Bone Chips said:
Not the best ones. When would Stanton reach FA? Justin Upton? Kershaw? Heyward? (Bogaerts?)
26-29, if ever. It's possible that the tier of players you're describing isn't actually the top tier.
Extending Lester
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Not the best ones. When would Stanton reach FA? Justin Upton? Kershaw? Heyward? (Bogaerts?)
26-29, if ever. It's possible that the tier of players you're describing isn't actually the top tier.
Bone Chips said:
Lesse, missed the playoffs in 2012, made the NLCS in 2013, in 2nd place in the NL West today.
Better question is what the Dodgers have gotten for their money after the trade from those players:
Gonzalez: 283/337/456/793, 121 OPS+ (his OPS+ in Boston was 139)
Crawford: 279/320/405/725, 103 OPS+ (his OPS+ in Boston was 89)
Punto: 258/335/325/660, 87 OPS+ (his OPS+ in Boston was 57)
Beckett: 7-13, 3.16 ERA, 115 ERA+ (89-58, 109 ERA+ in Boston). Major arm injury of course.
Given the payroll figures of those guys and the price they paid to acquire them, they haven't been worth the money or the acquisition cost. The Dodgers made the NLCS last year, but that may have had more to do with Hanley and Puig coming over than any of these guys.
The Dodgers have a $230 million payroll, you're rooting for the wrong team if you think that should be the standard.
Rovin Romine said:
I think you can replace "Ross" with a good framing catcher. Salty isn't, and Pierzynski sure as hell isn't, so it may be not so much a personal connection with Lester and Ross but just Lester wanting to pitch to a guy who can really help him behind the plate.
If Christian Vazquez can do that, then Lester would seemingly be set for a catcher over the life of any contract he would sign with the Sox, whether Vazquez is the starting catcher or the backup to Swihart or someone else.
Still no championships. Was there a point you were trying to make that I missed?Bone Chips said:
Or, put another way, since the Punto trade the Dodgers have the 4th most regular season wins of any team in baseball (more than the Red Sox), were the odds on favorite to win the World Series last year, are the odds on favorite to win the World Series this year (according to baseball prospectus), and have also led all of major league baseball in attendance - and by a wide margin. Hardly what I would call "crippling a franchise".Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
And no, I don't want to be like the Dodgers. But this whole idea that older, high cost players are poison to a franchise has really risen to ridiculous proportions in here. Just look at Becket this year. The guy is easily one of the top 10 pitchers in the game this year. His 2.37 era is 7th in all of baseball and his 1.02 WHIP is 8th. Gonzalez hasn't lived up to my lofty expectations for him, but I still believe he'll come around. Crawford is a disaster and always was. I blame for the whole sordid mess. That was the contract that never should have happened. We paid for it then, and now that we appear to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater by shying away from older, top tier players, I'm afraid we'll be paying for it again many times over.
Exactly. And the cherry on top is that part of the reason they so eagerly bid up the price on Crawford beyond recognition instead of doing so for Jayson Werth or Matt Holliday was their supposedly newfangled defensive evaluation system, which they continue to overvalue.Bone Chips said:
Bone Chips said:
I agree with this. Another example is Cliff Lee; aged 31 when signed to a 5/120 (with 6th year option for 15M) and he's been easily worth the money. By fWAR roughly $5.25M per win to date, and that's with missed time this season.
Bone Chips said:
Why are you looking at Beckett for only this year? He was a disaster in 2012 for the Sox, he was a disaster for the Dodgers in 2013 before getting his surgery. Great, he's been excellent so far this year. But on a pure cost/WAR basis he's been awful since 2012. He's exactly the type of player who's NOT a good bargain for the higher end of the FA market.
You have to look at the totality of the contract. He signed a 4/68 deal in 2010 that covered his 2011-2014 seasons. So far under that contract he's gone 25-31 with an ERA+ of 113 and has missed substantial time with an injury. That's neither upper echelon pitching nor a good contract.
BTW, his FIP for the Dodgers this year is 3.80 and his BABiP is .241. He's due for a regression and that right soon.
