A past anxiety disorder that by all means he's been over for quite a long time. And yeah, I tend to think guys who bitch and moan about teams then sign with them may end up problematic. Or they may not. But it's not something you just shrug off like it never happened, and I think it's a bit unfair to focus entirely on Greinke's past but completely ignore Price's, especially when the latter was more recent.
The value of the player option to the organisation is that it meant David Price signed on the dotted line where he may well not have otherwise.
But before it is signed there is definite value to the organisation if it tips the player over too signing with them over somewhere else.
Is it? There have not been that many, which opt outs harmed the clubs? The contracts then signed after the optout is a different beast. It can be argued that the team may be somewhat forced into resigning the player as its hard to plan if you don't know if they will opt out, but in most cases (all? ) it was pretty obvious.
I'm sure ownership agrees but this option is not on the table. It's like dwelling on not buying a house for 200k and then bitching about paying 600k for a slightly better one later on when you reassess the initial market. Lester has nothing to do with Price. But it's not going to stop guys like CHB from making the correlation.
In what universe did Dave Dombrowski have the option of paying up for Jon Lester this winter?
So far Dombrowski has said that he wanted to sign an ace starter, trade for an ace reliever, and pick up a RHB 4th outfielder. Then he did what he said he wanted to do. He expended quantity of cash and prospects to get quality pitching (and he kept the draft pick, and it's not my money).
If SoSH had a like button, I'd be using it here. I'm not a fan of the opt out, but it's a necessary evil in today's market, especially if you want to get someone like this signed early. Best case scenario, considering it's there and not going anywhere, is that he dominates for 3 seasons, opts out and someone else pays him 30 million a year for another 5 or 6 seasons. I will never argue that an opt out benefits a team, but if it's there, might as well hope for the best in the limited years of control you have and deal with him walking.
Yes.
All of them.
I don't get why this is so hard for people to understand. When a player exercises his opt-out, it's because he's performing well which means the result of the opt-out is that a player otherwhise under contract is now a free agent. You can't simply say that the contracts signed after the player opts out are a different beast entirely because IF THE PLAYER HADN'T HAD THE OPT OUT CLAUSE HE WOULD HAVE BEEN UNDER CONTRACT ALREADY so the team wouldn't have had to negotiate with either the player or their replacement. They'd have had a position filled with a quality player.
Last five years: Lester 19.2 fWAR, Price 26.3 fWAR. Lester is close to two years older. Lester was nothing special in the postseason this year as the Cubs crashed out to the Mets. I'm sure ownership has had its share of regrets and Rembrat is entitled to his preferences, but IMHO the Sox have pulled a Don Zimmer, to quote Bill Lee: falling out of trees and landing on their feet.
I do not see where anyone is posting that not signing Lester is the fault of DD. Those that wanted fan favorite and proven playoff winner/hero John Lester are still allowed to be disappointed that he was let go for less than hated pitching rival David Price was just signed.
I think this is exactly the perspective behind the opt-out. If he wants to leave, let him go. I know this is not relevant to the Price situation, but how many times did Theo try to get out from under Manny's contract? If Manny had an opt-out and used it, Theo would have donned the gorilla suit and scattered rose petals in front of Manny on his way out of town.
Every player option does not come with a team getting David Price. For example, when the Yankees gave CC a player option, they did not also get David Price. For the 4th (?) time, I was taking about the value of player options, not the value of getting David Price.
To the bolded: no. The worst-case scenario is completely, absolutely, positively, 100% unaffected by the opt-out. The only impact of the opt-out is to transfer control from the team to the player for the final years of the contract in the best-case scenario. Even in the very best case, that probably amounts to robbing the team of a pretty modest bargain. A fully healthy David Price, showing no signs of decline, may well be worth more than 4/$124M in the 2018-19 offseason market--but it's pretty unlikely that his performance in his age 33-36 years is going to provide a huge value surplus over that $124M figure. The opt-out is bad for the team in a relative sense--it gives something to the player while not giving the team anything in return, at least not in itself--but it's really a fairly trivial problem for the team. It's right to say that the opt-out benefits only the player. It's wrong to talk as if it subjects the team to some new and serious downside risk. All the downside risk is baked in either way.
I wrote something to this effect in the Who to Sign thread and it bears repeating for anybody who wants to beat the Sox over the head for letting Lester walk. Price by every metric except the postseason, smallish sample size, is better.
And upthread someone recommended #23 but wasn't that Luis Tiant's number? I don't really like that the still give it out to anyone but I think it would be a bit much for any Sox pitcher to wear #23 after Tiant.
Like the Crawford theoretical, I don't think a player would opt out of a deal if he wasn't sure he was going to get more money elsewhere. He would just try to force a trade. That way, the team would eat the lost value, not him. They'd either have to chip in cash or take back lesser talent. And the player gets to keep his payout the same.
The anger about the opt out is that if things go poorly, it's still a seven year contract and if things go well, it isn't. The downside risk is all on the Sox and the upside benefit is all on Price. It's really pretty much that simple.
THE SOX DO NOT GET AN OPT OUT ONLY PRICE GETS AN OPT OUT HOW HARD IS THIS TO UNDERSTAND
Building on this, it's obvious that teams view player options as a net negative. That's why they're not ubiquitous and we only see them in super star contracts. The reasons for this are probably wishing to avoid uncertainty of who is on the roster and hoping to get a bargain that fights inflation. Perhaps there are more.
Except that's ignoring the scenario that the first three years could be good with a swift decline phase in the last four, which given his age I believe may be more likely than some here think.
What about a team that doesn't really want to sign 30yo pitchers to contracts longer than 5yrs? There is no way Price was giving the team an opt out nor was he going to accept less than 7yrs on the open market but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Boston was fully supportive of the opt out given that perhaps their analysis justifies paying Price 3/95 but that the back end 4yrs bring considerable risk. They could have decided that other teams may be less risk averse to signing older pitchers to long term contracts and see this as a way to minimize the risk on a long-term deal. For all we know they assume this is a 3/95 deal. If Price had signed for 3/95 today I don't think anyone would be complaining.
I think we only see them in superstar contracts because those are the only ones that are 6+ years.
It's actually not, but you'd have to ignore every other page of this thread and type in all caps to think otherwise.
Oh I understand that. I didn't think my post came off as otherwise. But there's an opt out in the deal which most of the board wanted.
What is so hard to understand about the back end of big contracts being a huge risk of injury and/or accelerated decline. You generally get the value in the first few years, then pay for it later. If the injury/decline comes after the opt out has happened and some other sucker is paying the contract, then guess what? The team that let him go dodges a bullet and already received the ealry years value.
Noone is debating who wins in those scenarios at both extremes. What you can't seem to grasp is there is plenty of middle ground between them.
Nope.
It is still a net negative to the team vs not having one because they could just not include the opt out and trade him after three years. I covered this in my post.
There is zero chance in hell this happens. No way they hand out 2 contracts like this. I mean maybe someone like a Lackey type I could see but there is a limit on money.
I'll go a step further -- you can't compare BC to DD at all. BC operated under budget constraints that apparently aren't in place anymore; if BC had permission to spend $220mm or more per year, maybe he would've brought Lester back, but the consensus a year ago was that any leeway BC had was small and temporary, and that he was expected to get under the CBT threshold again in 2016.
That was Darryl Johnson. Zimmer landed, repeatedly, on his head.
I agree but if you look at a scenario in which both opt out in 3 years....
