Our first bit of offsesason news is this, and all I have to say is HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, or maybe you'll break something and miss 2 months again. I really am being a bit cruel here, Witt was a good player when he was on the field, but the "when he was on the field" was the rub. Nevertheless with the emergence of Bo Angeac I was going to trade Witt anyway, and might have picked up a "B" prospect with that contract. Instead, I'll probably give him the QO since it's less than what he was making and net a draft pick.
Word from the boss:
We'll come in under this $160M payroll of course. Andy Aparicio and Dane Ayers become arbitration-eligible and will get huge raises and Nate Clark is projected to go from $11M to $21M but we cleared Witt's $20M.
Players I will be shopping this offseason: Jasson Dominguez, Connor Kirkley, Alex Buitrago, Mike Harms. I may make a run at re-signing Christian Little because he is kind of a unicorn but I'm pretty sure I'll be outbid. So with he and Jon Hayes leaving, I will need a quality, young cost-controlled starting pitcher as right now the rotation is Aparicio, Sachais (coming off an arthritic elbow, will his stuff dimimish?), Jon Soranno and probably Danny Medina. The emergence of Chris Hicks means I don't need a righty reliever, but the lefty situation is shaky with Alvarado and Beltre free agents, Mooney coming back from surgery, Brad Ballmann being Brad Ballmann, etc. Bob Sirna was a revelation but he still has enough inconsistency in his game that he isn't going to be the primary option, so a shutdown lefty for the pen is also on the shopping list.
Wow, it really was Black Wednesday in MLB:
The shocker here is Lovullo, who just led Arizona to its first World Series in 31 years. Man, that's tough. Also a bit of a surprise is Gaillard as that's Dodgers, not Angels there. LA was surprised in the playoffs, but they're a perennial participant. Guess it's one of those "find someone to get us over the hump" moves.
Notable retirements: 2021 Cy Young winner Nate Pearson, who spent most of his career battling injuries, grizzled vets Ken Giles, Matt Olson and David Dahl (who always killed us with Boston), Ozzie Albies (Atlanta retired #1), Ramon Laureano, Bryce Harper (Phillies retired #3)
Former Rays hanging it up: Chris Betts, Max Kepler, Yordan Alvarez (Houston retired #44!), Blake Money (a sad story given his injuries after we traded him to Oakland in 2029).
Our first trade:
We got the power lefty we wanted for the pen in Wherry, 75-80 stuff, 55 movement, 45 control (3.5* now, 5.0 potential). He impressed as a rookie last year with Atlanta (34K in 27 IP, 1.33 ERA plus 10 whiffs in 5 scoreless IP during the playoffs) and fits our needs. We thank D'Andre Hodges for his service, he was a fine bat off the bench in the mold of Bramdon Perez, who also thrived for a while after getting regular PT and I suspect if Atlanta sticks Hodges in their lineup every day he'll hit 30-35 HR. My thought now is to hang on to Jasson Dominguez for another year and bring Omar Rodriguez up next year as a 4th outfielder. This still leaves Kirkley, Buitrago and Harms as trade bait.
And here's the biggie:
Kirkley was what the English would say "surplus to requirements" as Jaiden Hardaway has the 2B job now for the foreseeable future. It took Lovetere to get the deal done, and the scouts and BNN seem to like him a lot more than his numbers would indicate because as mentioned earlier about him, he strikes out about 4.5 per 9 IP, which would have been OK in 1975. His stuff has the potential to be better, but only up to 50. Allen is a swingman with 50 stuff, I liked him a lot more when we acquired him in the Jack Leiter deal a couple of winters ago. And Tudor was hurt most of last season and although his fundamentals are good, I was going to non-tender him at $5M or so. So in return we get Schultz, who was one of the AL's better starters last year and is basically Jon Hayes 2.0 (okay maybe 1.8):
This still leaves Buitrago and Harms to possibly deal, and I'd like to replenish our pitching pipeline as we have a lot of good hitting prospects on the way.
November 11: The Gold Gloves were awarded today and congratulations to Dayle Jenkins for winning it in RF! This will hopefully be the first of several awards Jenkins wins, as I see at least a Silver Slugger in his future and he has a very good chance (perhaps the frontrunner) to be MVP. A couple of former Rays with the World Champion Rangers (ugh) won Gold Gloves too: C Carlos Perez and 3B Wander Franco. Maybe we should have played Franco at 3B and kept Willy Adames all those years ago since Adames had a great career with Atlanta and Max Fried (whom we got for Adames) gave us only a couple of decent years in the rotation.
November 13: As befitting an offense which scored 1009 runs last season (but sadly only 10 total in their last 3 playoff games), we took several Silver Slugger Awards (or Platinum Stick as OOTP is calling it): 2B Jaiden Hardaway, SS Ricky Widmar, CF Jasson Dominguez, RF Dayle Jenkins and DH Victor de Jesus. Old friend Joe Barker won the NL 1B award off his 40-HR debut season in Washington.
It was unanimous, as it should have been, with Bo #2:
Also unanimous, with Jon Hayes taking the silver:
I'm going to at least make a half-hearted effort to re-sign him once he declares free agency (the pre-FA demands are always over the top). St. Louis's Leo Ortega won the award in the NL, and I'm the only one who kept it from being unanimous as I voted for Arizona's Jeremy Odle. Ortega has stamina issues, so he rarely goes more than 5-6 innings per start. They're 5-6 great innings, but I thought Odle was more valuable.
And there it is, the biggie. Congratulations to Dayle Jenkins!
I thought Christian Little would get a few more votes given that he did lead MLB in WAR, but it wasn't a case like last year when Aparicio was head and shoulders above all the hitters. So this gives us a clean sweep of the major awards (MVP, Cy Young, Rookie) but alas no championship trophy to show for it. Over in the NL, the winner was....Nick Gonzales! It was a close and fragmented vote as you can see below (I voted for C.Rodriguez):
But congratulations to Nick, whom we dealt to LA for Gavin Lux in 2028. Lux had the one MVP-caliber season with us that year and we did win the title, so flags fly forever, etc. but LA ended up with the best of that deal.