Hot Stove 2023-2024

For the 26 clubs not playing baseball this week, the stove is heating up ...

Kim Ng declined her option and won't return as Marlins GM. I guess she has something better already lined up?

They tried to install someone above her and wouldn't let her hire people.

Sounds bad. Can’t imagine she’ll end up in Boston where the first stipulation of the job is that you’re not allowed to fire Alex Cora.

really bad look on Miami here. they tried to effectively demote one of the few women working in baseball after the teams makes it to the playoffs twice (I believe) under her - with hardly any payroll?!

there was an article about kim ng in the athletic just earlier this month that sounded like a victory lap, i took it as a sign that she was going to be in miami for the long-term...

for obvious reasons this a PR nightmare for the marlins but honestly the team this year was beyond lucky to even be sniffing the playoffs & i was never really impressed by a lot of her personnel decisions. she made some good bets on middling big league players like soler, josh bell, jake burger but every marlins GM is operating w/ one hand tied behind their back and bcuz of that the organization needs a robust farm system and her front office's track record of drafting & developing was looking really poor. i'm sure her side of the story contains 500 different examples of why GMing the marlins is nearly impossible -- bomani jones talks often about how they throw black coaches the worst NFL jobs, have to feel like a similar dynamic was at play here -- and hiring a man over is her is just like... what the fuck is wrong with this franchise? and the owner frankly seems like a complete tyrant, he's now had two GMs (jeter first) walk away from the job. i mean, it's really hard to have two GMs just walk off the job when there are only 30 of them. jeter you could easily come up w/ logical reasons why it might not have been worth his time, but the first woman GM in history?? she was just like, "actually i'm good"??? anyway i'm making a lot of excuses for her while also saying that i didn't think she was all that great at being the marlins GM specifically and the future of the franchise could be a lot brighter if they hired someone who really knows how to draft and build a farm system. but the one thing that's the hardest to fix in any sport is bad ownership

i guess i should say that she did succeed in building a team that appeared in the playoffs (nevermind losing 11-2 combined in the two game sweep) because it did seem like the front office strategy was to act as if making the playoffs was the same as winning the world series. she spent money & traded prospects to get guys like soler, avisail garcia, bryan de la cruz, bell, burger etc who are a very unsexy type of player who is a rung or two above replacement level. she basically put together a .500 team that ended up having the best luck of any team in baseball & was able to ride that to the playoffs, and that counts as an accomplishment for this franchise, obviously. but she was pursuing a very low ceiling type of team & i expect that regardless of who is in charge next year they are going to get a big taste of reality in terms of the actual quality of the roster. maybe that's an ownership directive -- make the playoffs asap but also you can't spend real money -- or a survivalist strategy for a GM and not kim ng's worldview on team building. but the track they were/are on is extreme mediocrity & maybe there is someone out there better equipped to try and find this franchise a sustainable window of actual world series contention, and not "let's just make the wild card and say we got this franchise to the playoffs"

I was under the impression that she was doing a good job despite the many limitations involved with being the GM of the Marlins. In over 30 years, has the franchise ever had a decent long term plan to stay in contention? Ownership has always gotten in the way of that.

i think decent job is very relatively speaking. they were 24 games under .500 last year w/ the cy young winner & if you read anything about which teams had the greatest luck in close games this year, the marlins were a deeply mediocre team that were very fortunate to be anywhere near the playoffs.

I normally agree with J0rdan so I'm pretty taken aback by his steamy turd of a take.

Marlins payroll in 2022 started at $67.5 million (26th/30) and ended up around $80M.

2023 was $110M (24th/30) and they made the playoffs.

she spent money & traded prospects to get guys like soler, avisail garcia, bryan de la cruz, bell, burger etc who are a very unsexy type of player who is a rung or two above replacement level.

Would you believe that 20 years ago there was a NYT bestseller based entirely on this concept!?!

Jake Burger‘s slash line since the trade deadline was .303/.355/.505, OPS of .860. How many trade deadline acquisitions were that impactful? Luis Arraez was also a good trade.

i think one reason she traded for Jake was he was afaict extremely unlucky with his BABIP and the underlying stats were very positive for him. his exit velo was pretty superior too. she might have been banking on a course correction and it seems like the right move in retrospect.

Yeah his savant page backs you up.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/jake-burger-669394?stats=statcast-r-hitting-mlb

luis arraez 2023 fWAR - 3.4
pablo lopez 2023 fWAR - 4.5

i'm not gonna dump on that trade cuz arraez is a fun player. but the marlins also ended up starting braxton garrett in game 2 of the playoffs this year.

you guys have any thoughts on the 4/53 contract given out to avisail garcia after he was randomly good one year?

do you guys know the names khalil watson, joe mack, or jacob berry? those are the marlins first round picks under ng. go check top 100 prospect lists and tell me where those names appear. by every measure this is a bottom third farm system in baseball, and the crown jewel (eury perez) that was keeping that ranking even relatively afloat was from the previous regime. when the farm system rankings refresh next year the marlins will be in the consensus bottom 5

like i said earlier, she did some legit good stuff finding decent major league players on the margins and that is a key part of being the GM of the marlins. she may be really good at that relative to her peers. but for the marlins to succeed the farm system needs to be constantly siphoning in and producing talent that outperforms salary, and she never showed any promise on that side. in reality, it was the opposite.

the jeter front office also had a track record of drafting poorly and was legendarily bad at developing hitting prospects, so maybe the marlins entire minor league infrastructure is rotten & ng was a victim of that. entirely possible! but i also know that prospect and draft writers consistently had issues w/ the marlins draft strategy & selections

If the Marlins wanted to keep Kim Ng as they claimed, I think it would have made more sense to hire a new scouting lead under her. Instead they wanted to add an exec above her. That's a weird way to fix the scouting department.

Baggs says the Giants are hiring Bob Melvin.

Side note: I love how often his source is Buster Posey, the guy who grants one interview a year and who texts him all the time.

After a swift interview process, they are poised to announce the hiring of Bob Melvin, sources briefed on the matter told The Athletic on condition of anonymity.

The Giants moved quickly once the Padres granted permission to speak to Melvin, who had one year remaining on his contract to manage in San Diego but was known to clash with Padres GM A.J. Preller. Melvin met on Monday with several top Giants officials on the baseball operations and ownership level, including executive board member Buster Posey. Evidently, nothing emerged from those conversations to dissuade San Francisco officials that Melvin, a Bay Area native who turns 62 on Saturday, was the right choice for the current moment.

Sean Casey announced on his podcast "The Mayors Office" that he will not be returning as Yankees hitting coach for family reasons.

— Joel Sherman (@Joelsherman1) October 25, 2023

https://deadspin.com/mookie-betts-trevor-bauer-los-angeles-dodgers-rape-1850980801

Mookie should probably not be reflecting on what a great guy Trevor Bauer is.

This story seems so so so bad.

Sources: The San Diego Padres took out a loan for about $50 million in September to address short-term cash flow issues and meet their obligations, including player payroll. With @dennistlin and @Ken_Rosenthal: https://t.co/uUr3NRHXN7

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) November 1, 2023

The Padres started the season with a payroll of about $250 million, third-most in baseball, and an outlier among teams that play in a similar bottom-third media market. The investment generated excitement and income: the club set a franchise record with 3.3 million tickets sold, and per a team spokesperson, finished in the top six in the sport for regular-season ticket revenue.

But in September, the Padres had a third-party lender willing to loan the club $100 million. The team asked MLB for permission to receive close to the full $100 million, according to people briefed on the team’s finances. MLB gave the team permission to draw roughly $50 million, which the league deemed a sufficient amount for the team to cover its expenses.

“If the question is, despite all that revenue growth, why would we need to be borrowing more money? I mean, you can connect those dots,” said a Padres official who was not authorized to speak publicly. “The levels of payroll that we’ve been at have probably reasonably been in excess of what we could have supported, but it was part of the larger plan.”

Soto's in arbitration so I don't think the Padres necessarily have a huge commitment to him if they are indeed in a bleak financial hole. He'll likely sign with a wealthier team when he's a free agent in 2025. He could bounce around a bit this season.

i'm glad it finally got explained how the padres were spending so much money. i never understood it. interesting choice to jack your payroll up so high you have to take out a loan while putting that payroll in the hands of AJ preller. wouldn't have been me!

xp sorry I could have been clearer- I didn’t mean his payroll costs. If they’re not going to spend to keep him then they should trade him and they could get a haul even for a rental, which would help if they’re trying to keep payroll costs down and can demand a couple of good young players with years of team control

Clayton Kershaw just announced on Instagram he underwent surgery to repair the gleno-humeral ligaments and capsule on his left shoulder. He says he is hopeful to return at some point next summer.

— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) November 3, 2023

Gonsolin is out for 2024 iirc

options on tim anderson and whit merrifield declined

ilb fave mark canha dealt to detroit

bellinger and stroman opted out. not too sure about the latter doing so -- he was so terrible in the second half of the season that i'm skeptical someone will offer him the $21m he would have made with the cubs? guess he wants more years tho, and i suppose everyone needs pitching

Prob more years & lower aav in case he gets injured again

David Ross out in Chicago, Craig Counsell in

Ohhh that mother fucker

That is not going to make him any friends

Craig Counsell's $8 million-a-year deal with the Chicago Cubs is an industry-shaking deal. In recent years, multiple coaches have pointed out that it's more lucrative financially to take a job with a college program than an MLB team. Counsell's deal could help change that in MLB.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 6, 2023

Three new managers hired on the same day today! (Cubs, Guardians, Mets)

stephen vogt is a good dude; hope he does well

I believe in him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azTGrocYlu4

David Ross's Cubs exceeded my expectations this year. Is he a weirdo behind the scenes or something?

Heyman said it wasn’t anything he did so much as the Cubs jumping on the chance to have Counsell

WAIVERS: #Rockies have claimed LHP Jalen Beeks off waivers from the #Rays.

— MLB Transaction Tracker (@MLBMovesTracker) November 7, 2023

jal-jal beeks

OFFICIAL: the Angels have hired Ron Washington as the Club’s manager. pic.twitter.com/NGWV6X10PW

— Los Angeles Angels (@Angels) November 8, 2023

Happy for Wash, sad for Barves infielders.

happy for wash, but that is not a situation in which anyone can succeed

there are managers teams will fite for/fire people simply to get (joe madden once, craig counsell now)

(bob melvin may think he's in this category, but he's not)

there are managers (of color) who have done well but, you know, maybe they're not quite up to the task, if you know what i mean (cora, roberts)

there are managers (of color) who are obviously simply caretakers until the team might have a chance to compete (wash, rick renteria, pedro grifol, bo porter, luis rojas). jim riggleman is white but remains the purest expression of this variety of manager

there are managers (of color) who've spent decades in the minors and sometimes they randomly get a shot (charlie montoyo, charlie mendoza, oliver marmol, dave martinez)

there are *scrappy* white managers who've spent decades in the minors and sometimes they randomly get a shot (snitker, schumaker, rob thomson, shildt, torey lovullo)

there are pitching coaches who are in way over their heads (bud black, ray miller)

there are (white) former catchers who get hired with no experience whatsoever (matheny, ross, vogt, cash, schneider, gonna throw hinch in here although he had *some* experience, gonna throw boone in here although he wasn't a catcher)

there are the (white) young geniuses (cash, kapler, maybe rocco?)

there are (white) managers who have somehow survived being terrible for quite a long time (shelton, servais)

have i missed anything (beyond legends like dusty and bochy)

Bud Black, it's hard to know where to fit him in.

pitching coaches who are in way over their heads
and/or
managers who have somehow survived being terrible for quite a long time

imo

(not that i blame bud black -- the rockies are a garbage organization)

That was meant as a joke having to do with his name.

ah

Welcome to Detroit, Jason Benetti.

Something I had completely forgotten till I saw the headline on Posnanski's post today (and then immediately remembered): Ron Washington delivers one of my two of three favourite lines in Moneyball, "It's incredibly hard."

(aside: That actor (Brent Jennings) who portrays Wash had one of the leading roles in AMC/Hulu's Lodge 49 and was amazing.)

(said character also coaches the lodge's softball team in perhaps a nod to Jenning's role in MBall)

Anyone else enter the MLBTR free agent contest? It’s kind of a crapshoot, because even the experts get it wrong more than right, but I still think it’s fun

Nola staying in Philly for 7Y/$172M.

Not a bad deal. Makes sense for all parties.

i had no skin in the game, but was rooting for Nola to be a Philly for life (obv could still possibly be traded).
also i am now 1/1 on the mlbtr contest.

Trade news, per ESPN sources:

Arizona Diamondbacks acquire third baseman Eugenio Suarez.

Seattle Mariners acquire reliever Carlos Vargas and catcher Seby Zavala.

