Mookie BBetts - 2019 Campaign
- Thread starter Pitt the Elder
- Start date
100%. Mookie’s a generational player and should be someone New England kids look back on for the rest of their lives the same way they do Yaz, Pedroia, and Pedro.
There are other ways forward, and I think most of them involve Price. Would the Angels do something centered around Price for Justin Upton? He’d have to waive his no trade clause but Upton could be a decent replacement at DH. If JDM opts out or we trade him, that saves roughly $32 million without any other money or players exchanged.
Price to STL with one of Fowler or Carpenter coming back is another possibility.
Yeah, I live in Chicago too. Have for a long, long time. And I think the White Sox are looking to make a splash. There was a time after they won their WS, that they were consistently a top 10 payroll team(2006-2011). They've managed it down low enough now that I could see them continuing to be aggressive, the way they were in their pursuit of Machado.
I do agree that there are no bandwagon White Sox fans.
And they pitched to Harper, too. But they were free agents, didn’t cost pre-arb prospects. And both those contract offers fell well short of what Machado & Harper actually signed for: 3 years & $5m/year and 6 years, respectively. I mean, they thought they could get Machado at a discount by brining in a couple of his friends. It’s not serious business.
Yes.
He's worth every penny. He's a homegrown megastar who's arguably the best player in the game not named Mike Trout.
The idea to move him his absolutely ridiculous. I mean it when I say this -- I will probably cancel my MLB.tv sub if they don't retain him, I love the guy that much. He's the best homegrown player this team has had since Yaz. There's no reason -- other than simply not wanting to pay him -- that the Boston Red Sox shouldn't give him whatever he wants.
This x1000. I would sacrifice some unknowable percentage of the chances of winning a WS over the next 10 years if it means Mookie is a Red Sox for life. Maybe that’s irrational but Mookie is the kind of player you tell your kids about watching. The Yaz comparison really isn’t hyperbole.
It's not irrational. Mookie Betts is the best player this franchise has produced in my lifetime, and I'm 37. He's awesome, and I mean that literally. In game 162, with nothing on the line, he went from first to home and scored the walk-off run. He didn't have to, he could have stopped at third, but his instincts said to get home.
It is borderline criminal for this ownership to move him at this point. John Henry is worth close to THREE BILLION DOLLARS, so why is he complaining about the luxury tax? Mookie is a generational talent. Pay him his goddamn money already.
Yes.
I've seen them win four times. I'm honestly content if they end up mediocre for a few years if it means I get to watch him play his whole career here. It could happen anyway no matter what path you take--this year is great proof of that. That's where I'm at. Wouldn't say that about Bogaerts, for instance, or just anyone.
This team makes zillions and zillions of dollars. Pay him, or we'll all feel forced to recount the minutiae of how it came to pass every few months for years on end because once it happens it will immediately become unbelievable.
Yes. Without a doubt. What seems unreasonable now will seem very reasonable financially speaking when the contract expires. 300 million is the new 200 million. Mookie is the perfect player. It just sucks that we're going to lose him. Better get this return right.
Part of Mookie's insistence on going to free agency may not be all about the money - it could also be based on a desire to play in some other city than Boston. The idea of getting a huge contract to play in Atlanta is probably pretty attractive to a Tennessee native like him.
Are the Braves likely to dole out 350 million? Not sure I see it. There’s just not many teams that can.
Actually we don't know this. Inflation is not a given. $/win was climbing fast for a while there, but for the past several years I think it has leveled out a good deal. Going forward, it could take a dive for all we know -- the entertainment industry seems to be in huge flux right now and I would not take it as a given that the TV dollars of yore will continue to materialize for MLB.
And even if there is inflation, will it keep pace with player decline? Does it ever? Even if $35M/year now seems more like $25M/year by 2030, that doesn't mean Mookie will still be the current equivalent of a $25M player by then. In fact, the odds are against it.
This is the real reason to overpay him, but I don't know if it's a good enough reason. My heart says yes, but (probably fortunately) my heart is not a candidate for the Sox GM job.
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My issue with the potential Mookie trade (aside from the payouts to Eovaldi, Sandoval, and Obviously Risky Sale that put the team into this payroll position to begin with) is less about the relative value of trading him vs ridiculously overpaying Mookie to keep him, and more with my lack of faith in the organization to properly identify and deploy whatever assets they get in return in a Mookie trade.
