Hot Stove 2023-2024

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