bill hAll Star

As are most Rockies players, including the previously mentioned Nolan Arenado. There are explanations that go beyond just looking at the road stats to find the player’s likely true value. One thing working against their road splits is that balls break less in Colorado, so often Rockies players are having to go back and forth from home to road venues adjusting to the same pitches acting very differently. In the case of several players, as RRB suggested, they’ve adjusted when they’ve left Coors to play in a more normalized environment for the majority of season. In the case of McMahon, it appears he’s also been victim to some bad batted ball luck on the road this year. Are you talking about Nolan Arenado, the guy that is hitting roughly the same in St. Louis as he did on the road for the Rockies? I'd expect not much different from McMahon. David Dahl is another guy that continued to not hit out of Coors. Dickerson for some short stints and DJL are exceptions and I think there are reasonable explanations there, and I think the DJL juiced ball explanation definitely plays.

I'd consider Yelich for Hosmer, though there is insane risk there. Of course if Yelich returns to MVP Yelich or even 80% of that, you are giving up a star during the Burnes/Woodruff/Peralta years. However, the benefits would be: Short-term: $5m in 2022 and $13m/year in 2023-2025 (unless he opts out, then $26m each year 2023-2025). Long-term: $26m/year 2026-2028. I was not a major fan of the extension due to the risk of what we're seeing right now of Yelich breaking down early, but also the obvious long-term burden a la Braun. Of course, we'd maybe be losing Yelich after this year if not for the extension. Right now may be the turning point, but in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months from now, it's possible that the $5m next year or $13m in savings for the following 3 years may be massive instead of a fading/injury prone corner OF as we are maxing out Mark's payroll with a dominant pitching staff window.

I understand maybe a high-upside guy getting sent back like Kelly, but I think people will be surprised with the return if Donaldson is traded this year. I'm guessing it's a pure salary dump. He's heating up and looks like he may be back to being very good, but if I'm a GM making this trade, I'm basically paying $45 million in 2022/2023 for said player in 2021. What I mean is that I'd bank on literally nothing after this year. He'll be 36 next year and he's already fragile. There is a very likely chance that the team that acquires him gets nothing due to injury or just a replacement-level guy for some or all of 2022-2023.

Given Donaldson's age/injury history/remaining salary and the landscape of baseball - I would send nothing back. If the Twins are trying to do a salary dump, I think basically leaving 2 years/$43 million to the next team is pretty fair risk for getting a guy that is starting to play like the older All Star that he is. I know there is a salary balance but I think if there was any balancing, the Twins would just pay $, not take Cain to get in the way of their fairly crowded OF situation. The Twins probably will not dump longer-term guys but who knows. I think they still feel they can be competitive again in 2022 and their GMs probably do not want to hit the reset button as even though they've shown some great flashes, they could be canned with another down year.

Stearns already said bullpen.

Stearns already said bullpen.

It was not a good trade, but that Davies bit in the end might cause Ken to pull a muscle reaching to make a point. Why? They got a fantastic year out of Davies and then used him to get Yu. Seems like a legitimate point to me. They handled Davies perfectly. It was a salary dump trade for the most part. Davies was just an MLB placeholder coming back that the Cubs could maybe flip again. Yes, Davies had a great shortened season...but nobody was placing much value on him in the trade market.

This trade is in some way the opposite of the Grisham trade. Grisham/Adames are the solid MLB commodity with upside. Grisham had proven less, but both guys had some upside, though nobody is expecting superstardom, both could be All Stars if things break right. Adames is still young and has that whole weird "can't hit at the Trop" thing. Urias/Rasmussen are the bag of magic beans. Urias had questions of whether he could hit at the MLB level and was just an OK defender, Rasmussen is (probably) just a reliever with control issues...but if he figures out those control issues he is one of the better relievers in baseball.

It was not a good trade, but that Davies bit in the end might cause Ken to pull a muscle reaching to make a point.

Really? We don't even know what we have yet in Urias. Anyone can be your undoing. Urias can't be any worse offensively than Arcia, so I doubt the effect is as detrimental as you think. I was admittedly an Urias fan when that trade happened knowing this was the downside, but if he cannot develop some power on the ball, he absolutely could be worse than Arcia at the plate. I still have some hope but so far he's shown that he is worse than Arcia in his first 430 MLB plate appearances. Or maybe it takes a very long time to finally emerge from the dumpster of batting stats of guys that can handle the bat but not drive it hard enough to be productive/get on base and therefore are horrendous bats. See: Eric Sogard 2010-2015.