I'm basically with you so I don't think you understood my point. I seen the righting on the wall before last season ended regarding our short and long term OF production. I saw that the farm had some weaknesses with the OF being the most glaring one of all, so there wasn't going to be any help there. There was a solid chance we'd lose Ellsbury and I argued here that we needed not only to sign an OF'er last off-season but one with a very good bat. That said I'm not for signing a player for appearances, if the best move is to wait a year to fill the void because it's a rebuilding year or whatever you want to call it, then I can agree with that but if it's to pocket some dough because the scrutiny or lack there of of winning a WS will satiate the masses then I'm 100% with you. The thing is it's hard to tell the difference.Plympton91 said:
In the very near future we are losing Ortiz' bat, he'll fall of a cliff sooner than later, and Victorino's last year is next year and how much can you depend on him? Usually it takes 2 years for players such as JBJ to learn how to hit at the major league level. Pedroia the last few games aside has to have everyone concerned that he's past his prime. This team is likely to take a step back for at least another year maybe two while the infusion of several more prospects take their time to develop and prosper at the ML level. So maybe the wise thing is to do what Ben did with the mid level contracts and hope lighting strikes twice.
Bone Chips said:
The Dodgers paid $31.5mm over the past two years for a grand total of 15 Beckett starts, and that doesn't include whatever they paid in 2011. So Beckett having a single good year (and in a contract year, imagine that!) out of three with the Dodgers doesn't really support overpaying Lester.
Regarding your larger point, the Dodgers' payroll is $238mm -- $76mm more than the Red Sox. They have been able to fix the problems caused by overspending on veterans by spending more. The Sox's ownership is never going to do that, so the idea that the Dodgers are any kind of model for the Sox is really misplaced.
That said, if the rejoinder to this is "the Sox are minting money -- they should happily blow through the luxury tax," I can't argue. But that's not the way this ownership thinks, as far as I can tell, so any discussion of the Lester deal needs to account for that.
All fair points. The big argument against signing a 30 year old "elite" player to a high valued contract is that there's a good chance he will be injured or play very poorly for at least one of the years you sign him to. But there's also the equally good chance that he'll deliver a one or two year stretch of exceptional performance that puts your team over the top and wins a Championship. All it takes is one great year to completely change the overall picture of a contract - John Lackey being the perfect example of this.Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
Bone Chips said:
Lackey's Red Sox contract isn't ever going to look good, all his 2013 postseason heroics included. It was profoundly gratifying to see him pitch last October like the pitcher we all thought we were getting when he initially signed the deal, but it was one postseason, not a lifetime dispensation. Lackey has gone 45-41 with an ERA of 4.50 (ERA+ 93) in a Boston uniform, and for that the Red Sox will have paid him $80 million by the end of the 2014 season. He could have been 1967-era Bob Gibson last October and it still wouldn't have made that contract a good one.
Hell, Dice K "only" got $52 million from the Sox and has a WS ring to his name along with an 18-3 season and several good postseason starts under his belt. Think that was a good contract too?
And if Olney is right, that's Exhibit Z of why you don't make offers in an unrealistic range. You don't get multiple chances to get things right.
So there are two possibilities: they want Lester, or they don't.
If they do, they fucked up this spring.
If they don't, then it's really disappointing because it mean, with this latest attempt to reopen talks, that they are playing games for cosmetic reasons.
My guess is it's door number 1.
And if the plan was to trade him all along, this progression has probably lessened his value, assuming Olney is right. Lester is apparently determined to hit the open market.
So there are two possibilities: they want Lester, or they don't.
If they do, they fucked up this spring.
If they don't, then it's really disappointing because it mean, with this latest attempt to reopen talks, that they are playing games for cosmetic reasons.
My guess is it's door number 1.
And if the plan was to trade him all along, this progression has probably lessened his value, assuming Olney is right. Lester is apparently determined to hit the open market.
Smiling Joe Hesketh said:
I respect your opinion and I certainly understand it, but here is where we'll have to agree to disagree. Last October 30th I spent $2,500 for two tickets to game 6 of the World Series, took a day off from work, pulled my son out of school, and drove about 200 miles to see Lackey outduel Wacha to win the first World Series in Boston in almost 100 years. I can assure you that the only thing going through my mind that night regarding Lackey's contract was one of pure thanks that the Red Sox did that deal. For me it's all about Championships, and I can't see the Red Sox winning another one in the next few years without a guy like Lester or Scherzer on the staff.
Many many FA contracts don't work out. This is the natural product of the fact that so much value is derived from pre-FA players. But unless you have a remarkable farm system, you have to take the risks. You can point to teams like the A's but I will be honest, the A's are supremely lucky that e.g. Brandon Moss has had a development curve that almost no player in the history of baseball has had. Based on history before last year, Mike Carp should be a much better player than Brandon Moss. Would you have bet on Coco Crisp having two of his three best seasons at age 33 and 34? Beyond the A's, who out there is getting huge performance without having a bunch of risky contracts?
