With the BBA expansion draft just around the corner, 9-News has received an unauthorized list of players thought to represent individuals the team will be protecting. It could, of course, be a ruse. It could be a careful ploy of disinformation. But the list looks reasonable, and so in order to have fun, we here at 9-News have concocted a full team of players from the Nine organization who will be exposed for the draft.
It’s an interesting team—likely not a Landis winner, but, then, Yellow Springs has never had one of those so welcome to the club.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
POSITION PLAYERS:
Catcher: Pablo Alaniz (22, 5/8/6/4/6): Alaniz threw down half a WAR in only 175 plate appearances last season, his first as the backup to Aaron Stone. Defensively, he’s still a work in process, though some suggest he’ll eventually be pretty good. Catchers, it seems, are slow to develop though. He’s likely available because the club has guys coming along behind him ion the form of Kazuki Saito and Jesus Rodgriguez.
1st Base/Designated Hitter: The top candidates here are Miguel Angel Perales (21, 7/8/7/4/6) and Sinosuke Muto (22, 7/8/7/6/5): Perales has a little pop from the right hand side of the plate, and he can at least handle the defensive side of the game a little. He’s blocked in the short term at first base by Lucas McNeill and at RHB DH by Miguel Fernandez, making him a likely subject for exposure. Of course, Fernandez (24, 7/7/4/5/8) is also available, and with a solid .333/.356/.482 season under his belt in the BBA, perhaps more attractive for a team that wants a surer thing. Muto is a bit of a rock on the field, but he’s got some serious lumber from the left side of the plate, hitting 21 AAA homers last year, OPS+ing 158 and posting 3.1 WAR.
Finally, even more in that camp is Dimaio Laqui (25, 7/5/6/5/8), a switch hitter who signed a $875K deal in the off season. Despite his young age, Laqui is a veteran of several useful BBA seasons, and as a switchie, would appeal to a team looking for more utility from their first base position.
2nd Base: Tai hoi Zhu (24 (6/6/5/4/7) has been a steady hand in the minors for several seasons, and a guy the team has been expecting would play in the bigs. He’s likely a utility player in YS9’s scheme, and that’s probably his best role, in reality. That said, his 7/6/8/8 defensive ratings make him a solid second baseman, perhaps league average, perhaps a touch below.
Shortstop: Perhaps the most intriguing idea here would be to pull 23-year-old Jose Moran from the Nine’s A-ball club in Fort Worth and just eat his invisible bat. We say this because you’d have one of the most adroit defensive players in the league. This is a guy who registered 1.9 WAR in A-ball while OPSing .681. Definitely a gamble, but the kind of gamble some expansion teams take.
Alternates here would be Bernardo Sanchez (23, 4/5/3/3/6) and Adrian Salazar (23, 4/5/4/6/5). Sanchez is a bit better hitter than Moran, and still has an top quartile quality glove, while Salazar will at least get on base pretty well while giving pedestrian glove.
All these guys are available because, as we’ll see in a moment, it seems clear the Nine plan to enact the approach of using Luis Pena at shortstop for the next several seasons.
3rd Base: We say it seems clear that Pena will be at shortstop because the list we have says that the entire starting platoon of Rob Thomas (26, 6/8/7/3/6) and Alejandro Rodriguez (23, 6/8/6/4/7) will be exposed to the draft. Both players have been with the big club for a few years now, Thomas signed a $4.7m contract to avoid arbitration, Rodriguez a $900K contract. Neither were as brilliant last season as they’ve been in the past, but we suspect they are available because, with Pena at shortstop, Dong-po Thum slides over to third base full time. Regardless, it’s interesting that the team is exposing their entire 3B squadron.
Left Field: Perhaps the most interesting name left off the protected list is left fielder Andy McKinney (24, 6/7/6/6/6). He’s a Gillstrom winner a couple years back, and has had moments each year where he carried the team. He also recently signed a fairly team friendly deal to buy out his arbitration years. Unfortunately for McKinney, he’s also here at the same time Ricardo Mendoza has become ready to play. He’s the guy you’d likely start in left field—perhaps platooned with…
Pat Allen (25, 6/8/7/4/7)…Allen has had troubles sticking at the parent club as the RHB of a platoon system, though most scouts don’t know why. Maybe dumb luck. He should hit a bigger ton than he has against LHP—and given his glove is made of concrete, he has to. Both Allen and LHB Anastasio Hernandez (24, 6/7/6/2/7) are unlikely to be taken, but could hold a spot in a BBA roster in a pinch.
Center Field: The obvious starter of this group would be Michael Noel (20, 6/8/4/4/7). He looks like he can handle the defensive chore and may someday hit a little—though his effort when the team force-fit him into left field for much of the season last year wound up showing his glove was as solid as advertised, but his bat registering a paltry 72 on the OPS+ scale--clearly showing that the idea of him playing left field is now a non-starter for the Nine. We’re not sure what the expansion teams are going to look for, but Noel would be cheap guy to plug into a difficult hole to plug. He’s almost certainly available due to the emergence of Abdeljilill Sediki as the Nine’s full-time center fielder. If this were a real team, you could see a couple of the other guys here to fill in, but none of them would seem to have any real value for an expansion club.
