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Front Office Chat: August 15th, 2025
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Optimistic Giants Fan
1:19
Give me something, man
Stewart W.
1:20
Theoretically...  Suppose that Posey & Minasian decided this offseason to pursue a full teardown and start from scratch. In this thought experiment, they would base a rebuild around Bryce Eldridge, Randy Rodriguez, and the current group of AAA pitchers (including Roupp & Birdsong). Also presume that any existing no-trade clauses would be waived. In that scenario, what do you think they could accomplish if the goal was to return to relevance as soon as possible?
For the record, I'm not necessarily advocating this. However, after watching their oscillations between terrible and mediocre since 2016, let's just say that I've long been teardown-curious.
Darragh McDonald
1:21
Lots of frustration from the land of the Giants, which is understandable.
1:22
I don't really see a rebuild being a possibility. They have a lot of long-term deals on the books already between Chapman, Adames, Devers, JHL, Webb, Ray.
1:23
What's working for them is they're not losing a ton at year's end. Verlander, Flores and Tom Murphy are the impending free agents.
So, it's a .500-ish team now and will be about that going into the winter. Not an awful starting point for 2026.
1:24
As for the managerial stuff, I think it's really hard to tell from a distance if a skipper is doing a good job or not. As someone watching on TV, we can scrutinize bullpen management but so much of their job happens away from the cameras.
1:25
It is a bit odd that the Padres seemed fine letting him go and they have been doing better since he left, but that might just be a coincidence. Like I said, I find it hard to come to concrete conclusions on these kinds of things.
Joakim
1:26
With the crowded (young) outfield picture, with Crews returning, was Nats best move to DFA Lowe?
Darragh McDonald
1:27
I kinda get it. They weren't going to bring him back next year. Getting Lowe out of the way opens the DH spot. They're trying to get five outfielders into the three outfield spots and the DH slot. But also, if that was the plan, they should have just eaten the money on Lowe to trade him at the deadline. Now they're going to eat the money and get nothing.
Clement
1:28
With Ernie Clement's rise, do you think the Jays regret trading for Andres Gimenez?
That's a lot of dough that could have been allocated other places...
Jays Rotation
1:28
Who goes to the pen and why will it be Eric Lauer who's been the best of the bunch?
Dan Grant
1:28
How does the semi-revamped Blue Jays bullpen stack up against other contenders? What happens if Bieber is good enough to occupy a rotation spot come playoff time, assuming everyone is healthy?
Six into Four
1:28
What's the Jays October rotation assuming everyone is healthy?  Presume Lauer despite his proformance goes to the pen but who will be the other man out?
Believer with a B and no el
1:28
Back in 2023 I won my fantasy league by riding a post TJ Skubal to the playoff, I'm no GM but Shane Bieber's rehab is giving me the vibes this year for my Blue Jays, do you believe (as I do) that he's going to be their game 1 starter in the playoff?
Blue Jay Way
1:28
What do you attribute the Jays amazing turnaround to? Did they decide one day to change their whole approach and do the opposite of what everyone else does? Or did the team just gel and everything clicked.
Darragh McDonald
1:29
Lots of Jays questions and they're positive?! What a difference a few months can make. Remember when the team was going nowhere and everyone needed to be fired?
1:30
On the reasons for the turnaround, I guess it could be approach. There has been a lot of talk this year about the guys trying to use their "A" swing more often. In other words, trying to hit the piss out of the ball when you get a pitch you like. Seems to be working for Springer, for instance.
1:31
More broadly, I think it's just depth and balance. They don't really have any holes.
The hitting is good. The defense is good. The rotation is good. The bullpen is good.
Similar to the Brewers, it's hard to lose a bunch of games in a row if every guy on the team is pretty decent. If two or three guys are in a slump, then someone else hits.
1:32
The Jays have 11 position players with at least 1.1 fWAR this year.
1:33
Straw and Loperfido are just under, at 0.9 and 0.7.
On the rotation, man, I really don't know. It's the proverbial good problem to have, but I'm glad I'm not making the decisions.
Lauer has the least experience but was the best of the bunch for a month or two.
Scherzer has been hurt a lot but has been looking great lately.
1:34
Gausman and Bassitt have wobbles but both of them will just randomly give you eight shutty some days.
1:36
I would guess Lauer ends up in the bullpen. He has less of a track record and there's also kinda workload stuff. He only got to about 110 innings last year. Only about 90 in 2023. He's over 100 already in 2025, combining majors and minors.
1:37
He would give them a third lefty alongside Little and Fluharty, which is a bonus.
For the playoffs, it might depend on matchups. Before, they did they thing where they pulled Berrios early to get Kikuchi in there, trying to play matchups against the Twins.
1:38
As for the Gimenez trade, yeah, it doesn't look amazing for 2025. But I think it was also an insurance policy on Bichette leaving.
1:39
For 2026, you could have Andres at short, Clement at second and Barger at third. If Bo comes back, great. If not, they can figure something else out.
John B
1:39
Hi Darragh. Who do you see as the top bidders for Kyle Tucker this off season?
Darragh McDonald
1:39
All the top spenders, really.
1:40
It's going to be in the 400-500 range. You can eliminate all the small-market teams, unfortunately.
BrewCrewzing
1:41
With the emergence of Andrew Vaughn, is the infield set for the next 2 years?  The Outfield also?  Barring injuries, the future looks bring in Milwaukee.   How do you see it?  Thanks.
BeBopCola
1:41
If I told you at the beginning of the year that the brewers would be the best team in baseball at this point of the season, would you have believed me?
Darragh McDonald
1:43
I'll probably remain skeptical of Vaughn for a while but the Brewers are clearly smarter than me and everyone else.
1:44
But yeah, the position player group looks really good right now. The only impending free agents are Hoskins and Jansen, so they could roll into next year with basically the same group they have now.
And to BeBopCola's question, absolutely not.
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