DaytonC83’s Offseason Plan: Spending Jerry’s Money!

PREAMBLE

Are we finally ready to spend? I am going to spread my Jerry pocket book around a little more then some and hopefully we are supplementing our core and creating a lasting contender. I feel I fell for two of the more popular realistic free agent plays but I tried to be different elsewhere.

ARBITRATION-ELIGIBLE PLAYERS

•Alex Colomé, $10.3M Tender

•Yolmer Sánchez, $6.2M Non-Tender

•James McCann, $4.9M Tender

•Carlos Rodon, $4.5M Tender

•Leury García, $4M Tender

•Evan Marshall, $1.3M Tender

•Josh Osich, $1M Tender

•Ryan Goins, $900K Non-Tender

I think Colome is very close to a non-tender, that tag with his peripherals is kinda scary. That said they didn’t trade him when they knew that number was coming and this decision has to be made first so you pretty much have to tender.

CLUB OPTIONS

•Welington Castillo: $8 million/$500,000 buyout Decline

OTHER IMPENDING FREE-AGENTS

Try to retain, or let go?

•Jose Abreu 2 years 33 million mutual option for 2022 for 16mil w/ 2 mil buyout

•Iván Nova (made $9,166,167 in 2019) Let Go

•Jon Jay (made $4M in 2019) Let Go

•Hector Santiago (made $2M in 2019 on split contract) Let Go

Re-signing Jose just seems like a foregone conclusion. The team loves him, he’s begging to come back, I just can’t picture a scenario where he doesn’t. I’m pretty ‘meh’ about it but the figure will be fine and we can worry about Vaughn in 2021.

FREE-AGENTS  (a little front loaded to make the budget)

No. 1: Zack Wheeler 4/80 (15/20/22/23)

No. 2: Yasmani Grandal 4/58 (13,13,15,17)

No. 3: Dallas Kuechel 3/34 (11/11/12)

No. 4 Didi Gregorius 1/12

No. 5 Chris Martin 2/13 (5/8)

No. 6 Mark Trumbo 1/3.5

Wheeler has Cole level talent at a third of the price and Grandal is all of our love affair: a high OBP, can hit from the left side, great game-calling catcher. Dallas is a veteran innings eater who will supplement the staff with still some upside and I think his ground ball stuff plays at the cell. Didi is a pillow contract for him to rebuild value. I think he fits the lineup perfectly, where he fits on the diamond will be a little up in the air. Martin is our back end pen add. Trumbo is just a ‘we have a 26th man’ flier for some pop of the bench and potentially part of a DH platoon if healthy.

TRADES

No. 1: Trade Reynaldo Lopez, Steele Walker, Bernardo Flores, Gavin Sheets to Mariners for Mitch Haniger.

The first thing I thought when I came into making this plan is ‘I bet the White Sox will dangle Reynaldo Lopez out there as a trade chip’. They were not shy about their displeasure with how motivated he is towards the end of the year and I think they may want to move on while he has some value. What is that value though? He’s a cost controlled starter with a nice prospect pedigree who has been all over the place. I am hoping he is enough to be a big chip here in this deal. Haniger is signed until 2023 and has a couple really solid years under his belt but is also coming off a injury ridden 2019. Can we get him without a top #100 prospect here with a close one in Walker, and two organizational top 30’s in Sheets and Flores? I’m hoping so. Mariners have no pitching and could unlock something with the enigma of Lopez while we throw them some high floor hitters and a potential back end guy in Flores.

Trade Carson Fulmer to someone for something. He’s done here but he doesn’t bring anyone back to mention.

SUMMARY

Here is a tentative lineup:

  1. Mitch Haniger RF
  2. Yoan Moncada 3b
  3. Jose Abreu 1B
  4. Eloy Jimenez LF
  5. Yasmani Grandal C
  6. Didi Gregorius 2B
  7. Tim Anderson SS
  8. Luis Robert CF
  9. Zack Collins & Friends DH

Bench: L. Garcia OF/IF, Danny Mendick IF, James McCann C, Mark Trumbo DH/OF, Adam Engel CF

Lot of flexibility to do different things. Guys like Grandal/McCann/Trumbo/Abreu may circle out of DH. I am unsure what Ricky would actually do with Gregorius on a one year deal but I assume we wouldn’t move Anderson off SS. You could pick a handful of guys to lead off but I just chose Haniger, I wonder if Ricky would be ambitious enough to try Grandal at first? Robert starts down in the order to take pressure off, if Madrigal comes up the Sox will figure it out as it goes.

Rotation

  1. Lucas Giolito
  2. Zack Wheeler
  3. Dallas Kuechel
  4. Dylan Cease
  5. Michael Kopech/Carlos Rodon

At some point this may be more like a 6 man rotation with Kopech and Rodon playing off each other to cut down on their respective innings.

Bullpen:

Alex Colome

Chris Martin

Aaron Bummer

Jimmy Cordero

Kelvin Herrera

Evan Marshall

Jace Fry/ Osich

You know who looked awesome? Jimmy Cordero. I could totally see him jumping to closer. Maybe Herrera looks better like he did the last month? I don’t know, I don’t feel much better about Colome leading this crew then anyone reading this but we’ll start here and pen help would be easy to find if needed.

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burning-phoneix

I think payroll and luxury considerations are measured by AAV rather than the actual yearly value so frontloading or backloading contracts doesn’t affect it.