bill hAll Star

Are there some missing, successful seasons for Greg Bird that I'm unaware of? I understand there is some Thames/Gallo/Chris Davis type power number hopes with him and he had one nice 45 game opening stint, but he seems to have gotten the Yankees boost on his rating. He's 27 years old and in his last ~100 games in the majors over 3 separate stints could not get close to cracking a .200 AVG or .300 OBP.

Yeah, they definitely are paying for other deals. The issue (and we're mostly in agreement, here) is that even if you chop your way down to the lux tax # by giving away Price, maybe finding a way to dump Eovaldi, etc...is that your team still doesn't have a GREAT outlook at that point. They have a lot of star power but are very thin behind them so they'd have to go and fill their roster with other expensive pieces.

In 2012, granted, this was a longer burden, they literally gave away prime Adrian Gonzalez and a bad Carl Crawford contract. Those contracts lasted through 2018 and 2017, respectively. They also gave up Beckett. They won the World Series in 2013 with probably some extra cash to sign short-term deals. They won the World Series in 2018 because they signed David Price in 2016 to a huge deal, JD Martinez in 2018, and got under the luxury tax threshold in 2017. Would any of that have happened with Carl Crawford rotting for $21 million and a washed up A-Gon collecting $21 million? Probably not. How does this relate to Betts? If they really DID find a way to sign Betts next year (by the way, they technically have the same opportunity to sign him still), it would proably be $40 million/year. They'd probably keep Price or give him away having to pay 70% of his deal. So imagine a roster with Betts, Price, and everyone else (because you want to compete, right?). In 2021, that roster is ALREADY well over the luxury tax. Now add in that they won 84 games last year, have a disappearing farm system, and guys like Sale, Price, etc. are getting older. That means they'd probably have to add more expensive players to be really good. Those expensive players would cost 1.5-2x the cost because they'd be way, way over the luxury tax. Sign another ace pitcher for $20 million/year? It'll cost ownership $30-35m/year at least until they can find their way back under. So I just don't see it happening. The fact that Betts probably is gone anyways and the unlikelihood of winning it this year or building around him with all of the other bad contracts in 2021 mean you just have to go and get the best you can and retool. It worked for them after 2012.

This is crazy and I have Price valued even worse. Boston gives up 23.1 mil in value. They get 94.4 mil in value. People hate it for Boston? As stated, that value for the 5th year of Yelich (add another prospect for MKE to offset the Price cap eat part of the deal) is about what they gave up for all 5 years of Yelich. MKE gets over 100 mil of surplus value for 1 year of Yelich which is +48 mil? An offer like this will make that 5th year hard to hold onto. The people that hate it for Boston are the ones that like to just get mad at ownership. To be fair, also not everyone knows the ins-and-outs of Boston's salary situation or their upcoming tax. If you tell someone that Betts + Price still probably doesn't give you great WS odds in 2020 and in 2021 and beyond you either lose Betts for nothing or you are deep into luxury tax territory giving Betts $40m/year (and keep Price) and have the same aging roster with not great farm system...and they STILL don't get it then they never will...because these people will not be happy until Boston or New York at $500m payrolls and the Brewers are at $350 (near-term).

It really cuts both ways, though. Most World Series champions have these ridiculous contracts. The Red Sox have won 2 in the past 7 years. The Dodgers have plenty of these massive contracts and have been to basically every WS for the NL recently. The Nats just won with Scherzer, Corbin, Strasburg...yeah, they passed on Harper and later Rendon, but they're not there without those 3 massive contract pitcher prices. So unless you expect owners to start pushing $400-500 million payrolls, it is working out exactly as it should. The big markets spend big bucks to take a shot at titles, knowing that Jacoby Ellsbury and Nate Eovaldi may be literally useless contract players or shells of their former selves at some point in said contracts. When they reach a point like the Red Sox and Cubs have of, "oh, we are already at the luxury tax, we won 84 games last year, and we have no farm system. Let's not just sign our entire roster back/add to it so that we can have a $300 million payroll of 34-year-old vets" they hit the reset button. Most fans aren't sitting and looking at cot's baseball contracts so they don't really have a grasp on this, but it's probably the right thing to do unless you expect most or all of these teams to go to $400+ million.

