Balta1701

"Drake LaRoche is our real team leader!" and "I don't think you'll be wearing those jerseys now" are at least worthy entries on the same list.

More than not following it...they are angry at the concept that people might want them to. They look at the Astros, Dodgers, Red Sox, and say "you're bleeping doing it wrong!".

A couple more thoughts. I've lived in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Houston markets, and I cannot ever remember a franchise that has gone after their own fans nearly as often as this one. AJ Hinch gets mad when another team throws at his players, our manager swears when people dare question him. I think this tells us a lot about how these guys really are indoors - they really are surrounded by yes men. They go around all day with no one willing to step out of line, to propose anything new, or even to suggest that doing things differently might produce different results. They are so used to it that the only way any criticism leaks through - in the occasional press availability - they blow up at them over and over. Williams, Stone, Renteria, and I'm sure Cooper more than once although we've stopped paying attention to those, and that's all just this season. Rick Renteria has a .423 career winning mark, he is 258-352 as a big league manager. But he's absolutely angry at the concept that he might ever incorporate anything new into his managing style. His GM doesn't push him on that, he doesn't work with him on that, he's just in charge and he's absolutely earned it? That's absolutely not how it works in Houston. If management has something they want to try, they work with Hinch on it, and if Hinch has a problem with it, things stay behind closed doors. When people question AJ Hinch, he explains his thinking, admits sometimes things go wrong, and here's what we'll do about it if needed. It's the same setup as the rest of the franchise - how dare you question us, we are owed your allegiance and your money. Everyone around us has told us we're doing a great job, just you angry folks in the press.

That...doesn't address this matter whatsoever?

For some of the other quotes you could say that he's making a legitimate argument for balance in decision making and understanding where your players are on any given day, but this is the key one telling you the point he wants to make. Stats people "I don't give a bleep what you think so stop questioning me I deserve this and your opinion doesn't matter". He calls for balance, but note which side he wants to swear at.

No they're not. Instead they're signing them to 5 year, $150 million deals or 10 year, $300 million deals - betting on there being 6 win seasons somewhere in the early years and then dropoffs in the later years. You are letting the length of the contract fool you; the teams do that as a hedge against risk and also because if a player has some longevity it makes the deal more friendly to the team, as we've seen with pitchers like Greinke in recent years.

1. The Free Agent dollars per fWAR crossed over $10 million before 2017, I don't have precise 2018 numbers but baseball salaries have remained flat for about the last 3 years so I used the 2017 estimate of $10.7 million. Your $9.5 million is a discount. 2. That is never how MLB contracts work and you should understand that. A team could sign a guy to a 1-2 year deal and offer them $50 million for each of those years, and it might make sense for the player to take it, but the team doesn't want that. Teams sign guys to contracts that are 7+ years long because it allows them to spread out the risk: the player is likely to have seasons at the back end where he is not worth the money, but is also likely to have seasons at the front end where he's underpaid. During those years at the front end, you can then take the extra money and use it to sign other players, hopefully enough to put you over the top for a world series. No one signs guys at age 28 because of what they'll do at age 35; they are getting paid at age 35 so that the team can spread out the risk. 3. Had Mike Trout hit the free agent market I have literally no idea what he would get. I would guess that he would have topped $500 million, assuming he stayed healthy up until that. It might well have gone higher.

You just saw a person say they'd be angry at anything over 1 year, $10 million. If it's 1 year, $12 million, I'm personally not going to be all that mad. But the question does arise - if they start adding extra years, it's not a few million dollars any more, it's tens of millions of dollars and a commitment into an extra year. So, each person has to draw their line - where do they say "no this is crazy why are we doing this".

Right now, for 2019 Fangraphs pegs him as having been worth $12.5 million, with 20% or so of the season remaining. Whether someone will actually pay that or not who knows...but back onto Cole, that's why it's notable that the Dodgers and Yankees are involved. They may not pay stupid money, but with those 2 teams involved, you won't be seeing a huge discount.

25 WAR on paper right now is worth something like $270 million on the free agent market.

Deep down I don't even think they'll make a pretend showing of it this year, they'll spend their time on a target like Bumgarner. One press report I believe from last offseason basically said that they didn't really speak to Boras at all after their time with Harper at the winter meetings, which tells you how they approached it - dramatically underbid, if at all.

Yeah, but I can give you 220 million reasons why the White Sox won't be involved in that bidding even if they should be. I said a couple weeks ago, my personal favorite fantasy for this offseason is to have them schedule a time at the winter meetings to make their presentation to Boras and Cole, they go through their wonderful professionally made video and all the meetings, Boras then asks for an offer, the White Sox hand him a freshly prepared offer for 5 years and $75 million and Boras, without missing a beat, immediately hands them back an already prepared bill for his time they just wasted that he brought to the meeting with them.

This team was not going to have enough to compete this year even if they signed Machado and Harper. We knew that last offseason. We didn't know how this season would go, we didn't know Rodon would be the one who got hurt, we didn't how how much Eloy and Lopez would struggle, we didn't know Anderson and Giolito and McCann would break out, but there was zero chance of putting a competitive roster out there. There were just too many holes. When we tried to put together competitive rosters at a $150 million price tag last offseason on here, on my list of things we needed to do was "Replace Giolito" because coming into this season there was no honest way you could count on him as even a #5 starter on a competitive team. Next offseason is different. Kopech, Madrigal, Robert, and hopefully Collins and Vaughn are coming. Cease is another year along the line. Hopefully Eloy is a breakout candidate. Maybe Lopez is pointing in the right direction. There are still holes, there are still decisions to make, it is still entirely possible that our GM will do what he usually does and we'll wind up with 75 wins on the year, but we should be in far better position on paper to make a turn in the right direction.

Yup, with the Yankees and the Dodgers both having money to spend, he'll pass Price's mark. I'm not sure how much he'll pass it by, but if you are serious about signing Gerrit Cole the numbers you just wrote are the starting bid.

Yes. Avisail Garcia was a rotten fielder in 2014 and he has been a slightly above average right fielder from 2016-2019 according to DRS.

He's on the injured list again and his stats for June were so bad that his season looks pretty mediocre even to you. But yeah, it probably would work for 1 year.

Avisail Garcia.

Oh, an important question to ask Nova or whoever they sign in this role, if they do actually fill it, is "are you ok with shifting to the bullpen sometimes". Because the 6th starter will probably spend a portion of the season in the pen as a long man.

After last offseason...being in December and having made no moves would be preferable to being in December and acquiring Alonsos and Jays.

Right now? no.

That's the easy stuff. The hard stuff is who gets the additional money. The players could make a case that they're putting themselves at a larger risk so to agree to extra games they would want a larger share of the revenue for those games and the owners...well you know how it goes when a players union asks for a bigger revenue share.

I don't know when, but I do think that at some point in my lifetime both sides will realize how much extra money there would be in turning the schedule into an 18 game regular season and a 2 game preseason.

at what salary level do you become unhappy with it?

So are you willing to pay him based on what "wouldn't be shocking"?