’20 40-Man Preview Extravaganza
As has been the case for *most* of the year, we’re in uncharted territory. Certain questions were resolved with in-season additions of good friends such as Ljay Newsome, Aaron Fletcher, and (way ahead of time) Joey Gerber, but this offseason provides more conundrums than are characteristic. How much will teams be ready to gamble on Rule 5 selections amidst limited alternate site data? If the market looks to be flush with relievers, then how do you weight your own potential in-house additions? And then there was last year’s fun where we signed Evan White to a long-term contract a season early, didn’t add anyone we needed to, but neither did we lose anyone at the major league level. Are we planning to use the Rule 5 to our own advantage again? When it comes to choosing between seemingly clear options, Jerry Dipoto has been a huge fan of selecting “what’s in the box,” particularly if the box has the potential of containing an upper-90s relief arm (hi, Yohan Ramirez!).
Conventional rulings on the matter would dictate that we are adding, or risking the loss of, college players from the 2017 draft and high school and July 2nd signings from 2016. At least two, maybe three of the additions seem to me to be rather obvious, but there are multiple relievers we have from the year’s college crop that qualify as intriguing. It’s just a question of how much 40-man space you want to devote to the bullpen, especially when it’s the strength of what looks to be a bone-chilling marketplace. For other teams, position scarcity might drive up the value of, say, starters, but we don’t have much to offer there either. Thus, what we’re looking at here are one guaranteed outfield addition, one in pitching (wherever he lands), and a few appealing bullpen arms. Lacking the usual numbers to crunch here, I’ll be supplying 2019 stats instead. We’re looking at a November 20th deadline.
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