Balta1701

He's not going to have only 3 years remaining on his deal at age 29, he'll have 7/250 in the setup you wrote, and he would absolutely be able to beat that on the FA market unless he was hurt or Heywarded the contract, probably in the range of 10/450 if he just kept doing what he was doing now. So I have no idea what you're saying. He'd take that opt out at age 29 after 2021 with no thought at all.

So you're saying he could hit free agency at age 32 and sign an 8+ year contract again? That's a joke of course he'd opt out of that. He would take every single opt out that you listed.

He would ABSOLUTELY opt out of 3/155 to get 7/280. He would take the first opt out, he would take the 2nd opt out, he would take the 3rd opt out. He would take every single one of those unless he was hurt the year before. Those last 4 seasons are going to be years when he's after age 35, he is not going to make an extra $125 million in short term deals by then. You want an example of a back loaded deal that a player opted out of with Boras as his agent? Alex Rodriguez's first deal was backloaded. He signed at age 25, and played the first 6 years earning just over $22 million per year. In the first 6 years, he earned $135 million. He had $114 million on the table, an average of $29 million per year. He opted out of those last 4 years, at age 31, and then signed a 10/$275 deal. If Harper can hit free agency again and his deal is anything other HUGELY backloaded, he will opt out.

Why did you write this without giving the example? Here's an example where he might or might not 20/20/20/50/50/50/50/50/50/50. That's 10/$410. After a year 3 opt out, he would be leaving $350 million on the table over the next 7 years, and he might still opt out then if he thought he could get to $400 million again, but he might not. Whether he opted out that year might depend on what he actually did that year. Opting out could still very possibly add $50 million or more to his total career earnings. That's the only way to do it, you have to make so little money go to him in the first 3 years that opting out costs him almost the entire contract amount.

I'm playing along with the rules of the thread which says no Harper, and no, Harper is not moving to 1b even if we get him.

Cruz hasn't played more than 4 games in the OF since 2016, so by signing him I save a few million dollars but I also force Palka and Davidson into the lineup at 1b every day? I would pay the few million more to have Abreu able to play 1b fairly often.

Frontloading it is backwards. Frontloading it removes the penalty for opting out, the only way to make there be a penalty to opt out is to backload the deal. If you frontload the deal, then he gets lots of money at the front and little money at the end, so it makes way more sense to opt out and push up the value of those last few years. If you frontload a deal and then add in an opt out, then as long as the player is healthy they absolutely should take the opt out. The only way around an opt-out is to have there be money afterwards that the player can't match. Harper would take less money in years 4-6 if he was able to get more money in years 7-10 and then add in years 11, 12, and 13 on the second guaranteed deal.

Because he'd be 29 years old and still in a position where he could easily get another 9-10 year deal. If you write a deal this year for 10/$400, and you do it as $40 million per year, after 2021 he would have $280 million remaining on his deal over the next 7 years. If he was still a great outfielder at age 29, and salary inflation has continued for a few more years (New CBA might even guarantee the players more revenue), can you honestly tell me he wouldn't be able to beat a 7/$280 million contract? Albert Pujols got 10/$240 at age 32 and that was in the year 2012. Harper opting out would be talking about 10/$400 or more again after the year 2021, so you better be ready to outbid the Yankees...again.

You're right I do like the Palka and Davidson setup...but what am I doing with the DH spot if I let Abreu go? I've freed up $18 million in payroll, but what player am I going to get for the DH spot who is likely to produce beyond Abreu for that money? I already needed to sign one of the OFs to fill Garcia's spot, so now I need another one? That's comparable money and Abreu would be getting fewer years. So, put Palka and Davidson together to make a DH platoon, with the ability to rest the corner OF spots or 3b/1b every now and then, and then I have Abreu at 1b/Dh and a solid, cheap pair in Palka and Davidson, I'm getting decent production all around.

Because of the team schedule. There's a huge chance that the White Sox are not competitive in 2019 - IMO if they have that many players take huge steps forward they need to make Renteria and Cooper and Steverson coaches for life because that would be incredible performance even with Harper. 2020 looks Iffy at best. You can convince yourself that everything could go right, but we still have a young team, we would have very young catchers, we would have Kopech coming off an injury and needing to get innings more than anything else, we would have Cease as a rookie and who knows what you get from rookie pitchers even when they're talented, we would have to replace Abreu and that's going to eat into Free Agent dollars we have to spend...and that's before any other injuries happen. If you want to believe that Kopech is going to come back and have the same control he finished this year with, and that no one else is going to get hurt...you can see a path to competing that year, but that's so much of an "Everything goes right" case that it's hard to fathom right now. 2021 - that's the year this season's Winston Salem OF hits the big leagues. That's the year Robert should take over CF. We're going to have more players hitting the big leagues than we know what to do with. We might have no choice but to trade 2 of them, and maybe we target someone like Blake Snell or Trea Turner or someone ridiculous like that because we'll have so many resources. We should be disappointed if we're not competitive that year, that would require everything going wrong again. If you sign Harper to a 3 year opt out he's here for 2021, but the more you front-load the deal the more likely he is to opt out. If he opts out after 2021, you have to be ready for Harper to be here during 1 competitive season. Imagine the scenario where the White Sox win 75 games this year, 81 games in 2020, and then 92 games and a wild card birth in 2021, only to lose in the Wild Card - and THEN HARPER LEAVES. Now you've done everything right to get to a Wild Card birth, you get 1 game in the playoffs, and then your best or second best player leaves as a free agent. Congrats, you paid $120 million, you got 1 playoff game, your fan base is disappointed because you lost, and then they're demoralized because Harper signed a 10 year deal with the World Champion Yankees. Aside from the nightmare of the injuries continuing...that's just about the worst case scenario I can imagine.