Diamondbacks get their third baseman. Mariners move money off the books and get a live arm and backup catcher.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 22, 2023

the cardinals signed lance lynn, who in 2023 had the second worst HR/9 since 2000 (worst was jose lima, 2000, 2.20 HR/9). however, he does eat a lot of innings, really painful eatings. like miles mikolas, another guy who you can count on to throw 190 mediocre innings. to shore up the staff, yesterday the cardinals signed mediocre innings-eater kyle gibson

the 2024 innings are being gobbled up in stl, we are good to go on the innings being covered and played in a professional manner

I'm seein' triple - three James Shields!

hey when you gotta big game coming up...

of course i could be way wrong on one or more of them (lynn/gibson/mikolas) - all three have been effective in the not too distant past, and i thought wainwright was completely cooked several years before he retired, and he ended up wiggling his way out of a ton of jams almost to the end

I don’t get that Suarez deal for Seattle

Salary dump

dipoto gets antsy if he doesn't make a trade every so often

also suarez really strikes out a *lot*

He does but he’s a great third baseman and though he wasn’t great at the plate last season (in 2022 he had a wrc+ of 130) he hit 22 hrs and drove in 96 runs. That’s a lot on a team that doesn’t hit well.

Exactly. Like congrats on reducing your strikeouts, but you’ve also reduced your overall production in the process. Maybe if he’s a corner outfielder you can easily find another guy; but at 3b?

Passan (?) said that the Mariners intend to use Luis Urias there. Now look: I like Luis Urias and I liked him in his half season in Boston especially when he hit a grand slam off Gerrit Cole even though he was playing through injury most of the season & had terrible numbers -he was great in the WBC. But they need to replace that production and that’s not it.

Could be freeing up money for a splash they intend to make in free agency?

I wish that was true. :( if it happens I’ll be delighted but…

What!

Sonny Gray and the Cardinals are expected to finalize a deal today, via league sources

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) November 27, 2023

3/$75m for Sonny Gray. The stove is lukewarm

Gibby!

https://nypost.com/2023/11/22/sports/mets-hiring-ex-blue-jays-manager-john-gibbons-as-bench-coach/

You can pretty much pencil them in for the World Series.

Sonny Gray has been surprisingly good and durable for nearly his entire career, that's a good pickup for just a three year investment.

I guess the Cards are looking to go worst to first in 2024, and why not, the division is winnable.

Definitely a good pitcher. When I saw he finished second in the Cy Young vote, I didn't think to look at his record. But we're truly deep in the new era when a guy who goes 8-8 can finish that high, even minus the dominance of a deGrom or King Felix, with the voters looking past the W/L to accurately assess his true value.

gray is a good signing but i'm not really convinced that gray + gibson + lynn is going to completely solve their rotation problems from last season (not to mention their offensive issues). i doubt they'll come in last in the division again but they don't seem considerably better than the cubs/brewers/reds at this point (sorry pirates).

feels like the exact same kinda mid market 3rd-ish starter type deal they've already failed on a few times w/ mike leake & steven matz. but i guess gray is just better. probably...

Gray is def better than that at his best, but he does feel like a rich hill type in some respects.

The stove is warming up

Right-hander Luis Severino and the New York Mets are finalizing a one-year, $13 million contract, sources familiar with the deal tell ESPN. Severino, 29, will join the Mets and a rotation in significant need of help after spending his eight-year career with the New York Yankees.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 29, 2023

feels like a pretty decent deal. lots of upside

this rumoured deal between the brewers and Jackson Chourio are crazy. 8 years/$80M (and options) for a guy who's never seen the majors!

Why would you not do this? Very good chance the extension costs a lot more if they do it two years from now, and if it doesn't work, it's... $10m a year? That's what you pay for a 3rd starter these days. What would you rather have for the next eight years, Aaron Nola starting from age 30 or two Jackson Chourios starting now?

The White Sox did a similar deal for Luis Robert, who is supposedly the only guy they want to rebuild around

Ya, fair enough.

Why would you not do this? Very good chance the extension costs a lot more if they do it two years from now, and if it doesn't work, it's... $10m a year? That's what you pay for a 3rd starter these days. What would you rather have for the next eight years, Aaron Nola starting from age 30 or two Jackson Chourios starting now?

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, November 30, 2023 11:56 AM (two hours ago)

exactly. the downside of 10/80 is pretty minimal compared to the upside of him becoming julio rodriguez and commanding 12/210, which itself is still a massive discount

I always love deals like that, I think they're so much more unquestionably smart than similar length deals at three times the price for 29 or 30 year olds.

I mean the latter point is kind of obvious I suppose...

What the fuck!!!

Braves acquire Jarred Kelenic, Evan White and Marco Gonzales from Mariners for young righties Jackson Kowar and Cole Phillips, via @RyanDivish Mariners shed more salary in trade. Presumably loading up to add a big stick or two.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 4, 2023

the classic sam miller 'love this trade for the rays! who'd they get' tweet is being pre-empted by atlanta

(and/or whomever jerry dipoto trades with)

I can only wonder if they are clearing payroll space for a big bat but it’s the Mariners

Ohtani met with Blue Jays management at the team's spring training complex in Florida.

I am still skeptical that anything will come out of this, but it is interesting.

i guess roberts spilled the beans Ohtani had met with the dodgers before that as well.
literally everyday i have at least two friends checking in with me about this "Ohtani guy"

so this mariners deal

marco gonzales is bad, and they got out of spending $12m on him
kelenic (still possibly not-terrible) and white (terrible) are pre-arb

jackson kowar is 27 and has never been good
cole phillips is a high school pitcher who, at 20, has yet to pitch professionally

i don't think saving $12m suddenly means they can splash out on ohtani? phillips is a stab in the dark. and for whatever one thinks of kelenic, he put up 2 bwar as a 24yo this past season, which is infinitely more than everyone else in this trade combined

i rate this trade: ffs

SF to Tokyo is 11hours there, 9.5 back. It's an absolute grind even in biz/1st.
Seattle & LA (and SD lol) are a little longer but all within the realm of "geographical proximity".

ATL/NYC/BOS/PHI are more 14+/12+, bordering on soultheft.

I take that back about PHI, there's no direct flights which I think would be a dealbreaker at close to 18-20h per leg.

*huge caveat: assuming Shohei flies commercial.

He’ll be able to buy his own airline soon enough.

don't think the flight time matters -- it's not like he's not going to be an all-star, he's stuck here all summer

what *might* matter is how time zones and television play out in japan?

steve shasta: bring the knowledge

it's not so much him, it's his lifeline (family, friends, colleagues, seniors/juniors, medical staff, cultural staff, etc.)

east coast daygames are dreadful (usually starting ~midnight) but all night games line up with the workday with west coast night games ending around 4pm.

lol verdugo to the yankees

i want him to refuse to shave

I feel like the autonomy really matters for Ohtani; you see it on this tour now. Literally the only reason I thought he might not sign with the Dodgers is because they’d want him to do things off the field. Buster Olney posted that there was a chance he could go back to the Angels, which would undoubtedly pay a ton of money for him to make them money, and to never do media for months if he doesn’t feel like it. But ultimately I still think he’s a Dodger for a million reasons, I think that would be the only sticking point.

so this mariners deal

marco gonzales is bad, and they got out of spending $12m on him
kelenic (still possibly not-terrible) and white (terrible) are pre-arb

jackson kowar is 27 and has never been good
cole phillips is a high school pitcher who, at 20, has yet to pitch professionally

i don't think saving $12m suddenly means they can splash out on ohtani? phillips is a stab in the dark. and for whatever one thinks of kelenic, he put up 2 bwar as a 24yo this past season, which is infinitely more than everyone else in this trade combined

i rate this trade: ffs

classic bucco

i want him to refuse to shave

Welcome to the Bronx, Alex Verdugo 💪#YANKSonYES pic.twitter.com/crFSLHmfvs

— YES Network (@YESNetwork) December 6, 2023

I really wish someone would call their bluff

Lots of chatter suggesting Juan "Childish Bambino" Soto is heading to The Bronx... pending physicals of course.

Soto with that RF porch 😵‍💫

They’re not a Soto away tbh

Craig Kimbrel is a deal now with O’s. $13M. @Joelsherman1 and @Ken_Rosenthal on it

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 6, 2023

damn and i was rooting for the O's to go further this season

lol

Kimbrel-pitching-stance-with-a-pitch-of-Orioles-perched-on-his-wonky-arm.jpg

Finalized:

NYY: JuanSoto + Trent Grisham

SDP: Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez + Kyle Higashioka

so not exactly a bustling trade market for his services huh...

For a 1 year rental, I'd rate it 60% NYY/40% SDP

Finalized:

NYY: JuanSoto + Trent Grisham

SDP: Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez + Kyle Higashioka

The proposed Soto/Yankees trade has not yet advanced to the point where the teams have told each other they have a deal , and no players have yet been informed that they are on the move.

— Andy Martino (@martinonyc) December 6, 2023

padres trying to gauge public reaction to getting back next to nothing for a guy they unloaded their farm system for?

soto home vs away in 2023:

home: .240/.398/.429 (12 HR)
away: .307/.422/.604 (23 HR)

xp they’ve got no money cos their tv deal collapsed, they decided to pay Xander Bogaerts a ton of money to play first base next year and their owner just died, I doubt they give a fuck about the opinions of the fans. The bigger fuckup was signing Bogaerts and not prioritising Soto.

The proposed return btw:

King, a SP the Yankees decided to use from being a reliever, good performance in a small sample size
Brito: potentially a SP, will be better than Rich Hill was for the Padres
Thorpe: iirc their best pitching prospect not too far off the major leagues
Vasquez: nfi
Higgy: lol at least he’s not Austin Nola????

The Yankees rotation before this was:

- Cole, Cortes, Rodón, King, Schmidt. I think? So they have probably at least two SP to fill given that Cortes and Rodón are both crocked. And I don’t think any other team was going to give them two putative SP for a rental.

Cashman is rumored to be in Japan courting Yoshinobu Yamamoto 👀👀👀

Seidler was a maniac, clearly. RIP to the Padres' spendiest owner ever, and good luck to Greupner and Kutsenda if they try to move Bogaerts or Tatis next.

xp you mean Steve Cohen

Yankees GM Brian Cashman and manager Aaron Boone just left the winter meetings hotel and are headed to the Nashville airport with no Soto deal finalized yet

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 6, 2023

Juan Soto trade agreement is being finalized now, source confirms.

The deal, as @JackCurryYES and @Joelsherman1 reported, sends Soto and Trent Grisham to New York for Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez, and Kyle Higashioka.

Thorpe and Vasquez are the Yankees 5th- and 13th-best prospects according to MLB.

Cashman en route to Japan! 👀👀👀

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=yamamo004yos

I'm glad Soto is out of the NL West

very strange to see a player as statistically good as Soto being traded twice before he hits free agency. wonder if there is anything to that.

More to do with extending him. He wouldn’t extend with the Nationals even though they offered him $440m for 15 years so they traded him and went into rebuild rather than walk for free. The Padres don’t have the money to extend him so they traded him to get some money off the books as they wanted to bring payroll down to $200m and he hits free agency next year - all their other expensive contracts (Tatis Jr, Machado, Darvish, Bogaerts) are locked up for years.

Looking forward to the Yanks moving him at the trade deadline for a top Dodgers prospect

Ha, Soto may get traded again this year if the Yanks swoon before the trade deadline! It's all circumstantial.

he's my favorite player that i dread my favorite team facing. i don't usually watch baseball through my fingers, but i often do when soto is up!

