Official Offseason Thread

Ummm.....can I have what you're smoking? Marte and Ender similar value smh

Value as in WAR, not trade value. Ender was a consistent 3 WAR player prior to last season. And he's still on the good side of 30. There's absolutely a decent chance he returns to similar levels.

Marte, on the other hand, is 31 and has been roughly a 3 WAR player over the last 2 years. I think it's fair to say he is on his decline.

It isn't crazy to assume they both could be roughly 2.5 WAR players in 2020.
 
Not only should they not be players for a Marte trade, they should look at shopping Ender now to see if they can get enough value to justify trading him. If you can find a team willing to take his contract AND provide a reasonable prospect in return (a pick isn't enough IMO), then I think he needs to be moved NOW.

My reasoning is that Ender may or may not return to 2018 value. He's 29 and had some injuries so odds are that he won't be a 3 WAR guy again. I know, even at 1 or 2 WAR, his contract makes him valuable. But you have to look at the context of the team. AA has held on to ALL his OF prospects (Riley, Pache, Waters, even Jenista) with Pache reportedly being a better defender right now. Chances are that one or both of Pache & Waters will be ready for a trial at some point this season. Freeing up $18.5M over the next two seasons has value in itself. And you have to ask yourself if Ender not being in CF but instead and opening day OF of Ozuna, Acuna, Markakis/Duvall is that much worse than an Ozuna/Inciarte/Acuna OF. Yes, the Inciarte OF is better defensively. But I think there's a very good chance that an early year platoon of Duvall/Markakis is better offensively. And you have to believe that you're going to get one of the Riley, Pache, Waters trio ready to play by mid season at the latest.

I admit that it's always possible that Ender comes out and has a 4 WAR season and plays prior 2018 level defense and makes himself a more valuable trade commodity for the 20-21 offseason.

Right now, you've got a few teams like Cleveland and Arizona looking for CF types. Sending Ender to Cleveland for a guy like Hankins or Espino might be a gamble but one worth taking IMO.
 
He better have Ron Gant read his contract and make sure there aren't any basketball stipulations.

Haha - true! I’m sure there’s something in there for it, and Acuna probably violated that clause. We’d never enforce it though since he’s on such a team friendly deal
 
lol

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Not exactly sure why this comes as any kind of surprise to anyone - if you had doubts about that, it's only because you were kidding yourself.

There's always "the other side", and the other side of this issue is part of what makes the players like Snitker (and previously Bobby) so much - he's going to go to any length to make his players feel as comfortable as humanly possible, and he doesn't give a *amn what the numbers (or people outside the clubhouse) say.

We can disagree with that rationale all we'd like - that's often the difference in having a great clubhouse and a meh clubhouse. It's not going to have a direct bearing on the numbers, but it's tough to argue that it's probably easier to get better performance from a roster full of happy players than a group of guys who aren't necessarily looking forward to getting to the park every day.

Can you measure that? Of course not, but players constantly tell us that that kind of thing both exists and affects their performance - so tell them they're full of *hit, not posters on a message board.
 
Not exactly sure why this comes as any kind of surprise to anyone - if you had doubts about that, it's only because you were kidding yourself.

There's always "the other side", and the other side of this issue is part of what makes the players like Snitker (and previously Bobby) so much - he's going to go to any length to make his players feel as comfortable as humanly possible, and he doesn't give a *amn what the numbers (or people outside the clubhouse) say.

We can disagree with that rationale all we'd like - that's often the difference in having a great clubhouse and a meh clubhouse. It's not going to have a direct bearing on the numbers, but it's tough to argue that it's probably easier to get better performance from a roster full of happy players than a group of guys who aren't necessarily looking forward to getting to the park every day.

Can you measure that? Of course not, but players constantly tell us that that kind of thing both exists and affects their performance - so tell them they're full of *hit, not posters on a message board.

At some point, a player just needs to suck it up and do his job. And at some point, its the manager's job to not bow to player pressure and instead do what is right.
 
At some point, a player just needs to suck it up and do his job. And at some point, its the manager's job to not bow to player pressure and instead do what is right.

I think teams probably need to do a better job of explaining to players the rationale behind why certain things work and certain things don't, and why certain decisions are being made. Run through the numbers with them and give them a reason why they won't be hitting in their favorite spot in the order, or why they need to use an opener instead of a traditional SP, or why they are going to stop bunting. A good analytics guy could sit in a clubhouse for an hour or two and have most of the team convinced that moves like this would be best for the team. There would probably be a few old school hold outs, but you could just give them a lollipop and tell them to stand in the corner or something.
 
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