The Offseason Monitor: November 2nd
The offseason begins. We make some bad jokes and take a glance at this year's free agent class.
Well, that was fun. Of course, I couldn’t stay awake for the end of game seven. It was mostly my own fault. I had drunk a few Southern Tier Pumkings Imperial Stout daddies earlier in the day. I fired up some Black Rifle Coffee around 7:30pm to give myself a shot. And I smooth-sailed through 8.5 innings, but it was nod-off city in the 9th, and I just gave up when the game hit extras. We saw a few crazy long postseason games this year, and with young kids waking up by 7 am daily, I really couldn’t risk it.
I’m glad the Dodgers won, I think. I’m a big fan of Tyler Glasnow. There’s history there. I was a long-time defender of his when he was in Pittsburgh. I’m still wrestling with anti-Canada bias, but I’m being re-educated, and I hope to come out of this offseason as a more inclusive and open-minded globalist.
So now we hit the offseason. And it doesn’t seem that long. I mean we have the World Baseball Classic next year, and it’s already November 2nd. We’re knocking on the door already.
The offseason goes pretty quickly for me. I never stop writing. The Team Previews keep me busy from November to February, and then you hit prime fantasy baseball writing season in March. I’m also doing a ton of prospect stuff with Tim this year, so the content spicket remains open.
I wanted to take a look at the list of impending free agents. That situation is always the most thing to follow in November-December, right?
I don’t have any predictions or particularly useful analysis, but I just feel like typing words at you all. The winter makes you feel unneeded in this business, you know? I have to stay relevant.
It’s a pretty weak starting pitcher class. Way more SP4-SP5 options than aces. Ranger Suarez and Framber Valdez certainly have pitched their ways into large contracts. It will be interesting to see how much money Dylan Cease can leverage his SIERA-ERA gap into. I’d still be pretty pumped to have Cease on my favorite team. But I say that as someone who has never rooted for the guy. I’m sure that can be pretty heartbreaking.
We’ll get another year of Justin Verlander, it seems. You can’t be Justin Verlander and earn less than double-digit millions per year. And he’s not going to want to hang ‘em up until he absolutely has to. His 3.85 ERA last year and the extra tickets he sells probably grabs him another one-year deal for $10 million or something. Maybe back on Detroit just for the storybook ending.
The big names are Kyle Schwarber and Kyle Tucker. To a lesser extent, Bo Bichette, Alex Bregman, and Pete Alonso. Maybe that’s disrespectful to Alonso, but I don’t know; he has that really weird hair going on.
I also read this article this morning from MLB Trade Rumors about 40 trade candidates. There are plenty of pitchers that would make sense to be moved in the trade market. MacKenzie Gore was #1 on the list. And dangit, I already wrote his player preview in the Nats piece (coming out next week, probably). Lots to adjust and change as we move forward.
It will also be NFBC Gladiator Draft Season starting this week. Those are fun draft-and-holds. I’m way too excited to not necessarily play in any of those (although I will, and I consider it a business expense at this point), but to begin work on the sickest fantasy baseball ADP Tableau Dashboard of all time. That’s coming as soon as the data is made available.