JotCast | Chat With MLBTR's Steve Adams: 3/18/19

Chat With MLBTR's Steve Adams: 3/18/19

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Potter

3:49

I feel like MLB's insistence on discussing pacing issues, and other issues have created a culture of dissecting "everything that is wrong in baseball". Do you think this will be a consistent topic going forward for baseball?

Steve Adams

3:51

I feel like everyone's general mentality on social media is so nauseatingly negative that we've just become a society that looks for the utter worst in all aspects of our lives and then screams about them online while searching for fights. I would love to say that'll change, but it's hard to envision.

Rocky

3:52

Do you think Luis Castillo should be in the rotation of the Reds? I just don’t feel comfortable with him as a pitcher. What do you say?

Steve Adams

3:52

No way would I give up on him as a starter

Ryan

3:53

Which team going into a rebuild (Rangers, Mariners, Orioles, ...) had the best offseason in your opinion?

Steve Adams

3:54

Mariners acquired a lot of intriguing MLB-level assets with numerous 4+ years of club control remaining, lowered their payroll and drastically improved the overall state of the farm system. (It's still not good, but it's not a bottom 5 or even bottom 10 farm anymore)

I like what they did and think they'll be better than people expect (not great, of course, but not like 100 losses bad as many seem to be anticipating)

SLH16

3:55

Shouldn't Tyler O'Neill be a starting outfielder for the Cardinals?

Steve Adams

3:56

Could argue that, sure, but he's not going to start over Ozuna or Bader, and Fowler's contract will earn him another look. He'll play a fair amount this year still, and I imagine he's starting in St. Louis in 2020

Ben

3:56

What do you think of expanding the rosters to 26-men?

Steve Adams

3:57

Fine with it. I think the way that teams have begun to build rosters and utilize players has evolved radically, and 25 guys per roster was always kind of arbitrary anyway, right? Creates 30 new jobs, lessens injury risk for everyone by creating more rest -- zero complaints here

GeorgeSFriendLenny

3:58

Do you have a surprise Cy Young candidate from each league?

Steve Adams

4:00

Walker Buehler, Zack Wheeler, Mike Clevinger, Jose Berrios ... I don't know that I expect any of that bunch to truly compete (most bullish on Buehler), but I generally think they're all pretty underrtated and could have another step forward in them.

Fred

4:02

If you had to guess, which team will wait the longest between right now and their next postseason appearance?

Steve Adams

4:03

Orioles just because of how much work they need to do and how strong that division is. I really do wonder about the Reds just because of their recent failures to develop starting pitching, as well. They're losing two of the guys they acquired this winter next offseason (Wood, Roark), and basically none of their pitching prospects have panned out. For a team with payroll limitations in a very tough division, they're going to eventually need some of these guys to pan out

4:04

They also only control DeSclafani through 2020, which only enhances the need.

I think Cincinnati is among the most improved teams in the league for 2019, but everything they added was short-term

Tim

4:04

Hello Steve! Big fan. I’m in a home run pool, so a related question—who will finish this year with more dingers? Matt Olson, Acuna, or Conforto?

Steve Adams

4:05

I'll go Acuna, Olson, Conforto with a sizable gap betwen Olson and Conforto

4:06

(and not a huge gap between Acuna and Olson, although Acuna will be a generally better hitter than Olson all-around)

medium-sized papi

4:06

do you think this is the year that joe musgrove makes the leap?

Steve Adams

4:07

I like Musgrove a lot, if he can stay healthy, and think he'll be the best of what the Pirates got for Cole -- to the point where it won't look like they got completely fleeced or anything.

He won't be a Cole-caliber pitcher, but five years of control over a mid-rotation starter is still pretty nice

Jonathan W

4:08

What would an Acuna extension look like? Maybe after this year do an 8/100?

Steve Adams

4:12

He'll finish the season with a year and 159 days of service. The largest contract ever given to a player in that service class was Andrelton's 7-year, $58MM contract. Eight years would buy out Acuna's final pre-arb season, four years of club control and three free-agent years.