I don't think it would have been wise for the Red Sox to have a $260+ million cost payroll in 2021 prior to even adding anything that we know about this year. If they somehow didn't lose Betts and signed him to $40+/year and kept Price, that's what they're looking at. They're in better position for it unless you think their owner should go over $400 million by 2021 or 2022.

This is basically doing the Anthony Rendon contract only also giving up our best prospects to do it. It's just not happening. Neither of those prospects are supposed to be all that great. It's unlikely that this move would ever happen but if it was available...sign me up. Sure, I'd rather have just signed Rendon and only given up a comp pick, but if the price to getting a star player was, "OK, also throw in these likely lower-ceiling prospects" I'd be OK with it. Depends on one's opinion of Turang, of course. I can't really see projecting him to be a star but if you're certain he's going to be a 50+ guy, then maybe I'd think twice.

Try convincing the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, etc. who believe that they carry the entire league (and really, they do) to go for that. Especially considering they basically fund the A's/Rays/Marlins as those teams just sit on their pile of revenue sharing and if the rules changed, they'd maybe have to spend some of their money...

DJ is an outlier that benefited from the juiced ball with his style of hitting and going to an easier home run ballpark. He had 19 HR there which significantly boosted his numbers. He was perfect for hitting the ball over that short porch in RF. Arenado's numbers would drop significantly other than maybe hitting homers at Fenway or Yankee Stadium. He wouldn't be bad, but he'd fall off a bit. Man, when I stumped for the Brewers to sign LeMahieu last offseason, all I was met with is "he's a Coors Field guy, he'll be terrible outside of Coors." Well, guess what ... outlier or not, LeMahieu was a stud for the Yankees. When you are a good player, you're a good player anywhere. Arenado didn't get that huge deal just because he can hit well at Coors. He got it because he's a stud. And he's going to be a stud in Arlington, Washington D.C., Milwaukee, or wherever else he ends up. Except St. Louis. If he ends up in St. Louis, he's gonna suck He has good bat skills so he would not be a bad player anywhere. But he is in the class of the LaStella, McNeil, Sogard where the juiced ball took a guy that hit the ball hard to all fields and was a .290/.340/.400 type of guy to a superstar because a lot of those lineouts to the right fielder became doubles to the gap or went over the fence. Especially in New York.

DJ is an outlier that benefited from the juiced ball with his style of hitting and going to an easier home run ballpark. He had 19 HR there which significantly boosted his numbers. He was perfect for hitting the ball over that short porch in RF. Arenado's numbers would drop significantly other than maybe hitting homers at Fenway or Yankee Stadium. He wouldn't be bad, but he'd fall off a bit.

If we're going to operate under the same constraints of what we have (a reasonably high payroll given market size, but not a big payroll) then I don't understand a Yelich extension. Not worth paying $150-200 million (or more) for 1-2 more elite years and then a bunch of years as he fades out as Braun has since 2014 or 2016 or whatever year one believes he did.

My question is if the Astros were able to implement this stuff on the road. Altuve's 2 insane batting average seasons involved him hitting much, much better on the road. Until I understand that one, I'm at "hold" on this theory.

I don't think so. Coors numbers be damned, even if he posts his .760 road OPS full-time with excellent defense at shortstop, it'll require more than that. He's basically prime Troy Tulowitzki with 2 years of control left. That's relatively valuable.

Yup. A dominant freak of a relief pitcher that has off days just like every other player in the game. If we had a manager who saw he was off and went to Lyles he might have had a hold. Biggest coaching pet peeve... putting people in position to fail or leaving them in position to fail. The most beautiful thing is you can't be wrong when you make calls like this. We can all just assume that the next, inferior guy in wouldn't have blown the game in more spectacular fashion and forget that a broken bat single was the catalyst. That said, in this case I was not a fan of how early he did start Hader...but I'll stop there as we won't want to rehash this.

