I'm not as optimistic this year as the past couple. I still think they are, and will be a good team. Strong pitching and defense, middle-ish offense. I think they are the 7th or 8th best team in baseball, but might be the 4th best team in their own division. IMO they'll be in the wild card hunt again. ~90 wins or so.
This could be the last year for the Bo/Vlad based core as well. I think these two have shown they are not cornerstone pieces to build around. They can be decent pieces and parts of a winning team but if you hand out massive deals to them it will hurt you in the long run. I think whatever happens this season, we will see a core shuffling happen. If they are in it all season, it will happen next off season, if they are out of it mid season it will possibly happen at the deadline.
I believe this is a deep team with almost no "passengers" but also no real 6+ fWAR superstars and a whole lot of 1 to 3-4 fWAR type players. That's not a bad thing, but you certainly can't be doling out $300 million+ contracts to 3-4 fWAR players.
If Bo and Vlad were consistently 6+ fWAR superstars this team would be winning division titles instead of fighting for WC berths.
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