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Comments
3 at 15 seems fine to me.
If Gausman is worth 10m for 1 year, 15m a year for 3 years of Kimbrel seems perfectly fine.
If he can be had at 3 years for 14-15 per then I jump at it. Otherwise I'd be out. I don't necessarily think the closer is that important, but if it can push everyone back one spot in the pen and make things more solid all around I'd do it.
Teddy, no way I'd sign Kimbrel to a 6 year deal unless it was a big bargain on a per year basis.
Last season Craig's post all star ERA was 4.57, his ERA in the playoffs was 5.91. There have been closers who were dominant well into their 30s, Billy Wagner for 1, though he was a train wreck in post seasons. Of course Rivera was great into his 40s, but those are exceptions.
I'll take his full body of work over the last 3 or so years versus half a season basically. He had a bad half of a year, and not the best playoffs. He still got 6 saves in the playoffs (in 9 appearances). He gave up 7 runs in 10.2 innings, not good. But when the other team scored he still got the saves, and had zero blown saves.
6 saves, 2 no save opportunities (as the Red Sox had sizable leads), and 1 inning of work in a loss (in which he gave up no runs). He seemed to give up runs several times when they had several run lead, so no harm no foul. Other than but#-clinching if you're a Red Sox fan in those situation.
@Teddy you make some good points, and @WCDawg does as well. Here’s my two cents.
kimbrel is declining for sure as @WCDawg said, but he is still really good (projected 2.80 FIP per fangraphs). I side with kasey that I’ll take his full body of work over a half season/post season and the projection systems do too. He would make us better, great player fitting an area of need. But 15M is a lot for a closer. In terms of $$/WAR it is bordering on too much. I’d probably do it for 2 years but the third would make me think harder, due to his decline.
Id like to say sign him, this is why we have that whole “financial flexibility” thing. We signed Ozzie and acuna for legitimate steals and must have a lot of financial freedom. But baseball doesn’t have a salary cap and money not spent now can rollover into the next year.
I think the reality of the situation is kimbrel is asking for a ton of money and a lot of years and the market obviously doesn’t value him at whatever price point he wants. Couple that with whichever team that signs him would lose a draft pick (if he signs before the draft this year), you get a situation like this.
I’m just not worried about Liberty spending too much on one contract in a position of need, because they aren’t spending anything as is. They’re sitting on a mountain of cash, laughing at us fans all the way to the bank. Liberty likes the “we’ll have financial flexibility next year” line. Seem to use it every year now.
I agree, it’s really frustrating. Seems like we have been sold a bill of goods for a while here. You may have convinced me to join the Kimbrel for 3/45 club
Kirbstomper. Good point about losing a draft pick if you sign Kimbrel before the draft is over. That makes June 6th a likely day for bidding to start. That is also when a lot of teams are starting to get a good idea of what they need.
June 6th is also the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, which just occurred to me while typing June 6th.
Teddy. I'd actually be LESS concerned with tying up 15 or so million a year if Liberty was less tight with a buck. It seems like we need to be very judicious at how money is spent.
Good grief, what can the Braves do to improve the relief pitching situation? They’re terrible. Not scoring a lot doesn’t help but...
This was a known issue since last season, Liberty doesn't like spending money and did nothing in the offseason. So they can't act surprised. They're probably trying to wait until June 2nd and hope Kimbrel's price comes down too.
Hear ya Teddy, but it’s not just the closer. Middle relief seems to give up the big inning that does the damage.
Soroka looked great - once again. Could make up for Newk’s struggles.
I agree the bullpen needs more than just one guy. But I think signing Kimbrell allows for Minter and Vizcaino to move up to be middle relievers/setup men, while sending down/trading your worst reliever.
Edit: I know Vizcaino is out for the season now, but just talking before the season started scenarios... Adding injuries to an already thin bullpen is absolute worst case scenario for the Braves.
It's not up to Liberty to add or not add to the payroll. Blame Terry McGuirk and not them. It feels a lot more that they just decided to punt this season too when they realized that the Mets and Nats were going ALL in. They thought it was going to be a 2 man race and AA acted shocked on an interview in January when it came out that it wasn't.
Considering rule changes, this year is going to almost have to be "it" on punting and "evaluation of players". They're going back to the 15 day DL and shortening the roster for September so not as many September call ups. They're going to have to choose the guys to go all in on and the trades down the road this year and I honestly don't think it's that hard.
With the bullpen, as I've said at other places, they bizarrely thought that relying on injury risk guys was value. And now it's likely all three will be non factors all season, and two volatile guys blew up at the same time.