Author: Anthony Franco

Anthony Franco

• Hey all, Steve’s on vacation this week so I’m stepping in for the Tuesday chat. Apologies for the time change from the usual afternoon schedule. We’ll get going at the top of the hour
• Good morning, hope you’re all doing well!
• Let’s get rolling

AL Central Casting

• With all the extensions getting done around the league lately, I’d love to see the Twins lock up Luke Keaschall long-term. What do you think it would take? What about for Walker Jenkins?

Anthony Franco

• Both sensible targets. I’d have Jenkins below Colt Emerson based on the higher defensive floor for Emerson as a shortstop but they’re not too dissimilar as prospects. Jenkins should be closer to Emerson’s $95M guarantee than Cooper Pratt’s $50M range
• Some questions about the long-term defensive home for Keaschall but more proof of concept that he can hit MLB pitching than we had with Campbell or Samuel Basallo, even if they were better prospects pre-debut. Would guess somewhere between $60-70M on him?

Jason

• I thought Boston was going to be middle of the pack this year, so I’m not completely surprised by the horrible no good very bad start, but did you think they’d be this bad so early? I know a lot can change but wowzers.

Anthony Franco

• Still think they’ll be fine — no way the starting pitching remains this bad — but obviously the worst first couple weeks for any team and it’s not an easy division to climb back from if they keep spiraling through most of April

AA

• Why do I get the feeling this year’s Braves team isn’t gonna be much different than the last two?

Anthony Franco

• Obviously remain concerned about the rotation depth there but credit to Bryce Elder, whose first two starts have been really good. If he’s able to stick around as a league average starter and they get contributions from Ritchie and Fuentes, they’ll be better than last year

Ham

• Despite a couple big adds, the Orioles offense still looks like last year’s lackluster offense.  What’s going on?  And when will they learn to hit an offspeed pitch?

Anthony Franco

• Alonso’s better than this obviously but I think they’ve skewed too heavily toward RHH power at the expense of their OBP overall
• Would still take them as a slightly better than average offense moving forward but I worry that some of the redundancy in the offensive profiles will make them pretty streaky

Redsy

• If Sandy Alcantara has another excellent outing would you go all in on trying to trade for him this early if you are one of the big contenders? No way the guy stays in Miami past the deadline this year right?

Anthony Franco

• Darragh wrote a Front Office post on this so he and I were discussing this yesterday. I lean towards them holding and trading him this offseason
• Would be really surprised if he signs an extension — only way I could see it being plausible is if the league gets the MLBPA to break on a cap/floor system that forces Miami to almost double their payroll
• But I don’t think it’s out of the question this Miami team can hang around the Wild Card picture where the final spot might be 83-85 wins and Sandy would still have immense trade value next winter

Reds fan

• What are the reds doing with Marte? He is a building block guy and he hasn’t played against a right hander yet-is he just a platoon bat moving forward? I don’t understand it

Anthony Franco

• Yeah I don’t get that one either. They’re not really platooning him, just kind of alternating between him and Will Benson and I’d much rather have Marte out in right field

Cardsfansince1973

• There have been reports about the Cardinals trying to extend JJ Wetherholt.  Any updates?  Do you think they will try to extend Masyn Winn as well?

Anthony Franco

• Don’t doubt that they’d love to get both of them done. Wetherholt seems likelier to me just based on the number of early-career extensions we’ve seen the past couple years

decinces

• is the angels decent start (third best record in the al) just small sample size or a hope that the pitching is a little better than advertised and better depth is making the lineup deeper and able to string together some momentum, even with adell and lowe not doing anything offensively so far (though both have been phenomenal in the outfield corners so far)

Anthony Franco

• I just can’t muster any kind of optimism with this roster. Much the same pattern as previous Angels teams where there are handful of impact pieces (Neto, Soriano, Trout if healthy, maybe Detmers) but the depth is going to get exposed over 162

Chris

• Even off to a good start, preseason concerns about Yanks bottom of order and back end of bullpen look legit, dont they?

Anthony Franco

• Lineup will be fine. Caballero’s in over his head as a starting shortstop but you can live with him or Volpe at the bottom of the order. McMahon and Wells should be close to league average bats who provide strong defensive value
• Bullpen bridge to Bednar and Cruz concerns me a little more, but that’s a spot where they can again take a volume approach at the deadline (hopefully with better results than they’ve gotten from Doval and Bird so far)

Connor⚾️

• Expectations for the Rangers this year?⚾️

Anthony Franco

• Right around .500, clearly behind Seattle for me but there with Houston as the second and third best teams in the division in some order

The Ghost of Mickey Lolich

• To the surprise of no one, except Scott Harris, the Tigers offense ‘stinks’.   When will we see Max Clark called up

Anthony Franco

• Ha, I still mostly like this offense on paper. Do think we could see Clark by the middle of May, though, especially if Parker Meadows isn’t hitting

SCR

• Wacha , Soriano or Messick rest of 2026 ?  ( K’s dont matter ) .

