He’s been staying with Ohtani when in LA. Gee…I wonder if he was continually recruited. Good for YY and good for us that he didn’t end up in the ALE. It will be interesting to see his adjustment to MLB. It took some time for Yoshida to assimilate.
Not our Star Blazer: Yamamoto signs with the Dodgers for $325 million, 12 years
- Thread starter TimScribble
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Because it's pretty clear that he used the NYM/NYY to see if the dodgers could match their offer. He pretty much gave the dodgers the last chance to match, like a player would do do with their former team when in FA....
It also makes more sense why Ohtani deferred all that money.
I dont really see that happening in any great numbers in this thread. There are relatively small amounts of both excessive hand-wringing and ownership-worship. The rest seems like a healthy amount of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Ernst & Young, and Magellan.
There are credible reports that the Yankees, Mets, and Dodgers were all in, along with the Giants. So odds were never high he would choose Boston. Again, should the Sox have offered 10/$450M?
Just imagine then what a team who doesn't have Ohtani's contract on the books to begin with could offer him!
Is there any indication they reached 325 to begin with? Because if they did and Yamamoto chose to be a Dodger (LA, Ohtani, etc), I'm fine with it. I just don't think we have any indication that's what happened.
Content's been split into two threads here, but he did get two opt outs:
View: https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1738071903707750849
Is there any indication they didn't reach 325? (Also, define "indication.")
If you start with the premise that the Sox are cheap stupid and "dont care about winning," then assuming that they fucked up these negotiations makes perfect sense.
OTOH....a lot of people thought Ohtani's contract was a harbinger to YY picking LAD no matter what. There's no indication that Sox did not feel the same way and chose not to serve as YY's leverage.
Eh.... why did Cohen not go beyond 325? I think the east coast front offices realized they were being used a la Ohtani and Toronto.
I am a bit confused why the Yanks "only" went 10/300.
No- but it has been reported that the Sox didn’t fully engage with starters who have sense signed elsewhere because they had to wait to see how YY sweepstakes turned out. It seems possibly that they should have known they didn’t have much of a chance from earlier on (although the transition of the FO may have complicated this); and maybe they are able to sign a Gray, Rodriguez, Lugo, etc. Not the end of the world and there are some starters left but the Sox certainly treated the early offseason as if they had a legitimate shot at landing YY, for whatever reason.
Has there been any concrete reporting on what the Sox offered? Have seen that the Yankees and Mets offered $300M, but haven’t seen anything about any other bidders.
Man oh man. Is it remotely within the realm of possibility that Breslow has a master plan that has always included the possibility of not landing Yamamoto? Is there any chance that he has other irons in the fire? Is it possible that they simply didn't like any of those mid-tier free agents you keep bringing up enough to go hard after them? Is there any chance that this winds up a successful offseason for the Boston Red Sox?
An alternate way to look at this is to ask when did "EVERYTHING SUCKS!!!11" become our official mantra?
Or maybe they weren't interested in Gray, Rodriguez, or Lugo, and the pitchers that do interest them have been waiting for the YY sweepstakes to end.
I think this is more plausible, as it does seem unlikely that those guys would sign if a team or two with big pockets told them to hold off.
There has been no "concrete reporting" of anything.
But there was this:
Report: Red Sox make huge offer to free agent RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto (bostonherald.com)
And then there was this:
Report: Red Sox haven't offered $300 million for Yamamoto yet (boston.com)
And before that we had this about Devers, before he walked away from the Sox and signed elsewhere:
Red Sox far from new contract with homegrown star who is seeking $300 million: report (foxnews.com)
Methinks thou dost protest too much, I simply observe the fact that essentially all prospect value is derived from position players. Unbalancing this to maximize performance falls to Breslow, and I'm a genuine fan of the prospects and ready to watch them warts and all at the big club in '24, but how many Meyers would (will) it take to exchange for his equivalent pitcher? Three?