As was pointed out earlier in the thread, the ability to identify and acquire non-star players who are prime candidates for performance improvement if properly coached in technique/used in optimal situations is one of the critical skills that even the big market teams now need to have in order to succeed over multiple seasons. I haven't seen much from the Red Sox over the past few seasons to indicate that this team has that critical skill, to identify, acquire, and coach-up/deploy the resulting talent. Since the trade for Eduardo Rodriguez, aside from Pearce's hot run last season, when was the last time the Red Sox traded for a non-star player who made a meaningful, positive contribution to the club? Identifying star pitchers with the "stuff" to succeed in Boston (independent of whether or not they are healthy enough to actually pitch) and developing homegrown position player prospects don't seem to be issues at the organizational level, but in a Mookie trade scenario, I don't think we're looking at the same situation. Being smarter than other organizations about those orgs' own players and how to coach/employ them does not seem to be a strength of the Red Sox in recent years. Given that the current front office in transition post-DD, I'm not especially confident that they can get the right hire, have that new GM get the organization staffed to his/her satisfaction, and subsequently identify the ideal target orgs and players for a trade that could very well determine the competitive fate of the MLB roster for the next 2-3 seasons at the very least.
As was pointed out earlier in the thread, the ability to identify and acquire non-star players who are prime candidates for performance improvement if properly coached in technique/used in optimal situations is one of the critical skills that even the big market teams now need to have in order to succeed over multiple seasons. I haven't seen much from the Red Sox over the past few seasons to indicate that this team has that critical skill, to identify, acquire, and coach-up/deploy the resulting talent. Since the trade for Eduardo Rodriguez, aside from Pearce's hot run last season, when was the last time the Red Sox traded for a non-star player who made a meaningful, positive contribution to the club? Identifying star pitchers with the "stuff" to succeed in Boston (independent of whether or not they are healthy enough to actually pitch) and developing homegrown position player prospects don't seem to be issues at the organizational level, but in a Mookie trade scenario, I don't think we're looking at the same situation. Being smarter than other organizations about those orgs' own players and how to coach/employ them does not seem to be a strength of the Red Sox in recent years. Given that the current front office in transition post-DD, I'm not especially confident that they can get the right hire, have that new GM get the organization staffed to his/her satisfaction, and subsequently identify the ideal target orgs and players for a trade that could very well determine the competitive fate of the MLB roster for the next 2-3 seasons at the very least.
For al reasons upthread, I want Mookie here for a long time. But "they should keep him because I'm afraid the organziation will fuck up trading him" is a bad reason.
Does someone like Josh Taylor count? Holt? Nunez? Eovaldi's 2018 was pretty positive.
I appreciate the response, given how many potential examples I neglected to think of prior to posting, you could have been far harsher in tone than you chose to be. I had completely forgotten that Holt was acquired via trade in 2012 from the Pirates, and there's no excuse for letting my frustrations with 2019 Eovaldi and pessimism about his future as a SP wipe out the facts of his acquisition via trade and contributions in 2018 from my memory. Josh Taylor would count as well, so that's another oversight on my part.
I did think of Nunez, but I looked at his contribution as pretty mixed overall in his time with the team. The positive contributions that he had were certainly timely in 2018, though, so I can track the argument for him, particularly if you give him some "mentoring" credit for reportedly helping Devers last season.
Amid a flurry of Mookie-in-the-offseason-will-he-stay-or-not takes, I wanted to put the capstone on Mookie's 2019 season. Here are a host of Mookie's stats, in the context of his career:
Mookie didn't put up an all-time great season like last year, but once again was one of the best players in baseball, ranking as the 9th best among position players in fWAR and 7th best in bWAR. The first half of Mookie's season was marred by a poor two-month stretch in May and June, where Mookie showed a conservative approach that bordered on timid that resulted in a big spike in his walk rate, a big drop in his power, and a baffling inability to hit LHP. In the second half, however, Mookie revived his offensive game with a much more aggressive approach at the plate where he attacked pitches in the zone, particularly first-pitch fastballs, which resulted in a drop in bb% but a spike in ISO, EV, and other power stats. In the end, Mookie's 2019 2nd half looked a lot like his 2018 2nd half, which seems to be representative to his mean ability level:
Though Mookie's offensive game seems likely to remain strong going forward, there were worrying drops in his defense and speed metrics that continued an ongoing trend. Leaving aside the drop in steals, which may reflect changes in the game that deemphasize the strategic value of stealing more than Mookie's ability, Mookie saw his speed stats drop to career lows. Likewise, Mookie's defense, which still grades out as among the best in the league, isn't as otherworldly as it was a couple of seasons ago. That said, much of his defensive stats seemed to be weighed down by early-season struggles and lapses in focus, and they rebounded quite nicely in the 2nd half.