I think there's this perception, maybe partially true as far as certain counting stats but vv unfair, that Soto has fallen shy of what people think he's capable of. Still frighteningly good, and he looks like a Hall of famer to me, *and* he's only 25.

yadier molina is back to the cardinals, this time as a special assistant to Mozeliak. but i would think it highly likely that if the cards disappoint again in 2024, oli marmol gets canned and yadi's in as manager

yankees taking a risk in trading for a boras client in the last year of his deal, but gotta think a lefty slugger like soto will be a great fit. idk if there's anything to trent grisham as a reclamation project, but he is better than a lot of the jamokes they were running out in the outfield last year.

as gyac said, they need pitching help fast (tho gyac, you forgot about frankie montas! to be fair, everybody does). they're gonna go all out for yamamoto, maybe trade another prospect for an available starter. and if they sense yamamoto isn't working out, they might re-sign their old friend jordan montgomery.

as for what they gave up, king has probably been the yankees best reliever over the past few years and showed a lot of promise as a starter. i am not mad at cashman for selling him when his value is highest though. thorpe is the other potential guy in that trade who the yankees might regret parting with (tho if soto re-signs, i doubt they'll regret it much). brito was overmatched as a big league starter last year, but could turn into a back of rotation arm. vasquez's under-the-hood stats belie some pretty good results from last year. neither vasquez nor brito get many strikeouts and in a stadium like that, you can't keep that kind of starter around for long.

i'm not sure there's much risk to this trade given that the best prospects they gave up are all pitchers. i guess there's some opportunity cost in terms of what else they have left to trade, but i doubt a better player than soto comes on the trade market this year

i'm pretty shocked that they got grisham as a throw in, too. even as is he's prob net equal w/ king from a WAR perspective & if his hitting ever returns he could be an all star

Real chance that the Padres will be much better this upcoming year than last, even subtracting soto. If Machado follows his pattern, he's going to be in the MVP conversation again. And Tatis will be back for a full year, assuming he doesn't do anything stupid.

the risk is that he doesn't re-sign, but yeah, chances are even one year of soto will be better for the team than keeping all those prospects (and king)

grisham will be good. judge doesn't have to play centerfield anymore and even if grisham is basically aaron hicks 2.0, at least he's a younger, healthier version of hicks

i don't think there's any way soto doesn't hit free agency. but maybe the yankees are hoping that a year of mystique, aura and a short RF porch will give them a leg up

otoh given what they're paying judge/cole/rodon/stanton, i'm not sure they can afford him (given hal's appetite)

"But I do think that there’s something about Soto’s particular greatness that makes it somewhat easier to deal him. He’s probably a below-average outfielder and probably a below-average baserunner, and a great deal of his value comes from his patience at the plate — he has led the league in walks three times. He doesn’t seem to me a conventionally EXCITING player like those young and untradeable players mentioned above. I’m sure Nationals fans loved him, and I’m sure Padres fans loved him, but how deep was that love? Was it Ken Griffey Jr. level love? No, certainly not. Was it Johnny Bench love? Was it Mickey Mantle love? Was it Al Kaline love?

You would think that the Yankees will go all the way with Soto now, that they will, in due course, spend the big money and sign him long-term and make Aaron Judge-Juan Soto the best righty-lefty hitting combination in baseball today, and one of the best in baseball history. We’ll see."

Posnanski, yes. Omar's post about counting stats makes more or less the same point.

I know Votto is loved in Cincinnati now, but didn't he go through a version of that for the first half of his career? With the Cincinnati media, anyway--not sure about the fans, and at least management didn't trade him away.

i can imagine him getting to miggy-level love if his teams stop trading him every 18 months

no one is getting to mantle-level, because baseball is no longer the dominant sport that it was in his time

That Verdugo Photoshop is a violation

Remember when Aaron judge/giancarlo Stanton was going to be the greatest power duo in history back in 2018? Stanton has relatively quickly gone from winning MVP to posting negative war last year.

(tho gyac, you forgot about frankie montas! to be fair, everybody does)

apologies to gyac and everyone else, frankie is a free agent after pitching about 40 innings for the yankees in a season and a half. good trade, cash.

xp soto and judge have better overlapping skill sets. judge and stanton are the same kind of hitter, big power and big swings leading to homers and strikeouts. soto and judge complement each other: one lefty, one righty, one an on-base merchant, one a isolated power god. soto + judge as 2 and 3 will instantly elevate the yanks offense in to very good territory, if not elite (since they still have a lot of lineup question marks)

experts are saying that over a bajillion runs could be scored

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/juan-soto-is-going-to-score-a-bajillion-runs-hitting-in-front-of-aaron-judge/

but yes, soto and judge have excellent overlapping skills. and also, inasmuch as staying healthy can be considered a skill, soto tends to play every single day, whereas stanton will likely miss the HOF just because he couldn't stay on the field

I guess it could be argued that Stanton, if healthy, might have wound up being the right-handed Jim Thome. He was truly fearsome when he was in FLA.

idk maybe I’m just sick of all the hype and think pieces that accompany these trades. when Soto was first traded it was a once in a lifetime thing that would never happen again and whoever got him would be the most feared lineup etc. And the Soto + Judge potential doesn’t feel that different from what was promised when you had Machado + Tatis + Soto all together

Judge and Stanton were supposed to hit 100-110 HR between them every single season.

to be fair they did get to 93 in 2022 but there was a slight imbalance

There seem to be toronto rumblings

Good, if its not the Giants then I'm happy it's not the Dodgers either.

Blue Jays calling a presser for 6pm est

I've been monitoring the Toronto and national 24-hour new stations the past hour, and the coverage isn't as intense as you might expect--maybe some reservations about it actually happening, and that we're just a smokescreen for the inevitable L.A. signing.

What the fuck is going on

Can confirm Shohei Ohtani is not en route to Toronto and is home in SoCal @BNightengale on it

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 8, 2023

Exactly what I mean. I got sucked in today, but I generally try to stay clear of all this stuff.

He's such a drama queen, he just needs to make a decision so the rest of the league can get on with business.

Yeah it’s reminiscent of the Correa stuff from last year. Meanwhile…

Tyler O’Neill is being traded to Red Sox

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 8, 2023

He's such a drama queen, he just needs to make a decision so the rest of the league can get on with business.

He's such a drama queen, he just needs to make a decision so the rest of the league can get on with business.

― Bee OK, Friday, December 8, 2023 5:38 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

sources close to him have said he's deciding this weekend. he literally hasn't said a word to the press. how is he being a drama queen?

Who is this guy
― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Friday, December 8, 2023 5:38 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

post-hype outfielder, had a pretty great season in 2021. someone in st. louis had to get squeezed out, guess they decided to keep nootbar and carlson over him.

I've seen enough:

Ohtani signs with Oakland.

new face of the Oakland Ballers

Don't say anything or else it will hurt your chances ect

Xxxpost

So basically he is saying because Dave Roberts said something he's not signing with the bums

Blue Jays calling a presser for 6pm est

All we've got is Jeff Blair in a studio, stammering about Twitter.

It’s honestly not his fault

Who is this guy
― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Friday, December 8, 2023 5:38 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

post-hype outfielder, had a pretty great season in 2021. someone in st. louis had to get squeezed out, guess they decided to keep nootbar and carlson over him.

Right-handed hitter barrels the last 3 seasons, min. 500 batted balls pic.twitter.com/OavrH58AoB

— Red Sox Stats (@redsoxstats) December 8, 2023

I've seen enough:

Ohtani signs with Oakland.

Today has been nuts. Tracking some random airplane and diner reservations going viral. Did not expect people to get this into it. Been getting texts all day from friends asking who this guy is and if we’re actually lending him etc

Does Dave Roberts speak Japanese?

He does not

Q. Have to brush up on your Japanese a little?

DAVE ROBERTS: I definitely need to brush up on my Japanese. I'm a momma's boy, self-admitted momma's boy. She's fluent in Japanese. Have to get home cooking and go back to mom and go back to Japanese 101.

Tyler O’Neill is also Canadian

Based on my extensive research (~4 mins of searching Japanese youtube), I can concur he does not. One Japanese reporter addressed him as Dave-san and he bowed a little awkwardly lol.

Also he shared a stage with Shohei at an ASG panel and commented on him pretty much to his face:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqZOyyAp_0w

Speaking of the ASG, Kenley Jansen says Shohei speaks perfect English. He uses his interpreter to make sure he doesn’t misspeak during professional stuff iirc.

Also true of Casey Stengel.

I'd say his translator speaks perfect English, while Shohei is working on it, maybe a 4-500 TOEIC? Kenley speaks like 5-6 languages though so respect to him.

That’s why I trust Kenley when he says it’s perfect. He’d know. Ichiro said in some old interview I watched that although he learned and spoke English - and Spanish - that he was very conscious of misusing English because it would be a huge story at home. So he used an interpreter too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtImIqR5neU

!!!!! Just realized I met Shohei's translator a long time ago when he was a fresh faced Red Sox employee... let me go dig up a picture lol.

You met Ippei? Wow!

I can't find it (my flickr account is now paywalled?). I sat next to him and Hideki Okajima at a sushi bar in SF when the Red Sox were in town to face the A's.

Today has been funny:

https://sports.yahoo.com/shohei-ohtani-free-agency-chaos-reigns-friday-with-flight-trackers-conflicting-reports-232934777.html

Now that Ohtani is delayed, I feel like it means he's going to be a Dodger. Or maybe back to the Angels.

Happy arson judge day to those who observe

As a Giants fan, I'm fine not landing Judge for that amount, Correa was the better choice but too bad about his ankle.

yeah, it's much better to never sign anyone

i don’t mind the tyler o’neill trade, he seems like numbers wise he’s like-for-like with duvall and a better glove but there was something nagging me about it that i couldn’t put my finger on.. and then i realised, he looks like a fuckin yankee

Another good summary of yesterday:

https://www.bleachernation.com/cubs/2023/12/09/obsessive-shohei-ohtani-watch-trying-to-reset-after-a-crazy-day/

Feel quite silly about getting drawn in.

i don’t mind the tyler o’neill trade, he seems like numbers wise he’s like-for-like with duvall and a better glove but there was something nagging me about it that i couldn’t put my finger on.. and then i realised, he looks like a fuckin yankee

Ohtani’s a Dodger. Details to follow, according to his Instagram. He apologised for taking so long!

Fucking hell!

Shohei Ohtani's deal with the Dodgers is for 10 years and $700 million.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 9, 2023

whhhat tf

Got da

Yes, that.

$70m a year is insane for a guy who’s going to be pitching less than half that time. Unless he did agree to learn to play the outfield in that eventuality. I guess we’ll find out at his press conference.

There are no opt-outs in Shohei Ohtani's deal.

— Alden González (@Alden_Gonzalez) December 9, 2023

Anything anybody from Toronto says at this point obviously has an element of sour grapes, so I won't even try to argue that. But in all honesty, I can't imagine paying anyone that kind of money. And Ohtani is 29, with his future as a pitcher unclear. If you can afford it, like L.A. can, I guess it doesn't matter. Toronto could have afforded that kind of money, too,* but as a practical matter--baseball does not feel like it's at the top of the priority list--it would have boxed them in for the next few years.

*Rogers Communication gross profit for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023 was $7.120B, a 45.8% increase year-over-year. Rogers Communication annual gross profit for 2022 was $4.917B, a 4.69% increase from 2021. Rogers Communication annual gross profit for 2021 was $4.697B, a 47.43% decline from 2020.

I think Toronto has to have offered over 600 to get the Dodgers to go to 700. If he hadn’t been injured, I would understand that. 700 not knowing how he might pitch again for how long…it’s a lot.

That's the thing that really gives me pause, the injury. His age, too. There's a decent chance L.A. is really paying for two of the greatest seasons ever more than what he'll do from here. I'm sure he'll do very well, but going by this piece, he'd have to compile 100 WAR over the life of the contract, 10.0 a season, to break even...but I know that's a simplification of his real value, etc., etc. So who knows.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10063324-inside-the-rising-cost-of-winning-in-mlb-free-agency

Ohtani deal with Dodgers, per source, includes “unprecedented” deferrals - the majority of his salary. The deferrals were Ohtani’s idea to ease the Dodgers’ luxury-tax and cash flow burdens to give the team the flexibility needs to be as competitive as possible, the source said.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 9, 2023

That contract is insane. Ohtani is great but...that's insane.

Breaking my ilxor break to say: wtf????????????????

Contract is absolutely insane

people will be saying Happy Bobby Bonilla Shohei Ohtani Day until the planet burns up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHj3IMpy3Co

How many fans did the dodgers just buy?

I’m buying a jersey as soon as they’re up. Gotta contribute to the payroll

Dodgers potential lineup right now (the offseason is just getting started)

1. Mookie Betts, 2B
2. Freddie Freeman, 1B
3. Shohei Ohtani, DH
4. Will Smith, C
5. Max Muncy, 3B
6. James Outman, CF
7. Chris Taylor, LF
8. Jason Heyward, RF
9. Gavin Lux, SS

How do you pitch to this?

— Noah Camras (@noahcamras) December 9, 2023

Seemed inevitable but that's a lot of cash.

Gonna be really funny when we find out he goes missing in the playoffs

Uhh…wow

Good on Ohtani for making bank, but, wow, that's an insane amount of money.

How to win a whole nation to your team fan are with one small trick

You better believe I am going to be flaunting my dodger credential the whole time I’m in Japan next week. The kershaw jersey is being worn everyday and I will be stopping for questions and photos by all my fellow dodger fans

Just realised this one move moved me from the 1st generation to 2nd generation Dodger fandom. Looking forward to wearing this status market at all possible opportunities

*marker

the ghost of don drysdale looks over us all

Serious question: when else has an organisation been able to purchase a hof’er in free agency that will guarentee go in with their hat on. Obviously not 100% lock, but it’s deffs a solid 95% chance the dodgers just bought a dodgers hall of famer. I can’t imagine this has happened more than one other time?

