Balta1701

I wouldn’t describe any of those guys using those words. Hell, Leury came over in a trade from Texas, Yermin was 25 and had been in Baltimore and Washington’s systems before here. The only one with more than a rounding error to 0 WAR in their careers is Leury.

But the bolded is what you folks have been expecting consistently in this thread and telling me will happen this time.

Or the other option still is possible - that none of them will pay this diamond price, and they will fill their needs as well as they can with the pieces that are available. This is precisely what happened at the trade deadline with Cease last year, no team was willing to pay the kind of asking price the White Sox wanted. This is also what has happened through the full offseason so far.

That isn't the question though. The question is whether that's more a deal that would work for both teams, as that would at least satisfy some of Baltimore's pitching need at a cost it was more willing to pay.

Then if you believe that, hold onto Cease for a couple months and let him prove it. If he's top 3 in the Cy Young race at the deadline, or even in June, you're going to get the type of bidding war and elite returns people are angry that we're not getting now. Take away the reason for Baltimore's GM to hesitate.

Then where's the Fire Ethan Katz thread? Because fixing things that are easily fixable over a full year seems like a reasonable job for a pitching coach.

Couldn't one of those guys for Bieber be a matchup that works for both teams? Cleveland definitely needs the offensive help.

The number of times I say "I would need to see Cease get back to his 2022 form before I'd trade for him" while people ignore it and insist I've said he will never rebound still is amazing to me. But go ahead, continue to make it personal.

Houston, for example, yes has more resources than some of the noncompetitive teams, and that has helped them, but at the same time look what happened to Houston this year. They signed several bad contracts including Abreu and Montero, and now they're on the verge of having Bregman, Altuve, and potentially Verlander leaving after this year. If they had a smaller market, it's possible they could have more aggressively moved a piece like Bregman or Valdez after their 2022 title to keep their salary more under control. So, either way - they had a hell of a run, but somewhere in there they're going to need to retool. When we talk about sustainable winning organizations, I see no team that does so without strong development. The Braves, the Dodgers, the Rays - they are at the top because they pulled a ton from their minor leagues. The Yankees missed the playoffs in 2016, did a quick rebuilding, and got back to the playoffs based on finding a guy like Judge. When the Yankees, the Mets have tried to short circuit this setup, they wind up missing the playoffs and spending $250 million. The organizations that have sustainable runs continue developing talent and using it in interesting, aggressive ways.

Straight up answer - I don't know. I have seen two fundamentally different versions of Dylan Cease over the past 2 years. Projecting him to be in-between those two doesn't fit the pitcher that I saw, he has been two fundamentally different people. Some of the same people who are saying that Cease should return a fortune now were saying in April that Cease was in trouble if he couldn't get his fastball back. They were right at that time, and I doubted them at that time because historically his velocity got better during the summer. I would have paid through the roof for 2022 Dylan Cease. I wouldn't trade for 2023 Dylan Cease if I was trying to build a competitive rotation.

I have no idea how to do this on Baseball-Savant or any website. And it still misses a big part of the problem - 2023 Cease was way worse than 2022 Cease. 2022 Cease was elite and you could ask for an elite pitcher price based on that. 2023 still existed and happened, and was way more recent than 2022.

Indiana-Purdue basketball is also on Peacock only for one game this year. And yeah, this will not only not get me to subscribe but it will leave me holding a grudge, so that I make sure they dont' ever get money from me.

No that's how Baseball-Savant does things though, it's a little messy. If I filter to minimum 500 PAs against someone, Cease was 41st on wOBA and 38th on xERA in 2023. Very close to Clevinger, slightly behind Eduardo Rodriguez and Chris Bassitt.

And yet, in MLB no team has more than 3 titles in the past 25 years. In the NFL, one team has 6.

Naw, I will compliment you guys on being right like I did last summer. The difference is y'all act like I'm betraying the White Sox by pointing any of this out, it's a personal attack on every White Sox fan, it's some horrible offense because if I write any of this then some other team's scouts might see it!