Player projections are not my forte, but Mookie seems like a good bet to remain a ~7 WAR player for the next 3-4 years, with perhaps one or two more MVP-caliber seasons, before the inevitable aging decline downgrades him from elite to merely great and ultimately very good. It seems likely that Mookie will continue to lose value on defense and on the bases, but his instincts, fundamental skills, and natural above-average speed will probably keep those as relative strengths even into his 30s. His power, not the core part of his game, could tick up in his late 20s even after he loses a figurative and literal step. I think all this adds up to a player that will age gracefully and who will still add a ton of value even after his peak is firmly behind him.
I don't know what Mookie's future with the team looks like, but he's a special player that exemplifies everything I love about the Red Sox. As I posted in the game thread last night, I watched the season's final play where Mookie scored from first on a dribbler to rightfield with my 7 month-year-old son and celebrated like the Sox won the world series. I desperately want Mookie to be the Red Sox legend he grows up watching and to experience plays like that when he's old enough to enjoy them. I would gladly let JDM walk and trade away some bad money contracts for pennies on the dollar if it affords the Sox the opportunity to rebuild this team around Betts, Bogaerts, and Devers, even if that means overpaying Mookie to play solid if not great baseball into his mid-30s.
Edit: format, clarity, grammar
| Year | R | HR | SB | TB | fWAR | bWAR |
| 2015 | 92 | 18 | 21 | 286 | 4.8 | 5.9 |
| 2016 | 122 | 31 | 26 | 359 | 8.3 | 9.7 |
| 2017 | 101 | 24 | 26 | 288 | 5.3 | 6.4 |
| 2018 | 129 | 32 | 30 | 333 | 10.4 | 10.9 |
| 2019 | 135 | 29 | 16 | 313 | 6.6 | 6.8 |
| Year | WRC+ | PA | Avg | OBP | SLG | OPS | ISO |
| 2015 | 120 | 654 | 0.291 | 0.341 | 0.479 | 0.820 | 0.188 |
| 2016 | 136 | 730 | 0.318 | 0.363 | 0.534 | 0.897 | 0.216 |
| 2017 | 106 | 712 | 0.264 | 0.344 | 0.459 | 0.803 | 0.194 |
| 2018 | 185 | 614 | 0.346 | 0.438 | 0.64 | 1.078 | 0.294 |
| 2019 | 135 | 706 | 0.295 | 0.391 | 0.524 | 0.915 | 0.229 |
| Year | bb% | kk% | O-Swing % | Z-Swing % | Swing % | O-Contact % | Z-contact % | SwSt % |
| 2015 | 7.0% | 12.5% | 25.3% | 55.7% | 40.2% | 72.9% | 93.1% | 5.4% |
| 2016 | 6.7% | 11.0% | 25.5% | 58.4% | 41.2% | 71.6% | 94.8% | 5.2% |
| 2017 | 10.8% | 11.1% | 22.1% | 53.8% | 36.0% | 72.6% | 92.7% | 5.0% |
| 2018 | 13.2% | 14.8% | 19.8% | 57.0% | 35.6% | 70.7% | 93.0% | 5.0% |
| 2019 | 13.7% | 14.3% | 21.4% | 61.5% | 38.3% | 71.9% | 93.7% | 5.1% |
| Year | barrel % | exit velocity | launch angle | XBA | XSLG | HARD % |
| 2015 | 5.9% | 89.9 | 15.0 | 0.29 | 0.454 | 37.4% |
| 2016 | 5.3% | 89.7 | 12.5 | 0.289 | 0.457 | 39.6% |
| 2017 | 4.5% | 88.4 | 14.1 | 0.279 | 0.444 | 37.9% |
| 2018 | 14.1% | 92.2 | 18.3 | 0.314 | 0.510 | 50.2% |
| 2019 | 10.2% | 90.9 | 19.0 | 0.301 | 0.536 | 46.4% |
| Year | BsR | Sprint Speed | HP to 1st | Bolts | Def | OAA | Catch % Added |
| 2015 | 7.9 | 28.7 | 15 | 0.5 | |||
| 2016 | 10.6 | 27.9 | 10 | 14 | 15 | 5% | |
| 2017 | 9.2 | 27.9 | 4.21 | 6 | 14.3 | 18 | 4% |
| 2018 | 6.9 | 28.1 | 4.18 | 6 | 11.6 | 11 | 4% |
| 2019 | 5.3 | 27.9 | 4.28 | 1 | 6.7 | 7 | 2% |
