Offseason rumors
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Another player I really suspect simply wanted to play for Chicago more than make ten million more clams somewhere he didn’t really care to be.
I actually think it’s the opposite. I think his market was essentially non existent since the Yankees got Soto. Cubs were the only fit.
Teams aren’t going to invest $250mm in players with the variance Bellinger has shown the last 6 years.
I expect Snells to look very similar but slightly longer.
Monty might really be there at 4/95mm with an opt out after 2.
Fascinating off season continues to be fascinating.
Seems like Bellinger did ok here despite falling well short of the guaranteed dollars projected earlier in the winter. He’s kind of a unique case in that he’s coming off a rebound season after a couple down/injured years but still fairly young (28).
Makes sense for him to try to hit the market again next year without the qualifying offer attached and (hopefully for his sake) another productive, post-injury season under his belt.
Makes sense for him to try to hit the market again next year without the qualifying offer attached and (hopefully for his sake) another productive, post-injury season under his belt.
Hope you're right about Monty - your numbers make sense - please let it be the Red Sox.
Has anyone other than the Dodgers signed a free agent for more than 4 years? The RSN situation affects pretty much everyone except them and it's showing in the deals teams are willing to offer. Someone might go to 5 with Snell to lower the AAV, but those 6-8 year contracts everyone was talking about at the start of the offseason were fantasy.
$80M is a ton of money but that has to feel like a relative disappointment for Bellinger given what he probably thought he was getting a few months ago. But the $26-27M AAV feels about right here so it’s more about the length. But I don’t blame the Cubs for balking on going longer. Lots of variance risk.
Bellinger gets 1/30, 2/60, or 3/80, so not a terrible deal for him. If he has a season like he had last year, he opts out and tries again. Imagine we will see similar type deals with the pitchers- although I think Snell is the most challenging, doubt any team wants to give up a pick for a potential one year rental, and it doesn’t seem like going back to SD is realistic.
My daughter was born the day the Red Sox lost a 2003 ALDS game to the A's on a squeeze play in extra innings. I watched the game from the hospital with her in my lap, and thought, "Welcome to Red Sox nation, this is the way it's gonna be. Sorry."
This from the Boston Globe today:
Teoscar Hernández told the Flippin’ Bats podcast that his final decision in free agency came down to the Dodgers or Red Sox.He wanted to play in Boston because of his love of Fenway Park and the passion from the fans.
“It feels good to play there,” Hernández said. “I love it. I do.”
But Hernández signed with the Dodgers. The Sox, he said, “didn’t come with a good deal.”
My son was born at NYU (first of six generations outside Maine) to Beckett going 8.2 and almost shutting out the Os. I think we brought the WS back to NE.
Good news my Yankee fan wife was otherwise distracted while the TV was on in delivery room : )
Well, there's certainly no reason not to believe what he say's about playing at Fenway. Lifted this from Tyler Milliken's X account. 45 games played at Fenway, just more than 1/2 of a season's worth of home games.This from the Boston Globe today:
He wanted to play in Boston because of his love of Fenway Park and the passion from the fans.
“It feels good to play there,” Hernández said. “I love it. I do.”
But Hernández signed with the Dodgers. The Sox, he said, “didn’t come with a good deal.”
Teoscar Hernandez’s spray chart over Fenway Park the last two seasons (2022-2023). Along with his career numbers in the ballpark: 45 Games .282/.344/.606/.950 14 HR 9 2B 2 3B 44 RBI
This seems like collusion, or it may just be that every front office--or at least the ones with the kind of resources to spend big money---all employ analytics teams that have led them to similar conclusions against offering lucrative long-term deals to these players. But if this happened forty years ago, there would definitely be people thinking something fishy was going on.
Eh, I dunno. Bellinger is a tough player to project- his fWAR has been between -1 and 8, by season. Hes projected to be a 2.4 win player this season. A long term deal feels really risky given his track record; I think the same is true of Snell and Chapman, and Montgomery likely seems to be looking for too much $$$.
Hard to know what’s going on without any idea of what these guys are asking for, or what teams have offered.
Hard to know what’s going on without any idea of what these guys are asking for, or what teams have offered.