“Knowingly purchase”, I should clarify

Ichiro?

Maybe the Padres and Machado?

Angels/pujols might have have worked out that way, in theory. If pujols would have had a solid 30s with the angels, racking up milestones and some more awards, maybe an angels WS or two, maybe he’d go into the hof with an angels hat? Even then it seems doubtful

>when else has an organisation been able to purchase a hof’er in free agency that will guarentee go in with their hat on

Wade. Boggs.

maybe the angels w/ vlad sr bcuz people knew the expos were not going to be around? he went in as an angel despite only being great there for a few seasons and all of his most iconic years being in montreal

gerrit cole was in his late 20s coming off of two seasons of like 13-15 WAR combined when the yankees signed him. i don't think he's a no doubt hall of famer in the same way as ohtani but given his draft pedigree and that performance it wouldn't have been unreasonable for the yankees to think they might be purchasing a hall of fame plaque

i'm not sure if manny ramirez was considered a hall of fame lock exactly but the red sox knew they were signing one of the best hitters of his generation in his prime. he would be in as a red sock if not for the roid stuff

would throw bonds out there too

cc. harper. whoever signs soto next year. came pretty close with mussina. mookie was a trade but still purchased in a way. i imagine scherzer will have no logo but the nats would have an argument

idg the wade boggs answer

Ichiro nah,
Machado kinda escapes on technicality. His first contract with the Padres had an opt out and he was talking about taking it early this year before he signed his big no-opt-out extension which now puts him as a locked padres hall of famer
Pujols definitely a weird one for the reasons stated.
Wade Boggs also idgi
Vlad sr a good call (though not as strong a lock as ohtani, obviously, no one is)
Gerrit Cole's contract having opt outs kinda compromises it
I didn't think harper was a locked hof'er when his contract sheneigans were going down. The likelihood was good, but it wasn't a "we are absolutely buying a hall of famer" type conversation iirc. A lot, and I mean A LOT of promise, but no lock like Ohtani. There was a lot of doubt with him only having one absolutely stellar season. Since signing, yeah absolutely no doubt going to the hall of fame and with a phillies hat on

Thinking of all this makes you realise how foolish it is to compare Ohtani to like, anything

Congrats to the best player on Earth. I’ll always remember our battles over the years (1 AB, 1 pitch, he homered) https://t.co/3ohE6W3mUo

— Trevor Hildenberger (@t_hildy) December 9, 2023

it's obviously still a ton of money, but worth noting that all the deferred money ($400M, more than half of the contract) is going to be worth quite a bit less when ohtani receives it, post-2034. applying a pretty standard 5% discount rate brings that $400M down to $129M in present value

ohtani is going to be so mad when he finds out!

"i said i prefer more money, not defer it!"

*headinhands*

but yeah, i think it brings it down to $43M AAV, which is more than about 25 teams can afford but seems to make it much more manageable for the doyers

Boggs answer was just a joke

but also, technically, accurate

also just a few thoughts about tyler o'neill, whose given name is tyler bro'neill. his father is a canadian powerlifting legend, and tyler also likes to pump iron. when healthy, he can be one of the best players in the league. he has excellent power, defense, and speed. unfortunately he is almost always injured or recovering from an injury. if he can stay healthy, he has a chance to win mvp votes in 2024. if he does not stay healthy, he will pick up a SUV and throw it.

part of the reason he's out of st louis is he made the mistake of telling everyone in spring training 2023, that he thought he should be the starting CF. there was kind of a competition for it early last year, between dylan carlson, nootbaar, tommy edman, and o'neill. you could make good cases for all of them. o'neill has a lot of confidence and has the talent to back it up, but he stumbled out of the gate, made enemies with manager oli marmol (who i dislike, already), and would have been gone at the trade deadline if not for some injury

maybe the sox can flip him to the bronx his natural home

How else are they going to have the most hench outfield though

z_tbd: now that you're back, we never got a chance to thank you for Paul DeJong.

lol! oooof, yeah that was a rough one, i felt bad for the jays crew on ilx when that went down! what did he end up with in TOR, .068/.068/.068 in 44 PAs, with zero walks! his half-hearted nickname in st. louis was Pauly D (he has very little personality that i can detect). but these days it's more like Pauly no, no no. uugh, no, paul, no.

Left-handed reliever Will Smith and the Kansas City Royals are in agreement on a one-year, $5 million contract, sources tell ESPN.

Smith, 34, made his big league debut with the Royals in 2012. He has won a World Series ring each of the last three seasons.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 10, 2023

btw $700m is roughly what the pirates spent on total payroll over the last 10 years. and more than the a's did.

the pirates should defer their payroll until 2040

Austin Hedges to Guardians. $4M.

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) December 10, 2023

appalling

but no lock like Ohtani.

Ohtani is no more a lock than Harper was imo. The Hall doesn't generally reward short-term brilliance. Ohtani has a long way to go and a history of injuries.

I had another look and yeah, 29 war for Harper with the Nats and he was only 26yo is pretty bonkers. Debuting at 19 helped those counting stats big time.

But 100% ohtani is more of a lock than Harper. 31+ war in one less season, two unanimous mvps, that whole two-way-player thing. But it’s really just comparing an A to and A++++

Fuck baseball, oh how I love the game but when only four teams matter to New York then there is no point.

When I'm missing you know why as what's the point if you're not a Yankee, Mets or Dodgers fan.

tbf the mets just spectacularly flamed out and the yankees barely broke .500

but i hear you cluckin

i mean i <3 shohei but seeing if he can help the dodgers win their division by more than 16 games, as they did this past season, isn't all that interesting

Thanks for not attacking me and letting me vent.

MLB is broken when only a few teams are in on a star players.

When the Dodgers also sign Yoshinobu Yamamoto then that will be it.

April is a long ways away, I'm sure I will be in a different mind set by then.

And Bob Costas comment really fucking pissed me off…

"Baseball has to be breathing a sigh of relief, because if he went to Toronto, his value to the sport would have been greatly diminished"

For the reasons Bee outlined, plus acting like Toronto is some kind of garbage dump, Costas can go fuck himself.

Heyman can fuck himself too while we’re at it for essentially saying the same thing but with more words

otm

Everyone otm, but I dunno, I’m spoilt, I’m an international fan, I only know Dodger success, and this is a conversation with a million points of nuance that are impossible to cover….. but couldn’t the other teams like… try more? Spend more money? The Pads have tried (are trying?). The Braves are trying. The Phillies are trying. The Jays are trying. The cubs are trying (I think). It’s not a one man race, despite the Dodgers victory. Yes the dodgers have an intrinsic bonus in their location being attractive, but besides that, it’s a theoretically equal playing ground? Anyone could have hired Andrew Friedman (in theory). Any billionaire owner can put out money out (in theory with a bunch of significant variables). We saw some previous figures above about the ridiculous blue jays profits. I can understand the Dodgers being the most boring result to the Ohtani sweepstakes, but I don’t really have time to indulge an organisational response of “this wasn’t fair”. Put up or shut up

I can indulge a fan response of “this isn’t fair” though, that’s entirely warranted. Tear my response apart with your baseball/economic wisdom, I’m open to having the wrong take on this one

In this particular case, the dodgers seemed to have a massive pull that wasn't defined by dollars which definitely makes it tough for the other teams. Despite the 700mil figure, it seems winning was a first priority, with money/location having a conversation for second. But things COULD have been different. If Ohtani moved over to any other city in 2018, does he end up with the Dodger now? If Andrew Friedman stayed in Tampa, if the Dodgers weren't seized from Frank McCourt etc. etc. etc. The Dodgers got themselves some great owners and GM's for baseball purposes. That's their primary crime here imo. Second crime being located in L.A. Third, deciding to spend money wisely.

Good little vid from a couple days before Ohtani signed

Why Shohei Ohtani Is Worth $700 million pic.twitter.com/bzEuk1cyPv

— Baseball Doesn't Exist (@BaseballDoesnt) December 9, 2023

Dodgers post-season chokes a nice counterbalance to make this pill slightly easier to swallow. Ohtani ain't gonna fix that problem

as i think we've mentioned before, you can't necessarily buy a championship

but you *can*, for the most part, buy a postseason berth

no amount of choking on the dodgers' part will make up for all the chances two-thirds of the other teams never had

Yeah but if we're still talking about Ohtani, and like you already mentioned, he's really not helping that part. I don't think it's fandom to claim the Dodgers were most likely reaching the post season most years for the next decade with how their team and farm is set-up.

I guess ya gotta account for what you gain by taking Ohtani off the table from other teams tho. If the Giants were in, it's a different story and that could have significantly effect Dodger postseason berth odds

to be accurate, because it's a zero-sum game, it's all how the ratios of success rise and fall based upon the movements of the 29 other teams. If the Dodgers are playing an unfair game, there's another 11 spots for people to battle for without necessarily having to try match the resources the Dodgers are using.

And if you don't match the Dodgers in resources spent, you can still easily knock them out by using your resources effectively, as the diamondbacks/padres/braves/nats/red-sox/astros/cubs/mets/cards/phillies etc. all did in the post-season in that order. Hell, the team the Dodgers finally got a world series off, the 2020 Rays were 28th in payroll that year, and they took them to a game 6.

Costas has had an irrational hate for the Blue Jays for decades, fuck him.

Are we really heading down this path and complaining that "WAH only four teams get all the star players"? The Yankees have made one WS appearance in the past 20 years. There hasn't been a repeat champion since the '98-'00 Yankees. Since then, sixteen different clubs have won the WS. Out of the teams that haven't won, the Tigers, Guardians, and Rays (to name three) have all been to the WS and have been perennially good.

Baseball has never been a purely money spending contest, and probably never will be. Also, winning creates stars! Stars who make money but don't perform on the field are losers.

well but to mookieproof’s point, it’s not really about the crapshoot of the playoffs it’s who gets into the playoffs in the first place. famously the yankees missed the playoffs for the first time in approximately a bazillion years.

the marlins have never won the NL east.

the rockies have never won the NL west.

etc

On the note of being able to buy a postseason berth:

2023 division winners:
Dodgers (2nd in payroll to Padres)
Brewers (3rd in payroll to Cubs/Cards)
Braves (2nd in payroll to Phillies)
Astros (3rd in payroll to Angels/Texas)
Twins (2nd in payroll to white sox)
Orioles (5th in payroll to everyone)

For those counting along, that's a 0/6, titanium sombrero for people spending the most in the division
If we average, turns out spending the 3rd most in your division gives you the best odds based on 2023 figures, and the top 3 spenders last year (NYY, NYM, SDP) didn't even sniff the post season.
"Baseball has never been a purely money spending contest, and probably never will be." otm. Money's important, but it's far from everything in baseball

phillies and rangers didn't do too bad iirc

Neither did the dbacks iirc

(Last in their division spending)

love 2 be schooled on how small payroll teams have just as much a chance as anybody by a *check notes* dodgers fan

Love that you interpret this as a “schooling”. What’s your email so I can invoice you?

“Just as much a chance”. Damn, haven’t been able to up your reading comprehension yet; few more sessions should do the trick

In tracer’s defense you did just write like a thousand word thesis statement on “why the dodgers are just like everyone else but they do things better let me show you how they do it” and regardless of the strength of your arguments, a lot of uninterrupted messageboard text in a row is often going to look more like a lecture than a conversation

True, except for me saying “how they do it”, I’ve got no idea there.

For future clarification, I’ve got nothing to lecture anyone here on regarding Baseball. But I’m always open to conversation, sorry if me text-walling limits that

there is a certain irony in receiving a screed on how competitively balanced the mlb playoffs are from a fan of the team that has just paid $700m for one player. maybe i’m off-base but it’s almost like you have a stake in this being true regardless of how true it actually is

Yeah, and it’s a high stakes game this posting business

mad at hp instead of being mad at cheap owners who refuse to sell to someone actually willing to spend

There’s a certain irony in receiving a scolding on “schooling” from someone who is…….

like i’m a boston fan and i am fully cognizant of the advantages that come with a high payroll. are owners trying to buy championships? hell yeah. do they always succeed? no that’s why they play the games, but when your team is capable of shelling out more for one player than some teams’ entire payrolls then yes the table is tilted quite a bit. i don’t begrudge the dodgers doing this! if anything the problem is in the other direction: that some owners have clearly decided to use their teams as something close to money laundering operations, do not try to match division rivals, and continually circle the drain all while raking in guaranteed profit-sharing

xp

mad at hp instead of being mad at cheap owners who refuse to sell to someone actually willing to spend

if a team can’t keep at least a tigers level payroll ($131 mil las these) they should be forced to sell. that should be the salary floor. teams can afford it.

no sympathy for crying poverty

*last year

I think you’re having a very different conversation vc.