Right Field: The enigma that is John Ginn (26, 6/7/6/5/6) would start for this imaginary team of exposed players. Ginn signed a $4.2M deal to avoid arbitration, and has earned that after posting two straight solid seasons as the RHB in a platoon with Jose Machado (2.7 WAR in 399 PA over the two seasons). While still not the most gregarious of teammates, the emotional swings of his youth seem to be behind him, and it’s showing on the field. Given that he can play some defense, he could be an interesting addition for a team looking to build a short-term bridge of productive players.
POSITION PLAYER OVERVIEW:
A scan of these players shows Pablo Alaniz catching with an interesting infield of Perales/Muto, Zhu, Moran, and Thomas/Rodriguez. Perhaps Laqui and Fernandez do some DHing, and one of the lower-grade SS as a utility player. The outfield would consist of McKinney/Allen, Noel, and Ginn. Add, say, Hernandez and This wouldn’t be a murderer’s row, but it would score a few runs, and the glovework would probably be at least league average.
It might just be a fun little offense to watch for awhile, and with Moran, Zhu, an improving Alaniz, and Noel as the defensive middle, it could be a gang that helps the team's pitchers a bit...which, might be for the best.
THE ROTATION:
Clearly, the starting rotation has been a problem for the Nine, so it will be a problem for the fake-expansion Nine. That said, it’s not absolutely horrific.
#1: Juan Guerrero – RHP (27, 5/5/8)
#2: Adam Barnard – RHP (28, 6/6/8)
#3: Callum Maybury – LHP (28, 6/3/6)
#4: In-sung Yi – RHP (23, 8/5/4)
Barnard my actually be the #1 here both by ratings and the fact that an expansion team taking him are committing $10M of their budget to him, but the Nine had more success with him as a reliever last season, and so maybe we’re just a little angsty. There was some discussion that the Nine might protect Guerrero and leave Luis Colon exposed, but if our list is right, that’s not happening. With Guerrero having signed a very team friendly 1-season extension this year, he may be a financial target in addition to being simply a semi-reliable arm in a world where such things are scarce.
Yi is probably the most coveted of Nine starters on the eligible list, but he’s convalescing with another injury, so he comes with risk. Maybury isn’t going anywhere, but he’s kind of a fan favorite as he’s generally over-performed expectations. The team has always been intrigued to see what he would do in a full season, but not intrigued enough to want to see for themselves.
At the end of the day, this isn’t a rotation that would crush opponents—and, in fact, we’d need to add a fifth in there from a collection of guys who would give manager Bill Inkster a case of the clotted bowel syndrome. But we could see it having moments, especially if Yi were to heal up and be a value-add.
THE BULLPEN:
Drafting late in the process, YS9 seems to always load up on bullpen arms, and you can see it here. Really, we have no idea how to rank these guys, or even which ones would be in which roles. But it’s a solid collection.
- Momcilo Djuretic (28, LHP, 6/7/5)
- Tristan Alfama (28, RHP, 8/5/7)
- Emilio Gutirrez (26, RHP, 7/6/6)
- Adergazoz Ouakili (25, LHP, 11/3/4)
- Edgardo Llauro (24, LHP, 8/5/6)
- Carlos Elias (20, RHP, 9/6/4)
- Roberto Fernandez (21, RHP, 7/6/5)
- Jose Sanchez (21, RHP, 7/7/6)
This would be a sneaky bullpen. Probably less reliable than you want due to the lack of a top-end guy (or two if Djuretic is really losing something).
OVERALL PITCHING ASSESSMENT
While we wouldn’t be shocked to see the offense listed above manage to be something close to league average, we admit there’s more than a little wishful thinking in the staff. Not that it couldn’t be decent—to be direct, pitching in the BBA is down, and at least this bullpen would be respectable. If we were going to Free Agency with this team, we’d bee looking to over-pay for an arm to start games, though (and preferably two). But this is kind of a junkyard dog-meat kind of a rotation that you throw out there, cross your fingers and hope that, if the wind blows in a little and the defense can help you out, it can get you to .500.
REALISTIC PROJECTION:
In the end, .500 is probably too much to ask of a AAAA kind of team, but if a few things fell this team's way, I could see 75 wins. Poor, sure, but not horrific. Of course, an injury here and a bottom falling out there, and this team would fall on some pretty dire times. Such is that fate of this kind of effort.
Still, this was a fun little exercise, and I admit to being pleasantly surprised to see the options that exist down the chain.
SO, WHO WILL THE TEAM LOSE?
To be honest, we have no idea who the team will lose. The way the system is set up, every team is certain to lose one player, most will lose two players, and several will likely shed three. At the end of the day, that means the team is likely planning for worst case, the loss of three members of the Nine family.
Which three, however, depends a lot on what the Portland and Charlotte front offices decide to focus on.
If teams are looking for guys who can help win games now, then Nine players like McKinney, Thomas, and Guerro/Bernard would seen natural to boil up. Injury-tolerant teams might look at Yi and Djuretic as helpful guys to have in the pitching categories. If they club is looking defense or young lottery chips, guys like Noel, Perales, Muto, Moran, and maybe even Zhu could be on the expansion board. John Ginn could be a surprise pick in the former case. Maybe one of these teams will go full cyclone (he says, looking at Chris Wilson), and suddenly we’ll see a three-arm sweep out of the bullpen.
Or not.
That’s the fun of the process, right?
Waiting. Thinking. Juggling.
And who knows? Maybe, as we noted above, this list is wrong, a case of #truefakenews. Maybe it was a plant from the offices of the Louisville Sluggers, or was created fully formed as a figment of the delusional Assistant GM Fred Morrison.
Only time will tell.
