caulfield12

Schist. Scheisse.

Going cost to save $35 million in 2024 salary but most importantly to LAD adding TOR starter Glasnow...to cover the one year Ohtani won't be pitching.

He's going to be a lot closer to Ichiro than a 20-25 homer guy...especially playing 81 games in SF.

It does have everyone in the world (temporarily at least) talking baseball, Dodgers, Ohtani...even all the other professional leagues.

Hoerner at least would be better than the likes of India or Frazier, but not happening.

Rays clearing tons of payroll. Around $35 million by my count, as Margot was set to make $10 million coming off a 0.4 fWAR season (2022 was surprisingly good). They might be in on Cease now, too. https://www.tampabay.com/sports/rays/2023/12/12/wander-franco-dominican-republic-mlb-investigation-spring-training/

Outman to Sox lol. Simply to have a more interesting board, whoever is still left hanging around past the trade deadline.

You're going to be saying the same thing about the next 15 pitchers off the board. Which ultimately works in favor of JR and Getz I guess. Of course most fanbases don't attend due to rational, risk-mitigating front offices. Not exactly inspirational.

When Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani joined the Angels in 2018, my cousins and I made a bet. How long until he leaves Orange County to join the Los Angeles Dodgers? We knew it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. Not just because the Blue Crew is one of baseball’s marquee franchises, while the Halos are as respected as a soul patch. Or because Angels owner Arte Moreno makes NFT investors seem as smart with their money as, well, the Dodgers, who just signed Ohtani to the richest contract ever in professional sports, at $700 million for 10 years. Nah, we knew Ohtani was fated to leave because he's a young, talented person — and folks like him usually get the hell out of O.C. the moment they can. We saw the best minds of my generation flee for Austin, Texas, Chicago, New York, the Inland Empire, but especially L.A. — the place our elders taught us to fear as full of crime and liberals. Our friends and relatives left to find opportunities that were impossible in staid, conservative, expensive Orange County. They rarely looked back. When their new neighbors asked where they were from, most would demur and say “Southern California” or “near Los Angeles." City, civic and county leaders didn't care about this exodus, since O.C. was never meant to be cool. We were the spot where people moved after they made it. Orange County was aspirational, and if you couldn't afford to hack it here, good riddance and don't forget to take along other underachievers like you. This thinking went on, unchecked, for decades. But it’s finally dawning on the lords of O.C. that losing our young to Los Angeles and elsewhere portends doom. https://www.yahoo.com/news/column-shohei-ohtani-just-latest-224818706.html

Can I please at least get a trademark symbol next to Caulfield in the thread title? Thanks in advance for your time and consideration, oh mighty yet benevolent moderating team.

Almost starting to feel sorry for Craig Kimbrel. Almost. But he keeps getting paid $10+ million per year...so not feeling THAT sorry. At any rate, Liam's a good dude...he might end up signing in the middle of the season to one of those deals with incentives based on a 2-3 month long season in order to earn a much healthier 2025 option year. Don't want to ever bet against that guy. Do so at your own peril.

Doomed by favorite uncle (who definitely liked his beer, mostly Coors in the 70's and 80's) loving the White Sox, the other liked the Cubs. Of course, he was from Dubuque and worked for the local meat packing company.

Probably has a clause that will be opened upon JR's "untimely" death which binds the Board of Directors to never signing a Sox player for over $100 million into perpetuity, lol... South Side "lunch pail/working class/blue collar" indeed.

Ohtani accepting such a drastic portion of his compensation in deferrals will give teams ammunition when they ask other players—all of them inferior to Ohtani—to do the same. Many owners might be pissed too, insofar as a deferral like this one provides a model, albeit with strings attached, to a supersize payment total for players. The latter theory has origins in other sports. In 2010 the NHL’s New Jersey Devils gave a $102 million contract to goal-scoring winger Ilya Kovalchuk. The sticker price was a lot, but the stunner was the term: a 17-year pact that Kovalchuk, then 27, was never going to play all the way out. The franchise built the contract that way so that Kovalchuk’s salary cap hit would be lower. A furious league office fined the Devils and took away some draft picks because New Jersey had committed a grave sin against sports’ ownership class: It had devised a creative way to enhance a player’s salary. But the Dodgers now have a path to give more players more money while also snapping up Ohtani, and who knows what their down-the-road obligations might be because of Ohtani’s deferrals? The current CBA runs only through 2026. The sport could look much different by the time Ohtani needs to get his cash. Players might be angry about the money Ohtani will have to wait to get, and other owners might be angry that the Dodgers are giving it to him. Baseball’s owners aren’t a monolith, and some will be offended merely at the notion that the Dodgers got a player they’d never dare try to get for themselves. None of that is the Dodgers’ problem, though. They’ve pulled a coup, and their fans will get to watch one of the most exciting athletes ever for the next decade. Ohtani has been more generous to his new employer than he had to be, but such is life when you’ve just spent six years drawing favorable comparisons to Babe Ruth while never once appearing in the postseason. Ohtani languished on a team that never deserved him. Now he will star for one that barely has to work to afford him. Picked a really good year for the Dodgers and Padres (HaSeong Kim) to kick off the season in Korea. They're only missing the mythical Lee, who will be patrolling CF in SF for at least the next four seasons. And of course Yamamoto and Shota Imanata (big Cubs' fall back option at $75-90ish million) are still out there as well.

