caulfield12

Not hearing Imanata’s name much recently, but he is suddenly one to watch as he was expected to come in around $75 million before all this craziness…and he’s actually the third option currently in FA behind Snell and Montgomery.

Coverage of Ohtani and Yamamoto…about 50-60 Japanese writers will now be based out of Southern California, with 15-20 Korean writers already split between SFG and SD (unless HaSeong Kim is traded off at max value because they cant get enough back for eating the Cronenworth deal.) Then you have the Dodgers/Padres to open the season in Seoul. When the Dodgers are out of town, it only makes sense for some of those writers to be allocated to much closer games than the Cubs (Suzuki) and Red Sox (Yoshida). Also depends of course where those various teams are in the standings.

Looks like other West Coast teams now building around the Japanese and Korean markets except the A’s Mariners and of course the Angels. Looks like they believe they can take advantage of the spillover effect from LA. There’s your new Hader on the cheap lol. https://www.gaslampball.com/2023/12/19/24008210/padres-close-to-signing-reliever-yuki-matsui

And satellite providers. Right now...the majority of big streaming sites are losing money and will have to cut back, merge/consolidate or simply disappear from existence.

It's pretty amazing what the Brewers have done vis a vis the hifher-spending Cubs and Cardinals over the last decade or so. Even then, they inevitably lost Stearns to the Mets and Counsell to the Cubs...and are in the verge of rebuilding if they end up dealing Burnes.

Just have to wait for the trade because $150-175 million for Snell and $100-125 million for Montgomery is even more insane to all but the Top Ten or so franchises…for example, the Braves would never dare touch those two deals.

They’re so far away Luis Robert and probably Montogomery are the only two players one can even feel confident being on the 2026/27 rosters…if not traded. The odds of getting a positional star caliber young player here are probably 10% at best. Even with three of the best trade assets in the game, the Sox didn’t even acquire any All Stars out of the last so called wave of 2017-2020. Rodon was almost an accident (no other options) and we managed to get nothing for him when he left. Anderson was drafted and Abreu and Robert were signed as FA’s.

Can’t imagine where they would have been without Baines and Ventura... Another thing the Sox never used to do was pay through the nose for relievers,,,going all the way back to Roberto Hernandez and Thigpen and Foulke.. Other than the KW Koch disaster, Linebrink/Dotel, Robertson and then Liam and Crew, we hardly ever had big money invested into bullpens until the Royals became the darlings of the sport. And then that niche advantage was lost as nearly evrryone attempted to emulate KC.

Assuming some were right about his wrist...why would he suddenly become one of the worst defenders in baseball simultaneously?

Or Benintendi being so close to Robert...based on what exactly? Benintendi has only had one good season in the past four...and that was largely on the backs of being in that Yankee lineup, not unlike Pollock with the Dodgers then subsequently falling off a cliff.

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39170048/steve-cohen-life-goes-mets-missing-yamamoto The get-togethers helped Yamamoto crystallize his priorities before the teams started talking terms of the deal with Yamamoto and his agent, Joel Wolfe, on Monday. Cohen ultimately made a similar contract offer to Yamamoto -- 12 years and $325 million plus opt-outs -- but couldn't overcome the Dodgers, who have now accounted for more than half the spending across MLB in free agency this winter, following the 10-year, $700 million contract they gave to Shohei Ohtani, Yamamoto's countryman. ..... "Last I looked, there's never one player that is going to make or break your team," Cohen said of Yamamoto, who has dominated Nippon Professional Baseball like nobody else in the league's 74-year history since transitioning from bullpen to the Orix Buffaloes' rotation in 2019."

They know they need to have a stable of younger players to offset all those 3 massive veteran contracts. Just like the Astros managed to balance for so long. Also the Rangers are one of the 3 teams currently being threatened with lower RSN rights fees...despite the WS title. This was one year ago coming off Cy Young runnerup lol...and three inexpensive years of control. Texas Rangers RECEIVE SP Dylan Cease RP Kendall Graveman RP Joe Kelly Chicago White Sox RECEIVE RHP Owen White RHP Glenn Otto IF Justin Foscue OF Bubba Thompson

It's not like trading Cease for minor league prospects is going to boost season ticket sales. Zero reason not to wait out the market exactly like Boras does on the player side. Someone always blinks eventually.

It's not so much pitching extremely well (record doesn't matter one bit) as believing in someone's upside. Remember how Giolito was basically the worst pitcher in baseball in the early part of his Sox career and then came out of it? Who knows...if you're not inside that clubhouse. But does Jessie Scholtens or Davis Martin really have any upside? Trade or flip value? Simply placeholders protecting younger pitchers who aren't ready from getting slaughtered? I would like to think the goal at some point is to find the members of the 2026/27 starting rotation.

Sure...but why even bother acquiring them in the first place? I remember a time when we found guys like Damaso Marte because of roster crunches in other organizations. Except we should have the least amount of that as the least talented overall organization in baseball at the moment. Honeywell another example. The bullpen without Santos looks to be one of the very worst in the majors if you don't have a healthy Crochet ever again.

Francisco Mejia was supposed to be one of the best catchers in the game...and that never panned out either. Even the Rays get some clearly wrong.

Corbin Burnes seems to be the key now...he's the most comparable piece to Dylan Cease out there now, not Bieber. More expensive than Glasnow but certainly less than Cease. Also the big projected salary differentials to consider between the two.

