Chapter Four Pickups

I had high hopes for all of the free agents we signed a chapter ago. Yet, of the five players we signed, we ended up releasing four of them this chapter. At least we got one useful piece of trade bait (Josh Harrison) out of that mess. This chapter, we picked up eight free agents, which may or may not be an all-time record. Here they are, in the order in which they were chosen:

1. Brandon Crawford

Crawford is not someone that we wanted or needed, but we would have been fools not to select him once all of our preferred free agents disappeared. At the ripe old age of 34, he is having a career year. He has already hit 15 home runs, which is the most he has hit since 2015, and is hitting .253/.339/.537 overall. We have nowhere to put him with Trea Turner firmly entrenched at shortstop, but perhaps we can move one of them over to second, given that our second baseman, Nick Madrigal, is now done for the year.

2. Jace Jung

Jace, brother of Josh, is arguably the top college freshman hitter in the nation. Batting in the heart of the Texas Tech lineup, Jung hit .337/.462/.697 this season, with 21 homers, and more walks (49) than strikeouts (45). He could very well be selected at the very top of the 2023 draft.

3. Thomas White

Normally, we would steer clear of any high school junior. We have made that mistake in the past, and it never ends well. Too much happens between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, and the players who are identified as being the best of their class in their junior year are often nowhere to be seen by the time they graduate. Especially pitchers. That said, you don't often read the type of glowing, gushing, praise that White has received from scouts and pundits alike. He is being hyped as the surefire number one overall pick in 2023, and this opinion seems to be universal. When someone like that comes along, it's worth the lottery ticket -- especially as the third pick in the draft.

4. Benny Montgomery

We didn't own a single player on our farm who is likely to be selected in the 2021 draft until we added Montgomery. Monty, an 18-year-old high school punk, is generally considered to have the best tools, across the board, in the draft. He hits for average and power, he has speed that some consider to be an "80" on the 20-80 scouting scale, and he has a plus arm in the outfield. The only knock on him is that he has a quirky swing that may get him into trouble at the pro level. He's a big kid who is often compared to Jayson Werth, which I suppose wouldn't be bad.

5. Ricardo Cabrera

It is very difficult to find information on the 2021 and 2022 Latin American prospects who used to be called "July 2" prospects. So much has changed over the past couple of years that scouting reports and rankings have all but disappeared. Given that, the scouting reports that I was able to find suggested that Cabrera could be one of the top Latin American players who will be signed this year. He has the most well-rounded tool set of the group, and is said to be the most advanced of that group. We'll see.

6. Paul Sewald

Sewald is a 31-year-old journeyman reliever with the Mariners. In a very small 14-inning sample, he has allowed 10 hits, no home runs, and eight walks, with 23 whiffs. He is a right-hander, but has limited lefties to a .125/.276/.167 batting line. Righties have hit .233/.303/.333 against him. Of course, one bad outing can change all of the above.

7. Phil Gosselin

Yet another old (32) journeyman who is performing well in a small sample. Gosselin is currently being used in a platoon around the infield, hitting primarily against left-handers. He has excelled in that role, hitting .433/.452/.633 in only 31 plate appearances. Like Sewald above, one bad streak could ruin Gosselin's numbers and make him entirely useless. A lot can happen in half a season.

8. Logan Tanner

Louisville catcher Henry Davis is generally considered to be a lock to be selected in the top five picks of the 2021 MLB draft. Georgia Tech catcher Kevin Parada is generally considered to be one of the top catchers in the 2022 draft, and was selected in the first round of our midseason draft. Tanner, a catcher with Mississippi State and a member of the 2022 draft class, is arguably better than both of them. He is a tremendous defensive catcher, and hit .284/.375/.528 in his sophomore season, with a team-leading 14 home runs, and a 33/38 BB/K ratio.