It does. I am sure there is a lawsuit coming after this case.
The Hernandez stuff is just really frustrating. Not defensible from a team with their ticket prices. It is one thing to say you don't like the player - but they DID.
If I wasn't clear, I agree that it's due to teams getting smarter.
Here in Philly, Harper has asked for an extension into his forties, but that has barely made a blip here because he has another seven years to go on his current contract. I think even the fans here, who absolutely worship him, know it would be dumb for the team to take any course other than tabling those talks for a few years when his value past the expiration of his current deal can better be established.
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Certainly, accept at the same time analytics have given everyone a better understanding of player value. The invisible hand of the market is sort of showing itself these days…
I think it's the second one. Every team is working off the same set of data with roughly the same analytic departments. The game on the field has been homogenized and it's extended into player acquisition, too.
Several big market teams (Mets, Sox; even teams like the Padres and Angels) seemingly sitting out the market hasn’t helped.
This is such a salient point, and one I've been pondering for a long time. It used to be that there were a multitude of organizational approaches, on and off the field. Like you said, now its nearly all the same. It's made for a much more boring game.
I'm wondering if there's something else going on too, like the owners are seeing some financial data that indicates MLB revenues are not growing like they were.
Ownership understands that an 85-90 win team on a budget can win a championship. The key is to get to the playoffs, then it’s more of a function on who’s hot at the right time.
They are working under the assumption that spending 150mm annually to upgrade a team from an 87 win team to a 94 win team is a poor investment of dollars.
They could be wrong. But it’s clear that’s the current thinking outside of the Dodgers.
Possibly. The Yankees aren't exactly clipping coupons either, especially if they sign Snell. And they were all in on Yamamoto, too.
But the other aspect of this is that spending to upgrade a 93-win team to a 108-win team is a good investment.
I wonder if the Red Sox will get back to this space in the next five years.
30 million per year for the next two years with an opt-out after each doesn't sound too bad for Bellinger at all. If the longterm contract isn't there, going the Kirk Cousins route is a solid backup plan.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Monty with an opt-out after one year. Not sure it will happen for Snell given the qualifying offer unless he goes back to SD.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Monty with an opt-out after one year. Not sure it will happen for Snell given the qualifying offer unless he goes back to SD.
Devers would probably pull a Manny and demand he start in the field somewhere. Maybe he already has. Of course, the Red Sox back then had two great hitters that wouldn’t be good in the field and only one could DH. Also, haven’t the Sox (Breslow?) declared that DH would be spread among several guys?
I would think that it took until now for Bellinger to sign suggests that someone misread the market. Players (and agents) who have contract expectations that are in line with teams don't typically remain unemployed until after spring training starts.
Don't the Sox have several OF prospects they think highly of, whom a long-signed Hernandez might block?
Boras is human so he has flaws. But he has set up a system where he makes money regardless of how things go so I would argue he is doing things pretty well. He also seems to earn a lot of money for his clients too so he is winning there as well.
The question I have is how someone can say that Boras or anyone misread a market when we really don't have the information to make that statement? Is someone really going to argue that media reports are accurate and/or represent facts?
This is the point that those of us who are uninformed keep forgetting. We keep repeating the projections from the media to the point where we wind up using them as gospel.
No one on this board has a clue as to what the real numbers being discussed between teams and agents are, no matter how many insider reports we ferret out across social media.
Did Bellinger get as much as Boras was hoping to get for him? Yes and no. He got him $30M for this year in a place he knows well. Have a season similar to last year's comeback and he can try again. Would he have liked the longer, larger deal this time around? Sure.
But saying Boras misread the market is a result in service to a narrative. He knew what the market was pretty quick, then switched to get the best deal out there that gave his client flexibility.
