At some point, I'm going to break things up and start a speculating about 2023 thread, but as I see it, I rough out the line up as the following, with long term pieces in bold:
C - Ruiz, Adams / Pineda
1B - Voit / Meneses
2d - Garcia
SS- Abrams
3d - free agent ???
LF - free agent / Thomas/ Palacios/ Yadi ???
CF - ??? / Thomas / Robles*
RF - Meneses / Palacios
DH - Yadi / Voit / Meneses
Rotation - Gray / Gore / Cavalli / Fedde / Espino (or FA)
Pen - Finnegan / Edwards / Harvey ...
Robles will be an interesting call. He's going into his second year of arbitration coming off of earning $1.65 million. As bad as he is, he is due a bump up, perhaps to $2 million. I wonder if they cut him like they did with Taylor when he started getting too expensive. If he is due $2.5 millioin or more, then I don't think there's much of a question.
CJ Abrams, SS
Luis Garcia, 2B
$12-15 mil AAV FA, RF
Luke Voit, DH
Meneses/Placeholder, 1B
Yadiel Hernandez, LF
Keibert Ruiz, C
Carter Kieboom, 3B
Victor Robles, CF
Bench:
Meneses / Placeholder FA 1B
Thomas
Adams/Barrera
Kieboom Insurance FA 3B
Glove-first Backup FA 2B/SS
They won't cut Robles or they would have trade him this deadline for a bag of peanuts. FAs may also be a trade from a salary dump team. Think Josh Bell Pirates trade. I wanted Adams to get a run at 1B up here before end of the season, but Meneses got his shot and took control.
I'd be okay with that opening day lineup. There is no one in the upper minors who is being held back. See if Kieboom has anything. Maybe Hernandez, Voit, or Menseses plays well and gets flipped. Past that, just hope someone like Jake Alu or Darren Baker force their way up into a role and suck it up while they spend another year trying to fix the pitching and getting one year closer to hopefully one or two of the low minors bats breaking through.