Anthony Franco

• Soriano

Too Early

• Related questions:  How does a lockout impact service time, and does the potential for a lockout get factored into some of the extensions we are seeing?

Anthony Franco

• An offseason lockout obviously doesn’t impact service time. If it costs an entire season, that’s something they’d need to sort out within the CBA
• I don’t think it’s having much of an impact on extensions. It probably plays into contract structure a little bit — players would prefer the money as signing bonuses rather than 2027 salary as a hedge — but if the ’27 season gets canceled, they’re not getting paid salaries either way

Slick Ric

• If CJ Abrams keeps hitting like he is, does that make it more likely or less likely that he is in Washington after the trade deadline?

Buster Posey

• Fine: I should have traded for CJ Abrams. Does Eldridge straight-up get it done or would the Nats want more?

Anthony Franco

• Better performance has to drive up the likelihood of a trade. Nats still aren’t close and 2.5 years of Abrams might be the most valuable deadline trade chip
• I don’t think Eldridge is getting it done as a standalone. Sensible headliner but this kind of deal is basically never one-for-one for a top prospect. Teams like to hedge their bets with multi-player packages

Circle Me Bert

• Where is Byron Buxton playing after the trade deadline?

Anthony Franco

• Still think he’s a Twin

Fantasy Advice

• Are we concerned about Nick Kurtz’s start?

Anthony Franco

• Not really. His rookie season was probably a little over his head — don’t think we’re talking about him as the third-best hitter in MLB behind Judge and Ohtani — and there will always be a lot of strikeouts but the power barrage is coming

Greg

• Any tips for securing a job with MLB Trade Rumors?

Anthony Franco

• When opportunities come out, we just put out a job posting on the site, nothing available right now. Best advice I could give is to read closely on a lot of the transactional minutia to have an idea of why teams make moves when they do, 40-man implications, etc.

Phils

• What do you do with T walker when Zach Wheeler comes back?   He won’t be in the rotation and they have absolutely no space for him in the bullpen. Is it time to just say goodbye or ask him to go to AAA?

Anthony Franco

• He has no incentive to go to Triple-A. My guess is they’ll try to get Pop through waivers and keep Walker around in long relief as a hedge in case Wheeler doesn’t look right

Ryan

• Why did the Brewers preemptively give Cooper Pratt a 40-man roster spot when he’s not getting called up and wasn’t Rule 5 eligible until after the 2027 season?

Anthony Franco

• It’s required for any player signing a major league contract. Mariners had to do the same with Colt Emerson

Jordan Walker

• Are you buying my breakout?

Anthony Franco

• Cautiously optimistic. Still a lot of swing-and-miss but he’s destroying the ball and getting it in the air more than he usually does. Seems like the bat path is a little more uphill this year, which is encouraging if you can pull that off without a massive drop in contact
• It’s two weeks so I’m not fully on board yet because we’ve seen stretches where Walker gets hot and then falls back, but I’m more intrigued than I was on March 27

Big Fan

• Can you explain the “player to be named later” process?  Is there a time limit for the player to be named?  Is there a bank of players that the teams agree could be available at a later time?

Anthony Franco

• Pretty much. Teams will agree to a prearranged list of players who the acquiring club can choose from a timeline for them to make that decision

To ATL

• I’ve seen Tim and now you revently respond to questions about the lockout with a bit more pessimism. Is that me, or are you concerned we may actually lose part or all of next season?

Anthony Franco

• Nah I think the offseason will suck but they’ll figure it out late, pretty similar to what happened the last time around
• More pessimistic about 2031 but MLB has so many reasons right now (TV bundle after ’28, expansion, Manfred’s personal desire not to have his legacy be an inability to get a CBA done at the end of his tenure) not to bring it all to a halt this time

I Overslept

• Calm me down about Carter Jensen.  There are a lot of young guys on the Royals and it kinda bugs me that they let it slide.

Anthony Franco

• They kind of put him on blast publicly, obviously scratched him from that game. I think it’s fine. Sending him down or something is an overreaction that deals more of a hit to the team than it’s worth
• If it happens again, alright, maybe they do some kind of disciplinary thing like the Nationals did with CJ Abrams a couple years ago. For the first time, I think they handled it fine

The Big Q

• Why is “swing and miss” simply a part of Kurtz’s game, but a detriment to Walker’s breakout?

