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Trade Rumors Front Office Chat With Anthony Franco
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Anthony Franco
3:26
Hey everyone, we got a flood of transactions in the past 45 minutes, so the chat will probably get underway like 5-10 minutes late as I finish the Tyler Beede write-up
I'll stick around beyond an hour once we get going, appreciate your patience
3:41
Ok, that's all set
Let's get into it, sorry about the delay
Rangers13
3:41
Generally is N. Lowe or J. Bell the better combo of defense and offense?
Anthony Franco
3:43
I'd rather have Bell, if price is equal. Lowe's a nice player, solid all-around, but Bell has shown middle-of-the-order caliber offensive upside that Lowe hasn't really
caseypiotrowski
3:43
What do you think Taylor Ward's numbers are going to look like at the end of the season?  Are you becoming a believer?  And, if he's for real, does that make a trade of Jo Adell more realistic?
Anthony Franco
3:44
I'm still reluctant to completely shake off three seasons of Ward being fine but unexceptional because of a five-week tear. I can't buy him as one of the 10 best players in the league yet or anything
3:45
That said, everything Ward's doing from a process perspective is also unbelievable. He's swinging at the right pitches, not missing stuff inside the zone, hitting the crap out of the ball when he does make contact
3:47
So yeah, it's becoming harder and harder to say he's not quite good now, particularly as he continues to rake. I think I'd have him at like .265/.360/.460 from here on out
Which would obviously be regression but is a really good player. There's no one that I've changed my opinion on more relative to my preseason expectation
Bert
3:47
First to 100 wins Mets or Yankees?
Anthony Franco
3:48
I'll go Yankees
Just think they're a little more complete team
Wally
3:48
I don’t think the Red Sox are a team that truly rebuilds. But do you think they’ll retool, and blow it up by trading any of the following at the deadline: Xander, JD, Vazquez, Kike Hernandez, Eovaldi, and any of the guys they have one 1 year deals?
Anthony Franco
3:50
Really depends on whether they start playing better right? If you're 8-10 games out of a playoff spot at the deadline, I don't know how you keep the guys you named when you're probably not re-signing them (maybe aside from Hernández or Eovaldi) if you can't make the playoffs this year
3:51
No reason to make that call now, and I'm sure they want to give this group right up until the last possible minute in late July to turn it around given where they got last season. In either event, I agree it won't be a "rebuild." But whether the rentals get traded kind of comes down to whether the team plays well enough to earn them not getting dealt -- sort of like the Cubs were last year
Squeeze play
3:51
Santiago Espinal……Think he can be an impact player?
Anthony Franco
3:53
I still think he's more of a soft regular at second base. He's better than Biggio and plugged what looked their biggest weakness on the position player side for nothing, so he's a great find for the Jays, but I'm skeptical he's going to continue hitting for this kind of power
Sid Bream Slide
3:54
Why is there so much talk about the Braves having a Marcel Ozuna problem when he is far from the only player not producing. I get the domestic stuff may shade how people view him, but I have seen comments from other Braves fans about attaching a prospect to him to trade him. I mean, 2020 wasn’t that long ago.
Anthony Franco
3:54
Whether people want him around regardless of how he produces because of the domestic violence issues is their prerogative
3:55
Is he being singled out strictly from an on-field perspective? I haven't really seen it personally
3:57
He definitely needs to play better. He's not offering anything defensively, and he's got a 66 wRC+ right now, wasn't good last season even before the injury and arrest. I see a ton of Adam Duvall hate from Braves fans in the chats, but Ozuna's a real concern too IMO
3:58
You're right that 2020 is still there, but that was a two-month season and Ozuna was fine not great from 2018-19. I think it's possible he's just not very good and the Braves got fooled by the positive outlier
Chriss
3:58
How concerned should dodgers fans be about muncy and turner? I saw something about how the new baseballs are affecting them based on their swings? Thoughts?
Anthony Franco
4:01
I'm really not worried about Muncy at all. His plate discipline is still incredible. Is the ball sapping his power? Probably, but I expect that to be a bit less of an issue as the season goes along
4:02
Turner, I'm more worried. He wasn't great in the second half last year, he's older. A little more swing-and-miss in his game, he's chasing a few more pitches. I don't think he's this bad, but I'd guess he's closer to an average or slightly above-average player than a star at this stage of his career
sgrossman
4:02
As portrayed, baseball labor problems are on a 5-year schedule and tensions won't rise again until during and after the 2026 season. However, it doesn't feel that way to me, I know the international draft and qualifying offer are left-overs from the most recent agreement. What other items were not resolved and won't wait until 2026? Do you foresee areas that might become problems in the next year or two?
Anthony Franco
4:03
The unpredictability of the ball stands out as the big one to me. Pitchers already seem fed up with the foreign substance enforcement and lack of a pre-tacked ball
4:04
From an off-field perspective, I still think you're going to see grumbling about a lot of team behavior. The new CBA didn't eliminate the incentive for service time manipulation for rebuilding teams. In certain cases, it even exacerbated it by pushing the Orioles and Pirates to not let Adley/Oneil Cruz have a chance to win Rookie of the Year
4:05
You're still going to see multi-year rebuilds, teams that scale back payroll despite having paths to contention (like the Reds and A's did this winter)
4:06
I don't expect it to result in much more than occasional annoyed rhetoric until like 2025, but the new CBA -- while, in my opinion, a fine middle ground for everyone -- wasn't exactly revolutionary. We're going to hear a lot of the same stuff come up next time around
Don
4:07
What's wrong with KC's Nicky Lopez? At the least, he should be hitting his weight.
Anthony Franco
4:08
I just think you're going to get these kind of down cycles for players like Lopez who make hard contact so infrequently. David Fletcher was awful in the second half of last season; Nick Madrigal has done nothing this year
4:10
I wouldn't say there's anything dramatically different with Lopez so much as he's just never been all that good a hitter. His respectable numbers last year were basically predicated on the ground balls he was hitting finding holes. He's gotten a little more pull-happy this year, which probably doesn't help, but I think his 2021 numbers were just kind of inflated by some ball in play luck
Don
4:10
I'm getting killed by top prospects: Jarred Kelenic, Spencer Torkelson, Cal Raleigh. Raleigh was already send down but called back up when Tom Murphy got IL'd. Is there any hope for them this year?
Anthony Franco
4:12
Raleigh strikes out a ton, so he's not going to hold a ton of fantasy value. Kelenic, man, I keep waiting for it to click and it just hasn't happened yet. I wouldn't be stunned if it does because he's so talented but there's nothing there that says he's on the brink of flipping the switch either
4:13
I'm still most optimistic in Torkelson. This was his first look against MLB pitching, he's not going outside the strike zone. There's always been some swing-and-miss to his game but I expect him to get progressively better from a contact perspective and start tapping into the power moving forward
Hits Like Rays
4:13
What do you think of Drew Rasumssen's early success?  Have you heard any updates on the recoveries among Luis Patino, Shane Baz, and Yonny Chirinos?
Anthony Franco
4:14
I don't buy him as a sub-3.00 ERA guy but the SIERA's in the 3.50 range which feels about right to me. Injury history probably keeps him in this 4-5 inning role that the Rays like anyways, the stuff is good enough to get a fair amount of grounders and whiffs
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