That is usually what I would think when you have a trade like this at this time of the season, especially if the return ends up being a couple of low level minor leaguers. I would imagine they've been trying to deal Arcia for at least a full year, if not more - and I doubt it had much to do with chemistry issues. Maybe the ask vs. value was finally met.

If you have realistic expectations of what owners are going to spend and realistic expectations about the trajectory of the Rockies (post-2018 looked great! Post 2020 with Dodgers/Padres, they have zero chance), shedding the $ is huge. The Brewers of 2018 and Reds of 2020 would happily have hopped in a time machine and given Braun and Votto away for literally nothing 3 years earlier in tanking seasons. I know Braun held up somewhat well and had some clutch hits, but I'd have loved $20 million more to spend on pitching/deadline acquisitions over Braun. And that's what the Rockies' biggest asset is in this trade, for better or worse. Maybe they timed it wrong and got a crap deal instead of waiting another year. The reason they signed Arenado to this deal in the first place is it appeared that had a good 5 year window coming up. It appears the young pitching isn't what we thought it was...so time to retool/rebuild before Arenado becomes potentially untradeable in 2-3 years. To boot, they can move up in the draft.

I was one that was very wrong about DJ Lemahieu. He was one guy that I thought wouldn't be that great out of Coors. He can hit the ball very well, but one thing really helping him out was hitting the juiced ball and Yankee Stadium. That probably kept him from being, "meh, he can hit and is a solid player" to, "wow, he's still an All Star out of Coors." He hits the ball over that short porch in RF a lot, taking his game up a notch. He went from the best hitting park for guys to hit for average to probably the best HR park in Yankee Stadium, and it plays right to his strengths.

Pujols is very likely 42 right now. As a DH-only, one could argue he's worth cutting. With the 26th roster spot I guess you kinda have to just keep the "legend" on the roster, but I could see a prolonged IL stint sometime this year or next year just to kinda protect the image as he rides off into the sunset.

There are some questions about Pujols' actual age.

Heyward is only signed through age 33, FWIW. Agree, he's trending down.

Because a poster tried to make an apples-to-apples comparison in the deals based on 2019 WAR numbers of a 35-year-old Braun compared to a 29-year-old Heyward. When comparing the value, you have to look at the value providing over the lifetime of the deal compared to cherry-picking one season. Since Heyward signed his deal before the 2016 season, he only has 4 seasons to draw conclusions from. It makes sense to compare those numbers over four years to the first four years of Braun's big-money extension, which began in 2011. The extra two years and cash are worth noting on Heyward and he was more of a bust than Braun faded. Braun's contract was not "as bad" as Heyward's but that does not make it a great contract. Braun probably ended up providing on the mid-to-better end of expectations on it and it still didn't deliver a ton of value even if it has not crippled them.

Heyward also still has 4 more years left on his deal at $21.5m per. You guys are fighting a losing battle here trying to say Braun's deal is equal or worse than Heyward. As noted, Braun had those MVP/borderline MVP years in his prime as part of the deal...while Heyward in his prime part of the deal is posting 1-2 WAR seasons that are extremely heavily aided by defense...which is notorious for overvaluing defense. Those defensive skills will diminish as he ages and he might not even be rosterable by the end of his tenure if he can't hit better than a low 700s OPS. Basically, Braun in the twilight years of his big contract has been as productive as peak Heyward. Age is irrelevant in this discussion. Why are you bringing age into a discussion of value provided that a player provided under contract? If in 2010 I told you that Ryan Braun would give you 3 WAR and then 1.5 basically every year on his 2nd extension, knowing what we know about how players age, would that have surprised you? You might be conflating Braun's 1st deal with his 2nd. We're just talking about the only the 2nd deal that they signed Braun to which is very similar to Yelich's new extension.