News and Notes

I know that this is most likely a delusion caused by my deep-seated love and bias for all things Cowtipper, but it sure seems that whenever we enter into trade talks with another team, the asking price for our players is ten times that of any other team in the league. I have often thought that it's better to have a shitty farm system than a good one when it comes to trade talking. If you offer your "best" prospect, who happens to be the 60th-best prospect in baseball, it gives the illusion of being a better offer than if they same player were offered by a team that also owns the 6th-, 10th-, and 25th-best prospects.

Maybe it's just me.

In any case, after a shit-ton of begging, negotiating, arm-twisting, and heavy-drinking, we somehow managed to pull off two more trades this past chapter. Both trades should have been completely unnecessary. Hell, ANY trade that we have made over the past two chapters should have been unnecessary, given the quality of our team on paper compared to the competition. Yet, here we are.

In this Bizarro World of BDBL 2021, where black is white and up is down, we actually need to make a trade for a third baseman who can hit, despite the presence of Rafael Devers on our roster. To that end, we added David Freese from the Ravenswood Infidels. Freese's projected stats are nowhere near as good as Devers', and yet Freese is currently posting an OPS that is 100 points -- ONE-HUNDRED POINTS!! -- higher than Devers.

It's a very small sample, and Freese is severely restricted in usage, but every bat helps. If Devers' bat finally begins to heat up, we can move Freese to first base, where every batter we've used in that position has struggled all season.

In exchange for Freese, who only has 180 PA's left in usage this season, we had to give up TWO players with 2022 value. Like I said above, it seems like any other team would have had to give up half of what we did, but it is what it is. Josh Harrison was our best -- and only -- decent free agent acquisition last chapter. Codi Heuer was one of the rare middle relief fliers that actually panned out. Neither one will be contributing to our team in 2022 because Rafael Fucking Devers can't hit a baseball.

We acquired yet another ace-caliber starting pitcher, Mike Clevinger, in our second trade. That gives us an insanely-good starting rotation of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Sonny Gray, Jon Gray, Mike Clevinger, and Framber Valdez. The fact that we're in second place, barely clinging to a .500 record, with that rotation is beyond stupid.

Even though Clevinger is a starter, we mostly acquired him to bolster our bullpen. The plan is to use those six pitchers as starters, but whichever two are not scheduled to start in any given series will be used out of the bullpen. In this year where quality relief pitching is completely non-existent, outside of Great Lakes' inexplicable success with no-name nobodies, it seems like this is our best/only option. There simply aren't any relief pitchers worth trading for in this market. Why not use our stellar starting rotation to its maximum benefit?

In exchange for Clevinger and two other guys, we made the very difficult decision to finally part ways with Spencer Howard. This past winter, we rejected one trade offer after another for Howard. He was ticketed to fill the void that will be left in our rotation when Strasburg and Sonny Gray become free agents at the end of this year. However, the more we watch him pitch, the less we're convinced that he will ever fill that void.

I absolutely HATE giving up someone like Howard for a three-chapter rental. We've made trades like this in the past, and they have always bitten us in the past. We get three chapters of use from the guy we acquired, we lose in the postseason, and in the end, we end up giving up years of production in exchange for nothing. But here we are again.

If not for our complete and utter lack of confidence in Howard, this trade wouldn't have happened. Increasingly, it was looking as though time were running out to get anything of value in exchange for him. Had we traded him last winter, or two years ago, we could have received much more in exchange. But we held on to him, hoping and praying for him to fulfill his ace potential. Now that we've finally traded him, he is practically guaranteed to become that ace in the very near future.

We won't worry about that future at this point. We have too much work to do in the present.

*** 

On that note, we've decided to shake up the lineup in the second half. Against left-handers, we will likely begin using Freese at third base. Against righties, we're moving Shohei Ohtani to right field, and use Freese and Aledmys Diaz at first. We're hoping that this not only boosts our offense, but improves our defense, as Ohtani's errors at first base have become a constant, nagging, issue.

With Suzuki behind the plate, and Kolten Wong at second, we should -- SHOULD -- score more runs in the second half than we did in the first. This game, however, seems to have a very stubborn mind of its own.