I'm bored

This off-season is dullsville. AMA

Oh before you ask me something, that meant American Medical Association.  Ok, now go ahead and ask me anything.

Were you happy with The Last Jedi? I guess maybe I should ask if you like Star Wars and if you've seen it but I'm going to assume based on the age demographic I think you're in that you do and you have.

You should have asked. I like Star Wars but the emphasis is on "like". I caught the Force Awakens on a plane on my iPhone last year. So I haven't seen it the new one. Or that other one that a side story.

If I was running the Nats, I would be offering the fish Robles, Soto, MAT, and another 2 lower level prospects for Realmuto & Yelich if they are also willing to take Wieters contract. If they want nothing to do with Wieters 1 year deal, they can have Soto, MAT, & Severino + the lower tier prospects. Do you think this would be enough to entice them... is it enough to outbid other suitors... is it too much and its a good thing I am not running the Nats

YES! YES! 1000x YES! on the Robles one. It would also outbid other teams and be too much. The Soto one is tougher I'd say no but only because MAT has only 3 years before hitting FA but some people like Soto more than others. The Soto deal is probably something like what people are offering now "How about our 2nd best prospect and a good young player for your two almost stars?" so probably not an outbid and probably not too much.

I think you could get Yelich & Realmuto almost for any deal offering Robles. That's his general current status - guaranteed good player, maybe great just starting the clock.

Couldn't they pry Sal Perez away from the Royals for a similar package? If the Royals are rebuilding, why not go get the best catcher alive? 

Certainly for a Robles package. Otherwise... I kind of get the feeling he's the guy they are planning on keeping around. I mean if he doesn't nosedive they could get 2 more years of play from him and still ask for a Robles type in return after that.

Harper, what's the FA catcher pool look like for 2019? Anything in your opinion look like worth waiting for? 

About as good as one could hope... so not great. Grandal and Ramos head it up, with possibilities of it being deeper if Flowers keeps hitting and Mesoraco ever recovers. I like Grandal. I like Ramos. I wouldn't wait for either though. 

OK, I have a training wheels question. Please name one or two books good for an intro to looking at baseball from an analytic perspective, but for the beginner (ie, not the "SAS programmer by day" crowd.) 

We've had this asked before I think... yes... there we are People seem to like "Baseball Between the Numbers", "The Book:  Playing the Percentages" and I've seen a couple recommened "Understanding Sabermetrics". In the comments sirc recommends Nate Sliver's Signal/Noise book, Brian Kenny's Ahead of the Curve, Bill James' historical abstracts if you can find them, and Moneyball.

I've not read the first set of recommendations but have read all of sirc's. Personal opinions - I didn't like Silver's; No issue with ideas, I didn't find the writing good.  I liked Kenny's more than I thought; looks more at where these ideas could go then where we are.  Bill James can be curmudgeonly but I like reading his stuff. Moneyball is great but obviously more of a GM top-down view. 

I'd like to see more on how the CBA luxury tax is affecting off-season bidding-wars. Buster Olney thinks it's putting a damper on mid-market FAs. My sense is that also crimps the market for big-name FAs, such as Arieta. Could this be the year when the price per WAR flattens out?

Maybe.  But really we should be looking at the price per marginal WAR.  Oh god, that sounds terrible. Ok what I'm saying is that getting a 1 WAR players costs $X, 2 WAR $X+, 3 WAR $X++ but it's not linear. Getting from 1-2 is cheaper than from 5-6. I don't think that has changed. But I think the approach now is to try to get a lot of the "cheap" WARs - ideally as cheaply as possible (re: propsects)  That'll damper the WAR cost some but really they won't be paying alot for those additional WARs and losing that will screw with the average. So how about this - the median cost may drop some but the mean could plummet.

It's not necessarily the luxury tax that is doing this. I mean that matters but it only matters in so much as the owners and management care. What's really driving this is that the owners and managerment are REALLY starting to care about costs. 

Looking to next year, should the Nats get in a bidding war for Bryce with, say, the Dodgers? if we win, what are the implications for the team's ability to build a supporting cast? Are there likely to be better values for the $30MM+ salary that Harper would command?

It's all up to the ownership. It's only a hamper as much as they let it be. You can put together a damn good team for 150-175 million, put 30 million on top of that is not crazy. But owners don't want to spend that much anymore (mainly because ownership is a lot more a set of investors who want a return than crazy rich guys) 

What are the opportunities this year for a salary dump?

For signing Bryce - well Madson, Gio, Murphy, Wieters,  Adams and Kelly are all off the books - that's like 57 million alone. Also another 9 million if they don't pick up Doolittle and Kintzler but that's a whole bullpen rebuild then. There will be money - the ideal situatoin is Difo looks fine replacing Murphy, a young reliever (Glover?) becomes dominant, Severino or Read takes the next step, and they find a good young pitcher (Ross back in form?).  But that's drawing a straight flush on the river.
Another way to look at it - out of the high $ guys for 2019 and beyond  you can't deal Scherzer or Stras or Rendon - you need them. It coud be hard to get rid of Zimm becauase he's costly and of limited value (though maybe he kills it again this year?) Your best bet is probably dealing Roark and his ~10 million in 2019 salary but you'd have to find someone to replace him and Gio. It would take some work from Rizzo.