You’re saying two seperate, contradictory things here: owners aren’t capable of shelling out 70 mil (deferred) a year and so the tables are titled to the dodgers, but also the dodgers aren’t to be begrudged because the other teams should spend more than 70 mil a year and stop competing to spend the least while still raking the profit share.

nothing wrong with a little deserved gloating itt but no need to harness it to an argument about how great mlb’s competitive balance is

100% agree voodoo, the sport needs a salary floor, and probably a hard ceiling too.

Don’t know if we’re reading the same posts Tracer

gyac, probably, since i’m a yankees fan who is mad at the team for not running a $500 mil payroll (which they can easily afford! if you’re making this money spend it on the team, don’t care about the bottom line!!)

to take the dbacks example, they were 16 games out of first in their own division when the season ended (behind guess who) and the only way on god’s green earth that this 86-win team makes the postseason is the expanded playoff format, the secondary function of which is, as far as i can tell, to give the appearance of competitive balance that is lacking during the regular season

“we just landed ohtani… but actually… winning is not about the money”

Sports teams do not need a salary cap, no.

Critiques the *checks notes* Red Sox fan (is this a good argument?)

Sorry bout your sour grapes

spare me

Sports teams do not need a salary cap, no.

….. lol

Not going to make any more posts about reading comprehension after this one, promise

i think we should get back to everyone’s favourite subject, the dodgers choking in the postseason, despite their monstrous payroll, the hows and whys

I would also like to solve this problem

dodgers also always manage to have a thriving farm system producing great players like will smith and an endless supply of pitchers, prospects they can trade for rentals, and a sense of organizational professionalism that money cannot buy

money also can't buy not choking in the postseason

Money could help, Dodgers are still 2 starting pitchers short for this season. Their no-starting-pitchers-besides-lance-Lynn strategy wasn’t exactly a winner this year

I was interested though that apparently the Rangers are having trouble with money due to some TV rights issue, which seems to be damaging a ton of teams. Ken R reported that he thought they wouldn’t bring back Monty, which surprised me because previously he’d been a good fit.

I sometimes get alerts that Blake Snell is streaming on twitch, he is desperate to be a Mariner but I could only see them doing this if they sign him and then flip Kirby for a load of bats, at least one of which would have to be a major league player. I’m honestly not sure where he’ll end up, you don’t hear much about his market compared to the other SPs.

speaking of teams that have never won a pennant

First I’m hearing of the Snell mariners thing tbh. Had no idea.

… and now that I’m checking, he was born there, so makes sense.

xp don’t go there, h8 Stanton h8 Dipoto end of

Yeah Snell is, like his fellow two time Cy Young Award winner from Washington, a guy who loves being from Seattle and would be very happy to play out his career there. I think he may have said this outright too. Idk if you get better weed in California but maybe the taxes are lower too.

Money could help, Dodgers are still 2 starting pitchers short for this season. Their no-starting-pitchers-besides-lance-Lynn strategy wasn’t exactly a winner this year

― H.P, Monday, December 11, 2023 10:18 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

their strategy was to get may and gonsolin and buehler injured and then encourage urias to continue to be a violent jerk?

Tbf I don’t think they encouraged him to do that, they just kept him under contract like they were trying to rival the Yankees for the roster record for having the most DV offenders at any one time.

well yeah

mariners would be nuts to trade kirby. incredibly cool player.

Yes I wouldn’t either, but he would command a huge price in the trades and those cunts aren’t going to spend money. That kind of pinpoint control, I can’t see them paying for him in free agency.

He might eventually end up with your guys tbh, he’s from NY State and grew up a Yankees fan (though there’s a picture of him wearing a Red Sox shirt on his Instagram)

If I were trading for a Mariners SP and knowing Kirby and Castillo* aren’t going anywhere my priorities in order would be dependent on how much time I had to work with the guys. Here is a guide in case any of these guys get traded.

- Logan Gilbert
Pros: about ten feet tall, huge extension, 4 years of control, good breaking and offspeed mix, has that forever feeling of not being anywhere near his ceiling, healthy

Cons: his boyfriend** Cal Raleigh will come after you if you look at him, his 4-seamer has a BA of .280, from Florida.

-Bryan Woo
Pros: A BABY (he was called up from Double A last year due to Marco Gonzales being injured), great fastball, great ceiling if he can get a curveball or slider working for him. SEVEN years of team control.

Cons: he was on an innings limit last season due to being brought up early, needs some careful handling to stay in the big leagues, only really has two good pitches atm.

- Bryce Miller
Pros: also a BABY (he was called up from double A to fill a hole in the rotation when Robbie Ray got injured), has a great fastball, looks like Randy Johnson if he was hit with a shrinking device.

Cons: he has one pitch not even kidding, also fell apart as the season went on despite strong start due to needing more time to cook in the minors.

*Castillo is on a team friendly contract, if they trade him they might as well just fire everyone in charge of acquiring free agents
** they are the best of friends and lived together all through the minors and Cal made breakfast for him every day for YEARS until Logan got married and moved out

I hate seeing people talk shit about Toronto like they know it. If you live in Toronto you know how special of a place it is and how passionate the people are #GeauxCanada #GeauxBlueJays 🇨🇦🇨🇦

— Kevin Gausman (@KevinGausman) December 11, 2023

yeah all the people talking about toronto like it's some backwater instead of the fourth largest city in north america are making my blood boil. because they're not really talking about "markets" or whatever, they are talking about revenue for the u.s.-based tv networks. fans do not and should not care about that!

George Kirby is a guy who could be the new Maddux, if he's able to keep it together and get more consistency -- his bWAR was a little lower than i thought it might be, 3.9 over 190.2 IP. maybe some park factors there, he was more than a full run better at home vs the road. but he's a good one, they've gotta try to hang onto him.

fangraphs is much kinder to him, as they seem to favor underlying metrics more than on-field results. and he is a fip king, with less than one walk and approximately one homer per nine innings

I would kind of like to see the chaos rotation that features both George “never walks a guy” Kirby and Blake “walks ALL the guys” Snell.

Btw I also like Tarik Skubal, who has been improving for years and who really only needs a decent breaking pitch.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/savant-player/tarik-skubal-669373?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb

Doesn’t walk a ton of guys, doesn’t give up a ton of home runs. I doubt the Tigers part with him though.

Skubal was a top 3 pitcher in MLB the last month or so of the season.

Yeah! I wasn’t aware of him cos I don’t know many players on the Tigers besides Torkelson, Greene & Carpenter but I was first drawn to Skubal when I read this back about him in August:

Until that pitch on Friday, none of the 130 batters he’d faced this season — lefty or righty — had homered against Skubal, and in his three-plus seasons in the big leagues, only two lefties had ever taken him deep. He’d thrown more than 400 sliders to left-handed hitters in his career and only seven times had those hitters connected for an extra-base hit

i was aware of him on a vv deep level because he helped my fantasy team stay in the running for awhile there. i survived on my weekly skuby snacks.

Nice

i was gonna say he's the kinda pitcher who when you're deep in your fantasy league sorting all SPs by last 2 or 4 weeks of stats you're like "ok skubal is throwing like cy young again, i wish i had drafted him" and then another 4 weeks later he's gone a month w/ a 7.79 ERA and is back on the waiver wire

if you sort the 2023 LHP WAR leaderboard on fangraphs and set the IP total to 70, which allows skubal to qualify you get the following numbers

name/WAR/IP

1. justin steele / 4.9 / 173.1
2. framber valdez / 4.3 / 198.0
3. jordan montgomery / 4.3 / 188.2
4. blake snell / 4.1 / 180.0
5. jesus luzardo / 3.7 / 178.2
6. tarik skubal / 3.3 / 80.1
7. eduardo rodriguez / 3.0 / 152.2

he is the kinda pitcher fangraphs' version of WAR is generally biased towards but still pretty compelling. the list of very good LHP SPs is extremely short

his first few starts were pretty mediocre too, he was getting better as the season went on. it's a pretty small sample size obv but vv promising. he *might* be better than everyone else on that list.

Looking at the list of tigers above… they’ve got so much young talent, I’m kind of frustrated on behalf of their fans that they don’t want to start filling out the gaps with quality free agents. I know they got burned with Baez, but they seemed to give up after that.

They just got Miggy off the books as well

Meanwhile, in Seattle (Mariners twitter undefeated)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GBGOZuVaUAAHPnk?format=jpg&name=small

i think free agency is hard if you’re not a team big enough to just swallow the Ls like nothing happened

the e rod timeline — signed a good pitcher to an under market deal but was only able to do so by giving him an opt out that ended with him leaving for more money to a team in a warmer climate — is prob instructive in terms of the constraints some of these teams face in FA

e-rod didn't want to go to a warmer client when they tried to trade him to the dodgers at the deadline and he invoked his no-trade clause!

*climate, not client duh

ok fine, so just for more money

Great deal by the dbacks, vry strong top 3 in that rotation now

Exclusive @TheAthletic: Shohei Ohtani will defer $68 million per year of his $70 million annual salary over the course of his 10-year, $700 million deal with the Dodgers, allowing the team to keep spending, according to a person briefed on the terms.https://t.co/IsnWlsbTq9

— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) December 11, 2023

they're insane if they think they'll be able to get away with this for the life of the contract (and the 10 years after)

Insanely bad for the game.

Loooooool that is ridiculous

Vry interested in what happens post 2033

I am massively confused by this. So, as far as the competitive balance equation is concerned that contact averages out to just $45m a year??
Does Ohtani know he’s basically earning 45m when you account for inflation?!
I’d also like to know if it’s calculated by todays rate of inflation and if that’s recalculated every year based on where the prime rates etc are at. This is all so baffling. Do they have to set up some kind of blind trust / savings account type thing to dump money into yearly so they can actually play the guy out in 10 years?!?!

Apparently ends up being around 46mil a year for the luxury tax

I think it’s amazing how he’s gone from being one of my favourite players to someone I wouldn’t cry about suffering a career ending injury, myself

Oh, i see now it pays out over 10 years after the contract is done and not all at once

I think ohtani knew lol. Though it’s a very funny scenario where no one in ohtani’s camp understands inflation till after reading all the articles post-signing

I also hope the best player in my favourite sport suffers a career ending injury??????????????????????

Literally 680 million deferred………

I guess with inflation rates being so high right now, it really diminishes the long term value… obv Ohtani must be banking - literally - on rates coming back down in a few years. But I do want to know if/when baseball recalculates the value of they have to factor in inflation

This makes the Pujols contract look like a model of sanity!

I would guess he knows the estimated value, but wanted the team he signed to to stay competitive. So maybe he thought “yeah I’m worth 500 mil for 10 years but I want the team I sign to to be able to sign more players so we’ll do this bonkers 700 mil deferred business”.

he did it so they could sign yamamoto

Seems like a cunt thing to do tbf, I’m sure I remember owners complaining about how much money Steve Cohen spent and he wasn’t dreaming up deals to cheat the luxury tax so he could keep spending

For anyone wondering if MLB will challenge or cancel Ohtani's contract: The answer is unequivocally no. There is a specific article in the collective-bargaining agreement that addresses this. And it's very clear: Deferred money is limitless -- even $680 million of $700 million. pic.twitter.com/DGNK0JulED

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 11, 2023

Teams have several different angles to weaponize this, such as "You're no Ohtani and he's only getting ~$45m per NPV!" and "You're no Ohtani and he agreed to huge deferments as a team player!" It basically takes away most labor gains of the AAV record going up by $25m-plus.

— Jarrett Seidler (@jaseidler) December 11, 2023

Yeah I figured there was no way they (dodgers, or ohtani’s party) would take it this far without knowing either 1. It was legal or 2. It was a grey area that they could fight and win

the owners put this exact scenario into the CBA, because deferred teals are incredibly team friendly. i’m sure every front office is losing its mind but the owners care more about staying rich collectively than they do about anything involving the games, so their reactions are probably more like elation that even more precedent has been set for top players to take contracts that are far cheaper in the long run than the stated dollar value

For anyone wondering if MLB will challenge or cancel Ohtani's contract: The answer is unequivocally no. There is a specific article in the collective-bargaining agreement that addresses this. And it's very clear: Deferred money is limitless -- even $680 million of $700 million. pic.twitter.com/DGNK0JulED

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 11, 2023

I guess there’s also tax implications depending where he’s living while collecting the deferred money?
I guess if the dodgers want to pay a ghost player $68M a season stating in 10 years they’ll have to live with that. I’m guessing this is a great way for a current GM to fuck over a future one

Yeah there’s going to be another lockout isn’t there.

yes the tax aspect makes the most sense to me — i hesitate to assume bob n. is passing on accurate information but

Shohei Ohtani’s decision to earn just $2 million a year certainly is a great benefit to the Dodgers’ payroll, but also a stroke of genius for tax repercussions.
If he’s not living in California once his deferred payments start, he will not be subjected to heavy California tax.

