Buying Hard Into 2020-22
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I had never bought much into the "wait for 2021" shtick that Dipoto has on the marquee, until Sherminator put it this way:
So you have Mitch for 4 years, but you're wasting 1, maybe two of them. Which by definition means that he is worth less to us than to someone else, someone competetive. For us he's worth .25 cents on the dollar next year, .75 in year two, and 1.00 in years three and four. So if he's worth 75% to us what he is to LAD, why not flip him for an easy profit?
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This is sound logic, as Sherminator is wont to offer us.
Well, sure, if you are TRULY doing that, if you are extending both elbows, grasping the plunger on the Wile E. Coyote TNT detonator firmly, and blowing the next two years a quarter-mile high, then of course you might as well slave-auction Haniger in chains also. (Of course you might as well have not said that Marc-O and Haniger were the players you were trying to acquire, not shed, too.)
By exactly Sherm's logic you also slave-auction Marco Gonzalez ... and even Mallex Smith and any other young player who becomes worth 75% or less to us what they are to LAD. In particular Yusei Kukuchi is worth more to other teams than he is to us; his arm has a lot of mileage -- and injuries -- on it.
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The M's have been getting mentioned in rumors for Sonny Gray, a 1-year rental, as Lookout Landing points out. LL points out, also, the tasty little stats split that says Gray last year had an ERA a full -2 runs lower on the road than at home.
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Adding this all up, taking the square root and dividing by the answer to the universe, we come up with this: Dipoto's next few moves will tell us a whale of a lot about whether he's trying to retain a sucker's chance in 2019. Yusei Kukuchi, Marco Gonzalez, and Sonny Gray up top of the rotation would be one possible "42!" answer for us right there. But there are many such permutations to watch for.
Sherm's logic, and the 2019 subplot, make the next month or two's moves an intriguing watch for me.
BABVA,
Dr D