Anthony Franco

• We’ve seen Kurtz have a monster power season despite a 30% strikeout rate already
• If Kurtz had hit six homers last season, I’d be a lot more worried about the whiffs

zivkov34

• What’s the hold up on the Konnor Griffin extension? Or were we sold yet anotherPR lie y Bob

Anthony Franco

• Probably waiting a few days to make it look better for that silly PPI rule that says he can’t earn them a pick if there’s an extension done before his MLB debut

Marlins

• Do you think Liam hicks will keep hitting like this or do you think he’ll go back to being around a below average to average bat

Anthony Franco

• He’s never had anything close to this kind of power but the plate discipline is good enough that I buy him as a slightly above-average hitter
• I like him more than Agustín Ramírez but don’t think either has the glove to be a long-term starting catcher. Not like they’ve got anything locked down at first base, though

Blue

• How do you like ABS challenges so far?

Anthony Franco

• It’s been fun. Still think it’ll end up being full ABS once the novelty wears off and we get a blown call that costs a playoff game when a team is out of challenges. But I underrated how much fans would love the idea of the ABS overturning calls on the scoreboard

Guest

• If Bohm scuffles will the Phillies call up Aiden Miller to replace Bohm?

Anthony Franco

• He’d need to be really bad into July before I could see that as a possibility, easier to break him in as a bench bat without turning over 3B halfway through a pennant race. Miller’s also on the minor league IL right now and his return timeline isn’t clear

Buster Posey

• Why not blow this whole thing up and finally play the kids? This organization never wants to rebuild so we can be mediocre and win our standard 81 games.

Giants fan

• Would this Giants team be a powerhouse in the SEC?

Rich

• Is there a legitimate chance the Giants are really bad? Like, worse than Colorado bad.

Anthony Franco

• Three of the many Giants questions in here. Not yet moving off my prior that they’ll be in the Wild Card picture all season

Hoyer

• Giolito kinda makes sense if Hortons out awhile right?

Anthony Franco

• Probably but I have no idea what Giolito’s status is at this point. One of the weirder free agent trajectories I can remember

charlie tuna

• A question/comment about the MLB draft and taxes. As we all know, teams that spend big also pay big taxes and teams that don’t spend, don’t pay the lux tax. There are teams that are legitimately trying to win and others that aren’t. Then there are (not many) teams that spend and try to win with limited resources. Teams like this (best example being the Padres) are penalized by having to pay the lux tax anyway. They are also dinged by having their Q.O. players, that sign elsewhere, bring back a lower draft pick than they would normally receive. To me that seems like penalizing teams that use all their resources in an attempt to win. Bass akwards if you ask me and detrimental to the game. Any chance this gets address in the next CBA?

Anthony Franco

• MLBPA would love to flip this around. The league puts this in the CBA because they don’t want teams to spend, it’s a deliberate choice
• I don’t think moving a team’s top pick back 10 spots for passing the third tier is a huge disincentive. The QO stuff is, at least for mid-market players, but it’s designed to be to drive down free agent spending. Union has to give up something else to get MLB to give on this

Taylor

• With Yordan Alvarez finally healthy and the offense leading the AL in batting average through the first week, is this front office in a better position to be buyers at the deadline — or does the bullpen situation (Hader on IL, thin backend depth) make them more likely to address pitching first, even if it costs them a legitimate hitting upgrade?

Anthony Franco

• I’m sure they’d love to buy. Older roster, aggressive ownership (at least for certain players), a GM on the last year of his contract whose team missed the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons
• Still need to find a LH bat, ideally in the outfield. They’re still there with the Angels as the most RHH lineups in MLB
• Rotation depth isn’t great but is in better shape than it probably should be given where they were at the start of the offseason. Back-end bullpen could be the priority but we’ll see how Hader and Sousa recover in the interim few months

Nationals guy

• Are you buying the new analytics the Nationals are giving their hitters? Looks like we could have some guys breaking out (House, Nunez, Lyle) and that’s without Crews who should be coming up fairly soon. This team looks like they can at least hit.

Anthony Franco

• Nuñez is what he is, serviceable utility guy. Still don’t think House is going to make enough contact
• Agree that Lile can rake and should be athletic enough to play the outfield but man, his tentativeness last year was rough

Benge

• I have not been hitting at all lately. Probably time to go down to AAA to reset, or is it too early?

Anthony Franco

• Give him at least until Soto comes back. If he’s still struggling at that point, I’d option him
• Alright that’s all I have time for today. Working on a little tighter schedule this week unfortunately
• I’m on X @affranco10 if you want to throw any other questions at me there. I do a Friday afternoon chat for Front Office subscribers where I can get to a much higher percentage of questions with more time to go in depth on the answers
• Steve will be back next week, so it should be the usual Tuesday afternoon schedule on that one
• Have a good afternoon everyone!