Balta1701

If the rebuilding trades and draft picks worked, we have only a couple positions where we really need talent. Using our financial resources to get high flying players for those positions is exactly how this strategy should go. It would be the complete opposite of having way too many positions to fill and trying to fill them all with mid-level players from FA and trades - which we tried for the better part of a decade.

Depends on if they're willing to go well back into luxury tax territory. They were deep into tax paying until last year, now there's some comments that maybe they don't want a huge luxury tax bill again. They sign Harper, they're well back into tax territory.

Ok general in thread warning here - this discussion is falling apart and crossing the line into multiple personal attacks. We'll contact individual people as necessary right now but if all people are going to do is yell insults at each other we're going to consider this an appropriate reminder about the rules against personal insults at Soxtalk.com and suspend people who cross it without additional notes.

Except Nova had his career best stretch (or at least one of his best stretches) right after he got to the Pirates?

I doubt you're going to get much value for a fairly highly paid catcher who would be under contract for a couple months and who has a steroid suspension in their background.

I know Boston's payroll is pretty high but would they really make themselves that much worse next season by giving up a starting position player for nearly nothing?

It makes it far less likely, and to me, basically impossible that he can develop as a catcher. I'm not sure I'm against a Grandal signing. I think it's an admission that Collins is a likely flop, because I don't think his bat plays at 1b/DH. I don't like the idea of having to spend more $ at a position because of how bad we are at 1st round draft picks, but if Collins is going to be a flop then we should probably grab Grandal now.

And if Collins is going to be moved off that position, he won't have time to improve at that position, and within a couple years we won't want him there at all. And if Collins is going to be moved off that position, his bat also has to be good enough to play at DH or 1b, which is also questionable.

And the Astros traded for a guy with a .639 career OPS to be an upgrade at that position last season because the 30 year old Gattis was bad enough there that they didn't want to play him there any more.

Evan Gattis is another one - part time catcher for a couple years and then the Astros basically gave up on using him at that position and turned to a trade for Martin Maldonado and his .639 career OPS to fill their backup catcher role because they wanted better defense.

Catchers have so much other stuff going on that you can't just shift into the position unless they're doing it regularly. Scwharber caught 15 games as a rookie, then was used as an emergency backup catcher 4 times in 2017 and 0 times in 2018. If you move Collins to 1b, that's what will happen with him too - you move a guy away from the catcher's position he doesn't come back.

Yes, the advance stats have generally liked Grandal (of course, they don't include last postseason).

The idea of a guy catching 1 or 2 times per week really doesn't hold together in modern baseball. If you're giving up on the idea of the guy as an everyday catcher, it's because either you think his bat plays elsewhere and you're not going to catch him because you want him to stay healthy, or you're deciding he's just not a good enough catcher so you're making him a backup. A guy can't prepare to hit regular pitching every day and then just pick up "being a catcher" as a hobby. There's just too much work and preparation involved for the catcher's spot. You can call the guy your emergency catcher, that's ok, but if he's your everyday 1b, he's not a part time catcher.

So the plan is to bring Grandal in to mentor Collins at catcher, then move Collins to 1b because Grandal is the everyday catcher, right?

He literally did not play at all last year.

So if McCutchen outperforms his projections this could be as cheap as $7 million per fWAR. That's literally exactly what I'm saying - $40 million a year is basically right now a 5-5.5 fWAR player, not 7-10.

He put up 2.6 last year and over the past 3 seasons total he has put up 7.4, so 2.4-2.5 is literally "exactly what he's been doing the last few years with no decline". If you factor in a little bit of decline, then the Phillies just spent $50 million for something like 6 projected WAR.

He's a monster, but he'll also be a 22 year old rookie. The projection systems have him at something in the low .800s of OPS and ~3-ish WAR and I think those numbers are probably reasonable if he's healthy.

Remember - the price of 1 WAR on the free agent market is something close to $9 million right now, on average. A $400 million contract is not saying it's a 7-10 WAR player, not these days.

So the setup required is a complicated 3 team deal then followed by a free agent signing and all that has to work out correctly? That'll never work out correctly, too many moving parts.

I'm more stunned by the fact that the Nats had him in CF for 63 games last year than anything else I saw in those stats.

I don't know what the exact deal with him has been since he put up his MVP season, there's some injuries in there, but based on the Free Agent market, if he's a 4 fWAR player each of the next 5 years and then starts declining after age 31, then he'll mathematically be worth his contract. He's averaged 3.7 the last 3 seasons - and that's not counting the MVP caliber season. I think there's a decent chance he's worth his contract - the Free Agent market is just that pricey. One more >>5 WAR season though, which we know he can do - and he becomes a bargain.

Worth adding that the Red Sox had over $30 million in truly dead money this year including Sandoval and Rusney Castillo, with another $22 million locked up in Hanley Ramirez? Their payroll was $230 this year so they paid some luxury tax...but that's $50 million for basically 0 return whatsoever without it crippling them. Yeah it's the Red Sox and the White Sox probably won't get to $230 million, but how did the Red Sox do that? They developed enough talent to put in some really cheap guys and traded a couple other talented guys for Sale.

Just for some specific numbers - in 2011, MLB's average payroll was $101 million, in 2018 it was $139 million. And that's with the players share of revenue declining, which the MLBPA isn't going to allow to continue when the next CBA hits.

Credit to @Dick Allen for this one. Put a deadline on Wednesday night of the winter meetings - if a player signs by then, the signing team loses no picks. Every big name FA would sign by that Wednesday and you'd create a trade deadline style rush of press right in the middle of early December when your league is otherwise downtime.