If I'm looking at a competitive roster in 2019, I cleared out Avi and used his money, but like it or not I'm unlikely to find production anywhere close to Abreu at 1b by going on the FA market even with $18 million to spend. If I move Palka or Davidson to 1b, that's an offensive downgrade from Abreu, and if I move Palka to 1b now I need to find DH production. Palka and Davidson on the bench and filling the DH spot is totally ok with me, a bench of Sanchez, Davidson, backup OF (Leury), and Casteroid is a decent enough bench on paper that it's not a weakness and we can play around with platoon roles and fill in if/when Abreu gets hurt. If I dumped Abreu and tried to replace his production with someone like Brantley going to DH, it's almost the same money and out of the 2 I'll take Abreu.

I cannot do an opt out after year 3. That's after 2021. In my eyes, we're basically taking 1 shot at the world series before there's a good chance the player opts out. We'd be paying $125 million and we might be in the wild card race 1 time. I need at least 2 years when everyone should be up or traded out of the batch of prospects currently available. I guess you could convince me to do a year 3 opt out if each of the first 3 years was only $20 million or something like that, make it stupid for him to opt out.

Nobody bothered to comment on the one person who tried? Phooey.

The Astros won the world series when their opening day payroll was $117 mil (The Yankees were paying $8 mil for McCann). They added payroll during the year with Verlander and then gave Altuve a big extension afterwards...but they had a huge new revenue boost due to "Winning the World Series". Both of these things should happen with the White Sox.

The White Sox cannot assemble a competitive team for a $150 million payroll in 2019 without trading away their minor leaguers, and that includes if they were to sign Harper or Machado. Therefore, the answer to this is that they need to be aggressive on the trade market, and n some cases I'm going to need to overpay to motivate teams to move players they may not want to move. I don't know that Arenado is available, but he would be a sensible target as the Rockies might be motivated to move him if they have any indication that they could not re-sign him. Since he's only under control for 1 year you might have a shot at him without moving Cease, Kopech, Eloy, or Robert, but it's going to take someone out of our top 100. Some version of Dunning or Hansen + Rutherford might get them interested, but I'm not sure, that deal still seems somewhat light. Maybe a deal like that would work for Rendon also? If Harper leaves perhaps they'd be more motivated to move him for depth this year. Either way, if we miss out on Machado and we want to take a 62 win team up to 98 wins, we need a major upgrade at 3b. This adds approximately $15 million to the payroll. Meanwhile, we also need a major upgrade at CF and this is not available on the FA market either. The Reds have been talking about trading Billy Hamilton for years, he's not particularly great but he'd be a likely upgrade over Engel. I bet you would have a strong shot at him if you cashed in Basabe. This adds approximately $8 million to the payroll. Next up, we still need a corner OF upgrade, and that's not Avi garcia. This means we need to land one of McCutchen, Brantley, or Markakis. Signing one of them seems, as discussed in the Brantley thread, to be about a $15 million a year move, probably with a multi-year deal. This has taken me up to $90 million. Now I've got a lineup that's at least a quality lineup, but my rotation and bullpen are still disaster areas. Right now the White Sox need 2 pitchers just to stay afloat, and even if they sign both Keuchel and Corbin, they are still relying on Rodon to stay healthy and Lopez and Giolito not to be disasters, and so I need some additional depth behind them. I'm already running into resource limits here, so I'm going to say sign 1 of those 2 pitchers for a $25 million a year deal. I'm then going to go for someone like Joe Kelly or Nathan Eovaldi and say that they can move to the bullpen if needed, and I'm going to drop him in at $15 million a year. This brings my payroll to $130 million and I still have the unfortunate worry of Giolito as a major part of my rotation. Now I'm going to be creative and go after Mike Fiers from the A's, he has 1 year left on his contract so Beane will likely try to cash in on him a-la Samardzija. Someone like Walker might be a good target here - get value out of him early. Finally, I still have an extremely young bullpen. I am totally unsatisfied with my bullpen without an established closer. Wade Davis signed for 3/$52 and I think that's probably what Kimbrel is looking at after the way he finished this year, so I'm going to go 3/$52 for Kimbrel and hope that's enough. This brings me in at just under $160 million. I have to hope for the best from a number of positions, the bullpen most of all, but whoever loses out of the rotation competition can move over there and that should be another useful arm also. I think I've done pretty well with the offense, Cleveland's rotation is still substantially better so they have a legit shot at still beating us, but both teams have major bullpen worries so the division probably comes down to whose bullpen holds together better next year.