Naw but his xERA (175th in baseball, qualified pitchers) and wOBA (182nd in baseball, qualified pitchers) do and they tell the same story.

Dylan Cease in 2023 was roughly #60 in rWAR (it's hard to estimate since they don't make a full list easy to find, he was #64 in WAR according to ESPN where I can sort it). Is a guy who is #2 in 2022 and #64 in 2023 a top 10 starter? I don't think so, and I would look elsewhere if I had to pay a top 10 in MLB price for a top 60 starter...unless you could prove to me that he was the guy he was in 2022 again or at least close to it.

Operating in small windows is how things are supposed to go! You get a 3 to 4 year run where you make the playoffs several times, then your guys start getting expensive and leaving. That's how the NFL goes! Take a look at the Buffalo Bills right now for a great example, they had a multi-year run, they were able to add a Von Miller to push everything in on 2022, and now they're struggling a bit because they can't keep all their defenders around and they don't have young guys to replace guys who are getting injured more (the Bears signed a LB from them last offseason). Take a look at the LA Rams - they dumped everything they had on winning a title, took advantage of Kupp and Donald, won their title, and finished 5-12 last year because they hit the salary cap. The Eagles and the 49ers are in a peak right now, but the Eagles lost a LB to the Bears last year and right now they're struggling to stop the run the last 3 games because their LB corps is a bit weak. This is totally normal!!! You can look at basically every Super Bowl qualifying team other than 2 exceptions and you'll find the same pattern. The only teams in the NFL that are exceptions to this are the ones that have the truly elite coach-QB combos (New England, KC). Pittsburgh is a totally different problem. Their ownership also flat out sucks. Even with that, they're able to make the playoffs occasionally, but they have been really bad at developing talent (Go check out Gerrit Cole's story here). Kansas City had a strong multi-year run, made the World Series twice, then had to rebuild afterwards - and their problem has been that their rebuild has gone poorly. They've gone back to being dumb, possibly because their GM had other priorities than finding the best players once they won their title. Baltimore hasn't made the playoffs in years, but now they built up a load of talent and suddenly are looking at being a top team for the next however many years as long as they don't squander their young talent. They're in a division with the Red Sox, Yankees, and Rays, and they led the AL in wins last year. The Dodgers have spent a ton of money this offseason, they make the playoffs every year, but they're also on top because their organization is whip-smart. They are able to make trades for Trea Turner and Max Scherzer because in addition to spending money, they also develop talent like mad. They turned guys like Max Muncy, Justin Turner into studs when other teams gave up on them. They aren't getting high draft picks, but they are still churning out prospects that people want to trade for, because they're bloody well run and smart. They've short-circuited the normal cycle by being...really really smart.

We will repeat this again. fWAR is missing what happened to Dylan Cease the last 2 years. It is designed to factor that out. In 2022, Dylan Cease had the 10th best fWAR in the league. This is not Cy Young caliber if that's all you follow. Notably, Aaron Nola put up a 6.3 fWAR season, best in baseball - that's a Cy Young caliber season. Given fWAR, which you chose to quote at me, you would say that Dylan Cease has never put up a Cy Young caliber season and you'd agree with me that calling him a Cy Young caliber pitcher has never been correct and is a clear exaggeration. Dylan Cease, of course, was 2nd in the AL Cy Young voting that year, so what happened? Well, that's the part that fWAR is factoring out. Dylan Cease in 2022 had excellent contact numbers against him in addition to his high strikeout numbers. fWAR filters this out by focusing on FIP - it assumes that if a guy is generating weak contact its due to luck and if a guy is giving up hard contact it is also due to luck. In 2022, my version of Dylan Cease is that in addition to high strikeout and walk numbers, his statcast performance was excellent, his hard hit numbers were at the top of the league. In 2023, his exit velocity numbers were in the bottom half of the league and his performance suffered as a consequence. IF you want to call him Cy Young caliber in 2022, you're right, but that was because his slider in particular was producing very weak, pathetic contact against it. That pitch was hit hard in 2023. Fangraphs is filtering this out through the use of FIP, so you get an average performance that says "he's good but never has been Cy Young caliber" because it is calling the difference in those qualities luck. If you go to a different version, B-R, you will find that Cease was #2 in MLB in 2022 in WAR. That's a Cy Young caliber pitcher and I agree with that. But you also find a guy who dropped off to 2.4 rWAR last year, because he gave up more hard contact and B-R doesn't filter that out. I also agree with that, and I think this is the correct way to look at him, I think that Fangraphs is incorrectly filtering things out that are important by not taking into account contact profile for this pitcher. However, you don't get to pick both, you can't tell me he's a Cy Young caliber pitcher when Fangraphs says he's top 10-20 but not top 5, and then tell me that Fangraphs also thinks he has steady solid value from year to year. Is he a top 20 pitcher in MLB but not Cy Young caliber like Fangraphs thinks, or is he Cy Young caliber but a mid-rotation innings eater in 2023 (and 2021)?