I have a hard time seeing him being willing to surrender that much freedom if he has a typical Acuna season; he'd possibly be looking at a $10MM+ Arb1 salary, so you can reasonably project that he'd top $40MM in arbitration (which seems conservative).

At that point, you're paying him under $20MM per free-agent year, which just doesn't seem enough.

Zach

4:12

Concerned about Votto this season?

Steve Adams

4:14

A little bit. Plate discipline and OBP skills remained otherworldly, but he's 35 now (36 before season's end). He's a Hall of Famer and one of the best hitters we'll ever see, but at a certain point you have to brace for the possibility that even the game's very best begin to slow down.

Votto is one of my favorite players of this generation, so I hope 2018 proves to be a blip on the radar, but I don't see how you can just shrug off the complete power outage in his age-34 season.

CSA

4:15

Who do you think wins the O's starting catcher spot?

Steve Adams

4:16

Have to give Sisco a real chance at some point in '19

Joe

4:17

For Acuna 6/60 seems much more reasonable, no? 20 for that one FA year, true, but a nice and safe number where he's reasonably compensated if he gets hurt or otherwise has a dramatic drop-off. No reason for him to sell those 2 extra FA years, and still relatively good deal for the Braves if he does end up succeeding.

Steve Adams

4:19

I don't see why he'd give up the one free-agent year there; if the Braves wanted to do something shorter-term, they could try to buy out all four arb years (plus the final pre-arb season). Given his potential for arbitration earnings, there'd be value just to maintaining cost certainty, but I think 6/60 would an extraordinarily conservative route for him to take and one that his camp would largely dismiss without much consideration.

Matt E

4:20

Any concerns over Alex Woods health?

Steve Adams

4:21

Have to be; he's never really been able to handle a full workload. If I thought he could stay healthy I'd have listed him alongside Wheeler, Buehler, etc. for that other question because on a per-inning basis, I love the guy, but the delivery is just really funky and the injury history is lengthy

Finn the Baseball Human

4:21

Who says no to a Winker-for-Bieber swap? Am I off-base in thinking this is a perfect win-win deal?

Steve Adams

4:22

Way harder to find a quality starter than quality corner OF, and Bieber has an extra year of team control. Big fan of Winker's OBP-driven game, but I'm keeping Bieber there.

Clark the Cute Cub

4:23

If the Cubs were to essentially give Heyward and Chatwood away for salary relief without throwing in a sweetener or taking back a bad contract, how much could they realistically expect the other team to pay?

Steve Adams

4:29

Drew Pomeranz is 29, like Chatwood, and have every bit as awful a 2018 as Chatwood. He got a year and $1.5MM.

Heyward was a league-average bat whose defensive ratings dropped in '18. He's not especially young anymore (30 in August). I don't think there's a great comp for him who signed this winter -- a younger Markakis? -- but he wouldn't sniff the $126MM he's still owed. Even if you wanted to say he'd get 2/20 (which seems WAY too aggressive), they'd be eating $100MM+ on that contract. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that there just isn't a team that wants Heyward for 5 more years right now.

I don't see how they could come away from that without shelling out like $125MM+ to make them go away.

jamesess

4:30

Millennials are cord cutters. They don’t have cable or satellite. MLB TV blacks out local teams. Is it really about making the game time shorter? Shorten it by 10 minutes and Millennials still won’t watch because access is limited. How do you drum up interest in a generation who lives on social media and convince them to spend a bunch of money to follow the game?

Steve Adams

4:31

I agree that the blackout deals are an enormous problem in trying to reach not only the younger generation but the general fan base. I'm 33, and I know many friends whose parents no longer pay for cable because of streaming. My retired father uses terms like "binge-watching" and is a ravenous consumer of Netflix, Hulu, etc. ha ... it's a problem across multiple generations.

Big Game James

4:32

play the games ON Social Media! It worked somewhat on facebook last year!

Steve Adams

4:33

Hated the Facebook broadcasts. Plus, Facebook isn't really the social network of choice of the younger generation

Brent

4:33

Does Baltimore sign a starter before the season starts?

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