And as with FoxConn, it would have been cheaper per job for the state to just hire people itself.

And yet, as with Foxconn, the company is never going to give you a guarantee for a number of jobs in writing, so that if they happen to evaporate the state doesn't recoup it's money.

No that's not how it works because most defensive gun uses would not be incidents that result in fatalities even in that case. If you somehow have the penis engorging fantasy come true where you are the one who successfully pulls a gun on a person who is attempting to rob you, that would count as a defensive gun use, but most robberies do not end in fatalities. If you start a fight, the person punches you, and you pull a gun, that could still count as a defensive gun use. No one would have died and you started the fight, but you get to count that.

His bat was so good that they didn't want to have him spend 3-4 years developing behind the plate as a catcher, they wanted him called up and in the big leagues as a hitter. They moved him from catcher almost immediately.

Took me a while to find it but here's the original thread on the thing (Seriously, the search suggests rather than search for "MLB Streaming" you should search for "MLB and streaming" and then it returned every single post that included the word "and".)

I'd hate having Harper signed and Donaldson at 3b and bypassing any bidding on Arenado because we had already spent the money/half filled the position.

The average OPS at 2b across MLB last year was .712. The average OPS at 3b last year was .763. If he turns into a 40 HR hitting powerhouse and Madrigal comes up and is a great hitter we won't care, but yeah it's easier to find solid production at 3b (Davidson?) than it is to find one at 2b.

I agree with that. Please go do that. I don't think that a Happ or a Lynn or any of those guys, the guys who will win 1-2 extra games, will make any difference at all with the TV contract as I don't think they are enough to make us competitive next year even with one of the big fish. And then importantly, if you sign someone to a multi year deal and you use up payroll that we could spend in 2020 and 2021, you are making the team I care about worse.

Like it or not, "not being good enough for our TV contract renewal" was the risk that Rick Hahn took in 2015 and 2016 when he sacrificed future seasons for his success those years. Doing things that hurt us long term or cost us the ability to sign the last player when we really need them, in order to win 78 games next year instead of 75 games...that's not going to affect this TV contract, but it could be the difference between a 98 win division champion and a 97 win wild card team that goes home after 1 game in 2021. Miley could be ok for me, although he did miss more than 1/2 the year last year with an oblique injury which worries me because I need innings. But even though he was decent last year, he was rotten in 2016 and awful in 2017, so I'd struggle to see anyone giving him more than 1 year. Happ - one of these contenders might grab him for a couple years at the back of their rotation, he's been decent and reliable for several years in a row in the AL East.

The White Sox absolutely have to go outside the organization to get pitching, Kopech's injury left us no choice. We have 3 starting pitchers right now and 1 of them has a shoulder we should be worried about. We need at least 2 starting pitchers next year just to avoid forfeiting games. But, the top line starters available - Corbin and Keuchel - they do not do anything close to making this team competitive next year, and signing them both basically would destroy our payroll flexibility for the future if we did land one of the big fish. There are plenty of guys who might be ok and more affordable, but they're like 1/10 or 1/5 chances of them being good. Signing 2 of them gets us some innings, but they're a path to the team sucking next year. They're guys like Shields and Pomeranz, who were poor to bad last year. I'm totally ok with that! It has to happen for one more year. There's simply no path that puts this team anywhere on Cleveland's footing next year, let alone on the level of the Yankees or Astros, without so much player development happening that if you saw it you'd declare this staff coaches for life. So yes, take what Hahn said at face value. There's no reason not to sign one of the 2 big fish if we can land them. But beyond that...do no harm. If you sign Keuchel and Corbin, or heck just one of them, you are doing harm. You are giving away my ability to sign a big contract player next offseason, or the offseason after that, to fill a role that we should be able to fill internally, and you're doing so for a very dicey proposition - that we're going to be competitive next year in an era where even the wild card teams really have no shot at doing damage and where our rotation looks on paper like a pushover compared to Cleveland's. We absolutely have to go outside the organization for pitching. We do not have warm bodies right now, there is simply no other option. But our targets, at least for this year, should be Shields, Pomeranz, etc. - guys on 1 year deals, guys who stank last year and who we shouldn't expect much from other than innings. If pitching winds up being a need next offseason, there will be pitching available next offseason, and the offseason after that, and that will be the time to spend money on it.