The point being, you can't just shy away from spending money because you have had bad luck spending money. I mean you can, but then you are the Kansas City Royals.
The point being, you can't just shy away from spending money because you have had bad luck spending money. I mean you can, but then you are the Kansas City Royals.
Isn't Lester's collapse from September 2011 through 2012 getting just a little downplayed in this discussion? For all of his big-game heroics before and after that, the fact remains that Jon was apparently healthy and in the theoretical prime of his career and he just completely shat the bed. Ben and his staff had a front-row seat for his period of suckage and whatever was going on behind the scenes with the pitcher, and I have to think that's it's factoring into their reluctance to just write out a $110 to $125 million check to him.
His point is actually pretty valid though. You can argue that the lucky nature of the postseason makes analysis meaningless, but teams garner value from winning, and winning the World Series actually has an effect on the value of the team and on the short-term revenue stream. The Sox this year are on a pretty spectacularly bad run that may undo whatever value they could have pulled out of the World Series win, and you can argue that the Red Sox are the RED SOX and will be worth a ton of money no matter the state of the franchise, but it's probably true that in terms of real value delivered to the Red Sox and limited partners, John Lackey's small sample performance bridges a ton of the gap that SJH mentions.
smastroyin said:
Yeah, this is really what it feels like is happening. Before the 2011 season, they signed Crawford for 7 years, and then extended Buchholz for 4 and Adrian Gonzalez for 7 early in the season. Since then (unless I'm forgetting something), the only contracts they've given out for >2 years have been Victorino for 3 and the ridiculously team-friendly Pedroia deal. Am I missing any others?
I wonder to what extent that plays a factor in the team wide under-performance. I don't think Pedroia and Ortiz thought they were signing up to be the attendance-generating stars of Pawtucket North for the remainder of their careers.soxhop411 said:
I can totally see Pedroia pissed at the team for not giving Lester every penny. The guy has pitched his heart out, and the most important thing for any player is the big pay day. It's also pretty easy to imagine Ortiz not wanting to be in the spotlight.Plympton91 said:
My guess is close to zero given that its not bothering Lester's on field performance.Plympton91 said:
Im glad Lackey was there last October, but the fact that he was is just not very useful or predictive at all when trying to analyze how to build winning baseball teams. The goal is definitely to win titles, not WAR efficiency crowns, and the team is going to have to take risk in one form or another, but signing John Lackey, on balance, was a negative for Boston's World Series chances over the balance of his contract.smastroyin said:
I'm not talking about chances or the future. I'm talking about what actually happened. SJH said there was no way John Lackey could make up his horrible contract with one post-season, but the way teams make revenue suggests that it actually is possible.
When talking about building for the future, you can say "this player will add X wins +/- some standard deviation based on their history and normal variation and those wins will increase our chance of making the playoffs by X% and then even if you coinflip then that is worth money." But I'm not talking about Expected Values of the Lackey contract, I'm talking about what actually happened on the field. We don't need to talk about risks because we have the facts. Debating the overall value of Lackey of course requires some more analysis, and of course there is what we don't know, which is what he will bring and at what price next year. But if he is as good next year as he was in 2013 (which is worse than he has been so far in 2014) then he makes up the year lost to injury pretty readily. Then all you need is for a single post-season to make up the difference between his 2010/11 performance/salary. And personally I think that's quite possible, in terms of net value brought to the team. Not WAR, actual $ flowing toward the bottom line.
The counter arguments that should be made are that you don't need "proven veteran starters" to win in the playoffs, since that's the tie in to Lester. Personally, I can buy that, and if you said that Allen Webster or Henry Owens will pitch as well as Jon Lester I would not counter that we "need a horse to win in the playoffs." The problem is that there is a high chance that those guys aren't going to be as good as Jon Lester over the course of his contract, even pricing in Lester's own performance risk. Honestly it would be nice if they had another year to make this decision, it will be a pretty important amount of information.
When talking about building for the future, you can say "this player will add X wins +/- some standard deviation based on their history and normal variation and those wins will increase our chance of making the playoffs by X% and then even if you coinflip then that is worth money." But I'm not talking about Expected Values of the Lackey contract, I'm talking about what actually happened on the field. We don't need to talk about risks because we have the facts. Debating the overall value of Lackey of course requires some more analysis, and of course there is what we don't know, which is what he will bring and at what price next year. But if he is as good next year as he was in 2013 (which is worse than he has been so far in 2014) then he makes up the year lost to injury pretty readily. Then all you need is for a single post-season to make up the difference between his 2010/11 performance/salary. And personally I think that's quite possible, in terms of net value brought to the team. Not WAR, actual $ flowing toward the bottom line.