Mookie didn't put up an all-time great season like last year, but once again was one of the best players in baseball, ranking as the 9th best among position players in fWAR and 7th best in bWAR. The first half of Mookie's season was marred by a poor two-month stretch in May and June, where Mookie showed a conservative approach that bordered on timid that resulted in a big spike in his walk rate, a big drop in his power, and a baffling inability to hit LHP. In the second half, however, Mookie revived his offensive game with a much more aggressive approach at the plate where he attacked pitches in the zone, particularly first-pitch fastballs, which resulted in a drop in bb% but a spike in ISO, EV, and other power stats. In the end, Mookie's 2019 2nd half looked a lot like his 2018 2nd half, which seems to be representative to his mean ability level:
| Year | WRC+ | PA | Avg | OBP | SLG | OPS | ISO | r | hr | sb | bb% | kk% | hard % | hr/fb % | pa/hr |
| 1st Half | 123 | 418 | 0.272 | 0.392 | 0.467 | 0.859 | 0.194 | 77 | 13 | 10 | 16.3% | 14.4% | 42.0% | 10.4% | 32.2 |
| 2nd Half | 151 | 288 | 0.325 | 0.389 | 0.603 | 0.992 | 0.278 | 58 | 16 | 6 | 10.1% | 14.2% | 44.2% | 16.7% | 18.0 |
| 2018 | 185 | 614 | 0.346 | 0.438 | 0.640 | 1.078 | 0.294 | 129 | 32 | 30 | 13.2% | 14.8% | 44.5% | 16.4% | 19.2 |
| 2018 1st Half | 199 | 355 | 0.359 | 0.448 | 0.691 | 1.139 | 0.332 | 79 | 23 | 18 | 13.0% | 11.8% | 44.3% | 19.3% | 15.4 |
| 2018 2nd Half | 166 | 259 | 0.329 | 0.425 | 0.571 | 0.995 | 0.242 | 50 | 9 | 12 | 13.5% | 18.9% | 44.8% | 11.8% | 28.8 |
Though Mookie's offensive game seems likely to remain strong going forward, there were worrying drops in his defense and speed metrics that continued an ongoing trend. Leaving aside the drop in steals, which may reflect changes in the game that deemphasize the strategic value of stealing more than Mookie's ability, Mookie saw his speed stats drop to career lows. Likewise, Mookie's defense, which still grades out as among the best in the league, isn't as otherworldly as it was a couple of seasons ago. That said, much of his defensive stats seemed to be weighed down by early-season struggles and lapses in focus, and they rebounded quite nicely in the 2nd half.
Player projections are not my forte, but Mookie seems like a good bet to remain a ~7 WAR player for the next 3-4 years, with perhaps one or two more MVP-caliber seasons, before the inevitable aging decline downgrades him from elite to merely great and ultimately very good. It seems likely that Mookie will continue to lose value on defense and on the bases, but his instincts, fundamental skills, and natural above-average speed will probably keep those as relative strengths even into his 30s. His power, not the core part of his game, could tick up in his late 20s even after he loses a figurative and literal step. I think all this adds up to a player that will age gracefully and who will still add a ton of value even after his peak is firmly behind him.
I don't know what Mookie's future with the team looks like, but he's a special player that exemplifies everything I love about the Red Sox. As I posted in the game thread last night, I watched the season's final play where Mookie scored from first on a dribbler to rightfield with my 7 month-year-old son and celebrated like the Sox won the world series. I desperately want Mookie to be the Red Sox legend he grows up watching and to experience plays like that when he's old enough to enjoy them. I would gladly let JDM walk and trade away some bad money contracts for pennies on the dollar if it affords the Sox the opportunity to rebuild this team around Betts, Bogaerts, and Devers, even if that means overpaying Mookie to play solid if not great baseball into his mid-30s.
