2025-2026 offseason thread

AA has to be on the phone with the Twins about Buxton if the rumors are true about the NTC and I'm guessing they are. Adding Buxton and Kim to the offense with a premier utility guy like Dubon really makes this team dangerous.
 
I don't even know what his trade value would be, but would you trade MHII as part of a package to get Buxton and Ryan?

I mean I know MsSt would. Probably Matt too. But would anyone elese?
 
Carp said:
I don't even know what his trade value would be, but would you trade MHII as part of a package to get Buxton and Ryan?

I mean I know MsSt would. Probably Matt too. But would anyone elese?
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intriguing trade thought.. but that is tough because you are not really solving the OF issue because you still only have 3 real OF's and no DH still. You are also trading MH salary for Buxton who is a little more expensive but better. Twins would probably want to add more in because Buxton for Harris is probably pretty close to even with MH2 risk of decline equaling Buxton's injury history.

Ryan is way more valuable than MH2.. so adding him would require some significant prospect capital.
 
NYCBrave said:
Of course hindsight is always 20/20. But Riley was a top 10 MVP finisher in 3 consecutive years. Im not saying I agree with his extension. But I'm not sure anyone saw these injury laden down years the past two in what should have been a continuation of his prime.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't Riley already have been a free agent at this point had he not signed the extension? Same with Murphy?

Same with Matt Olson, and I haven't seen his extension questioned in here, because it's worked out well.

So we may have had a lot more to spend this off season. But I have no idea who would have plugged those holes in trade or free agency.

I'm not defending AA but more so bringing up a counter argument for the sake of discussion
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I'm a bit different than enscheff on the extension arguments, but I've always written that it isn't the individual extensions that are the problem. For the most part, they are reasonable and below market for a number of guys. Olson likes to play for the hometown squad, but he could have probably scored a $30 MM AAV if he had left after 2023.

The problem for me has always been the totality of the extensions. I just don't think Anthopoulos and company thought things through enough and could have been more selective in who they chose to extend. Buying out Harris' arbitration years made total sense, but should they have gone beyond it? Strider already had TJS. Given that he's a bit undersized and has a high-effort delivery, did his extension make sense. Pitching is the one category where the player development team seems to doing exemplary work and the depth was moving up. I suppose they had questions about Baldwin, so they extended Murphy beyond what really makes sense. I know the front office analyzes things to the nth degree, but I think they could have used better judgement when making some of these decisions.
 
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50PoundHead said:
I'm a bit different than enscheff on the extension arguments, but I've always written that it isn't the individual extensions that are the problem. For the most part, they are reasonable and below market for a number of guys. Olson likes to play for the hometown squad, but he could have probably scored a $30 MM AAV if he had left after 2023.

The problem for me has always been the totality of the extensions. I just don't think Anthopoulos and company thought things through enough and were more selective in who they chose to extend. Buying out Harris' arbitration years made total sense, but should they have gone beyond it? Strider already had TJS. Given that he's a bit undersized and has a high-effort delivery, did his extension make sense. Pitching is the one category where the player development team seems to doing exemplary work and the depth was moving up. I suppose they had questions about Baldwin, so they extended Murphy beyond what really makes sense. I know the front office analyzes things to the nth degree, but I think they could have used better judgement when making some of these decisions.
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I agree with all of this 100%. AA traded all future flexibility to save money on guys in the future he may not even want on the roster anymore.

If he has a maxed out payroll due to extensions, that was a pretty inexcusable mistake. If he still has payroll to fill significant holes the extensions were a good/great risk to take.
 
50PoundHead said:
I'm a bit different than enscheff on the extension arguments, but I've always written that it isn't the individual extensions that are the problem. For the most part, they are reasonable and below market for a number of guys. Olson likes to play for the hometown squad, but he could have probably scored a $30 MM AAV if he had left after 2023.

The problem for me has always been the totality of the extensions. I just don't think Anthopoulos and company thought things through enough and were more selective in who they chose to extend. Buying out Harris' arbitration years made total sense, but should they have gone beyond it? Strider already had TJS. Given that he's a bit undersized and has a high-effort delivery, did his extension make sense. Pitching is the one category where the player development team seems to doing exemplary work and the depth was moving up. I suppose they had questions about Baldwin, so they extended Murphy beyond what really makes sense. I know the front office analyzes things to the nth degree, but I think they could have used better judgement when making some of these decisions.
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Enscheff said:
I agree with all of this 100%. AA traded all future flexibility to save money on guys in the future he may not even want on the roster anymore.

If he has a maxed out payroll due to extensions, that was a pretty inexcusable mistake. If he still has payroll to fill significant holes the extensions were a good/great risk to take.
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I’m more supportive of the extension strategy. Absent a robust farm system that allows you to replenish the big league roster with cheap young players, there’s really no way around needing to spend to fill holes and I understand the logic of trying to maximize the value of spending which is more likely with extensions than it is competing on the open market.

But I think there is merit to the argument that some flexibility is needed so you can pursue free agency. There’s some probably some truth that AA got a little too drunk pursuing these extensions
 
chop2chip said:
I’m more supportive of the extension strategy. Absent a robust farm system that allows you to replenish the big league roster with cheap young players, there’s really no way around needing to spend to fill holes and I understand the logic of trying to maximize the value of spending which is more likely with extensions than it is competing on the open market.

But I think there is merit to the argument that some flexibility is needed so you can pursue free agency. There’s some probably some truth that AA got a little too drunk pursuing these extensions
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And I think that's sort of what I was getting at. If you didn't give out the extensions, some of those players would be gone, and you'd have more money to spend, but you'd need to be a high bidder in the free agent market to fill the holes, and the Braves have never been a high bidder. Oh, and those players you signed might have also ended up being not so good.

So not saying I agree with all the extensions that were given, but I can at least see a semblance of why it made sense at the time.

The Strider one never made sense to me. And the Harris one seemed a bit too early for the sake of trying to lock him in for cheaper.
 
50PoundHead said:
I'm a bit different than enscheff on the extension arguments, but I've always written that it isn't the individual extensions that are the problem. For the most part, they are reasonable and below market for a number of guys. Olson likes to play for the hometown squad, but he could have probably scored a $30 MM AAV if he had left after 2023.

The problem for me has always been the totality of the extensions. I just don't think Anthopoulos and company thought things through enough and were more selective in who they chose to extend. Buying out Harris' arbitration years made total sense, but should they have gone beyond it? Strider already had TJS. Given that he's a bit undersized and has a high-effort delivery, did his extension make sense. Pitching is the one category where the player development team seems to doing exemplary work and the depth was moving up. I suppose they had questions about Baldwin, so they extended Murphy beyond what really makes sense. I know the front office analyzes things to the nth degree, but I think they could have used better judgement when making some of these decisions.
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I think strider was definitely risky as any pitcher is risky, but the reward was getting Cy Young at below market AAV for his entire prime.

Maybe he's washed and it's going to end up terrible. But was it a good risk? I'm not entirely sure.

On one hand the flexibility to walk away from even the highest level prospect/arb guy is pretty valuable.

One of those...we just have to see what he is from here out to know how good/bad the return was.

Process wise you can definitely take either side, I believe.

I'm not a huge fan of fair extensions to be honest.
 
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