ashbury

Suppose the FO has crunched all the numbers on a 5-year contract for an over-30 player, and feels like it barely is acceptable. It includes a risk that the player's performance is bad in year 1, another risk that he's what they hoped for in year 1 but drops off the cliff in year 2, and so on and so forth. Lots of combinations, flips of the coin so to speak, adding up to about the value they are offering. Now, add an opt-out, and suppose 2 years later when the opt-out can be exercised that the player does indeed leave. That means, as we're all agreeing, that the team has done very well for itself and should be pleased with the return on investment so far. However, what has this new information, about 2 more years of performance, done to the computation of risks going forward? Almost certainly, it means that the risk of a sudden decline to worthlessness in year 3 has become reduced greatly, ditto the succeeding years. But the team doesn't get to reap the benefits of these flips of the coin. The player has walked. Those "good" coin flips were part of the original computation. Conversely if the player doesn't walk, the universe of outcomes relating to the remaining risks for years 3-5, respectively, have gone upward from the initial estimates. Because, if he doesn't walk, something bad has happened in years 1-2. All the "bad" coin flips remain on the club's debit sheet. The risk doesn't remain static. It changes as you see the actual outcomes. That's the flaw in the argument. It is the essence of the "heads I win, tails you lose" game, to the player's advantage. I have a hard time believing it's only a small difference in dollars. He can't earn less than $126M now, but if he does well for two years and the market goes nuts in some way (or just normalizes to what he thought he'd get), he could receive a lot more. And it leaves essentially unchanged the odds of the Cubs having to work around dead money, while reducing the positive value they potentially can receive from a mutually guaranteed contract instead. It helps the player, it costs the team. It probably puts the Cubs contract as an actuarial equivalent to, say, what a normal guaranteed $140M contract would bring him - close to what was originally forecast.

I'm sure the Twins front office will make the best of it, but there is simply nothing good about losing out on the chance to hire the best starting pitcher available, nor about losing several starts this season from a guy you are counting on. All of the "blessing in disguise" kinds of outcomes could happen at the expense of pitchers further down the pecking order.

What's your position on Yellow Labradors?

It's crazy, perhaps, but rooted in the idea of using "Darvish money," give or take, to improve the team a different way. Use money on Moustakas to get a third baseman who can flat out hit. Take on Span's salary to approximately do what Kepler has done. Now, on top of those substitutions, admittedly probable downgrades, add established starter Archer and highly touted starting prospect Honeywell, who acquitted himself well in AAA at age 22. Is the downgrade on the position-player side more or less than the improvement in the rotation? Still too crazy to even try to tweak as a deal? (I don't know that Gordon or other pieces are needed, BTW. Maybe even the other direction, if the baseball world still values Sano a lot.)

It's your thread. I guess you can thread-jack it if you wish.

I can't locate the date, but the Halsey Hall Chapter of SABR had Paul Castner as a guest panelist at one of their semi-annual meetings, sometime in the mid-1980s probably since he died in 1986. I think he was the guy who answered, when asked for his memories of Ty Cobb, whom he probably faced (I see now as I check) one time in a game on October 2, 1923, "ohhhhhh, he was a miserable fellow". Which put him pretty much in the mainstream of contemporary thought in those days. / Why stuff like this is still etched in my memory, but I can't come home from the store with the things my wife asked for, I don't know.

Scoffs:

I think that's a fallacy. Plan A for instance can involve the choice that, if you defer, you can't go back to. An example would be looking at your players in April who can't be optioned, and if they don't pan out then you look at the players at AAA. Because, if you do things in the reverse order, you lose the players you can't option when you try to ask waivers - at least, the ones who are any good, leaving you only with the dregs no one else felt strongly about either. Yet it could well be that the youngster stashed in AAA has the higher chance of success. It could be the same logic holding here, as well. If the judgment was that Darvish was the kingpin log holding the current logjam, it costs nothing to wait and see how he plays out and whether you can get him for the money you want to spend. Of course, the risk is a miscalculation, where the Cobbs and Lynns do sign first and then you have pinned too much of your chances on Plan A. But, so far, the ordering of these top FA starters is not demonstrably amiss. I don't know anything for sure, I am just challenging the notion that Plan A and Plan B are anywhere near as simple as we are making them out to be.

