Rotation: Valdez, Javier, McCullers, Kluber, Garcia, Urquidy Bullpen: Maton, Stanek, Rogers, Montero, Neris, Abreu, Pressly Even if you scratch Nimmo (removing the most expensive move), that lineup would still be DEEP with a 7-8-9 of Brantley-Murphy-McCormick. But worst case, Crane ends up overpaying for Conforto or Benintendi and they go into the season with Korey Lee as the backup catcher; they went into last season with Jason Castro in that role and nobody was panicking.
Barnhart's 2022 OPS .554 (31 year old season) would fit right in? I will be interesting to see where Christian Vázquez lands. Vázquez wants to start. We will see if any team will pay Vázquez to start. If the only offers Vázquez gets is a part time starter ...
You lost me at Hunter Brown. I much prefer “worst case” to that. I think we could get Vázquez for 2 years $14 million, which is the kind of middle-of-the-road option that might be a good fit for us. It buys us a few years for our farm catchers to figure things out.
Why in the F would we trade Hunter Brown for a catcher. Especially one that isn't much better than Vazquez and bats in the lower 3rd of the order?
Ideally i think best course is to find a natural centerfielder who can get on base. If it's not Nimmo, we can maybe trade for someone. We can then bring back Brantley if healthy and platoon him with McCormick in left. Yordan, Brantley, and McCormick split time at DH. McCormick is then backup CF. Maldonado as your only bad hitter is acceptable because he's cheap and not going to block Lee or Diaz if one starys to show something. If a catcher upgrade comes into play I'm all for it if we're discussing lower level prospects and some team control that doesn't involve an immediate extension... I just think the cost for an offensive upgrade in CF will be cheaper than a catcher who can hit and isn't a complete waste defensively.
Well, yeah. That's very similar to what we got from Vazquez while he was here but Barnhart would cost a fraction of what Vazquez would and he'd sign for fewer years. Since we lost out on the only quality FA catcher, we just have to accept the black hole at the 9 spot and try to make up for it elsewhere
Initial offer to Verlander was 2 years/60. Final was 2 years/66. He would have done 2/80 to come back. Who would we want from the diamondbacks in centerfield? Heard a potential deal involving Leon and Maton but don’t know the name of the Arizona player.
Well if you want to settle for a black hole catcher, one of the Astros AAA catchers will do. Heck, they might even figure something out and became league average :shrug:
Yep!!! For some reason he LOVES including Brown in trades. From the little we've seen of Brown thus far there is NO reason to even consider trading him. No team is seriously going to contend for a WS, not with just good pitching, but with ELITE pitching. So the Stros are going to trade a kid who could potentially be an ace (that we control for numerous yrs) for a catcher that is only controllable for three years?? CRAZY!!! As I've pointed out before, you don't think the Cards are HIGHLY regretting trading Alcantara and Zac Gallen for Ozuna. You want to trade for Murphy find another package that OAK would accept. If they insist Brown has to be included you HANG UP THE F'n PHONE!!
I completely agree, I was just saying if the team doesn't think they are ready, they should just plug in a cheap stop gap type rather than committing long term to a 33 year old catcher who gave them basically nothing last season. I'm perfectly fine going with Maldonado and Lee before getting serious about finding a replacement next offseason
It’s so funny to see CF wanting to trade for really good players while also refusing to trade our most coveted trade asset for a rebuilding team. You can’t have both. Good trades hurt. I’m not saying I want to move Brown, but you can’t try to get an all-star caliber player and also refuse to have him in the conversation.
What about something like: To Diamondbacks Luis Garcia Pedro Leon Yainer Diaz To Astros: Daulton Varsho Carson Kelly Christian Walker Walker, Varsho, and Kelly are all in arbitration. So this would be a salary dump too for Arizona. We plug Varsho in CF, Walker at DH, Kelly at catcher. Lee in AAA for full season, replace Maldonado in 2024. I would only do if we take savings and sign someone like a Cueto to replace Garcia as a 6th arm...
Pitchers are a premium lately, it'll be crazy to trade one of ours with 6 years of control. I'm surprise the people trying and proposing to trade away Brown are the same people claiming they wished we hadn't traded away Hader and Sandoval.