Edit: format, clarity, grammar
might just be lipservice
[B]Pete Abraham[/B]Verified account @[B]PeteAbe[/B] 25s25 seconds ago
Kennedy says Betts has “very smart and shrewd” representation. But Sox want him over the long term.
[B]Pete Abraham[/B]Verified account @[B]PeteAbe[/B] 25s25 seconds ago
Kennedy says Betts has “very smart and shrewd” representation. But Sox want him over the long term.
I was inspired by this post among several others to post this: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/new-tools-from-the-society-of-advanced-baseball-philosophy
Whoops. Posted by mistake.
Signing Mookie at any price is not a good business strategy. They undoubtedly project future cash flows and there is a cost for Mookie that would exceed his potential value to the team. People seem to scoff at the back-end of contracts, but Pedroia, Pujols and Cabrera prove that they do matter.
One of the posters above noted that Henry has made a huge unrealized profit with the Sox and that he is extremely wealthy even without including the Sox investment. However, he is a 40% owner and his partners might be more dependant on current cash flow. It's also possible the ownership has already borrowed against the equity which would farther decrease cash flow.
Signing Mookie at any price is not a good business strategy. They undoubtedly project future cash flows and there is a cost for Mookie that would exceed his potential value to the team. People seem to scoff at the back-end of contracts, but Pedroia, Pujols and Cabrera prove that they do matter.
One of the posters above noted that Henry has made a huge unrealized profit with the Sox and that he is extremely wealthy even without including the Sox investment. However, he is a 40% owner and his partners might be more dependant on current cash flow. It's also possible the ownership has already borrowed against the equity which would farther decrease cash flow.
Pujols & Cabrera represent beefy slugger types that we really know now age poorly (now that the PED era is over too). It's a very rare exception when they age well (Big Papi). Mookie is a better bet to still provide decent value with all the tools he has in the back half of a mega contract. Even in a down year for him he still provided 7 WAR this season, and he's just about to turn 27 - prime age.
If Mookie has played his last game on the Sox, I will be blaming ownership for shittastic planning when letting last offseason's commitments happen.
If Mookie has played his last game on the Sox, I will be blaming ownership for shittastic planning when letting last offseason's commitments happen.
Pedroia, Pujols, and Cabrera’s deals weren’t signed when they were twenty-freakin-six years old, though. It is more likely than not if the Sox gave Mookie a 10 year deal, he would provide value over the lifespan of the contract.
Hearing (well, reading) that Betts's teammates feel like that was his swang song because "We know we can't afford him" is enough to make my blood start to boil.
The Boston Red Sox can afford any player they want IF they want the player bad enough. If Mookie won't sign an extension and wants to go to free agency, then they have to take the risk that they'll still fail to sign him and lose him for the QO draft pick only. Trading him away prior to that weakens their leverage, I believe, because there is a chance that the player, regardless of how much he understands it's a business, is going to see that as the organization having no faith in his word that he wants to be there and not trusting the process. There's a chance he sees it as nothing more than transactional but I don't think he really wants to go anywhere else.
Back up the Brinks truck and don't worry about international signings for a couple years. Everything has its price and that might be the cost of locking up a generational talent. But don't ever say you "can't" afford him. "Can't afford" shouldn't even be a term used in that organization. "Don't want to pay" is the better term and would be more honest.
The Boston Red Sox can afford any player they want IF they want the player bad enough. If Mookie won't sign an extension and wants to go to free agency, then they have to take the risk that they'll still fail to sign him and lose him for the QO draft pick only. Trading him away prior to that weakens their leverage, I believe, because there is a chance that the player, regardless of how much he understands it's a business, is going to see that as the organization having no faith in his word that he wants to be there and not trusting the process. There's a chance he sees it as nothing more than transactional but I don't think he really wants to go anywhere else.
Back up the Brinks truck and don't worry about international signings for a couple years. Everything has its price and that might be the cost of locking up a generational talent. But don't ever say you "can't" afford him. "Can't afford" shouldn't even be a term used in that organization. "Don't want to pay" is the better term and would be more honest.
Your point certainly has merit but I think part of the issue that I, Captain Laddie and others are having with this whole discussion is that the Red Sox appear to be viewing this purely through a business mindset of straight dollars-and-cents, but in this case there is so much more that he means to the Red Sox and their fans than just "when all is said and done will his production on the field return equal or greater value than what we would pay him."