The counter arguments that should be made are that you don't need "proven veteran starters" to win in the playoffs, since that's the tie in to Lester. Personally, I can buy that, and if you said that Allen Webster or Henry Owens will pitch as well as Jon Lester I would not counter that we "need a horse to win in the playoffs." The problem is that there is a high chance that those guys aren't going to be as good as Jon Lester over the course of his contract, even pricing in Lester's own performance risk. Honestly it would be nice if they had another year to make this decision, it will be a pretty important amount of information.
If Lester tests FA, and he should, the Sox FO/ownership totally mangled a situation that seemed to hold a high probability for a win/win outcome, for both Lester and the Sox.dcmissle said:
bankshot1 said:
This is kind of making me realize how realistic OOTP Baseball is. You make a lowball offer and the counter is through the roof. It's hard to come back from that. Then you only get a few chances to come to a compromise before the player decides to test free agency.
I'll agree, if Lester gets to free agency, then the front office made a mistake. As I've stated, he's not the kind of guy I think they should have a problem paying up for. He's got all the requisite skill and attributes to be worthy of a mega deal, unless his camp is sticking to something ridiculous like 30 million a year then the team needs to make this happen.
Plympton91 said:
Yeah, I'm sure people are tanking it and driving their own value down because Lester hasn't been shown enough "respect" in the negotiation process thus far. Maybe if they'd just shelled out for Lester, everyone would be happy - no Nava slump and JBJ would be batting .300.
I'm also sure Pedroia and Ortiz will feel that the pressure is off them once Lester is signed for 2015. It must be like Lester is invisible right now or something!
Plymp, you're like the gadfly of the gadfly. It's just not trickling down to the polis.
smastroyin said:
There are a few different arguments getting mixed up in here (Bone Chips wasn't talking about increasing value, from what I understood), but even from this perspective how much do you think a World Series adds to the value of the team and what portion of that would you credit to Lackey? I think its tricky to evaluate individual contracts for members of title teams through this prism although I have to think about how to better articulate the problem as I see it (basically, a lot of the marginal value the contract is coming from the opportunity created by team, the individual player performance is only a small part of the team that creates the opportunity, and the more players you sign to contracts like Beckett or Lackey where they generally underperform and have crappy seasons mixed in with good seasons the lower the chance the team creates the opportunity that allows for a contract like Lackey's to create value through postseason performance).
FWIW Im not trying to argue against signing Lester.
Because our Red Sox have historically handled significant player departures so well, especially under our current CEO/President and his Special Assistant?Rudy Pemberton said:
Scares me too. That would be the cherry on the sundae.
Rovin Romine said:
I think this is a bit unfair. I don't think anyone suggested that players are tanking because they are unhappy. I also don't think the idea that poor morale can impact team performance is unreasonable either. Look at how the Bobby V era ended. I don't think it is likely in this case, but I do think it is possible for teams to have bad morale and for bad morale to contribute to poor play on the field.
I have the feeling if the Sox were 15 games over .500, and in 1st, the players would feel Lester is getting nickel and dimed by the FO. That the team-wide under-performance allows some to speculate that the FO's fuck-up has some spill-over effect is probably over-blown. The players own suckage on the field, the FO owns the suckage off the field.
EvilEmpire said:
Agree, but it seems like its two out of three years now where the players have stuck their collective middlefinger up at the FO, and at least in 2012, the coaching staff as well.
Rico Guapo said:
This is the part I don't get - why would they? Ellsbury made the choice to leave. Drew turned down the qualifying offer. They were replaced by Bradley and Bogaerts (and Sizemore then Holt basically took over the slot for Victorino, who was hurt.) The replacements were, at least, part of the team last year.
The FO basically has kept the same team and just inserted Bradley and Bogaerts, who were already part of the team last year at some point.
I have a difficult time believing that replacing Saltalamacchia with Pierzynski so completely wrecked morale to that point that they'd 'stick a middle finger' up at the FO.
I just feel more like the problem is the bottom 4 of the lineup offensively is the problem. No sustained attack to wear out pitchers.
kieckeredinthehead said:
Why would Pedroia be pissed at the team? He proved that the most important thing to him was not 'the big pay day' - he put his money where his mouth was and left money on the table to stay in Boston for the remainder of his career.