Well that's pretty much correct. Since 2008, the Brewers have run a payroll between 13th highest and 18th highest (middle of the pack) 8 times. Depending on where you look, the Brewers are somewhere in the bottom 5 of market sizes. So I'm not sure what else is expected rationally. If they skimp at a position here or there I may be mad but I will likely be in the grave by the time an owner like Attanasio says, "you know what? Eff it. I'm going to spend my entire fortune to try to win a World Series."

The problem with this logic is you get to take last years disappointments/underperformances and then compare that to all the 2020 players like we won't have guys be big disappointments. Reality is we will have big disappointments in 2020 once again. Hopefully not to that extent, but there will be. Using that kind of logic always paints the future a lot more pretty than it is. I do think they trimmed off some worthless ABs and will have more average ABs...does that outweigh the above average ABs they are losing? Unknown. If you had told me that Hiura would hit well but only play half the season in the majors, Aguilar/Shaw/Cain would all be below replacement-level hitters, Arcia didn't improve, and Yelich missed a month of the season...I'd have thought told you that we'd be nowhere near the playoffs. I do understand that Mous had a good year, Thames was good, Grandal was great...but I'd say that last year was more on the bad luck side of things.

1. I feel like the Brewers will more regularly go with 13 pitchers. 2. That probably means Healy is initially the option guy. 3. I don't think Urias will be in a bench role. If it really is "this is it" then I guess Healy does make the majors and Urias starts out in AAA. 4. If they want to start Urias, I don't see them keeping Arcia around. So I do still think something is coming. But even I am losing the confidence on that.

I am not arguing staunchly in favor of this, but Gyorko was "Moustakas-esque" in 2016-2017, albeit with less games played due to being on the other side of the platoon. So there is a world where this is a great move. But I'm not expecting it.

I'm not high on the Brewers' prospects listed other than maybe Turang. That said, Lamb is toast after some injuries and if your suggestion is that this happens at the deadline with Ray, he would need to be pitching at a Cy Young level to cost that much for 2 months of his services.

This is irrational, but while I understand that Cabrera's production is basically Seager's of late and he'd be a bargain at the level of Brett Anderson...something about the way he moves around makes me feel like he's one more tweaked ankle or knee away from basically turning into an unplayable scrub. Some probably say the same about Cain lumbering around, but Asdrubal looks very fragile on the field.

Somebody might be better at the actual statcast swing planes than me, but using Fangraphs: Tommy La Stella's career FB% is 31% (including 2019). In 2019 he hit the ball 33% of the time as a fly ball and was on pace for 30 HR (16 in half a season) after hitting 10 in his entire career. DJ LeMahieu hit 26 bombs after only 49 in his career before that. In 2018, he had a 29% FB% and only hit 26% FBs in 2019...yet he hit 15 HR in 2018 and 26 in 2019. Some of this may be park related. He hit a bunch at Yankee Stadium to the short porch. Coors is not a bad HR park but it more lends to base hits/extra base hits along with being a pretty good HR park. Sogard did step his FB% up even more than he has the past 2-3 years, but here's another comparison. In 2013 Sogard hit 39% fly balls and had 2 HR in 410 plate appearances. In 2019 Sogard hit 42% fly balls and had 13 HR in 442 plate apperances. Again, some park factor in there for Sogard but he hit 13 HR this year after hitting 9 in his career. He seems to have increased his launch angle but that's still something. Those are some that jumped off the page to me watching last year. I'm sure I can dig up some others.

