Balta1701

Now that Bumgarner is off the board, we've got Ryu and Keuchel left, but we have the White Sox, Dodgers, Angels, Twins, and maybe others still with pitching needs. Some of these teams will be missing.

I remember the good old days when I did this exercise before 2015 and convinced myself that they were in a good position that season.

I would have 0 issues with a guy like that being the 6th starter.

The given quote makes it sound like if they had a team that would take on Price's full contract but they had to give up players from their system, and they had another team that would take on $60 million of Price's deal without them giving up anything else, they'd take the latter option. Which makes sense, I would prefer to avoid sending out players in their situation also.

Well then. https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2019/12/14/major-league-baseball-threatens-to-walk-away-from-minor-league-baseball-entirely/

If your argument is "Moncada and Giolito aren't really that good", then you're telling me that we really don't have any hope of playoff appearances any time soon. Even I won't go that far.

No.

How accurate has the pessimistic lens been for the last decade?

Anyway, to the subject of this thread, it's too early to think about this right now but I hope someone in the organization realizes that they're on a path that could lead them right here. Giolito and Moncada can grow their value by having 2 good years in a row and possibly by being even better this year, and so if we were going to do this, the first time we should think about it is after 2020. Things start getting a little dicey after 2020 because the roster starts getting worse at the same time as their cost rises by more than $20 million, but for 2021 that should still be manageable. If a couple things go wrong, if there's a normal number of injuries or Eloy struggles or something like that, there is a legitimate path that takes this team to deciding after 2021 whether they have to dump these guys having never even come close to the playoffs. It doesn't have to end that way, but that's one possibility we have left open. That's the decision we're making by bringing in rebuilding players for 2020, it's 2021 or nothing and it all has to be done without any big contracts, so if anything at all goes wrong then we're in a true mess.

As of right now, Covey is your 5th starter for much of the year.

Clean up does not equal a push for the playoffs.

have you looked at the pitching options remaining on the FA and trade markets?

Most people would say that having taken this team to a cable channel too early turned out to be a nightmare for the franchise that helped set back their revenue streams for more than 3 decades now because it surrendered the city to a competing franchise.

If Rodon comes back in July - are we sure that there will be no other injuries in the starting rotation before then?

They will have him on an innings limit and they will want to get an extra year of control by keeping him in the minors for a month. They have all but said they will be doing this.

This team needed a top of the rotation arm and they will not be getting one, so at the very least we're teetering on that.

Like it or not, that's the going rate. We gave an offer that, after taxes, was within 1% of another team's offer; we did not substantially beat their offer. Given that we seemingly have no other solution other than punting on the whole season, I'd say that the extra $11 mil over 5 years seems to be a very minor cost.

So why didn't the organization try?

So your argument is that the difference in takehome pay wouldn't make a difference because of taxes, but location mattered more when our offer came out ahead by only a narrow margin. So in other words, when taxes are taken into account, our offer and the Phillies offer were 2% apart or so, and that difference is negligible. So do 10% more after taxes and see if he turns that down. It's clear we had no other backup plan, so there is no way that $12 million should be all that important.

If you're thinking this team is a playoff team then yeah you've got an innings limit because you probably don't want him throwing 210. If we're punting on the playoffs and think we can shut him down at 180 innings in September like Lopez has hit the last few years, then Mr. Offday's ok.

Many of the top relief options are already off the market. There are enough left to sign 2-3, but basically you have to sign all of the next set of options to do that. At this point, you need to go sign Betances, Harris, and Cashner to sign 3 solid relievers, and even then they're not the best options.

Did we try offering 10% more money? No we did not.

Has anyone signed an extremely early 8 year extension like that with a pitcher (rather than a position player)?

If you're using Mr. Offday as a starter you better not have anyone else in your rotation on an innings limit (Cease).

This team was going to be a sub-70 win team in 2017-2019 anyway after they stripped the entire thing bare to make their rosters in 2015 and 2016. Might as well have the payroll low in the process.