You are viewing the chat in desktop mode. Click here to switch to mobile view.
X
Front Office Chat: 3/8/24
powered byJotCast
Prev Page View Full Chat Next Page
tigersfan
4:39
Tigers have 6 viable starters rights now. Does mize or Olson start at AAA?
Anthony Franco
4:40
Yeah, if everyone's healthy, I'd start Mize in Toledo to keep tabs on his workload early. They'll need all those guys + Gipson-Long over the course of the season regardless
Rick
4:41
With all the Padres holes and limited budget, seems like they should have made an offer to Rosario and Votto when they had a chance. Maybe they did or maybe they will make a last minute splash. Profar in left and counting on a high prized rookie in CF is worrisome. Give me hope.
Erik
4:41
You are probably sick of my Padres outfield questions, but are they serious about patching together left and center field from some combination of an unproven rookie (Jackson Merrill) and a bunch of guys off the scrap heap (Tim Locastro, Brad Miller, Jose Azocar, etc.)?
Padre Jonathan
4:41
It's me again, same question, different day. Is Preller really trying to still create a competitive team? Votto gets a minor league deal and Lauer gets a minor league deal. I'm high on Brito and Merrill but they are not the answers for 2024. 2 OFs, DH, and 2 pitchers. #shrug.
Anthony Franco
4:42
Taking all these just to say that I'd also be really frustrated and don't understand why the Padres haven't jumped in on these guys
4:43
Maybe they offered Rosario $1.5M on a guaranteed deal and he took the non-roster offer with a chance to max out at $4M anyways, but it's not a good look that all they've come away with is Profar yet again
4:45
Still time to grab Pham, MAT or Duvall, I guess, but they're also not doing themselves any favors by dallying and limiting the amount of looks those guys could get in Spring Training. If they go into the season relying on both Merrill and Marsee to be everyday outfielders, it's just a really bad offseason
Thank you for the chat!
4:45
Could the Yanks flip an outfielder to save payroll to then be reallocated to one of the elite SP (reducing competitive balance tax implications from signing one of them)? Maybe Verdugo out, Grisham becomes the primary CF (L for L in batting, defense up for offense down), sign a backup OF, then go after Snell/Montgomery. In effect, reducing a 20-30MM/year signing to 15-23MM/year.
Anthony Franco
4:46
No harm in floating this around but I don't know that there are many teams that want to take on a near-$9MM salary on Verdugo at this point
4:47
It's not horrible value or anything, but most clubs seem to be around where they're willing to spend to start the season
Sully
4:47
Any concerns about Trevor Story's slow start?  I need him to get on base enough times to steal 20+ bases.
Anthony Franco
4:48
Not concerned about the strikeout rate in seven Spring Training games but very concerned that he hasn't been more than an average major league hitter for three years
Best lineup
4:48
the Dodgers best lineup has Mookie at SS and Lux at 2B. Do you think we see that become the lineup before October?
Anthony Franco
4:50
They clearly prefer Mookie at second so they'll keep working to see if Lux can get past the throwing issues, but if it's still not happening in a few weeks, I'd flip the two of them
Lonesome rider
4:50
Why doesn’t Cincinnati take a flyer on Bart? Who knows, with a younger team he might fit in better and not be as stressed, shouldn’t cost much?
Anthony Franco
4:51
Wouldn't cost much but they probably don't have the AB's to go around that'd give him much of a chance to develop. They already need Stephenson to take a significant step forward
Pip
4:51
If Holliday isn’t ROY, who is?
Anthony Franco
4:52
Holliday will probably be my pick but the Rangers guys (Carter/Langford) seem like the clearest alternatives
WHOA!
4:52
How does an offer work - if the Mets say "we'll match any offer", do they just trust the agent or does an offer officially get filed like an offer on a house?
Anthony Franco
4:55
I think it's more the former. Teams and agents work together all the time, there'd be a clear reputational cost to backing out of something if you have an informal understanding
Spaghetti Marinera
4:55
Do you think the Mariners are good to go at 3B, with a Josh Rojas/Luis Urias platoon? Even without Urias’ shoulder issues, does this measure up in comparison to 3Bs around the league and the standard set within the M’s st every other position?
Anthony Franco
4:56
Eh, it's fine. It's below average but not horrendous and you can live with it as one of your two or three worst lineup spots
AZ Pitching
4:57
The 2024 starting crop looks pretty ok, but should fans be worried that the team really doesn't have any homegrown success stories in 30 years? Webb was great but ended up injured. Pfaadt is the next best and seems... iffy. Once Gallen leaves in 2025, does the window just slam shut and Carroll becomes the next Goldy?
Anthony Franco
4:59
This probably always has to be in the back of your mind as a fan of a team with mid-level payrolls. It's tough to build consistently competitive teams beyond 3-4 windows unless you're constantly churning and never really going all-in the way that Milwaukee and Tampa Bay do
5:00
I like Pfaadt and think the Cristian Mena pickup is a good hedge, but the pitching pipeline hasn't been great and they'll have to hit on some arms over the next two or three drafts/international signing periods to ensure it doesn't become catastrophic
5:02
I'm taking over news coverage from Darragh now so I'll pause this for a minute to see where things stand. If it's slow, I'll hang around here for another 10-15 mins and try to move quickly through the stuff that's left in the queue
5:04
Alright, I'll stick around until 5:15 unless something breaks in the next 10 minutes
Dano
5:04
If a team had to choose between Clevinger and Lorenzen at the same price, which should they choose?
Anthony Franco
5:05
I'd rather have Clevinger, assuming teams are comfortable with him as a locker room fit
Kevin
5:05
Hi Anthony, thanks for the chat! What is your predictions for playoff teams this year?
Anthony Franco
5:05
We'll send site predictions for playoff teams, awards, etc. in a subscriber email shortly before Opening Day
A’s fan
5:06
Teams using lack of public funds as an excuse to leave a city, is unacceptable.  What happened to Oakland could happen to any city
Anthony Franco
5:07
It sucks but it will continue to happen as long as cities are willing to enable it. Obviously it rarely results in actual relocation, but teams love to hint at the possibility to leverage public funding from their existing city
AJ
5:07
Atkins and Shapiro seemed to be attached at the hip. While Shapiro seems to being doing a good job, the same cannot be said for Atkins and his throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach to the offseason. Is there a world where Atkins goes and Shapiro stays?
Anthony Franco
5:08
I don't really see it. It's tough for me to gauge the job Shapiro's doing from the outside, since a lot of it is on the business side, but they feel like a package duo
5:10
I think Atkins has done alright generally, but this was a rough offseason for the Jays front office. If ownership got to a point where they wanted to make a GM change, they'd probably move on from Shapiro too since he's the one most directly responsible for the Atkins hiring
Rangers Fan
5:10
Do you view Chris Young's strategy to sign big free agents as genius or did the organization get lucky that seemingly everyone played their absolute best at the right time in October?
Anthony Franco
5:11
It's a little bit of both, but there's a skill to picking the right players to spend on (which they did on Seager/Semien, TBD on deGrom) and they timed their aggressiveness well to coincide with the emergence of a lot of key internal pieces
5:13
Jon Daniels deserves a lot of that credit. It's unfortunate that he was fired before it all came together but he orchestrated a number of those moves
Connecting…