Ohtani’s 10-year deal, worth $700 million, would see him collect only $2 million a season until after the deal concludes. The rest will arrive without interest, Ardaya reported, between 2034 and 2043. In other words, Ohtani will issue an interest-free loan of nearly his entire salary for more than a decade. That will free up cash flow for the Dodgers while lowering the team’s obligations under MLB’s competitive balance tax. That tax applies to big-spending teams like the Dodgers, as a collectively bargained incentive to hold salaries down and give smaller-market teams (but really just cheaper owners) a better chance to compete without making a big financial effort. Ohtani will be fine. He has been the face of baseball in his native Japan for years, and he has recently become the same in the United States. His endorsement earnings are enormous, estimated in Ardaya’s report at $50 million a year. That allowed Ohtani to not quite work for the Dodgers for free but to accept an employment agreement worth nowhere close to what $700 million indicates. Sports economists will have a field day figuring out his new contract’s present-day value. A stock reaction to this reporting on Monday afternoon was: How is that legal? Well, it’s right there in the collective bargaining agreement between MLB’s players and owners, the one they struck up after a lockout in 2022. “There shall be no limitations on either the amount of deferred compensation or the percentage of total compensation attributable to deferred compensation” in MLB contracts, it says. The Dodgers don’t even have to have all that deferred compensation funded until years from now. The piper will need payment, but it will be a while. The world might end, or the Dodgers might get sold first. And Ohtani might be living somewhere other than California, so he might pay less in taxes. In the meantime, the Dodgers will pay about $20 million over 10 years for the best baseball player alive. ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports that in competitive balance tax terms, Ohtani’s deal will count for $46 million, not $70 million, per season. That will save L.A. millions in tax penalties while Ohtani is on the roster, though the deal is so big that it’s not right to see the whole thing as a tax dodge. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/shohei-ohtani-700-million-contract-183057095.html

Even there you had the Pohlads with multiple billions more than JR refusing to spend significantly on their product...just much better front office personnel and scouting/evaluation/coaching staffs for much of the past two decades. (Obviously the 2005 and 2008 coin flip Blackout win exceptions.)

Lee, a South Korean MVP and the son of a former MVP, can terminate the deal after four years and $72 million to become a free agent again. Zaidi discussed the team's negotiations with Ohtani and said the club had made three different offers, including a final proposal very similar to the deal with the Dodgers. "The proposal that was made was very comparable if not identical to what he wound up agreeing to,” Zaidi said during a video call. “We offered what would have been the biggest contract in major league history. I’m guessing we weren’t the only team that did that. But wanted to show our aggressiveness and interest right out of the gate.” SFgate.com/sports Giants are now claiming they largely lost out on Ohtani "due to geography."

Royals clearly outspending Sox this offseason...sigh. At least we're on par with CLE and MIN.

Pretty sad every Sox player comes attached with caveat...get him away from that coaching staff or that clubhouse. Saw recently where TA7 was expected to get somewhere between $10 million and the QO amount. Other than maybe Burger...and some will argue Bummer...Sox haven't gotten anything resembling increased value from any of their in-house assets. Stuck with Santos for now, too.

Gets even worse for FA's in CF: Kevin Kiermaier, Michael A. Taylor and Harrison Bader are your three top choices, after Bellinger.

Closer to 3 minutes...too reliant on Tyreek Hill to bail them out. Tua's taking way too many sacks and not as careful with the football the last month or so.

No reason to deal Eloy without trying first with a new set of hitting coaches...with an almost completely turned over starting roster and simply the fact that with Burger gone and Moncada soon to follow, you really have to get power from SOMEWHERE in the line-up when you play 54 games in the Chicago summer months at GRF.

Just one season....he was already at roughly $40 million, conservatively, the last couple of seasons, as a non-playoff bound Angel. Remember, he's getting equal or even greater amounts back in Japan for endorsing everything under the sun. Then you're combining the Ohtani phenomenon with how dominant the Dodgers' brand is in California as well as across the Pacific Rim.

Going to be a lot of Roy Oswalt comps...Pedro Martinez would be another. Stroman. The high school pitch counts in Japan are just insane. Hopefully Yamamoto and Sasaki can come out of their inevitable surgeries intact.

Who was the last international position player that totally busted on a high-profile deal like this? Off the top of my head, You had the Cubans....Yasmani Tomas (DBacks), Rusney Castillo (Red Sox) and Hector Olivera (Dodgers, 2B).