ashbury

If true that ownership turned thumbs down on a higher bid that FalVine were comfortable with (which is only speculation on your part), it's entirely normal for ownership to have to sign off on a multi-year contract. Even if ownership is happy with the FO at the moment, that could change in a couple years' time, and any bad contracts lasting for longer would be an impediment to hiring someone new and good enough to be in demand. It's possible ownership would have to eat some of the remaining liabilities on the books, or else they would only get the most desperate candidates to apply. So yeah, they get to be "in charge" of payroll, at this level.

With 6 days between starts for the first go-round, and 5 days for the second, I could see going with a four-man rotation all the way twice through, meaning no need for a fifth starter until Lucky Friday April 13. Do they all need 6 days that second time? Did I count wrong?

Hope it doesn't turn into Wanderlust.

I can accept that FIP correlates better to next-season ERA than ERA itself does. It still leaves me cold. It's not "fielding-independent" as named, it removes fielding by taking out much of what makes baseball baseball. It's kind of the "Garfield Minus Garfield" of baseball stats.

I hope we don't trade for Archer. We'd have to revisit ERA-versus-FIP in every thread about him.

And. Vice. Versa. .

Guaranteed, or controlled by an option?

Moderator's note: There seems to be more bickering going on here than is healthy; some posts have been removed from view as a consequence. A little less needling, and a little less response to needling, would be a good idea. It's not automatically wrong to respond with humor to a thought that you disagree with, but it carries risk and it's best to be ready to apologize and dial it back if it gets misunderstood. Please, all, keep the discussion mutually respectful, regardless of how strongly you disagree with someone's point.

Vampire Weekend disagrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_i1xk07o4g (NSFW lyrics) Also, I want to thank both my parents, William Strunk and E.B. White, for impressing on me the importance of the Oxford comma.

My point is not that Darvish is playing Let's Make A Deal. My point is that new information always has value. And an opt-out gives only one side the chance to use it. Any individual deal could work out, or not. But I'm talking about Expectation Value. Surely you're not saying that you would make the same performance forecast for Darvish in 2023 now, that you would two years from now if he won the Cy both years. That's the cost, in terms of upside, that is disguised by keeping the contract value the same with/without the opt-out clause. I'm not saying never to offer an opt-out. It's a way to keep the total contract value lower than you otherwise would have to offer in order to land the player. But if 6/$126M was already too rich for the Twins' blood (because we're pretty sure the Twins wouldn't go 6), the opt-out isn't even going to help them in that regard.

You know the Monty Hall Problem, right? On a giveaway show like Let's Make A Deal, there's 3 doors, behind which are two worthless goats and one Fabulous Prize - the contestant picks one at random, Monty (WHO KNOWS WHAT IS BEHIND WHICH DOOR) reveals one of the other doors has a goat, and then asks if the contestant wants to switch his choice to the other un-opened door. Should the contestant accept the swap? Does it matter? The answer is YES, which goes against many people's intuition. His chance of winning the prize goes up from 33% to 50%. A learning experience. But, that's part of the showmanship. Monty knows that he's giving away more money by allowing the contestant to make that change. Absent showmanship, Monty is a fool to allow this swap. It's a lesson in the economic value of revealed information. If Monty was in the dark about which door to open, then sometimes he'd accidentally reveal the Fabulous Prize. No, he always reveals one of the goats, because he's implicitly imparting new information to the contestant. Different scenario with an opt-out clause, but same logic. Offering a second-guess after new information (say, 2 more years of performance data) is revealed, is costly to the person offering it. I'm not saying it's wrong to offer an opt-out. But recognize that the cost is hidden: the contract value is static but you've removed some of the upside. The upside being that, after a good Year 1 and 2, the pitcher might defy the odds and lead his team to the World Series in Year 3, Year 4, or even 5 and 6. But you're still on the hook for all the risk of the bad things in Year 1 and 2 that perpetuate through the 6-year contract period.

I reach much the same conclusions, but arrived at in a slightly different formulation: free-enterprise works great when there is informed consent among all parties, but experience has shown that in certain areas such as health care that is not how it plays out. Market forces (call it greed if you want) will still exist, whether we choose to let them dictate transactions or not, so we must approach initiatives like "socialized medicine universal healthcare" with eyes wide open as to where the hidden costs will pop up. And the economy is far more prone to concentration due to global communications and transport than in Adam Smith's "invisible hand" days, not to mention automation making it unnecessary for every able-bodied person to work merely to avoid mass starvation. Classic free-enterprise is a special case of a broader economic theory we must create - a theory as understandable as free-enterprise or people will not embrace it.

Since my comment garnered two dissents, I guess I should walk it back a little because I wasn't trying to say curveballs aren't good. It really was meant as almost a nothing-conclusion - I might have said, "looks deadly at this point, which is great to see. Time will tell." Which is not much different than any good prospect.

“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it, and stop there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well, but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.” ― Mark Twain

He's going to cost a lot of minor league batters their jobs. "Can't hit the good curve." Whether that translates into a job in the majors where batters can hit (or lay off of) the good curve, is of course what will decide things for him.

Didn't we just get done explaining how teams situated on a coast have a big advantage over us?

It reduces the salary, while at the same time reducing the upside of the contract. I thought we weren't trying to win the War-per-dollar Pennant.

A trade offer two weeks ago? Let me provide a reverse jinx and say I'm skeptical this news has any bearing. Tampa is not a motivated seller.

OK, fair enough, I misunderstood what you were getting at. But plenty of people have indeed expressed concern about Santana going forward; you can't expect unanimity here. However, this ties in to what I was trying to get across regarding players' opt-out clauses. There is a big difference in the risk of forecasting what a 30-year old will do when he's 35, than the risk of forecasting what a 34-year old will do at 35. Because we know that the second guy managed to make it through his 31, 32, 33, and 34 year-old seasons with some degree of success.

Is anyone proposing an extension for Santana that will tie him to the club through 2023?

It is not only a GOOD deal, it's probably the DESIRABLE outcome. I don't discount the value of buying yourself a chance at that. But it is only one (or a conglomeration of several) among the many possibilities, and it represents a multi-stage optimization under uncertainty. I'm repeating myself now, so I'll bow out of this tangent.

You're looking at the favorable coin flips only.

Your friendly neighborhood financial advisor would like to sell you some stock options, I bet.