What Went Right This Winter
We acquired several players this winter with that goal of "competing while rebuilding" in mind. Our two auction acquisitions, Jose Quintana and Yoenis Cespedes, will not only contribute to our efforts to compete this year, but should be even greater assets in 2019 and 2020. We acquired several players in trade, such as Ichiro Suzuki, Matt Joyce, and Mike Leake, who are free agents at the end of this season. They will help us to compete this year, and then we shed $10 million in salary to spend on next year's free agent class.
In the draft, we mixed and matched players who can temporarily help us this year (Pedro Strop, Jayson Werth, Deven Marrero) with players who may help us next year (Andrew Toles, Tanner Scott, Dillon Maples.)
For the most part, we're happy with the players we were able to acquire this winter, and we believe they will help us compete in 2018 and beyond.
What Went Wrong This Winter
We severely misread the market for relief pitching. When we traded our closer, Blake Parker, very early in the winter, our assumption was that we could easily replace him in trade. Our most valuable trade bait, Elvis Andrus, proved to be unusually difficult to trade. With his Ex glove, power bat, even platoon splits, and reasonable salary, we wrongly assumed that he would have a great deal of trade value. Our franchise player, Trea Turner, is already manning the shortstop position, so we felt that Andrus was expendable, and that he would fetch a pair of quality relievers at minimum. We were wrong. Boy, were we wrong.
With our first pick in the farm draft, we selected a flamethrowing left-handed pitcher who is considered to be the second-best pitcher in Japan, and who is all-but-guaranteed to come to the US at the end of the 2018 season (or 2019 in the worst-case scenario.) Again, we completely misjudged the trade value of such a prospect. We made several offers for several relievers and were rejected at every turn.
We went into the draft with one nuclear option remaining: we could have spent $5 million on one player in the third round of the draft, and then filled in the rest of our roster with ten $100,000 picks. We had so many holes left to fill, that wasn't an appetizing option at all. However, we felt that if Brandon McCarthy or Tyler Chatwood fell to us then we could move Mike Montgomery to the bullpen and he would become our closer. Naturally, McCarthy and Chatwood were the first two picks of the draft.
So, Where Does That Leave Us?
Our bullpen is a mess. Raisel Iglesias, Jonathan Holder, and Phil Maton can't get lefties out if their lives depended on it. We need Montgomery's innings in the rotation. Strop is a right-handed lefty specialist. Matt Grace can't get right-handers out. In this day and age where bullpens have become so important, we don't have much of one.
Our starting rotation is actually not bad, but we don't have enough innings to survive an entire season unless we max-out Luis Perdomo (which would not be good.) I'll match Stephen Strasburg, Jose Quintana, Jon Gray, and Mike Montgomery against any four starters that any other team can throw against us. The problem is that Gray is limited to half a season and Montgomery is going to have to be a swing man.
Offensively, we don't have any problems at all. Jose Ramirez and Gary Sanchez are elite, all-star-caliber, players. Suarez and Odubel Herrera should be solid. Andrew Benintendi, Joyce, Ichiro, Mitch Moreland, and Turner are good platoon bats. Cespedes and Rafael Devers will be great when they play (which won't be often.) I expect this team to score somewhere near the 846 runs we scored a year ago.
This doesn't look like a division-winning team, but there are plenty of examples of teams in recent history that won their divisions despite not looking like a division-winner on paper. With Jim Doyle now leading the old Blazers franchise, and with Granite State and Western Kansas looking as though they're in the process of rebuilding, we could have a shot. Stranger things have happened.
The plan is to "go for it" early in the season, and then reassess our standing after a couple of chapters. If we're in the race, then maybe we'll trade away some of our future to win that division title. If we're out of the hunt, then we'll kick it into full-on rebuilding mode. "Compete while rebuilding." Sharky was a genius.
