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But I still think it needs a couple of veteran free agent stabilizers if we have any hope of contending long term. Wilhelmson's stuff lately has been much more crisp and he's commanding it better but we can't really afford to build the pen around hope that we get the good versions of Kelley, Wilhelmson, Lueke, Cortes, Ruffin, Furbush, etc. We need to make 8 guys fight for five spots behind some veteran leaders...and we need to trade League while his value is still high...which puts us in an awkward position where we're getting RID of experienced arms while trying to GET experienced arms.
Hence why I say that's where we should spend free agent capital. We can't really sign bats to spend that capital since we've got eight bazillion interesting guys for left field, center field, first base and DH to try out, all of whom have shown enough promise that we shouldn't block them (yes Taro...ALL of them...including Trayvon :) ). That means we're spending on...a veteran catcher to tag team with Olivo, a veteran infielder to insure against a Seager/Figgins implosion at third, and bullpen guys.
I mean...how do you spend any free agent money on this line-up?
RF) Ichiro!
3B) Seager/Figgins
2B) Ackley
DH) Carp
LF) Wells/Chiang/etc
1B) Smoak (to split the lefties and take pressure off of Smoak while also protecting Wells)
C) Olivo/vet back-up
SS) Ryan
CF) Robinson/Gutierrez
Who do you give up on? After what we've just seen?
We've got like 16 million coming off the books even after you remove some funds for Felix' pay raise assuming we jettison League and Vargas before they get pricey via trades. Where does that money go?
Maybe you can roll Seager and League together into a real third baseman (along with other interesting pieces), but that still leaves you with no holes in your line-up needing filling. Which would basically mean spending some o veteran back-up catcher, veteran relief pitchers and long term contract extensions for some of your young talent that you want to lock up.
Your rotation would be: King Felix / Michael Pineda / Danny Hultzen / James Paxton / Furbush - Beavan - Wilhelmson - several other choices
Whiel your bullpen has:
CL - Ruffin or Lueke
SUR - Lueke or Ruffin
SUL - ?
MR - Wilhelmson
MR - ????????
See what I mean"?