Royce Lewis Correa and Buxton were all considered elite…Jhoan Duran has the potential to be an elite closer. Miguel Sano was considered the best player in the Dominican at age 16 and the Twins won the bidding war. The Giants otoh have never signed a true superstar, just Barry Bonds and internal free agents until JungHo Kim…who most consider to be more of a complementary player and not a true star, either.

Not even close…as a non subscriber, I couldn’t access the whole thing anyway.

The sport is going to grow by 15% worldwide due to these two signings. Whether a 50s/60s style Dodgers dynasty in the NL is a good thing for the sport is another question altogether. Numerous non-baseball fans around the world are talking about the sport, partucularly the two contracts and these two talented players... How could that be bad? Most teams will set attendance records when the Dodgers are in town as well.

https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/why-japanese-righthander-yoshinobu-yamamoto-is-coveted-by-mlb-teams/ Seems professional athletes always take a lot more abuse than singers comedians movie and tv stars, models, etc., on this issue of exorbitant or "unseemly high" salaries. Because playing a game requires less practice or dedication? ... don't think so.

Yahoo Sports. Pretty much everything else besides his height is a positive. FanGraphs describes Yamamoto as "reminiscent of peak Zack Greinke" and grades his future value as a 65 on the 20-80 scale, which is a higher grade than that of the current top prospect in the minors, Baltimore Orioles phenom Jackson Holliday. Baseball America went even higher, with a 70 grade for Yamamoto, saying he "projects to be a No. 2 starter (lol) and has a chance to contend for Cy Young Awards." Yamamoto boasts a deep arsenal of pitches, with four of them graded by BA as above-average. It starts with a mid-90s fastball, followed by a wipeout splitter and a looping curveball. Rounding out the group are a slider and a cutter to keep hitters guessing, and all of the pitches are elevated by consistent command. https://sports.yahoo.com/yoshinobu-yamamoto-reportedly-agrees-to-join-dodgers-on-record-12-year-325-million-deal-041846597.html Of course he needs to switch from pitching once a week to once every 5-6 days...but with 15-20% fewer pitches in the US.

That was me…although there were many apparently NY media suckered by the same belief or assumption to be fair, especially the blogosphere. Will definitely make things much easier for the Japanese media...won't have to split their coverage.

1. Yoshinobu Yamamoto: 12 years, $325 million, $50.6 million posting fee 2. Masahiro Tanaka, New York Yankees: seven years, $155 million, $20 million posting fee 3. Masataka Yoshida, Boston Red Sox: five years, $90 million, $15.4 million posting fee 4. Seiya Suzuki, Chicago Cubs: five years, $85 million, $14.6 million posting fee 5. Yu Darvish, Texas Rangers: six years, $60 million, $51 million posting free 6. Yusei Kikuchi, Seattle Mariners: four years, $56 million, $10.3 million posting fee 7. Daisuke Matsuzaka, Boston Red Sox: six years, $52 million, $51.1 million posting fee In case you were curious, Ichiro Suzuki's first MLB contract was a three-year, $14 million deal with a $13.1 million posting fee. Ohtani moved to the U.S. right after MLB rule changes meant he couldn't sign a big-money deal due to his young age. https://sports.yahoo.com/yoshinobu-yamamoto-reportedly-agrees-to-join-dodgers-on-record-12-year-325-million-deal-041846597.html#:~:text=Yamamoto's deal sets record for Japanese players 1,%2460 million%2C %2451 million posting free More items

https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/39147239/yoshinobu-yamamoto-dodgers-contract-grade-free-agency The bottom line is there is no such thing as a mega-contract without risk, certainly not for a pitcher. But the Dodgers are just the kind of franchise who can afford to take on this kind of risk. The union of Yamamoto, Ohtani, the Dodgers, and the Los Angeles and Japanese fan bases has the potential to be an all-timer. When you think of the Dodgers, you think blue -- but their future is going to be generating a whole lot of green. They also have the perfect infrastructure in place to satisfy Yamamoto's apparent penchant for constant self improvement. One example: Despite all the success he enjoyed during the first six seasons of his career, last season Yamamoto got rid of the leg kick he'd long used during his delivery, in part to make him more apt to control the running game. That's a pretty fundamental adjustment for someone who had performed so well for so long -- and he went out and had his best season. Now he will get immersed in the Dodgers' system of pitch optimization. It really does feel like a marriage made in baseball heaven. Well, at least for the portion of it that roots for the Dodgers. The Dodgers are constructing a monster of a roster, though they still need to build out additional rotation depth, especially in lieu of last year's injury epidemic to that position group. And this being baseball and a 14-team postseason tournament being what it is, they are still guaranteed nothing in terms of a World Series trophy. But in landing the top two free agents on the board, they have established themselves as a strong favorite to win it all -- not just next season, but for the foreseeable future. Superstar players are hard to come by. In Ohtani and Yamamoto, the Dodgers added two players who are of that ilk (or at least potentially in Yamamoto's case) -- and also made sure that none of the other big spenders in the sport acquired them. All of the biggest teams in baseball were in on Yamamoto, which as much as anything validates this investment. Thus, Dodgers Inc. grows ever stronger -- a dynasty more than a decade old that shows no signs of crumbling any time soon, if ever. Grade: A