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Its crazy to me to look at Bryce Harper's contract and wonder how more teams weren't in on this. This was a 26 year old absolute superstar, and not one year of this deal eclipsed $30 million per year. Even better, the last 3 years of the deal when he is most likely in decline or declined are only $23 million per year!

degrom is a regrettable contract Trea Turner wont turn 30 until around the all star break next season. If he is a solid player for 5 years of this contract I don't think the Phillies are going to look at their 2028 payroll and go "Damn, you know what, wish we weren't stuck with this $27 million per year albatross."

2024 Payroll Bryce Harper - $27 million per year Trea Turner - $27 million per year Yoan Moncada - $24 million per year Yowza..

Yeah, well, they'll be sorry in like 7 years when hes not that good anymore.

Wasn’t it already, pretty much, proven they made a really bad offer to Machado and didn’t even offer for Harper?

Of course they don't know what they are doing, this has been proven multiple times.

Well, again, I am not trying to justify paying Abreu $60 million dollars and putting Vaughn in the OF again or trading him. That's what I would have preferred they do, but you're right that was never going to happen. I am just saying, player to player, the team would be better with Abreu on it.

This team would be better with Jose Abreu on it. Having Vaughn at 1B and ditching Jose is not whats best for this team. Its whats best for this ownership group that refuses to push all the chips in for a contender. So yeah, you are right, with the way the front office wants to operate we could not realistically bring Jose back.

Unfortunately no, that wouldn't have worked for our budget or current roster construction. I would rather have Jose and trade Vaughn though from a personal perspective.

My post was purely about Jose Abreu's production next season, not about we should have paid him and what to do with Vaughn. Mainly because the post I quoted said Abreu would need to take steroids to out perform Vaughn next year which is pretty ridiculous.

I think he definitely hits more HR's with that 315 FT left field, as well as those liners that are going to bounce off the big wall out there for doubles. He will be better than Vaughn next year, pretty confident in that.

The Jose Abreu has declined crowd is really fascinating to me. Abreu was a 4 win player on our shitty team, what do you think hes going to do next season in the middle of that stacked Astros lineup?

For starters, its generally not good practice to let your best hitter walk. This is also a guy who our front office obviously has a ton of respect for so it would make total sense to me that they made an offer, even if it was a bad one. Vaughn played 84 games in the OF last year, if they really felt he flat out couldn't do it I think they would have pulled the plug on it. It doesn't surprise me at all if they thought they could bring Abreu back and have Vaughn rotate through 1B, DH, and LF again.

I think its safe to assume they felt they could have flipped him for prospects and quickly found out no one was interested in that so they had to take what they could get.

They picked up the Kimbrel option with zero intent on keeping him, that's probably why. They also nitpicked with Giolito over 50K so none of this comes as a surprise.

He really started to fold the last month of the season. If were going to spend 8-10 million on an arm for the back of the rotation I would rather go with the younger, upside player.

Agreed

Danny Mendick isn’t good, who cares

Of course, im sure they think they are doing everything they can to win a title.

The White Sox had a top 10 payroll last year and will again this year, they are serious about contending but that doesn't mean they are good at it.

While this is true, they should have just declined the option to begin with

Hes now on a fantasy football radio show on Sirius XM and hes horrible. I don't think he can even manage that team.

The bar is not set very high

Whats the likelihood the Sox approached him and said "Listen, if you opt in the plan is to use you as a 4th OFer / Backup" and he just wasn't interested in that?

This is great news