1st. I am pulling anything I can to allow Edgar to stay as part of the hitting instruction. I guess the rigors of traveling for 1/2 of the 162 game season is a turnoff for Edgar so be it. He can stay in Seattle and go on his selection of road trips. Some assistant can do the road messaging.
2nd. I Keep the catching Mitch and do a trade of Mitch to CWS attached to a prospect and slap 3-6M with him depending on prospect quality going out.
3rd. I am getting rid of all the dead weight. (or almost all) Urias, all the lame BP guys: Sauce, trent, etc, and Urias, and Rojas. Between the moves for Haniger, not picking up Jorge's option and all the non-tenders and projected raises and the 26 man pay going up 5-10% I have the potential to spend 35-45M. Rojas would be the only questionable one.
Trade #1. This is very important because I am dumping Jorge and Rojas which would leave only Moore and the call-ups for 2B and 3B. I go out and get a deal done for one of my long time targets in 2B/1B/OF Tampa's Brandon Lowe* 121 OPS+ in 2024 (125 career).
His MLB tradecalc # is 13.5 to 16M M's trade ( Arroyo 13.5M, and Walter Ford 2M)
I thought about including Yandy Diaz for his ability to do 1B and some 3B but went another direction for this plan. But he would make a good choice.
Trade #2 M's acquire 2B/3B/OF StL's Brendan Donavan* He has a 116 OPS+ career, he is coming off a 112 OPS+ 2.6 WAR this year. Donavan's 3 arbitration years have a trade calc of 29M and he will probably be due about 3 to 4M in Arb1. The trade is a bit of an overpay but the Cards were over .500 and need to be convinced even with their core guys Goldy = FA, and Nolan at a 101 OPS+. The package:( Cole Young 22.1M, T. Locklear 12.8M, Dawel Joseph 3.3M)
FA I have noticed that many of you like me have wanted to add a power lefty to the pen. I address that need in a big way by signing A. Chapman who is coming off a 111ERA+ year to a 7.5M +/- 1 year.
FA#2 There was an option to go after Yandy as a high average high OBP but limited slug 1B. That profile was in the mold of T. France,
Justin Turner, and Lamonte Wade Jr. So in this case we just sign JT for???? 9M? Lineup:
1. Robles RF 155 OPS+
2. Raley* 1B 129 OPS+
3. Julio CF 116 OPS+
4. Cal** C 119 OPS+
5. Randy LF 118 OPS+
6. Lowe* 2B 121 OPS+
7. JT DH 128 OPS+
8. Donavan* 3B 112 OPS+
9. JP* SS 86 OPS+ ( 1 year removed from a 133 OPS+)
Bench is:
super utility Moore 104 OPS+
C/DH/1B Garver
3 of (Bliss, Dom C., Rivas, Haggerty, Marlowe, Taylor, etc) My guess
SP is the same but look at the BP
BP
Closer Munoz
RH set-up: Santos, Brash, Snider, Troy Taylor
LH set-up: A. Chapman
Lower leverage: JT Chargois, Bazardo, (scrap heap projects)
We added 30M/of my expected 35-45M dollar budget. That leaves room for adding at least 1 or 2 deadline additions.
Keys:
The real key to this build is Julio being an MVP bat.
The 2nd key is health. Run that starting 5 out with that knock-out BP? That could be a recipe for #1 SP, and #1 BP
3rd Key: Robles ignited this offense. That performance if repeated is like adding an even better version of prime Ichiro.