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 11, 2023

Ignoring the ridiculous deferments for a moment, this does put Ohtani back into the “what people thought he’d get paid after his UCL injury” bracket

xp but idc in particular if he’s doing it for that reason, but if you choose to pay a player $70m then that should count towards your cbt. Not this manipulative shit because you want to keep your draft picks and keep spending. The league literally introduced a Steve Cohen tax to rein teams in, but what’s the point then?

Interesting! pic.twitter.com/RFBk4BL42S

— Danny (@TatisMVPszn) December 11, 2023

The thing is they’re not choosing to pay him 700 mil a year, and that was made obvious as soon as the deal broke with a tweet immediately after about deferments. This isn’t a new phenomenon, it’s just a phenomenon that’s finally been taken to its extreme

they should just abolish the luxury tax if they're just gonna let teams skirt it like this

The judge thing, while related, is a bit different. You end up paying an average to the luxury tax in the years judge (presumably) won’t be playing. Ohtani’s contract will be counted to the luxury tax completely for all 10 years, just at a lower cost due to inflation

The judge example to the extreme would be even worse as you could do a 100 year 300mil contract to only have 3 mil a year to your luxury tax. When you take the deferment manipulation to the extreme, it’s still 45~mil a year to the luxury tax for 10 years

^^to clarify, not saying this deferrement business ain’t bad, just the judge example would have been a worse precedent to make. You could really max out and ruin a team by using years of the contract to manipulate the luxury tax

I love Ohtani but this is straight up bullshit and I think this sort of thing is really bad for the game. Can’t root for the Dodgers after this sorry

if you choose to pay a player $70m then that should count towards your cbt. Not this manipulative shit because you want to keep your draft picks and keep spending. The league literally introduced a Steve Cohen tax to rein teams in, but what’s the point then?

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Monday, December 11, 2023 6:35 PM (fifteen minutes ago)

gyac, it's easy to understand it's just that you're viewing it thru the lens of competition when it needs to be viewed thru the lens of money

the reason the owners introduced the steve cohen tax is because the large majoriy of them don't want to feel any pressure to engage in the way steve cohen is doing business, which is to say spending a shit ton of money every year on his baseball team

the reason why the owners are more than happy to let a team manipulate the luxury tax w/ deferred payments ie because they would all love to engage in the business of deferred contracts

the incentive structure here is very clear, it's just that the idea of it being about winning on the field is kayfabe. it's about winning at the bank.

I get that. I think it’s bullshit, and Ohtani is a scab. He can afford to do this because he has tens of millions in endorsements. I stand by my opinion that it’s bad for the game, in both the short and long term.

This is just getting worse and worse.

Fuck baseball!

lol

The next ownership group will figure it out 😳

— Justin Turner (@redturn2) December 11, 2023

I mean any player can afford to live on 2 mil a year with 680 deferred, endorsements or not.

I get that. I think it’s bullshit, and Ohtani is a scab. He can afford to do this because he has tens of millions in endorsements. I stand by my opinion that it’s bad for the game, in both the short and long term.

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Monday, December 11, 2023 7:01 PM (three minutes ago)

well you were asking why they would introduce a steve cohen tax if they would allow this so i answered

anyway, there's a number of star players on contracts w/ deferred money so the idea that ohtani is a scab or some kind of unique villain gets a bit into hysteria territory for me. the only players who will ever engage in deferred money contracts are like the top 1% of the top 1% of baseball so i wouldn't worry about it too much. no team is offering a player a 2 year $10 million deal w/ money deferred, this is irrelevant to the large majority of players

deferred contracts are in the CBA which means they were approved by the union. if you ask yourself why the union would approve deferred money in the contracts if it was going to be harmful to players the answer is because it will never effect 99.9% of the union

I’m aware other contracts with deferred money exist. The amount deferred isn’t $34m, a literal whole other player.

lol sorry $24m! Which is still true!

so it's ohtani's responsibility to figure out the exact number of deferred money that is "fair" vs the amount of money where it's not? i'm sorry but that's completely ridiculous

Hey J0rdan? I get that you like it. I don’t care.

well i'm sorry that we're posting on the same message board, i'm not sure what the solution is to that problem

I don’t think you’re getting this. They haven’t deferred 24 millions a year, they’re paying him 460~ million 2023 dollars all up over the life of the deal

Lol gyac

I don’t know how set in stone that 460 mil is, based on the questions thermo thinwall brought up, but that’s the ballpark reporters are going with right now

no offense to you "fuck ohtani" and 'fuck baseball" guys but your beef is with the owners it is not with ohtani. the owners have been trying to ruin baseball for 150 years and yet here we are

Tbf, it’s reasonable to think this one was pushed by ohtani too, and at the very least obviously accepted. I’m still trying to think through the implications of what this actually means beyond this singular event tho. For now it’s clearly in the rules so anyone can do it. If smarter brains than I have determined it’s terrible for the sport/players (whatever to owners), then I’m sure it’ll be changed very quickly

The owners have a vested interest in making money, but having a competitive product is strongly tied to making money (see Steve cohen tax). Hence my questionably naive hope

everyone is saying it was pushed by ohtani and i'm sure it was because no team would ever propose this to a player. but the idea that the competitive balance aspect of it is for ohtani to worry about is ludicrous

Why would anyone's beef on this specific issue be with the owners for agreeing to a player's idea?

Fans beef with players every time they try to craft a superteam around them (unless that superteam is your team).

Xp Completely true. The idea shohei should even shirk the idea of not allowing his team to be as competitive as possible (within the clearly defined rules) is against the principles of what it means to be a player in general. Can’t really shame the player for doing the most for his team to win, that’s they’re main job

Their

having a competitive product is strongly tied to making money

the problem w/ this statement is that it takes it as a fact that the dodgers are going to render baseball non-competitive. let's put aside the fact that a legendary team in a huge market winning 5 straight world series would in fact be amazing for the business of baseball overall, the more likely outcome is that the dodgers fall victim to the typical problems that plague old, expensive sports teams. or, like the astros, they make 7 straight LCS appearances but only win two titles. there's too many variables at play, history would tell you that competitive balance is always going to find its balance

Real Ohtani beef should be with undermining the union and (entirely of his own volition) setting a precedent for every team to try to screw over future big contracts.

Trust me on this, I take absolutely none of that as a fact and completely agree with everything you said

I was schooled on this opinion early in the thread

Why would anyone's beef on this specific issue be with the owners for agreeing to a player's idea?

Fans beef with players every time they try to craft a superteam around them (unless that superteam is your team).

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, December 11, 2023 7:34 PM (two minutes ago)

hey if you want to be mad at ohtani knock yourself out. "fans direct their anger at players instead of the billionaire owners who make all the rules" is not a defense that *i* would be making of *myself*. but live your truth, it's america.

This is way way back in the thread now but LOL at the idea that the Orioles winning the division in 2023 is proof that money doesn't win ballgames, the Orioles don't spend money and largely thanks to this they sniff contention once a decade or so and sometimes lose 110 games

Real Ohtani beef should be with undermining the union and (entirely of his own volition) setting a precedent for every team to try to screw over future big contracts.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, December 11, 2023 7:38 PM (three minutes ago)

again this is only legal per the union in the first place because it does not effect 99.9% of the union. if you want to be pissed at ohtani for undermining the future earnings of... like... adley rutschman or something go ahead but that's a weird thing to be mad about

Didn’t know Ben Verlander posted here

I mean there was more in that post than the “the orioles”. What’s with all these black and white readings? If someone says money is not THE ONLY THING that leads to winning, why are people reading that as someone saying money is not important to winning? Hard to not text wall when so many people read what they want from your posts unless you put in a million provisos (don’t worry, I won’t)

Didn’t know Ben Verlander posted here

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Tuesday, 12 December 2023 10:47 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Stick to the informative posts about baseball which you’re good at. The vitriolic quips aren’t your strong suit

"fans direct their anger at players instead of the billionaire owners who make all the rules"

Except the owners didn't make all the rules here? They're collectively bargained with the union - and no, they didn't take into the account a player giving those owners a bunch of money because why the fuck would you ever think you'd need to take that into account?

i don't know who ben verlander is. some dumb baseball guy?

anyway, you guys are talking about the future earnings of hundred million dollar players when the precedent that has been set that is actually materially effecting the earnings you guys apparently care so much about were the ozzie albies and ronald acuna type contracts that have now led to the corbin carrol and jackson chourio contracts where kids w/ barely any money are being incentivized to give up huge amounts of potential money in their prime earning years in order to "buy out" all the years of artificially depressed salaries put in place by the owners to hoard money. the amount of players who are even going to get to free agency to have their earnings "undermined" by the evil ohtani is rapidly dwindling by the day because the owners have moved on to screwing their best players before they even hit the majors. but maybe i heard that on ben verlander's podcast i'll have to go back and check

I think what you had said earlier is that more small market teams should do a Rays. But it’s incredibly hard to pull off. And I’m sure lots are trying, but it’s not a real solution to financial imbalance in the league. (I’d also add that the issue is getting blown out of proportion a little too right now)

That was an xpost to HP

So just to confirm, everyone up in arms about this thinks torn ucl ohtani is worth significantly more than 460 million over 10 years. I do, to clarify. It’s the players right to charge what they want for what they value. Part of this feels like the condescending attitudes Ozzie allies got for his contract exemption. That might have been terrible for the sport, but the guy is an individual and has the right to play where he wants for what he wants. People online were treating him like a kid that new nothing when that came out.

Yes this is a different situation, but there are elements of this

Didn’t see your post before bringing up Albies Jordan

as to "if you want to be mad at ohtani knock yourself out" you're aggressively missing the point of that post. IDGAF about Ohtani or the deal. If he'd signed for the Giants I don't think it makes them a championship quality team and probably cripples them eventually (because our billionaire scumbags would not just keep spending). The Dodgers were going to spend out the ass regardless so this just means the chucklehead who also owns Chelsea can waste a few hundred million more on that dogshit.

I don't see any reason to pretend that fans don't get mad whenever a player appears to build a supporting cast to carry them or that they should direct their ire at 'owners' when in this one specific instance it's entirely a product of the player's agency.

you guys are talking about the future earnings of hundred million dollar players when the precedent that has been set that is actually materially effecting the earnings you guys apparently care so much about were the ozzie albies and ronald acuna type contracts that have now led to the corbin carrol and jackson chourio contracts where kids w/ barely any money are being incentivized to give up huge amounts of potential money in their prime earning years in order to "buy out" all the years of artificially depressed salaries put in place by the owners to hoard money

I know this will shock you to the grave but it's possible for someone to disapprove of multiple things!

Agree thinwall. It’s not easy to pull off, money makes things easier, but all owners have money (I think?). How each team chooses to play the game of baseball is on them. Who is crying for how this deal affects John Fisher right now? Yes it sucks to be a fan of a John fisher owned team, but the dodgers ownership aren’t responsible for the happiness of John fisher team fans

If you're team 'abolish the draft, make every 18-year old a free agent and kill the remnants of the reserve clause,' (as everyone should be) it would still be entirely possible to not approve of Ohtani essentially playing for free for some of those billionaire scumbags.

I don't see any reason to pretend that fans don't get mad whenever a player appears to build a supporting cast to carry them or that they should direct their ire at 'owners' when in this one specific instance it's entirely a product of the player's agency.

putting aside that you're basically just asking me to acknowledge that people are dumb, i think you're conflating basketball and baseball. ohtani won 2 MVPs for teams that didn't even come close to making the playoffs. you can't build superteams in baseball. these feelings are not rational

I dunno, I personally think ohtani should keep playing baseball for the masses because it’s what he wants and what we (most of us) want. But for those who want him to suffer a career ending injury, I guess I can’t argue with you if those are your priorities?

If you're team 'abolish the draft, make every 18-year old a free agent and kill the remnants of the reserve clause,' (as everyone should be) it would still be entirely possible to not approve of Ohtani essentially playing for free for some of those billionaire scumbags.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, December 11, 2023 8:03 PM (five minutes ago)

but the reason why someone might care about abolishing the draft and making teenagers free agents is because teenagers haven't made any money. the reason why someone might not care that much about whether ohtani is donating hundreds of millions back to the owners of the dodgers is because he's already insanely wealthy. how mad do you get about wealth transfers between extremely rich parties when sports aren't involved?

i think it's wack that lebron's salary is capped because he has made the NBA billions upon billions of dollars that it will never come close to repaying him for. but when i start thinking about things that need to be fixed about the NBA that one isn't really at the top of the list. you see what i'm saying?

