rewrite this title Front Office Subscriber Chat With Anthony Franco

Anthony Franco

Good afternoon, hope you’ve all had a good week!
Decent number of questions in here, let’s get rolling

Half St

There really isn’t much for Nats fans to look forward to unless the new regime proves to be much better at developing young players. Do you feel there might be one young player who could make a surprise jump and carry the team forward from the absolute depths? James Wood seems the obvious answer, but should I be hoping on anybody else?

Anthony Franco

Wood’s the obvious one. Durability’s the big caveat for Cavalli but I think he’d be a mid-rotation starter if he can stay healthy. Harry Ford’s stock is down a little from its peak but still feels like a capable starting catcher to me
Abrams has a higher gear but he’s probably getting traded before they’re back to being competitive. Confidence in Crews is waning. Lile feels like a role player to be, not a believer in Brady House at this point

Barron Of th Bullpen

How does BlueJays & Astros trade effect Cam Smith’s playing time? What is your opinion of Smith long term?

Joey Loperfid’oh!

Who won this trade – Jays or Astros?

Anthony Franco

I prefer Houston’s end of it because I’d have just non-tendered Sánchez, who I don’t think is a $7M player. Loperfido is a fine bench bat, won’t have any impact on Cam Smith
Seems like Houston wants Smith to start the season in Triple-A after how he finished last year, which is understandable. Loperfido’s not blocking him and I imagine there’s another move coming to add a mid-tier outfielder to replace Sánchez

Tony

Thanks for the chats.  With early posturing by owners for a salary cap, or seems as if the only way the players would agree is if MLB agrees to a floor and some kind of revenue sharing.  Both sides will argue the league needs to improve competition. Since owners have resisted sharing their books  is there a way forward?  Or will MLB have to edit the game to save it.

Anthony Franco

All the cap systems come with a salary floor. The league would be on board with that — albeit with some dissent from the smaller-market owners — but MLBPA continues to maintain that’s a non-starter. If they budge on that, it would require a dramatic increase in revenue sharing to ensure the small-market teams meet the floor, yeah
Doesn’t necessarily mean they need to open the books to the public. They’d need to share it with the Players Association but they already do that, the MLBPA just can’t leak it. The bigger stumbling block — again, beyond the PA considering this at all — is how to calculate revenue. The players would want all the adjacent “ballpark village” stuff to factor into those calculations, while the team would obviously want to construe it much more narrowly

Sultan of Sling

The Giants can’t possibly be done assembling their bullpen. Can they?

Anthony Franco

Haha well they signed Rowan Wick three minutes ago, so I guess not?
In all seriousness, yeah they’re pretty much out of options back there and it’s my biggest gripe with the roster

The Beatles Show

Hey Anthony, how’s the weather for you?  Second…probably happier question:  With the Sanchez trade does that mean the Astros are going to keep Parades and move him to left?

Anthony Franco

Alright the past few days! All of January sucked. Don’t thing Sánchez has any real impact on Paredes, they could’ve played him in LF either way if they wanted to do that. Seems ill advised when he’s coming off the hamstring injury

Arizona

Which is more likely? A lottery pick or a playoff run?

Anthony Franco

Hmm, I think they’ll end up in between but lottery pick feels a little more likely. The bullpen’s really rough, rotation could go south quickly with an injury or two, and now there’s a question about what they’ll get from Carroll early in the season

Alex Anthopoulus

What am I doing? Our projected #2 starter goes down and I haven’t done a thing to address the starting rotation issue (that got worse with the Schwellenbach injury). This is a very odd offseason, it started “adequately” but I still haven’t solved the main problem from the beginning.