Now, I certainly wouldn't advocate taking that approach in most or even many circumstances - Brock Holt is a great Red Sox and teammate too but obviously the Sox shouldn't sign him at all costs, and the calculus might change if the sides were so woefully far apart as to not even be worth discussing. But quibbling over "only" a few dozen million dollars in this instance seems like the definition of missing the forest for the trees.
(I'm not saying, by the way, that the Sox should simply go to Boras and tell him they will pay whatever Mookie wants - and it's always possible that, ultimately, maybe Mookie just wants to play somewhere else even if the Sox offer the same or slightly more money, which would be sad but there wouldn't be much the Sox could do about that - but vigorously negotiating with Mookie up to and including letting him test free agency is way different than trading him now in a purported cost-saving move for a basket of prospects that, no matter good they are, will all inevitably be crapshoots to be even half as good as Mookie already is.)
We’ve gone over this before, but 27 is not entering prime for a baseball player; it’s beginning decline age.
And this wasn’t really a “down year” for Mookie unless you’re talking about defense and base running, which should be expected to decline rather steeply going forward. 7 WAR should not be expected as any kind of bottom in future years. ZIPS projects him at 6.5 next year, and 6.2 the year after. Still a great player, but very unlikely to be a downside outlier.
I agree with this completely. After the past two decades of unfathomable Boston sports franchise success very little riles me up, but I was absolutely fuming this morning listening to the T&R show discuss how yesterday may have been Mookie's last game with the Sox. If he doesn't want to finish his career in Boston then I understand, but ownership not doing everything in their power to sign him is unacceptable.
I'm 46 and much more of a Red Sox fan than a baseball fan at this point. I also don't want to come off as a toddler having a tantrum either. But it really will be difficult to muster up interest in this franchise if they jettison Mookie in the offseason. And it would probably be the biggest slap in the face to the fanbase, in terms of losing a beloved player for no good reason, since Haywood fumbled away Carlton Fisk.
Is the talk about trading him during the off season a bit of a straw man? I couldn't find any articles indicating a desire of ownership to trade Mookie during the off-season. Obviously the Sox will be a better team in 2020 if he stays, but an overwhelming offer of prospects would justify making a deal.
My prediction is that other teams aren't going to offer that much for a 1-year fix and at $25M or so, his equity value is only about $10M. The most likely scenario is he stays, no extension is agreed to and he hits the market in 2021.
Of course you won't find articles saying the owners *want* to trade him.
You will find articles from Sox reporters saying it is possible.
Yes, but Mookie has basically invited the Sox front office (and us fans) to take that view, because he has declared that he is taking that view. We fans can be as sentimental as we want; that's our job. But it's silly to ask the front office to be more sentimental about a player than the player is about the team. It's not their job to be as confused as the fans, as David St. Hubbins would say.
Mind you, I'm not hurling passive-aggressive shade at Mookie. At all. It's perfectly fine for him to see this situation in pure business terms. He has given every ounce of imaginable effort to this team every day he's been here, and given the fans many wonderful memories in the process, right up to and including the final play of the final game of what may be his final season here. He owes us nada, zilch, bupkis. But if he's not emotionally invested in staying, then I damn sure don't want the FO to be emotionally invested in keeping him here, because that's a recipe for a lopsided negotiation that saddles the team with a bad contract.
Totally. The alternative is John Henry saves some cash and we get a couple more Venezuelan teenagers. That's not a good alternative. I wouldn't want them to go over 40m per but only because I don't think they should expand the market, just meet it.
Sorry - I love Mookie like everyone else, but letting the draft pick slotting and international development go further to seed would be colossal mismanagement and likely hurt the team for a long time to come.
what do we think he would get on the free agent market? 10/300? more than that? 10/350? what is the upper limit we would be willing to pay? approaching trout's aav but over ten years? 10/370? i mean, mookie is a great player and i love having him on the team, but is he really worth 35+ million a year over the next ten seasons? what is the upper limit we would be comfortable with?
The comps are likely Arenado, Machado, & Harper. They aren’t exact. Arenado & Machado play defensively more valuable positions; Machado & Harper were 26 when they signed, 2 years younger than Mookie will be. But I expect his agents are looking at those as the baseline for expectations, with a Trout-level deal being the reach goal if some team owner gets crazy.