I didn't say anything in the slightest about a "solution". I don't have one. I know that I'm a fan of the Sox pretty much no matter what. I'm more of a fair weather fan of the Patriots. I liked the Bills back in the 90's on an equal footing and after Brady, I'm all for the Bills. But I'm a Sox fan no matter what.... unfortunately. All I'm saying is that that's your choice. You're a fan. If you don't like it what can you do? Your choice is to not follow them any longer. Scream at Chaim Bloom? Post on SoSH? None of that is moving the needle and I'm guessing that Henry has ascertained that he can put out teams that are competitive on paper. And like I said, the past 2 years teams were built to be competive IF THINGS WENT PERFECT FOR HEALTH AND LUCK. I don't see their last place finishes as refuting that. There's a big "IF" that applies that seems to be missed. I don't necessarily like it but I think that's what it is. And that "competitive.... IF" philosophy has screwed them. It really would have been better if they dealt Bogarts, probably Devers too but I think Henry has determined that the fan base would actually lose it's shit if it did that, so they're threading the needle in a fucking maddening way.
It's not a "solution" it's just how I'm reading the situation. And as a fan with no ownership in the Sox..... what the fuck else are you going to do about it? Whining and screaming doesn't do shit. You're not entitiled. You're not. You can spend thousands on season tickets and YOU'RE STILL NOT ENTITLED. Bummer.
A couple points I haven't seen discussed much here.
(1) I believe the Dodgers will significantly benefit from Japanese viewership and merch sales. I don't know how to maximize this but they do, and I believe that went into their thinking. And, as someone said earlier, I think they will now have the inside track on most Japanese free agents.
(2) I think the Sox strategy was likely similar to their Masa Yoshida approach last winter, "We know more about this player's value than anyone else thanks to our scouting. We will make an aggressive offer that blows everyone else out of the water." But as soon as the press started pumping up YY, and the longer it took, I felt the Sox strategy was likely going to be usurped by a mega-money deal.
I think the Sox can still win free agents but those FAs will have to be ones the Sox value much more than any other big money team that is in a position to spend.
(1) I believe the Dodgers will significantly benefit from Japanese viewership and merch sales. I don't know how to maximize this but they do, and I believe that went into their thinking. And, as someone said earlier, I think they will now have the inside track on most Japanese free agents.
(2) I think the Sox strategy was likely similar to their Masa Yoshida approach last winter, "We know more about this player's value than anyone else thanks to our scouting. We will make an aggressive offer that blows everyone else out of the water." But as soon as the press started pumping up YY, and the longer it took, I felt the Sox strategy was likely going to be usurped by a mega-money deal.
I think the Sox can still win free agents but those FAs will have to be ones the Sox value much more than any other big money team that is in a position to spend.
To complain?
Probably to the end of this off-season/the beginning of Spring Training. We'll know at that point if this is a drastically retooled year or another "see what we have in-house" year.
To contend?
Well, we have two threads devoted to what we actually have in-house. Pitching is not entirely inspiring. Basically, I think the limited consensus is the staff would benefit enormously from one or two new FA SPs pushing the roster down, or one or two new traded-for SPs lessening uncertainty/variance by trading question-mark/wide-outcome pitchers for more predictable starters. Or some combo.
Position players. . .it probably works as is. There are many question marks. So, not glorious, but likely competitive, especially if the 2B situation is addressed for this year. (Mayer and Yorke are almost ready - we only need one.)
I don't think we're that far away from both shoring up the pitching, and tweaking the bats. Doing the first probably makes us competitive this year.
But, as for any team, things have to break moderately well. Story has to hit again. We can't roll snake-eyes on two of Duran, Abreu, ONeil, Yoshida. (Rafaela hitting ML pitching would be gravy.)
Let's see what Breslow does.
Of course, I'll stop watching if Masa's gone, as he was the most entertaining player for the first half last season. But my $ investment in the team is low, so I wont be missed.
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They can’t not to
LA has the largest amount of Japanese outside of Japan than any other city
So basically, business as it's been for the past, oh, 50 years. The strike first, strike hard, strike fast style that Dombrowski employed in his five years at the helm were a real anomaly, and it happened to come during a period in which the Yankees et al weren't exactly big players on the free agent market. And even then, the only true top-of-the-market FA he signed during that stretch was David Price.
I've never really understood where the expectation that the Red Sox can and will outspend the rest of the league comes from. It's really never been true.
