Point Beer Is Best

Per an earlier post referencing Rosenthal, the incentives are likely to be unreached. They require him to win multiple Cy Youngs to reach the $150M. It will be a lot closer to $126M than $150M, if he doesn't opt out before then.

Means that they've put their best offers out there for a FA or trade target and were told it wasn't enough. So they're holding firm unless the other end changes their mind.

If we assume that Darvish will set the market (all signs have been pointing that way), suddenly the other pitchers become more affordable that was previously thought. What's Jake Arrieta's ceiling now? It can't be more than a deal with an AAV over $20M. Lynn/Cobb will be in the upper teens.

So the Cubs would have to hope that he’s worth it for the entire contract Yeah, it will be interesting to see the allocation of the dollars per year and where the opt outs are.

How so? 6 years sounds like a lot but 21M per is far under even the most conservative projection. Makes me think that the Brewers may have had the highest offer on the table, but he just didn't want to be here.

Nightengale reports the deal includes "no trade provisions and opt outs" as well.

So the $90M over 4 years the Cubs fans wasn't too far off, it just went two years further essentially. That is really far off. 2 years further for a 30 year old pitcher is a looooonng time. I'm obviously talking about the AAV.

AAV would be $21M guaranteed, and would be $25M per year if incentives are reached. That seems less than I would have expected. So the $90M over 4 years the Cubs fans wasn't too far off, it just went two years further essentially. Rosenthal says the $150M is pretty slim since he'd need to win multiple CY Young awards.

AAV would be $21M guaranteed, and would be $25M per year if incentives are reached. That seems less than I would have expected. So the $90M over 4 years the Cubs fans wasn't too far off, it just went two years further essentially.

This is getting off-topic, but I don’t think teams have suddenly realized that signing these free agent deals were a bad idea. The root cause is the much stricter Luxury Tax penalties which teams are now treating like a salary cap. Which, ironically, the MLBPA pretty stupidly agreed to. So, while revenues in total continue to climb, many of the usual suspects in terms of teams who spend wildly in free agency (or have the resources to do so) are now holding back since they can’t just shrug off a bad deal and spend more money to fix it. They are now operating more like the small market clubs have over the past couple of decades. And since revenue sharing is VERY minimal in comparison to the NFL (which has leaguewide TV deals instead of the team by team deals MLB operates with), some teams just don’t have the payroll flexibility and would be crippled financially if they made a bad move in free agency. On top of this, there is no salary floor, so teams who don’t see a chance to win that year aren’t typically going to sign a free agent to a monster deal either. Teams have seen that tanking pays huge dividends as it rewards the team with high draft picks for a number of years. The system is broke. There needs to be more competitive balance and prevention or revenue sharing going into the pockets of owners.

Ok I’ll bite. Over the same period of time (Super Bowl era), 8 of the 30 MLB teams are without a World Series Championship (and the two most recent winners had zero prior to those seasons in that era). That’s basically the same 1/3. The difference is that if you look at payroll/market size for the MLB teams with either zero or 1 WS championship during that era it’s pretty clear that the teams with large pocketbooks are able to compete at a high level much more consistently than those with limited resources. Frankly, if you have that level of failure in the NFL, it’s most likely due to the ineptitude of that front office because EVERYONE is on a level competitive playing field. Baseball economics are much different.

At his current salary, Kipnis has negative trade value. The idea that it would take Santana, Peralta plus another player for players with several warts in Salazar and Kipnis seems like a total nonstarter to me. Milwaukee would be assuming the salary and injury risk in exchange for a some pretty nice pieces heading back. Maybe for Clevenger, but not for an injury risk like Salazar.

I feel like this (extra points if you’re old enough to remember this live):

No. He can’t get into specifics, remember? This is great. I don’t even care that we’re being rick-rollled.

I meant the other way around, oops. So your suggesting Kipnis + $10MM for Cody Ponce & Villar? Cleveland says no. Cleveland will not need a backfill on the infield if it moves Kipnis. It already has a handful of guys guys to go thru to fill 3B with JRam moving from 3B over to 2B (since Kipnis gone). So let's consider a counter. Kipnis + $10MM (over 2 seasons, $4 this year, $6 next season) for FPeralta & a PTBNL. For our discussion the PTBNL cannot be anyone from full season minor league ball last season or listed in the top 30 of the BA Prospect list. This would be a true lottery ticket.. Your thoughts? I was actually just going to pose the question, “what is Jason Kipnis worth?”, as a stand-alone asset separate from Salazar. The fact that you want Peralta + for Kipnis & $10m in salary relief as an Indians fan on the opening salvo makes me think his worth is probably less than that.

I’m not sure if the Rays even want/need Santana, while Cleveland seems like a better fit. . Maybe they spurn the FA’s, send a package involving Santana to Cleveland for Salazar & Kipnis and Burnes + to Tampa for Archer. Personally I’d rather forget Salazar and focus on Kipnis and Mejia as the return for a Santana package, and focus on a FA pitcher and Archer.

I’m pretty much resigned to the fact we’ll lose Santana and Burnes in a deal for Archer. I’ll echo the comments of others that Phillips, in my view, has a significant role to play on this team as a very versatile OF and would really like to hold onto him.

