| Name | Age | Level | P1 | P2 | Availability | Years | AFV | Salary | Surplus | Low | Median | High |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Edgardo Henriquez | 24 | Majors | SP | 4.9 | 8.5 | 3.7 | 4.8 | 3.8 | 4.8 | 5.8 | ||
| James Tibbs | 23 | Minors | OF | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3.5 | 2.8 | 3.5 | 4.1 | ||
| Christian Zazueta | 21 | Minors | SP | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5.9 | 4.8 | 5.9 | 7.1 |
Total Value:
14.2
| Name | Age | Level | P1 | P2 | Availability | Years | AFV | Salary | Surplus | Low | Median | High |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Griffin Jax | 31 | Majors | RP | Medium | 1.9 | 28.6 | 8.6 | 20 | 16 | 20 | 24 |
Total Value:
20
Less than a year ago, Jax was the best reliever in baseball. The Rays have ruined that. It's better to move him now than have another Chris Morel situation, where you massively overpay and then force multiple players into smaller roles and deal with several bad years in order to delay and hope to justify a move that looks like a franchise altering awful fucking trade, followed by having to non-tender a player you paid a premium for. Jax is getting torched while walking everybody. You can do one and still be successful. You can't do both. They're accepting half the value they paid 85 games ago, but it's time to walk away with whatever you can get. Besides, Henriquez and Zazueta have very high ceilings, both of whom have fall-in-love-with metrics. Tibbs would make a nice low cost addition to a Durham team that has very little talent on it. Tibbs is raking in the PCL, so it's easy to overinflate his value, but my belief is Mullins and Fraley are 2 months away from being off the team, and Tibbs is a young LH bat with tons of options. In a transition year like this, the lineup should be loaded with maybes, not hasbeens.
I hated the Bradley trade, but I’m not ready to give up on Jax just yet.
Henriquez is a huge breakout candidate, and Zazueta is now hitting 98 as a 21 year old starting pitcher. If they can get this return, I believe they would jump for joy. Relievers are good until they aren't. We've seen it again and again. The Rays changed Jax' grip on a few pitches, and now he can't even get swings and misses while nibbling.
You’ve identified good players to go after but with a potential lockout next year, I’d like to see the Rays stay away from anyone on the 40 man. Also, while BTV hasn’t dinged Jax’s value too much, I gotta figure his slow start would make it tough to obtain even the $14MM in trade value in your trade proposal.
I agree with the valuation, and was ever so close to saying (Dodgers get to choose 2 of the 3 I requested), but thought I'd hear everyone out. What happens to Jax's value if he becomes good, but then loses his last year of control due to a lockout (I assume lockouts mean contacts still accrue time, but aren't paid?). I agree with you, that a lockout happens. That means we have a pretty shitty reliever with 1 year of contrl left heading into a lockout, but being paid 8-10 times the league minimum. If his time accrues, he's a FA when the lockout ends. If his time doesn't accrue, he's a shitty reliever with a large salary who might be non-tendered at year's end (Making $3.6 this year, standard raise puts him somehwere around $5M. At this point, get what you can get, because there's not enough upside even if he turns it around. I'm so sick of this management team fucking up time and time again. Real question: if Morel comes back from the IL and has a 130 wRC+, who gets fired? I mean, for fuck's sake, this is the group that tried to turn Cronenworth into a relief pitcher a few months before he became a perennial allstar. It's just too many mistakes to dismantle what used to be the best,., best at everything?
There will be teams like the Rays that go into the lockout assuming a lost year and clearing the decks accordingly and others who expect a partial year will be played ala the Covid Year. I expect the Rays to trade everyone not under control through 2028, and I expect there will be plenty of buyers. We will see. Oh yeah, Morel sucks. He won’t come back and hit 130 wRC+.