I always want to see 110% in regard to our FO. But if anything, you understated it. Each "Plan" consists of known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and they fit together as a larger framework that is actually The Plan. What we think of as Plan B doesn't even come into focus until some events unfold, and this off-season has been a bit unique. Further events look like they will unfold at a much more rapid pace now, and I'm still in Jury's-Still-Out mode to see what transpires. RB hit most of the points, in his post, that guide my thinking for now. For Now.

If you tell us that this was from Field Five then I'm really gonna get excited.

He hasn't been behind the plate in a game since 2012. If he did that in 2018, his quads or hammies would likely become the emergency.

Maybe the reason it's not being answered is that people feel it's a blind alley. Big-time pro sports are different from most other lines of work. They are different from small-time sports because of the incredible concentration of revenues. They are different from jobs you gave as examples because of the incredible scarcity of the talent. The latter aspect is what gives the players bargaining power, and the former is why they stand firm. Barrier to entry, in any industry, is a powerful thing. And if you believe the players are lining up to collect easy money, being a team owner in such circumstances but in the absence of collective bargaining is even easier money. With that as where I'm coming from, I'm sorry but I just can't find any aspect of your question that I want to delve into. Only in a benignly authoritarian economy would the important workers you named get paid "fairly".

He won't. Sano and Buxton are under team control through 2021, Kepler and Berrios through 2022. By the time any of these are pulling down $20M a year or greater, Mauer and ESan contracts will be distant memories. Also I don't know of an "etc" who will be needing contracts of the magnitude to worry about in 2022; you named all the high-end young guys, with Rosario and Polanco likely a tier down in salary. Moreover, the Twin Cities are capable of supporting a $150M payroll if the team is winning; and if the players we're thinking about are able to demand the salaries you're worrying about, the team will indeed win. Dozier's probably the only outlier in this. If extending his contract requires $20M a year in 2022 and beyond, I favor trading him, or else giving him a qualifying offer and letting him walk, in favor of our young infielders. Sure, management has to worry about the negative "what-ifs", but they also need to plan for success. If the success doesn't materialize, then the plan at 2022 will be to pivot to some other strategy. That's why FalVine get the big bucks. With years of team control for the key players, and the few current high-ticket contracts coming off the books, it can't be possible for a 5-year Darvish contract now to be an insurmountable obstacle to anything.

I'm getting way off onto a tangent now, but in trying to research some funny response I actually located a copy of the boilerplate portion of the MLB player contract. It's at MLBTradeRumors.com so I take it to be likely legit. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/files/mlb-contract.pdf Some people might find it interest to scan through, in its own right. Troublesome for me would be: "The Player agrees to... keep himself in first-class physical condition and to obey the Club's training rules." Deal-breaker from the git-go. There's also this pesky word, "skill", that keeps popping up. "The player represents and agrees that he has exceptional and unique skill and ability as a baseball player." I'd also have to claim to have no mental defects. Right there in writing.

I wouldn't. The standard contract contains language pertaining to ability to perform at minimal levels that I would be in violation of from Day 1.

Truck Day in Boston was last Monday and I forgot to go. It's a festive atmosphere at Fenway in mid-winter.

He's really regarded by them as a plus CF? He needs to be, if "hits just a little" is how it plays out, and I've seen nothing about his defense to assume anything other than fair-to-middling at this very competitive spot.

Using the Quote button when replying helps a lot, in this regard.

Paging Dr Glunn, Paging Dr Glunn, another 1K drop, the cat is lying motionless again, defibrillator paddles STAT!

Fangraphs... Glossary... that was too tough a Google search for me to come up with today. Thanks for humoring me.

I wouldn't let a ten-foot pole touch the 11-foot pole that touched that line.

Indians, eh? We should go examine their front office and raid them of a few up-and-coming bright lights.

Is there a glossary for this chart? I can't remember all of the abbreviations.

Wow. Sell high on him, if some other team is willing to part with a legitimate MLB-ready and controllable starting pitcher with Granite as the centerpiece. I like Granite, a lot - as a fourth outfielder. But he hasn't got the arm to excel in CF, and hasn't got the power to excel at a corner, making him a 3-tool player if he comes through, and is thus expendable in return for something else good at a position of need. C'mon, Tampa, your Brent Honeywell is ranked way below Granite - what else are you willing to throw in to sweeten the deal for us?

Moderator's note: I'd like to ask that posters stay on the topic of the present free agent logjam, and refrain from dragging into the conversation past front offices, whether pro or con. (We've needed to take action regarding posts of both kinds recently.) If you're thirsting to spark yet another referendum on the past, start a different thread please.