2019 War Braun- 1.8 Heyward- 2.0 Braun since signing his big extension in 2011 at age 27 - 29.8 WAR (9 seasons) Heyward since singing his huge deal in 2015 at age 26 - 7.1 WAR (4 seasons) Braun put up 17.5 WAR in the four years after signing his deal, which includes his injury and suspension-ravaged 2013 and 2014 seasons. Comparing these two based on the WAR Braun put up in 2019 as a 35-year-old versus what Heyward did as a 29-year-old just isn't a good, or fair, comparison. But Braun is only being paid like Heyward in his 30s vs. Heyward's 20s. The comparison is fair. We had Braun in his 20s on a cheaper deal and chose to add 5-6 years into his 30s. Braun's 20s vs. Heyward's 20s were a slam dunk for Braun. But we chose to pay Braun in his 30s like Heyward in his 20s/early 30s. Comparison is fair. You've brought up this age thing inadvertently. Braun, 2008-2015 (age 24-31): 35.5 WAR in 8 years. About 4.5 WAR/year Braun, next extension 2016-2019 (age 32-35) 8.1 WAR. About 2 WAR/year likely to go down this year again. Yelich, 2013-2019 (age 21-27): 33.6 WAR in 6.5 years. About 5 WAR/year Yelich would've been under the deal until age 31, just like Braun, right before he tapered off. So now we have Yelich, 2nd extension, 2023-2029 (I am going to count 2022 in his previous one). Could Yelich's 32-36 look like Braun's? It'll be 31-38 for Yelich.

I have never ripped Braun's production or the fact that he's "overpaid" or anything like that. I realize you cannot magically take that money and put it elsewhere sometimes, but still...do you think the Brewers wish they could've put $20 million to pitching or shortstop the past 2 years? I think they'd have taken that opportunity. This assumes there is a way you can just have a guy like Braun or Yelich for his peak years, then ditch them when they decline. This is how superstar contracts work. If you want a guy like Yelich or Braun, this is the cost. Would you rather have not had Braun at his peak because of the current value of his contract? I for one would rather pay that cost to have Yelich, now and in 9 years, than give him away and hope the money has value elsewhere I'm not totally against the deal as they may get a few extra peak years out of Yelich for under market, we'll see. We'll never know if Mark held back some cash this year given the upcoming extension. Even if he didn't, Yelich will begin to decline very likely the season after his previous deal would've ended, in theory (2022). So you could definitely make the argument that you could've gone all-in for these 3 years and traded Yelich at some point in 2022 if it wasn't working. Yelich, Hader, and any other all-in free agent signing should replenish the farm. Then, in 2025, instead of a 33 year-old Yelich giving you a 1.5 WAR for $25 million, you might have a loaded farm system. So in conclusion: They basically DID have Yelich through a good part of his prime. Maybe he is still an MVP from age 31-33, in which case this deal is great. But there's risk that he falls back to what Braun is now (which isn't bad) or worse.

I have never ripped Braun's production or the fact that he's "overpaid" or anything like that. I realize you cannot magically take that money and put it elsewhere sometimes, but still...do you think the Brewers wish they could've put $20 million to pitching or shortstop the past 2 years? I think they'd have taken that opportunity.

The question will have to be asked if they "saved payroll in 2020 for the extension." Yelich probably has 5 years of being a dominant player, give or take. We had 3 of them under control for cheap. So your options were: 1. Take that extra cash and go all-in with superstar Yelich 2020-2022. 2. Have Yelich for 6 extra years at a fair price but know that he's going to be overpaid from 2024-2029 or so.

I was an original naysayer, but after further review, this is fine. It's so "cheap" that even if he does suck from age 34-37, ~$25 million is like $15 million in today's money. Hopefully we get payoff from age 31-33 because otherwise this was pointless. At first I thought they were giving him more this year in said extension which would've been not great management of the window. But my question is: Did we "save $20m-30 this year" to sprinkle on his contract further down the road? If so, I'd rather have just gone all-in from 2020-2022 and gotten something for him in a trade if all else failed.

I would argue that it never should have begun. It should stop immediately ... but it won't. I have been defending Attanasio at every corner. Basically he just took money that he could've paid other good players for the next 3 seasons and gave it to Yelich. And then he took more money and earmarked it to Yelich when he's age 37 or 38. Cheap? No. Smart? Ehhhhh.

What??? Yelich is exactly the type of player and body type that can sustain at a very high level into his mid 30's. The long term deals that have become albatrosses for other teams are the ones where the player has been pushing 40 at the tail end. People will say "but what about Braun?" but that doesn't really work, either. Braun has been a very productive player for the life of that deal. Not MVP level, but a very good player. I've been a defender of Braun's deal but I think they'd take that back if they could. Yelich is probably going to get worse in every season starting in about 2023...it becomes harder to win that way.