They may be disadvantaged in pursuing the top free agents who get so many offers for so much money that it becomes more a choice of where do you want to live, and Boston isn't everyone's flavor (though for some it's *exactly* their flavor). A tier below that, guys will take the best offer, do their job for six or seven months, and go wherever home is for the winter. The good news is that solid depth is the number one prerequisite for success, in my view, just ahead of star players, and if we can fill in the pitching depth around Devers and maybe one more big "get" we should be able to compete sooner or later.
Oh and the Japanese pipeline thing was seen as a potentially inviting pathway because it didn't come with the same costs as free agency with QOs on the table, but clearly the market has now erased that little extra value, so now they're just guys who never played MLB coming over to see what they can do.
I don't get this reasoning. Both Betts and Freeman were excruciatingly bad against the D-backs. How does either of them deserve a WS win?
Were the Dombrowski years an anomaly compared to the last years of Duquette followed by the Theo regime? Trading for and extending Pedro, signing Manny to a record breaking contract, getting Schilling, Damon, Foulke, Beckett, Matsuzaka. These were all moves where the Sox flexed some muscle, outmaneuvered and outspent rivals. They identified needs and aggressively went out to fill those needs. That contrasts with today's apparent approach of fiddling around the edges, hoping for reclamation projects to come through, waiting for prospects to emerge and occasionally signing some 2nd tier free agent after the frenzy has died down.
It did not seem like an accident that the Sox run of success from 2004 to 2018 began when Duquette moved beyond the dumpster diving approach that characterized most of his tenure and started spending money. Even the the 2013 team, lighter on star power than our other championship additions, was still fourth in payroll that season. The Sox may not be able to outspend everybody else, but can they win a championship if they have a middle-of-the-pack payroll? They haven't so far.
The numbers are posted upthread, but the Sox have been "middle-of-the-pack" in payroll exactly once since Henry bought the team.
The frustrating thing is that the Dodgers are a "big market team" whose fans have the reputation of not being live or die fans. Regardless of that, the Dodgers act like a big market team these days in that they're ultra aggressive and spend. There needs to be a happy medium between the Dombrowski years of spend at all costs, in dollars and prospects, and the Chaim years of "evaluating". I don't mean that as a condemnation of Chaim, because he did build the farm system back up, short of premier arms.
Excluding 2022 and 2023 seems like a big exclusion. They’ve trended down multiple years in a row now.
Put another way when do you think they will spend an amount commensurate with their revenue base? I’ll be generous and say top 5 rather than the #3 spot they have. The number 5 spot is currently around $250M CBT number. They’re at $180 or so right now. 2024 seems almost impossible to spend that much with the number of free agents off the board already.
Do they do it in 2025 without Sale’s $25M and another $23M for Jansen and Martin? Again seems difficult, they’d need to sign 3-4 premium deals between this offseason and next. If not, when?
It seems a bit hard to argue that ownership hasn’t taken a different tack since moving on from DD.
Because "multiple" means more than one, I suppose it's accurate to say that spending less the past two years represents trending down over multiple years. In the end, though, I think it makes sense that when a team is rebuilding it is going to spend less. The Sox hadn't dared attempt a rebuild during the Henry ownership, despite even Theo advocating for it, so it makes sense that Sox fans are unfamiliar with the process. In any case, they have announced that they are no longer rebuilding and are going to spend. The team is announcing to the world that they are going to spend a lot of money on payroll this year after two whole seasons of spending less. How about we agree that if we get to opening day and they haven't done that, *then* we can have a discussion about the team's changing priorities. Is that reasonable?
I was referring strictly to free agency. Manny, Crawford, Price. That's pretty much the list of Red Sox free agent signings at the very top of the market. In all three cases, the Sox weren't competing with the perennial big spenders. In fact, Manny was their target only after they were outbid/outmaneuvered for Mike Mussina by...the Yankees. My point being that the Sox have never outspent the likes of the Yankees and Dodgers on the open market, so why are we supposed to expect them to do so now?
As for their flexing muscle and outmanuevering, that's easy to do when you have the prospect capital to trade. Remains to be seen if they have what they need to make a trade or two this winter. It's also easier to do when there weren't as many rules and restrictions on how to spend. They could easily buy free agents away from the have-nots of the league before revenue-sharing leveled the playing field significantly. They could flex their financial might in the draft before slotting and bonus pools were instituted. They could overpay for international free agents before that bonus pool was instituted. They could pay outrageous sums to Japanese teams via the blind bid posting system that no longer exists. Can you imagine how differently this Yamamoto thing would have gone if they'd been able to "come out of nowhere" to bid way more than anyone else (like they did for Matsuzaka) just to get exclusive rights to the player?