You're just making a version of the THEY JUST PLAY A GAME argument now.

no i'm saying that it's possible to enjoy sports w/o being irrationally angry at players over their financial decisions

He’s really not

i'm also saying that you're describing ohtani as "playing practically for free" when in reality he will be making like $450 million to $500 million on this deal and offering that your framing of this issue might not be the most sound

Thank you

i think you're conflating basketball and baseball. ohtani won 2 MVPs for teams that didn't even come close to making the playoffs. you can't build superteams in baseball. these feelings are not rational

It takes more than 2.5 players but freeing up $48 million a year (and given his ancillary value, more than that) is worth 6-7 wins a season for a team that isn't incompetent (on top of Ohtani's 5-9 wins). This is different from Steve Cohen setting money on fire because it's actual money saved (with luxury tax implications) rather than just banking on an owner spending until they have to take out payroll loans.

A baseball "superteam" doesn't mean they win every ring for ten years, no - but Lebron's Heat also got owned by Flu Dirk and A Bunch of Guys.

I don't know that people being mad about the concept of a superteam is any dumber than your argument that these people should in this instance be mad at owners (for... not turning down free money?).

He’s really not

He is, though. "They're already rich who cares" is the base stance of everyone who gets mad at sports unions for striking to demand better pay or conditions.

Are you saying ohtani is worth 46 million (his current estimated yearly pay) PLUS 48 mil for a grand total of 94 million a year????????

To clarify, yes 2 million yearly pay but 46 mil for luxury tax purposes

It’s not “they’re already rich who cares”, it’s “an adult can make their own decision”.

If people were pissed at me because I took the 200k a year job at the hospital next door to me instead of the 300k job on the other side of the country…..

460mil over 10 years is still the largest MLB contract ever. Easily beating second Trouts $426.5 million over 12 years. This is still the most money a player has ever gotten, this is still the most a single player has ever effected the luxury tax. He's just structured his contract so as to make sure his team is not completely burdened by him thus defeating his main purpose for playing: to win games.

My understanding is Ohtani took this approach (massively deferring his salary to keep team payroll flexible) with all the teams he negotiated with

So this wasn't a Dodgers-exclusive thing. Seems like he thought this was the best way to win in his new destination

— Jack Harris (@ByJackHarris) December 11, 2023

And lets be honest, which is worse for competition: The dodgers spending 70 mil a year on a player, or 46 mil a year on a player? I'm big for paying the players, but if the dodgers are entering the 70mil territory, they've now doubled the status quo of what a great player should/could earn. I think they're negatively effecting the fanbases of cheap-owner led teams more with a 700mil no deferrals deal, than this 46mil business. But there wasn't this vocal an outcry at how unfair things were when this first broke

"They're already rich who cares" is the base stance of everyone who gets mad at sports unions for striking to demand better pay or conditions.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, December 11, 2023 8:23 PM (twenty-six minutes ago)

the argument i'm making is "they're already rich who cares" *when we are talking about the 5-8 players in baseball who have deferred money in their contracts*. further, what i am saying is that this idea that ohtani is betraying or undermining the union is ridiculous because the rank and file union members will never make enough money to deal w/ the possibility of salary deferment. the majority of players *on the all star team* in a given year will never even make enough money to deal w/ salary deferments. your notion that this has anything to do w/ strikes or better pay/conditions is ridiculous, sorry.

xp to myself!

so why did he do it this way rather than just a plain jane 460mil 10 year no deferral? because 2 mil actually paid helps to win now ("win now" attitude being the conditional approach to any contract he would sign; thanks Angels), and probably for tax reasons? I'm fine with players trying to win now, I'm okay with non-citizens not paying crazy man tax to the country they're currently living in (I imagine shohei will move back to japan after his career?). I'm okay with players playing slightly cheaper so they don't have to move/lifestlye (is this more than a 10% discount? do other teams offer significantly more than 506mil/10 years when everything is accounted for? was someone offering a 770 mil contract with the same deferrals?)

It’s not “they’re already rich who cares

"you guys are talking about the future earnings of hundred million dollar players"

"the amount of players who are even going to get to free agency to have their earnings "undermined" by the evil ohtani"

"because he's already insanely wealthy. how mad do you get about wealth transfers between extremely rich parties when sports aren't involved?"

Every full season MLB player will earn more next season than a median worker will earn in 10. Every 2023 first round draft pick gets a bonus check equivalent to about 50 years of median individual income (so no, objection to the concept of a player draft is not about those players 'not having earned any money').

If relative wealth sets a limit on which sports labor questions you care about - most of us shouldn't care about any of them!

It’s not “they’re already rich who cares”, it’s “an adult can make their own decision”.

Yes, an adult can make their own decision - and other adults can look at that and go "that's fuckin' lame" for any number of reasons.

Sucks to not get ohtani, but don't think this is a crime against baseball, think it's reasonably fair when all is accounted for, think the outcry against ohtani (Ohtani specifically, say what you want to the dodgers/mlb/other owners) is absolutely ridiculous. Questioning whether people being cool with a career ending injury for ohtani have: cognizant thoughts, like baseball, are anything other than complete assholes

Yes, an adult can make their own decision - and other adults can look at that and go "that's fuckin' lame" for any number of reasons.

It's also very weird to be dismissive because it 'only impacts a few guys' while also recognizing that owners are villainous scum. Inconceivable that they would take a precedent and run with it (like, uh, buying out years way under market value).

my concern here is, what happens with team that might go all-in with this kind of thing. like, completely mortgage the future for 5 or 10 or 12 years of dominance; and then the team down the road has all these bills to pay and suddenly doesn't have the budget to put a competitive team on the field for another decade? it's going to be brutal for the owners down the road (whoever they may be), impossible for the next GM who inherits those bills to pay, and terrible for the team's fan base. i don't begrudge Ohtani for doing this and not really the dodgers either; but - i realize this is sort of a "slipper slope argument" - i forsee a lot of misery in the future if this sort of thing is allowed to get out of hand.

it "only impacts a few guys" who are clearly some of the best and most competitive players in baseball who now have competing interest of money/winning and this allows them some more flexibility toward the latter side of that equation without necessarily sacrificing the former (in the long run).

Just because something positively impacts a team, does not mean it negatively impacts its players. team x players is not a completely zero-sum game, there is the possibility of win-win in there.

my concern here is, what happens with team that might go all-in with this kind of thing. like, completely mortgage the future for 5 or 10 or 12 years of dominance; and then the team down the road has all these bills to pay and suddenly doesn't have the budget to put a competitive team on the field for another decade? it's going to be brutal for the owners down the road (whoever they may be), impossible for the next GM who inherits those bills to pay, and terrible for the team's fan base. i don't begrudge Ohtani for doing this and not really the dodgers either; but - i realize this is sort of a "slipper slope argument" - i forsee a lot of misery in the future if this sort of thing is allowed to get out of hand.

Completely fair concern, but to a certain extent this is what teams have already been doing with the rise of tanking. This just allows teams to be even more calculated in their tanking.

What would partially solve this problem, both tanking and massive deferments? Salary floor

salary floor and honestly i think they need to cap what % of a player salary you can defer. i feel like a mid-market team could really wind up leaving a unsurmountable time bomb for itself (and their fans) through an effort to outspend some larger market rivals.

It's also very weird to be dismissive because it 'only impacts a few guys' while also recognizing that owners are villainous scum. Inconceivable that they would take a precedent and run with it (like, uh, buying out years way under market value).

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, December 11, 2023 9:08 PM (two minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

i know this will shock you to the grave but it's possible for someone to think owners are villains while also thinking that the free agent contracts of players like max scherzer, jacob degrom, and freddie freeman are not exactly the most pressing labor issue

all joking aside, you're simply missing the point. the reason why contracts involving 19-22 year olds giving up 10 years of earning power is concerning is because those players are not typically advocated for by the union, which is largely made up of older more established players who tend to look out for the guys they see in the locker room. there will be no precedent set that allows deferred money to overtake MLB because the union will defend itself before that ever happens. kids in the minors aren't being advocated for by the union, generally speaking. and of course there's just the simple stuff about the vast gap in power dynamics between players in their first few years who are young and have not made life changing money vs players like ohtani and the rest of them.

I don't know that people being mad about the concept of a superteam is any dumber than your argument that these people should in this instance be mad at owners (for... not turning down free money?).

― papal hotwife (milo z), Monday, December 11, 2023 8:21 PM (fifty-two minutes ago)

i also want to return to this real quick -- if you're mad that ohtani is allowing the dodgers the opportunity to improve their team even further by subverting the luxury tax structure via a loophole regarding deferred money, then yes you should be mad at the owners. the luxury tax is in the CBA and thus collectively bargained but let's be honest about who really cares about the structure of the luxury tax & thus who constructs it and the rules that govern it. it's not the players. the idea that it's ohtani's responsibility to be on a team that is not too good is completely bizarre & the fact that in the past sports fans have unleashed their anger on players and not owners is not a compelling argument to me

So to conclude:

This completely predictable event of a great player wanting to play on a competitive team is completely normal and we should maybe recognise this and stop with the attacks on both sides but rather hope that our teams will work to be more competitive?

Don’t have to be L.A to be a dynasty. Houston had (are still in?) one. Cincinnati had one in the 70’s. San Francisco had one a decade ago. The Cardinals…. They’re the cardinals. Oakland had one in the 70’s, etc.
NY/LA make up 3 of the 23 World Series this century. Baseball is always anyones game

let's be honest about who really cares about the structure of the luxury tax & thus who constructs it and the rules that govern it. it's not the players.

What? It’s absolutely a negotiating concern for the players/union. It’s the de facto salary cap!

The owners wouldn’t have any loopholes in the luxury tax that allow for increases in overall spending if they had a choice (they wouldn’t have a luxury tax at all, they’d have a hard cap).

the reason why contracts involving 19-22 year olds giving up 10 years of earning power is concerning is because those players are not typically advocated for by the union, which is largely made up of older more established players who tend to look out for the guys they see in the locker room

See above for value of signing bonuses and what players earn on the major league minimum (why would I be concerned with millionaires but not multi-millionaires?) but more importantly this is isn’t actually true.

The union has not traditionally bargained for minor leaguers and draftees, because they’re not part of the union. The MLBPA advocates for young MLB players as much as it does for older players - increasing minimums, trying to stop service time manipulation, chipping away at how the remnants of the reserve clause work.

Your arguments for how Ohtani’s contract is an issue of the owners’ behavior are incoherent.

I don't think baseball owners want a hard cap, there have always been free-spending owners in the free agent era. I don't think there's any consensus about a hard cap among the owners. Baseball needs a salary floor more than it needs a cap.

Bob Nightengale's tweet (about 100 posts up) is clearly the essence of the agreement, Ohtani will live large on endorsements for the next ten years and then take up residence in the Bahamas or whatever is best for him tax-wise.

Players signing extensions when they reach the majors is not something I would blame on the owners. Players have a clear incentive to take that guaranteed money and be essentially set for life despite having minimal MLB experience. Many of those contract look great for the owners five years down the line but the lesson is that more players should bet on themselves and hold off on signing a long term deal. I think the union should take a more active role in advising players on this, but it's not so cut and dry when you're 22 years old and the team offers you 70 mil in guaranteed money.

my concern here is, what happens with team that might go all-in with this kind of thing. like, completely mortgage the future for 5 or 10 or 12 years of dominance; and then the team down the road has all these bills to pay and suddenly doesn't have the budget to put a competitive team on the field for another decade?

That's a slippery slope that I wouldn't want to head down, what if a team mortgages its future by emptying its farm system and goes all-in to win? At the end of the day these are adults making tough decisions, there's no way to ensure against a decision looking bad in five or ten years.

As long as the six year reserve period exists, those buyout contracts generally aren't terrible for players - injuries and declines happen. Scott Kingery made $14mn over the last two years to be bad in AAA.

Owners absolutely want a hard cap, it's in their best interests. The most free-spending owner doesn't want to pay Aaron Judge $35mn a year when an artificial limit could make that $25mn. It's not like splashing out big numbers is all that effective for buying free agents now anyway - the biggest ones get a few offers in the same ballpark and pick. Harper would still be a Phillie and Judge a Yankee with a cap - the team just wouldn't have to be on the hook for as much money. Steve Cohen would probably just sign everyone to 25 year contracts.

Wanting a hard cap and wanting to keep salaries down aren't quite the same thing. Collusion forced salaries down, and it still goes on today (there was undeclared collusion in the 2018 offseason I think, nobody was getting signed and everybody knew something fishy was happening). If teams want to spend then we should let them. It's not like substantially more teams would make offers to Judge at $30M/yr vs $35M/yr. Fewer teams would probably bid for him because some would be constrained by a cap.