If this stuff keeps getting louder and louder maybe they owners will care enough to just do with the NBA and NFL do and shield themselves behind a salary cap. I'm sure the Cowboys could afford a $400 million payroll but they only need to have a $150 million payroll and they can throw up their hands and say, "sorry, salary cap." NBA is basically that although technically teams are allowed to pay insane amounts of luxury tax over the top. I am just wired to live with the fact that owners will all collude to pocket $50 million and all be "capped out" a certain % short of their actual real budget. But say for a second that every owner was benign and they all spent most of their fortunes to try to win the World Series. Cole might've gotten $800 million instead...and eventually teams would be too poor anyways. So I don't care. It is annoying that teams like the Rays and Marlins are just sitting on revenue sharing. Attanasio at least pretends to try to spend more than they have. The annoying thing to me is Cubs fans complaining about their situation. 95% of them don't understand that the Cubs are fading with a giant collection of players crossing the age of 30 with only 2 years left on their contracts. They have no farm system or pitching depth. Short of signing Cole and Ryu, the Cubs will drive themselves into the garbage if they re-signed Rizzo/Bryant and spent on Kyle Gibson or something. If they went in an another offseason and keep some of their current stars as their fanbase wants, they are going to end up with a payroll that costs ownership $500 million with all of the luxury tax they'd have to pay in 3-4 years and it still might suck.

Alright I've kinda done the, "someone explain this to me" thing on other threads. -I understand Cleveland's ownership is cheap -They have a history of trading guys away before they lose them in free agency If they trade Lindor, Ramirez, or Clevenger...all of which are in their prime and are not paid more than they are worth (you could argue Kluber was)...what would compel them to want Josh Hader or Arcia? They're pretty clearly rebuilding if they put the next foot down. So the guys they're trading for should all have 5+ years of control and probably be not very close to the majors. Trading for Josh Hader will keep them at a 77 win team without Lindor and Kluber (and maybe Clevenger) and when they finally get their next wave up, Josh Hader will be a $14 million reliever with one year left of control. I think Cleveland is only trading these guys if they get absolutely blown away with a reason to start rebuilding. I sincerely hope from a baseball-wide perspective that they aren't selling off guys like Lindor or Clevenger for pennies on the dollar with zero franchise direction so that they can chop payroll down more than they already have (and they've already drastically slashed it).

Alright I've kinda done the, "someone explain this to me" thing on other threads. -I understand Cleveland's ownership is cheap -They have a history of trading guys away before they lose them in free agency If they trade Lindor, Ramirez, or Clevenger...all of which are in their prime and are not paid more than they are worth (you could argue Kluber was)...what would compel them to want Josh Hader or Arcia? They're pretty clearly rebuilding if they put the next foot down. So the guys they're trading for should all have 5+ years of control and probably be not very close to the majors. Trading for Josh Hader will keep them at a 77 win team without Lindor and Kluber (and maybe Clevenger) and when they finally get their next wave up, Josh Hader will be a $14 million reliever with one year left of control. I think Cleveland is only trading these guys if they get absolutely blown away with a reason to start rebuilding. I sincerely hope from a baseball-wide perspective that they aren't selling off guys like Lindor or Clevenger for pennies on the dollar with zero franchise direction so that they can chop payroll down more than they already have (and they've already drastically slashed it).

I don't believe so. I know these rumors are swirling about Cleveland but I think they're dangling some of their expensive guys out there to cut costs (I think they're done with that, though) and if a few teams offered a bunch of top 20 prospects then they'd just go ahead and rebuild. Ramirez is: 27 years old Locked up for 4 more years with 2 of those being options in case things somehow go south Averaging roughly $5m/year Had a down year last year but still has averaged roughly 5 WAR the past 4 seasons. I think it would cost our entire farm system to knock them over into making a deal and I still don't think that does it. I know people want to jump on and see what they can get out of "cheap" ownership but maybe I'm naive in expecting the best out of people, but I don't think Cleveland is going to give away an MVP candidate locked into an extremely team friendly deal unless it is for a massive, massive haul. To me, this would be like Attanasio saying, "OK $125 million was a special one-time thing for Grandal but now we want to get down to $110-115 million" and others immediately asking if Yelich is available. I guess I'd trade him for the Dodgers 5 best prospects but otherwise that's not the best way to shave cash off of payroll.