I keep stressing this for a reason - convince me that baseball has a competition parity problem. They have a salary parity problem, a resource parity problem, but they seem pretty far from a competition parity problem. It has been almost 25 years since a team repeated as World Series champions. No team has more than 3 titles in the last 25 years. In the last 10 years the Royals have a title, the Astros have 2 titles after doing a complete rebuild, the Cubs have a title after doing a complete rebuild, the Nationals won a title and had to do a complete rebuild shortly afterwards. In the last 10 years, we have had the teams from Cleveland, Arizona, and Tampa Bay make the World Series as small market teams. The Teams like the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees may spend a ton of money, but it doesn't guarantee them titles, or even World Series appearances. Hell, the Mets and Yankees both missed the playoffs last year, despite all the money the Mets spent they had to sell off at the trade deadline. Baseball has some moribund franchises, but a lot of that is internal. The Pirates and As and a few others have decided that they prefer to rake in as much money as possible. There are clearly some issues with the regional sports networks this year that have to be ironed out. What the Dodgers did with Ohtani's deal may in the future appear to be a big problem that has to be dealt with. However, if your team wants to win and is smart about doing so, there is no reason why you can't have a run of several playoff appearances in a row with a legit chance at a title and probably a World Series appearance. The teams that don't do this - the Rockies, the White Sox, etc., aren't uncompetitive because they're being outspent so badly they can't compete, they're uncompetitive because they're dumb. What the Dodgers did with Ohtani might change things and give them an extra advantage, but as of now I only see one cheat code to winning World Series titles in baseball, and it isn't money, it's Bruce Bochy.

Yup, read this and wanted to yell "2023 happened". You're getting a guy who was an innings-eating mid rotation starter in 2023 and was a Cy Young caliber starter in 2022 hoping you can get him back to the earlier level. Not the same thing at all.

Please note that the 2nd statement has nothing to do with their being a salary cap, it has to do with there being a salary floor. Negotiations might link that to a salary cap, but they are definitely separate issues, you could easily have a salary floor without a cap if that's what negotiations agreed to. Or a cap without a floor.

Yankees, Orioles, Red Sox all realize they’re better off not paying a super high price and hold onto their prospects instead.

While it's minor, it's an unnecessary waste of time and frankly a waste of effort on a pitcher's arm. Managers do it to either buy other guys time to warm up or to do gamesmanship things - oh you gotta have your guy announced first so I will send my guy out to fool you. It becomes a time waster coming right out of a commercial break, everything comes back, is ready to go, then oh here's another 3 minute delay. Especially if it happened at all during the playoffs, let's just get rid of it, it's unnecessary and serves no benefit to having a better game and makes it worse for TV. Put the pitcher out there to warm up who is actually going to pitch, come back from the break, and play baseball.

Excluding 2020 (or counting the year-opening 2020 payroll) when is this "Recent" year when Tampa Bay had a payroll under $60 million?