At this point, I wonder if/when Lester's agent tries to force a trade. If we assume he's now intent on testing free agency, there would be real value from their perspective to Lester not having a qualifying offer attached to him.
bankshot1 said:
Nail on the head.
I'm not saying this is a good reason, but I think it's very possible that the Sox wanted to see where they were at the break with all of the changes and see if the bridge they built was solid. Then if the bridge was collapsing (which in my opinion it is), they could shop him on the trade market and see what they could get.
I just saw this in the MLB-Radomski lounge forum
I wonder if the Levinson link could complicate the Lester situation.
I wonder if the Levinson link could complicate the Lester situation.
Manramsclan said:
I think this is a very strange combinaton of completely dead on balls accurate and so far wrong it's in another galaxy.
I think they wanted to wait until the break to see if Lester's second half of 2013 was the new normal or whether it was just normal variance. Now that his last 220 or so innings going back to last July are with a sub 3.00 ERA, I think they're convinced that he's not the guy from 2012 and the first half of 2013 with an ERA well above four.
bankshot1 said:
Maybe it will simplify it... maybe Lester will fire them, purge their poisonous advice and negotiate his own team friendly deal...
Maybe.
I am beginning to not trust current management. Actually not beginning - since before the season began if you consider the actions (and huge inactions - I've no idea how so many were so sold on this team actually even being competitive, in a post-season sense anyway - not to mention those on the game boards who think they still can be). Unfortunately I must get into the entire bridge year idea before discussing Lester. 2013 was supposed to be that year, no? (yes - I know, we won everything last year but mgmt hardly expected such, did they?). So the logic follows that this 2014 team is some semblance of what that plan was. And, again - yes I conceed that had we not won big last year there would likely have been an altered approach to '14. To be completely accurate there were (a few) changes made in last year's approach before the deadline. But would having Iggy on the roster (or as a chip) instead of Peavy really have improved this year?
From an application of offense, with the exception of our 3 real hitters (Pedroia, Ortiz, Napoli) we have become an AAA team. I'm sure we've all heard the axiom that even the best AAA cannot compete with the worst ML team. This weekend perhaps placed that in the limelight with two Triple A teams facing off and our losing laughably.
So now to the finishing point - Lester, our ace, holds the 7th highest win percentage of active players. He is less than one percentage beneath Kershaw (please don't hit me with - wrong its .008, as in science it goes by hundredths, not thousandths). If mgmt does not want to offer $20 million a year for such a (hometown) player we are not competitive next year. We're not even likable. In fact it's worse then this year. Behind Lester and Lackey our best starter has 2 wins. 2 wins - are you kidding me that they haven't signed this guy yet? Begin to think of '62 Mets as being an aspiration.
If Lester is not signed by the end of the break ownership is giving us a giant finger up.
Oh. Right. Yes Lester is 30. Lackey's 36. Are they so different (Except for Lester having had more talent)? The Sox have had this guy as a bargain his entire career. I'm old enough to know that neither side is telling the full truth, but given all I've just said about MY view anyway, its the Sox who are dicking us along. Sign him. If not I can always try to root for the A's. They are starting to appear to me as having not just better management - but more caring. It's the last part that truly irks me.
From an application of offense, with the exception of our 3 real hitters (Pedroia, Ortiz, Napoli) we have become an AAA team. I'm sure we've all heard the axiom that even the best AAA cannot compete with the worst ML team. This weekend perhaps placed that in the limelight with two Triple A teams facing off and our losing laughably.
So now to the finishing point - Lester, our ace, holds the 7th highest win percentage of active players. He is less than one percentage beneath Kershaw (please don't hit me with - wrong its .008, as in science it goes by hundredths, not thousandths). If mgmt does not want to offer $20 million a year for such a (hometown) player we are not competitive next year. We're not even likable. In fact it's worse then this year. Behind Lester and Lackey our best starter has 2 wins. 2 wins - are you kidding me that they haven't signed this guy yet? Begin to think of '62 Mets as being an aspiration.
If Lester is not signed by the end of the break ownership is giving us a giant finger up.
Oh. Right. Yes Lester is 30. Lackey's 36. Are they so different (Except for Lester having had more talent)? The Sox have had this guy as a bargain his entire career. I'm old enough to know that neither side is telling the full truth, but given all I've just said about MY view anyway, its the Sox who are dicking us along. Sign him. If not I can always try to root for the A's. They are starting to appear to me as having not just better management - but more caring. It's the last part that truly irks me.
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