The baseball world has changed over the last twenty years. The Sox are no longer one of 4-5 teams willing to spend obscene amounts of money. They're one of 15-20 willing to splurge on a free agent. Makes it a bit tougher to always be the team that gets their man.
Notable rookie seasons:
2014: Betts, JBJ, X, Vazquez, Holt, Workman
2015: E-rod, Barnes, Shaw
2016: None
2017: Devers, Benintendi
2018: None
2019: None
2020: None
2021: Houck, Whitlock
2022: Crawford, Winckowski (both prematurely), Bello
2023: Casas, Yoshida, Wong, Bernardino
They added essentially zero new cost controlled talent in the form of position players or starters from 2018 until this year. Of course ownership changed direction in that period, why on earth wouldn't they?
Why does that question matter at all? (Serious question. If they field a ML staff that's competitive, does it matter where they get their starting pitching from - FA, trade, or signing as a MiL?)
(Oh, I see- it’s just a list of rookie seasons over the past few years. Nm)
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It’s more efficient to build it in house so you don’t end up spending things like the Sale extension or the $10m/yr to old man Klubs
Weird that they made the ALCS in 2021. I guess that was kind of flukey, but baseball isn't the NBA, it's very flukey.
Ha, made me think of old comments from Lou Gorman (paraphrased), "We had bad medical reports on Tommy John, so we signed Skip Lockwood instead."
Good dodge? What reasonable plan has them adding even 50M in payroll before opening day with who is left never mind the $70M+ to get in the top 5 (generously assuming that this threshold doesn’t move up at all)? I’ll happily bet that they aren’t in the top 5 payrolls this year.
2025 is even harder given the $50M coming off the books after this year. How do they add $120M+? That’s 4 elite deals or 2 elite deals and 3-4 other large deals. Reading the tea leaves they weren’t close on Yamamoto, who they had apparently scouting and wanting for years. Why is there any confidence they are going to set the market for any of the remaining large deal FAs?
It’s one thing to drop for a year or two, but the indications here are that is a long term trend.
Edit: They could add Montgomery and Stroman at 25M AAV each and add a RHH for $15M and still not be in the top 5 this year. Quite frankly I’d be happily shocked if all three of those happen. Maybe $30-$40M is added and they’re 8-10th.
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My daughter called me this morning and said "Do you know what Henry said when Breslow told him Yamamoto signed with LA?" Henry said "Who is that?"
It has been a long day here. Let's see them make some moves so the beating will end, LOL.
I THINK @sezwho means more from something akin to a Baseball Trade Values standpoint (which, isn't perfect, but it's really all we've got). So saying, how many Mayers "as in with his 44 value" would we need to trade for a "44 value pitcher." (Ie, Valdez is 49, so we'd probably need TWO guys like Mayer to trade for him - or they'd probably need two of Anthony/Teel/Mayer. I don't think he meant an equivalent prospect.
I could be wrong, but I'm assuming that's what was meant.
So - for instance - to land someone like Luzardo, the Red Sox would probably have to trade 2 out of Mayer, Anthony and Teel. Whereas it would be easier if they had - for instance - someone like Ryan Pepiot (top 100ish prospect, close to MLB ready) and then you could likely move Mayer and that guy (not as valuable as Teel or Anthony) for Luzardo. You can't trade the hitting equivalent of Pepiot (lets say Nick Yorke, though not a perfect comp but close enough) along with Mayer.
Not having pitching PROSPECTS to include in a deal going out makes it a lot more difficult to get MLB pitching coming back. So you have to overpay (in terms of hitting prospects). Which is why I'd rather they (admittedly) over pay for one of Montgomery or even Snell (but I drastically prefer Montgomery) in just FA money. But they're going to have to over-pay somewhere. Or accept horrible starting pitching at the MLB level for the next 4 years at minimum while Breslow tries to rebuild that part of the farm system.
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