JotCast | Front Office Chat: 1/6/23

Front Office Chat: 1/6/23

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Jorge78

3:46

Any Jo Adell trade questions today?

Or has that ship sailed?

Anthony Franco

3:46

Only if this counts

Jay Man

3:46

Jo Adell...there I said it.

Joe

3:47

What is status of A’s stadium battle? How much longer will they have to suffer in that dump?

Anthony Franco

3:47

Manfred implied at the Winter Meetings last month the A's would need to have formal stadium plans somewhere by January 2024

Hits Like Rays

3:47

Thanks for the chat and I hope that your family in Buffalo is doing well! Do you care to make any predictions about how much the new "pickoff rules" are going to change the numbers of attempted and successful stolen bases?

Anthony Franco

3:48

Thank you! I do think raw stolen base attempts and totals will go up

Efficiency? Maybe in the beginning but it'll probably level off eventually

3:49

Teams have kind of determined that you need around a 75% success rate to make it worthwhile to steal. Making it easier for players to steal probably means clubs eventually encourage slower players to try to steal, which circles back to evening out the success rate again

3:50

It's kind of like that theory (maybe fact?) that bicycle accidents go up when people are wearing helmets because they're more risk-tolerant

The Rangers fan

3:50

with the NEW balanced schedule should it benefit or hurt certain teams, When was the last time MLB had a balanced schedule?

Anthony Franco

3:51

I don't know that the league has ever had a balanced schedule. They didn't even do interleague play until about 25 years ago

3:52

Don't think it changes much in the long run. Ken Rosenthal said on his podcast this week they have ways of minimizing the travel even with clubs more frequently playing out of division

3:53

In the short term, it probably hurts the Central teams. Those are still the two worst divisions and they're getting fewer games against each other

Paw Paw

3:53

Do you have a favorite GM?

Anthony Franco

3:54

I don't know about a favorite GM, but I've tended to be pretty on board with most decisions made by Jerry Dipoto and Mike Hazen over the years

3:55

Things have worked out better for Dipoto, although I'm consistently more optimistic than most on the Diamondbacks (usually in a way that turns out not to be justified) because I like a bunch of the players that front office brings in

tigersFan

3:55

Are the tigers gonna add any bats this offseason?

Anthony Franco

3:55

Yeah I think they'll bring in a bounceback type or two, kind of as they did on the pitching side with Boyd and Lorenzen

3:56

Brian Anderson, Miguel Sanó, maybe Raimel Tapia all kind of fit

Guest

3:57

Last time MLB had a balanced schedule was 1968, before divisional play started in 69

Anthony Franco

3:57

Ah yeah this makes sense

twinkie fan

3:57

will Cohen's spending lead to other owners following suit to some extent? it seems to have set the tone for some monster contracts this year.

Anthony Franco

3:58

Yeah I think it kind of has to, right? Doubt anyone's matching Cohen any time soon, but other teams are going to fear the Mets looming on a lot of their top free agent targets and are going to have to raise their bids accordingly

3:59

That's the whole appeal of the market. Having someone at the top spending past previously established norms means spending has to rise to at least somewhat keep pace

Jorge78

3:59

What ever happened to the MLBPA grievances about certain teams not spending enough money? Reportedly the Ray's made a $45 million profit last season. Their payroll sure was low.....

Anthony Franco

4:01

That's a good question. Haven't heard anything on the status of those since the CBA negotiations, where the league unsuccessfully tried to get the union to drop them

Rangers13

4:01

Would Z. Thompson fall ahead or behind Otto, Ragans, Dunning, and Howard on the Rangers' pitching depth chart in terms of the highest ceiling?

Anthony Franco

4:02

The Pirates' Zach Thompson? I think he's better than everyone you named aside from Dunning

CardinalRed

4:02

Cards seem to have some excess in LF candidates, would be great to see if they could get a SS out of it and put Edman's GG back at 2nd. Would any combo of O'Neill, Burleson, Yepez, and/or Gomez be enough to entice the Yankees for one Peraza?

Anthony Franco

4:03

Don't think so, no

4:04

Hard for me to see the Yankees trading Peraza at this point. They've addressed most of the holes aside from left field. Maybe they consider him for Reynolds, but that feels like the only left fielder who's probably available for whom they'd have to think about it

Jorge78

4:04

Nate Colbert was one of my favorite players when I was young. May he RIP. The MLBTR article didn't mention the record setting doubleheader day he had in Atlanta, 1971 I think? 5 home runs in one day!

Anthony Franco

4:05

Yeah that was my fault. I just didn't know about it until a bunch of people skewered me in the comments

4:07

I knew Nate Colbert as "Padres home run leader" and essentially nothing else until the news about his passing broke. We're trying to cover more of those for former players and a lot of times it involves learning on the fly about players with whom we're not familiar. Sometimes we miss interesting stuff

But yeah, I should've found it and mentioned it

Rangers13

4:07

Adrian Beltre a first ballot HOF when eligible?

Anthony Franco

4:08

Should be

I think he will get in on first ballot, yeah

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