I’d say Mookie will have to stay under 10 years to break $30m AAV. For 10 years or longer (which I doubt will be on the table, but it only takes one...), probably closer to $25m AAV.
If Mookie has a greater tolerance for risk, a 4 year deal with AAV exceeding $35m and then getting back on the market could bag him the most overall dollars.
edit: Wrong agent.
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Yeah, I gotta agree with the first post. I really don't care about international signings. I know I should, but I don't. You always go with the known commodity. Always. For every Rafael Devers, you have many, many more that never pan out. Pay the man, worry about signing some 16-year-old kid out of the DR later.
I noticed you referenced Scott Boras but as far as I know he does not represent Betts. His agents are Ed Cerulo and Steve Veltman as far as I can tell.
Yeah, I know you build your org through the international pool and you should make sacrifices to be players there, but you don't sacrifice MOOKIE BETTS to be players there. If they exceed the threshold they'll be limited to the cheaper players for a couple years, but sometime in the future they can reset and start building up the international talent then.
So you want them to pay Betts $38 million a year while having no cheap players to fill out the roster with because they sacrificed the farm to pay him that much. The point of having a good farm system is so that you can pay players like Mookie Betts $38 million a year because you'll get cheap production at other positions. Where are we going to get that cheap production if we keep waiting a few years to reset and start building up the talent? We would have to pay FA good money to fill out the roster around Betts or waste a few years of his career waiting for the farm to produce talent.
Yaz himself probably wasn't worth $35 million a year (whatever that would be inflation adjusted back to the 70s) for his age 29 to 38 seasons, and he was productive into his 40s. He was great when he was 29 and 30, but from 31 to 38 he was merely really good, with a 121 OPS+. That's probably the best case scenario for Mookie. The worst case is that he's Dustin Pedroia and the last three or four years of the deal are totally dead money.
age 28-37 he was worth about 50 war, that would easily be worth 10-350 in this market
I think the only thing you can do is try to project Mookie's long-term performance and calculate what you think is a fair valuation of that performance and make your offers based on that. Red Sox Stats posted some projections for Betts and JDM on Twitter, so that's at least someplace to start:
View: https://twitter.com/redsoxstats/status/1177967691979788293?s=09
The one thing those projections don't take into account is time missed due to injury, which I think you need to bake into your calculations.
legit swearing off baseball for a couple years if he's gone. I've seen around 90% of the games since the early nineties. I deserve better as a fan than to see the face of the franchise gone.
If the Red Sox can't afford to keep their superstars, how is any team ever able to afford it? I'll be damned if I see the Lester mistake happen all over again.
If the Red Sox can not afford their best player for the 2nd time this decade while throwing stupid contracts at blah players, they do not deserve the fan base they have. I can not deal with the thought that a team will not be competitive with a Mookie contract while David Price makes $31m a year, and we paid Pablo Hanley and so many others. They should have extended him 3-4 years ago. It's a joke it has even gotten to this point. I'd have an easier time dealing with this if they didn't just do the same thing with Lester a few years earlier.
If the Red Sox can't afford to keep their superstars, how is any team ever able to afford it? I'll be damned if I see the Lester mistake happen all over again.
Yes.
If the Red Sox can not afford their best player for the 2nd time this decade while throwing stupid contracts at blah players, they do not deserve the fan base they have. I can not deal with the thought that a team will not be competitive with a Mookie contract while David Price makes $31m a year, and we paid Pablo Hanley and so many others. They should have extended him 3-4 years ago. It's a joke it has even gotten to this point. I'd have an easier time dealing with this if they didn't just do the same thing with Lester a few years earlier.
What makes you think Betts was willing to sign an extension 3-4 years ago?
Also letting Lester walk wasn't a mistake. Signing David Price was.
The Sox won a WS last year with almost $70M in dead money between Rusney, Pedroia, Sandoval, Hanley, Craig, etc. The problem now is that they’ve saddled the roster with even more bloated contracts.
I think it's been pretty clear that Betts was not willing to sign an extension at any point.
mookie at 10/350 will hamstring this team financially and will lead to a lot of mediocre seasons. i would rather just annoit Xander and Devers as the faces of the franchise than have like 130 mil invested in 4 players on the team. if we want to keep up with the yankees, we are going to have to be a little smarter with our cash. this is why dombrowski got fired, he throws money around with a win now mentality and doesnt worry about long term consequences