When I talked to everyone in the organization, going through reports and on the phone, there wasn't really a consensus on every player. I could talk to 10 people, and five would say this player is going to be a star, and another five would say, "We're not sure, the jury is still out." There was never really a consensus. So even though I didn't know the evaluators, wasn't necessarily familiar with the information that we had internally, there was still [much] undecided internally. So that was a big part of it, looking around and giving guys opportunity and saying, "We're going to find out who is part of this core and who isn't." At least we would have a much better indication. We were going to want as much payroll flexibility as possible going forward because, look, young players -- some perform, some get hurt, some regress. All of a sudden, we might have a lot more holes at the end of 2018 than we thought we did. We may have fewer. The hope is, and we're still not there yet, is that we fill as many positions on this team as possible internally. That will just free up dollars for us to do other things, whether it's in the free-agent market or the trade market.
Conversely, what if our young players don't take a step? What if they regress, or there are injury concerns? We've got an elite-level player like Freddie Freeman, a stud defender like Ender Inciarte -- we have players that we still want to capitalize on. How can we continue on to take a step in 2019? That's where the payroll flexibility is going to come in. Right now, two months in, [Ozzie] Albies looks outstanding. Dansby Swanson has been very good. Johan Camargo has been coming on. [Austin] Riley is in Triple-A, so we feel good about that spot. ... I can go through the whole team, but it could have gone the other way. We just didn't know, but 2018 was a critical year for us to find out what we had.
You're always anxious. You want to make the team better. All I knew from the outside was that there was a lot of young talent here. All the previous regimes and scouting departments had done a fantastic job collecting and accumulating a lot of talent, even though the team wasn't winning at the big-league level. It was just a matter of, let's make sure we are not too quick to dismiss ... someone. Let's give the young guys as much opportunity as we can.
When I look at rosters, I always look at breakout and collapse potential, and even tried to incorporate that into my simulation model. How important is the variability that comes with young teams when you are talking about "surprise" teams in one form or another?
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/2...next-big-thing
There's more to is as well but seems he like some on here are a bit surprised at the start, makes what happens at the deadline alot more interesting if we keep staying afloat.
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Originally Posted by Russ2dollas