The problem is more with the mid-tier salaries for solid MLB regulars that might be worth 2-3 WAR per year. Teams can easily pass up on those players (most of whom aren't marketable to a large degree) and spend far less money on an unproven prospect or bargain bin player. There's no disincentive in the system for doing that.

don't get the hating on Ohtani, I mean if any player has earned the right to say fuck it, I'll do what it takes to get on a playoff team, it's him. like you wanna talk "bad for baseball" how about the fact that your marquee, once-in-a-lifetime talent hasn't even made the playoffs, where the games matter a lot and people are actually watching?

that said I'm actually stunned there are no rules in place preventing something like this from happening, seems like a real bad precedent for marquee free agents. makes me upset I didn't get that Brewers GM job, I would've offered him a cool trillion dollars, starting in 2033. sure we don't have the money but that's the next guy's problem

That's a slippery slope that I wouldn't want to head down, what if a team mortgages its future by emptying its farm system and goes all-in to win? At the end of the day these are adults making tough decisions, there's no way to ensure against a decision looking bad in five or ten years.

idk for me this is like a team going "you give us Acuna's contract now, then when it expires in 2029 you can pick any five guys from our farm team", just feels like it's artificially upsetting what's already a pretty fickle balance. the Dodgers I'm sure will be fine but imagine a small market team trying to pull this sort of thing off. its not really fair to the fans of the future.

I mean if any player has earned the right to say fuck it, I'll do what it takes to get on a playoff team, it's him. like you wanna talk "bad for baseball" how about the fact that your marquee, once-in-a-lifetime talent hasn't even made the playoffs, where the games matter a lot and people are actually watching?

also I think it's bad for the game in that it makes the Dodgers very easy to root against which I don't think the league wants when you've got (presumably) an all-time great player on the team. reminds me a bit of Durant on the Warriors, which was only possible due to some recently closed loophole that the team had lucked into.

(if you don't follow the NBA: Golden State set the all-time record for wins in a season, and THEN landed the best player in the league next to LeBron without losing any of their important dudes, which led to them steamrolling everyone until said player got hurt)

Also why are people so upset that I think he’s a dickhead for his choice, are you new to sports fandom or what? He’s an adult with a ton of agency who made this choice. He’ll make more money than the majority of players put together. Don’t make out we all need to nod along approvingly.

xp not familiar but that sounds fucking boring

but don’t pretend that structuring the thing to avoid paying the full whack of aav is “Good for the sport”.

basically my argument is that the Angels suck so much that it may actually wind up destroying Major League Baseball

Do California teams have the worst owners?

Giants - Charles Johnson: racist Trump donor, cunt, wish him the worst
A’s - John Fisher: revenue hoarding, club destroying, as above
Angels - Arte Moreno: had two generational talents in their primes and couldn’t finish above .500, destroyed the game

No idea who owns the Dodgers but I’m sure they’re pricks

Magic Johnson

small market team trying to pull this sort of thing off. its not really fair to the fans of the future.

yup. was exactly my point. and i don't think it's the same as selling off prospects for big league talent. you get a chance to add more young talent every year and if you really want to deplete your system, the effects will be notable within a few years and you still have the ability to add free agents etc. with this wild deferment gimmick, you can completely cripple a teams finances a decade down the road. the GM will def be a different person by then, maybe same owners, but the fans will be the ones who truly have to suffer when the team can no longer afford to put anything but a replacement level squad on the field.

xp not familiar but that sounds fucking boring

it was! but its the same sort of situation, on one hand it was easy to hate on the guy for ruining the league, on the other hand it was difficult to blame him too much, like if you're on the trajectory to be a sure-fire HOF'er and in the conversation for Top 10 of all time, but you haven't won a title yet, surely there's a special brand of anxiety there that mere mortals could not really understand? especially when the guy actually has not made the playoffs at all, and is in fact coming off a surgery that could alter the trajectory of his entire career? ultimately it's on the league to prevent this shit, really bad look for MLB to give people a reason to hate on a previously very well-liked player who is one of the baseball guys an average person could actually name, not to mention allowing a contract for which the first reaction is "how is that legal"

that said you never know, baseball is extremely weird, even if the Dodgers win 120 games there's still a 1-in-3 chance they get knocked off by the Diamondbacks again, that doesn't really happen in the NBA

I would also say there's probably a 50/50 chance that the three best years of Shohei's career were his last three. Which isn't to say he wouldn't be a superior hitter, I just don't know about the pitching part. That's what made him not just excellent but inner circle HOF level, adding up to 9-10 WAR every year. His avg yearly value over the length of the contract could be closer to peak Nelson Cruz.

That's the biggest thing to me. I'm not talking about marketing here--I'm sure the Dodgers will make loads. And I'm not talking about deferred money, etc., which I know little about. Just baseball. The Dodgers are, I think, doing the classic thing of paying for what the player's done, rather than what he'll do. More 9/10 WAR seasons seem very unlikely. Whereas--again, just a guess--I think Soto's greatest years are still to come.

for those of us just waking up to the news this has been a pretty good overview: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/shohei-ohani-is-deferring-97-of-his-contract/

peak nelson cruz is a HOF-er xp

another one, this one with much more discussion of what it means for the game, players, owners: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/shohei-ohtani-is-getting-paid-eventually/

this part stick out, per some of the discussion upthread about who deferrals benefit:

...Ohtani didn’t actually sign a $460 million contract, he signed a $700 million contract. Deferrals be damned, Boras and every other player agent is going to argue that $700 million is the new top of market. And as a result, they’ll probably have more success in getting their clients paid than if Ohtani got less money on a more normal time frame. This is why, when the issue of limiting deferrals came up in the last CBA negotiation, it was the players who objected, not the owners.

Oh yeah the Nelson Cruz thing isn't exactly an insult. if he had played like that during his twenties, if he'd gotten an earlier start, he probably would be getting into the Hall of Fame pretty easily and well deservedly. It's just that the dodgers aren't paying for merely very very good production.

Also why are people so upset that I think he’s a dickhead for his choice, are you new to sports fandom or what? He’s an adult with a ton of agency who made this choice. He’ll make more money than the majority of players put together. Don’t make out we all need to nod along approvingly.

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Tuesday, December 12, 2023 10:28 AM (one hour ago)

because you guys were calling ohtani a scab, saying that he betrayed the union, undermined the future salaries of other players etc. if you're simply saying that you want to exercise your license to root against a star who signed w/ a rich successful team that's cool but also an entirely different point

I still think all those things too & idc if you want to argue about it. I’m sure he’ll survive!

i'm sure he'll be fine. i was just answering the question you asked

Yeah my question was rhetorical, I already made the point that I don’t care if you disagree over 12 hours ago

as wakeboarder Steve Shasta pointed out on the clusterfuck thread:

He also has torn his UCL twice which is probably the most critical ligament in a pitcher's body. Earlier this year I looked up statistics of the 6 pitchers in MLB history who have had TJ surgery twice and only one performed above replacement level after the second surgery.

i'm sure the dodgers can afford him and have taken all of that into account, but at the same time they could really use pitching and it'll be "interesting" to see if he can come back and pitch like he did 2021-2023, and maybe even a bit "unprecedented". i don't want the guy to fall victim to injury, i'd actually rather see him succeed wildly and the dodgers get bounced in the first round every year. but i don't know that he will in fact succeed wildly, at least at the level fans in Anaheim were used to anyway.

Yeah my question was rhetorical, I already made the point that I don’t care if you disagree over 12 hours ago

― mojo dojo casas house (gyac), Tuesday, December 12, 2023 12:32 PM (six minutes ago)

my bad, you need to clarify when you're being rhetorical and when you're asking someone to point about why you're being a dumbass

i'm sure the dodgers can afford him and have taken all of that into account, but at the same time they could really use pitching and it'll be "interesting" to see if he can come back and pitch like he did 2021-2023, and maybe even a bit "unprecedented". i don't want the guy to fall victim to injury, i'd actually rather see him succeed wildly and the dodgers get bounced in the first round every year. but i don't know that he will in fact succeed wildly, at least at the level fans in Anaheim were used to anyway.

― omar little, Tuesday, December 12, 2023 12:38 PM (three minutes ago)

i think i mentioned this when we were talking about his potential contract a few months ago, but i wonder if the path forward for him as a pitcher on a team like the dodgers that can reasonably expect to contend every year is to use him more as a high leverage pitcher, keeping him warm for the postseason when having a guy who can pitch 2 or 3 shutout innings is extremely valuable. i think the WBC final was a good proof of concept for a version of ohtani that is not a 30 game starter but is still a valuable pitcher

Thanks J0rdan consider this woman put back in her place

ok...?

anyway xp to myself

i don't envision ohtani actually being a closer, meaning being fed the majority of ninth inning opportunities. but the highest paid closer in baseball (edwin diaz) is a nearly $20m player, which isn't that far off of what borderline 1/2 starters like zach wheeler etc make. so if you can get ohtani to be a lights out, insane strikeout rates for an inning or two type reliever you can still get some distance towards the overall $70m AAV. no idea if the dodgers will do this of course and maybe the idea that such a path provides less injury risk is also faulty. but i don't see a future for him where he's a real SP for years on end but this contract is obv pricing in him being a pitcher in some way

it's probably pretty reasonable to expect him to be a 40 HR type guy every season for a few years, maybe unreasonable to expect the 200 K/160 IP guy for that same period. so i do think that it would be wise to use him in that manner. at least in 2025, to ease him back in and see what he can do. not the same exact thing, but there's some precedent for successful SPs to turn to a relief role, then return to starting as good as ever. not a big precedent, i'm only thinking of Smoltz and Dempster here. but Ohtani is a fairly similar type of pitcher.

i actually forget if Dempster suffered a major injury though. Smoltz did obv.

actually yeah they both had TJ prior to returning as closers.

I would think his future load is as a 4-inning starter (a Plus-plus opener, if you want) instead of an andrew miller-type reliever or a closer. No one cares about wins anymore and wrt the Ohtani rule it would probably give him the most value in terms of usage. I don't think you want your unicorn warming up randomly to come into high leverage situations.

yeah that makes sense. i think the point would be largely about keeping him tuned up over the regular season so that he is ready to be unleashed in the postseason, while also scraping up some value from his regular season innings

if they can get 100-110 IP from him scattered throughout the season, that would be pretty excellent value. i mean this last season he did only throw about 130 innings.

the more I read about and try to wrap my head around this contract and its structure, the less of a problem I see it as — excepting the fact of the dodgers/other big market teams dominating the free agent market, which is a bit of a separate issue. it’s not really a 700m contract in any tangible or relevant way apart from the actual dollar amount that will eventually be paid out: it’s a 460m contract in 2023 dollars, with according cap impacts, that ohtani is choosing to actually receive in 10 years from now for one reason or another. this is much more in line with what people thought his projected offers might be. and as one of the fangraphs articles linked above mentions, it was the players who fought to keep these deferrals possible

I do wish ohtani would play the outfield though I reserve to mad at him for that specific reason only because it would be cool to watch

its less a problem with the total dollar amount and more that it's structured in a way that feels like cheating. pay the man virtually nothing for 10 years so you can sign whoever else you want and then in 10 years when he's gone pay him a dollar amount which is more than the current payroll of multiple MLB teams. this seems like it could set a precedent which will lead to certain franchises becoming superteams for 5 years and then absolute garbage for the next 5 and I really don't think that's good for the league.

I see that POV, but the way the MLB salary system is structured, the only relevant check on spending is the CBT, and the deferrals don’t lessen the CBT hit. while theoretically it’s true that saving 44m/year frees up the dodgers to use that money elsewhere, I kind of doubt that is going to break the bank for them either way

"excepting the fact of the dodgers/other big market teams dominating the free agent market, which is a bit of a separate issue"

Not directed at u but this sort of thing bugs me a little at this point because while admitting that MLB players as a whole tend to be fairly conservative they are also young dudes with a good deal of money and if you have any sort of elite ability, q-rating or "intangibles" i totally understand not wanting to ply my trade in, say, cleveland or wisconsin all else being equal.

the sam miller avocado theorem

continuing that it speaks to the malpractice levels of failure that the ownership of the angels, both sox, and a's can't get their shit together, and the gints may be approaching that level of what are we doing here lads

one more time around again. Yamamoto meeting with the Jays before signing with the dodgers.

I did read--accurate or not, who knows?--that the Jays' offer for Ohtani was in the 650-675M range; if true, a sincere attempt to sign him (and not just the dog-and-pony show I suspected). Honestly, I can live with them missing out.

i wasn't going to take things serious with the jays and Ohtani, assuming he was going to LA all the way... and then these tweets (or Xs or whatever) about him being close to signing - and MLTR and sportnet amplifying the rumours. i stupidly got caught up and got my hopes up.

now that i know that his inflation-adjusted yearly value counts against the luxury tax, i don't really have too many complaints

I had also heard that there was rodgers-related endorsement stuff tied to the TOR offer so that’s also a good faith effort xp