I must have missed the snarky posts, but I want to make a point clear to those that believe that Mark must have lots of cash to spend on payroll because the franchise has appreciated in value: You don’t realize the gain on your investment until you sell a percentage of your equity. Simply put, the franchise value increasing does not put more “cash” in the pockets of the owner. If you bought a house for $100k and ten years later it’s worth $200k... do you have an extra $100k in your pockets? No - you don’t realize that gain unless you sell the asset. This is why you see teams like the Marlins, Mets and even the Yankees looking for minority owners. The franchise value makes up the vast majority of their owners net worth. They are “cash poor” so in order to pull cash out you either have to get super creative (fraudulent, ala Frank McCourt and the Dodgers) or sell the team (I guess also Frank McCourt and the Dodgers are an example ).

Posted this elsewhere but Darvish has under 3ERA in 63% of his games in wins/no decisions. A 2.35 ERA and 6.12ERA in the losses only 37% of starts. Arrieta has a 1.6ERA in 46% of his starts of Wins only. 24.6% of his starts of no decisions is a 4.04 ERA. Losses at 7.17. Taking the majority of Arrieta's starts his no-decision/losses 54% of the time he's a 5.36 ERA pitcher. Yeah Darvish is a far better pitcher. I have no idea what I just read but I'm pretty sure it's hilarious.

I know it’s just speculation by the author, but that’s pretty close to where I would peg Broxton’s value. Either for a decent rental arm or some low level lottery tickets.

If you want to be an eternal optimist, there’s a few ways this could work out. Either by taking on salary from the Dodgers/Yankees in exchange for top prospects so they can keep Darvish from the Cubs, or force the Cubs into handing out a massive contract. Or the long shot he signs with us.

Broxton probably has Adam Lind type value. I’m guessing we’d be looking at lower level minors prospects in return while Tampa is looking for upper minors players for Archer. If I’m Tampa, I’m holding out for Burnes as the centerpiece for Archer. Someone will offer a comparable player for him eventually so time is on their side.

I watched the press conference from Alpha Entertainment's Twitter feed (OF COURSE that's what McMahon would call a company he just dumped $100M into). I thought the timing of bringing back the XFL was right, in that I think fans get frustrated with overly complex rules (the catch rule, that stupid rule where the defense gets the ball if you fumble the ball forward and it rolls out of the endzone, etc) and they are fed up with protections afforded to QB's (nobody wants to see violent headshots, but enforcing a 15 yard penalty for a D lineman grazing the side of a QB's helmet are frustrating). However, I came away from watching that press conference with some questions and concerns. - I don't know what their plan is. They want to play in the spring of 2020 (just two years from now), but don't appear to have anyone running the league, don't have a TV or streaming partners and don't have any cities identified (he mentioned exploring cities that have existing NFL facilities, which seems to indicate they'd like some kind of partnership, but do they have any idea if the feeling is mutual?). The only concrete plan seemed to be that they will just now begin getting input from fans and coaches on what the league should look like. - They also want to make the game quicker ("2 hours is the goal"), which is pretty easy if you don't have a TV partner anyways, but where does your ad revenue come from? Will the jerseys be covered in ads like in other sports? NOBODY is going to want to pay for this (we don't currently pay for the majority of NFL content, which is the most popular sport in America), so partnering with a streaming service seems unlikely. - It's pretty clear that McMahon wants to "keep politics OUT of the XFL", while at the same time he not so subtly indicated that there will be rules that every player must follow, including standing for the National Anthem, which some would argue is inherently political. - The high bar for player personal conduct. "If you have a DUI, you won't plan in this league" is what McMahon said. What is driving this is fan feedback on the perceived criminal history of players in the NFL (which, when you look at MLB and NFL players and arrest records, they are actually much lower than the general population). I don't have a problem with that - they have every right to create that threshold. I just think it is a very high bar, and appears to be a no-tolerance policy. He was asked about Tebow, Manziel and Kaeparnick. He dismissed Manziel (which shocked the heck out of everybody before he explained the policy), but invited Tebow as well as Kap (while pointing out that he must adhere to rules of the league, which we all know what he's talking about). The message I walked away with was, the fans want a quicker paced game, with easier to understand rules, with *some* of the violence reinstated to the sport, played by athletes with clean off the field records who will stand for the national anthem and keep their personal politics to themselves. And they currently have no in plan in place on how to make that happen and sustain it as a viable business enterprise.

Did he delete the tweet youre inferring to? I think they're still up there...you just need to speculate: "He has a plan for me"= maybe I've been traded somewhere again and it's another bump in the road? "I know who my crew is" = the "Crew" may not be is crew now. Also a tweet about being ready for Spring Training to start in the middle of there which is just part of the story of those other 2. He also retweeted someone saying "Worrying is wasting energy on the things you can't control. Leave everything in God's hand. Think less, pray more." I know we want to read more into it, but after going back through his timeline this isn't anything out of the ordinary from what he normally appears over the past few months.

We have it on good authority that Darvish is not coming to Milwaukee and will sign with the Cubs. Or so I've been told. They may not be directly waiting on Darvish, either. It could be their actual target (Arrieta, Lynn, Cobb) is waiting for Darvish to sign first to establish the market. And the Brewers are waiting in the balance since they can't deal Woodruff (or Davies) until they have the FA starter plugged in first. Just speculation at this point, but it makes sense as to why the rest of the predicted "flurry" of activity hasn't happened yet.