All of the above. The "Tampa Bay model" is no longer unique. That model has been around long enough now that there is a sort "tree" if you will, that has branched out and touched just about every franchise in one way or another. And to be honest, when we look at that shift the Sox were sort of in on the ground floor with the hiring of Theo all those years ago and bringing in Bill James. In time,Tampa seemed to have taken all of that to the next level. Now every team is leaning more and more on analytics and as mentioned above, every team is consuming the same data. How it's interpreted might be the only variable here, but much of the on and off field decisions are very regimented these days. Concerning the financial... We're said to be in a good economy, but the cost of EVERYTHING has gone up so much since Covid. Some of us may be making more money than we've ever made, yet it seems like more and more we're looking at our finances and searching for ways to stretch those dollars as they're not going as far as we would think that they should. The entertainment industry as a whole has seen a huge shift in how their product is consumed and baseball is no exception, especially in a time when the interest in the sport has taken a hit from younger generations for a whole host of reasons. Owners would be foolish not to try to project future trends in all aspects of their sport.
Looking at that Bellinger deal, with hindsight, a strong argument could be made that the NYY would have been better off signing Bellinger (4.4 WAR in 2023 to Soto's 5.6), keep the pitching prospects, have better OF defense this year, and sign Soto as a free agent next year, with Bellinger moving to 1B.
For those wanting to sign Chapman - no team is taking Yoshida off our hands in a full salary dump.
Any scenario in which the Yankees don’t extend or re-sign Soto seems so unlikely to me that it isn’t even worth discussing.
Cashman has already said he expects Soto to go to FA.
Soto turned down 14/440 from the Nats. He's going to want 500+ million assuming his standard season this year.
Still kind of insane to me he reportedly turned that down so far from FA (unless he just didn't like Washington).
Sure, he could beat it. But hard to imagine he will beat it by so much it was worth the risk of not taking it back then.
A guy like Bellinger is more likely to not have as good a season as last…not opt out and max outbthe 3/80M and then get maybe 1 or 2 more one year deals for $3-$5M rather than opt out and get the 6 year $180M Boras would rather him receive this offseason.
The same goes for Monty and Snell and I still think JM is more likely to be closest to earning the salary in later years. But I don’t imagine I can see any of them getting more total value in future years than right now.
I wouldn’t say Boras whiffed at all but from reading the tea leaves, I’d say he was hoping for a 6/180. Instead he’s more likely to get 100 over the next 5 years if lucky.
The same goes for Monty and Snell and I still think JM is more likely to be closest to earning the salary in later years. But I don’t imagine I can see any of them getting more total value in future years than right now.
I wouldn’t say Boras whiffed at all but from reading the tea leaves, I’d say he was hoping for a 6/180. Instead he’s more likely to get 100 over the next 5 years if lucky.
I don’t think so; Hernandez would’ve required at most 3 years and in theory a stronger 2 year offer might’ve worked out. He’s also a RH power bat with questionable defense, so he’d be in LF. The only “prospect” he’s really blocking is Duran. He’d be in competition with Yoshida, but it looks like one of these guys needed to be dealt to make room for him
If Rafaella hits well enough to be in MLB, it will be in CF. Roman Anthony may be up soon enough, but he should be in CF/ RF. Bleis looks far enough away that he wouldn’t really overlap. Maybe if we had a conversion like Blaze Jordan take off in the OF, but that seems like a real long shot.
I don’t think there’s any way for Chapman to get cheap enough that he makes sense for the Sox given their artificial payroll limitations. They need to spend the money they have on pitching, not on wishcasting Chapman to reverse his decline so we can displace the best player on the team and create additional conflicts at 1B (where Casa should get a long term deal ASAP) and DH (where Breslow wants to rotate people). The best solution here is to hope coaching and Story stabilizing SS defense makes Devers second half 2023 numbers a trend.
Definitely a possibility for someone as up and down as he has been.
Maybe the medicals are bad and that’s a problem here, but in general I’d take the over on his 100M being his next 5 years salary.
He’s already banked 80M at least worst case scenario, and even a decent 2024 he will probably beat 4/70M on the open market next off season.
Why do you interpret this to mean they did like him but were too cheap to pay him? Maybe the offer reflects that they liked him but didn't love him? Or they are doing one year deals because they think Anthony will take that spot in a year?
Neville says Bryan Mata has pulled a hammy, and he has been shut down. Tough break for Mata, as he is out of options. His career has been beseiged by injuries, TJS, on and on. He is really talented athletically, but how do you wager on staying the course with this guy?
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