Cutdown Day is over, and the final list of free agents is now set in stone. We have $37.3 million (third-most in the BDBL) to spend on 16 players. Our needs are:
- 2 catchers
- 2 starting pitchers
- First baseman
- At least one outfielder
Our wants are:
- A lights-out closer
- One more outfielder
- A shortstop vs. lefties
Let's take it position-by-position.
First Base
There are several players we are targeting at the moment. At the very top of our Christmas list is Brandon Belt. He had an absolutely phenomenal year in a ballpark that is extremely tough on left-handers like himself. Put him in our park, and I estimate his slugging percentage would be well over 130 points higher than the .597 average he posted last year.
There are a few problems with Belt, however. First, he is guaranteed to cost at least $6 million, and more likely closer to $7 million. That makes him a Type H player, which guarantees that he'll be paid $7 or $8 million in 2024, which he would be playing at age 35. Second, the guy is constantly injured. In eleven big league seasons, he has managed to reach 500 PA's four times. Third, he had only 381 PA's last year, which means he would have just 419 PA's of usage. Which means we would need to draft another first baseman in addition to him.
I plan to throw $7 million at him and see if it sticks. The problem is that Belt is scheduled to land in the fifth auction lot, and the man that I would want if I don't get Belt is in Lot #4. That man is Yulieski Gurriel. I think teams may shy away from Gurriel because of his age (37), so there is a chance he could fetch less than Belt. Then again, a year ago, 40-year-old Nelson Cruz fetched $7.5 million in the auction, so who knows what the crazy people in this league will do.
If only Belt still played in the outfield, the decision would be easy: draft both! Unfortunately, both men are only rated at first base. In fact, if/when the National League adopts the DH, Belt may end up playing that "position" full-time, leaving us with a very expensive DH for the next two years -- a position already filled by Shohei Ohtani.
Right now, the strategy is to place a $6 million bid on Gurriel. If we get it, great. If not, we go all-in on Belt. If that falls through, then we are mostly screwed. Depending on the pending decision by the Auction Committee, Mark Canha may be available in the draft. If not, Ji-Man Choi will be there. We have the #3 pick in every round, so the worst-case scenario would be to use that pick on one of those two. It wouldn't be ideal, but we could live with it.
Starting Pitching
We need over 380 more innings to fill our starting rotation, which means we need to add two starters just to have enough innings to get through this season (barring trade.) Unfortunately, there aren't many options to choose from. We are looking at one of the weakest pools of starting pitching in league history. This gives us a few options:
Option #1: Go all-in for the best pitchers available. We will take a pass on the 40-year-old Adam Wainwright (although we'll throw a decent bid at him, just in case.) Gerrit Cole and Clayton Kershaw are very likely to be overpriced, so we'll pass on them as well. That leaves Nathan Eovaldi as our top choice. Not only is he a great fit in our ballpark, but I think he will retain good value going forward. The problem is that I estimate it would take $9 million or more to win the bidding on him, given the dearth of quality innings in this draft class.
Option #2: Fill our rotation with mediocre arms and rely heavily on our bullpen. Sonny Gray would be our next logical choice after Eovaldi. Not only would he be a good fit in terms of our ballpark and the innings we need, but we would have the top tie-breaker on him. Steven Matz seems like a decent bet to fill innings this year and have some value over the '23-'24 seasons as well. In a normal year, we could probably sign both pitchers for around $6 million each. This year, that seems doubtful.
Option #3: There is no real appetizing option after the first two. There are only 23 starting pitchers with an adjusted OPS below .800 in this draft, and roughly half of them have fewer than 150 innings pitched. We could try to piecmeal together 380 innings by signing/drafting Ranger Suarez (106 IP, estimated $6M), Carlos Hernandez (85, $5M), and Corey Kluber (80, $5M). This would cost us $16 million -- roughly the same amount that Options 1 and 2 would cost -- but leave us 70 innings short.
These decisions will ultimately have to be made on the fly, as they are entirely dependent on this market. Of course, it all depends on Jeff Paulson as well. He is drafting two picks ahead of me throughout the entire draft, and is very likely to target someone like Hernandez with that third-round pick.
Outfield
There are only a few options that I consider to be palatable here. If Canha is available in the draft, we might be able to snag him with pick #3 in the third round. He would be a perfect fit for Salem. If only we had known Cleveland was planning to cut him, we would have gladly offered some trinket for him and solved one of our glaring issues. Hindsight is 20/20.
Out of all the free agent outfielders, Ketel Marte would be our #1 choice. He's young (28), he has a great track record, he plays the infield as well as the outfield, and I think he'll come more cheaply than expected, since he posted only 374 PA's last year. We could probably go as high as $7 million on him if needed, but I'm not crazy about that price.
The other option would be a combination of Tony Kemp (397 PA, .900 aOPS) and Kevin Kiermaier (390, .817). There really is no full-time outfield option available that makes sense for us, so piecemeal is the way to go. Both Kemp and Kiermaier are lefties, so we'd need to find righty platoon partners for them -- which is usally pretty easy to do.
The nice part about Kemp and Marte is that, because they are rated at second base, we could move Trea Turner over to short and solve our shortstop platoon problem against lefties.
Closer
I would really like to build a world-class bullpen this year. I think we're well on our way to doing so, but adding another arm would seal that deal. My top choice would be Blake Treinen, but I know that he will be a Type H, and we have a club policy never to sign a reliever to a Type H contract. Fortunately, there are about 10,000 other closer-worthy relievers on the market this year. All we need to do is throw a $5M bid on each of them, and we're bound to get one, eventually.
The riskier move would be to wait until the very end and hope to get one at a dirt-cheap price. I'm willing to bet that move would pay off big-time, in theory, but I'm nowhere near ready to put my fake money where my mouth is.
Catcher
I saved the least-important for last. The catching market is completely barren this year. There is only one catcher (Yan Gomes) in the auction and: a) he can't hit righties, and b) he's one of the most error-prone catchers in the league. No, thanks. I'll pass without even placing a bid. (Okay, maybe $1M.)
We've identified two others who would make a good platoon: Zack Collins (231 PA, .710 vs. RH) and Austin Nola (194, .821 vs. LH). The problem is that they don't combine for enough usage to make a full catcher, and would likely cost us two $3M picks just to fill that position.
What we will end up doing, more than likely, is scrapping the entire position and filling it with a couple of $100K picks. Adley Rutschman cannot get here soon enough.
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