Otto von Ballpark

Just because the Angels have finished the last 4 years averaging 80 wins, doesn't mean they are doomed to the same result the next 3. They've got the same ~20% chance at the postseason, with neutral luck, this year, regardless of their finish the last 4 years (which may have been in part due to bad luck? they've been terrible with pitching injuries). As for what could be an acceptable prospect return for Mike Trout, you'd have to look beyond rankings -- not all prospects are equal. Ceiling, floor, reliability. The Braves, for their general prospect riches, their top prospect at MLB.com is only ranked #24, and he's a pitcher who missed most of 2018 with shoulder issues. Their next top prospect is a college pitcher. I'm having a hard time seeing an appropriate package led by those two, much less a mix of lesser ranked prospects. To use the phrase that most prospects are question marks, you could say that Trout is basically three exclamation points by himself. Even 5 question marks probably don't represent equal value. Maybe if you could build a trade return around a position player prospect who's almost one exclamation point already himself, like Vlad Jr. -- but teams understandably don't want to trade those guys if they have them, much less gut their system in addition to that guy.

Not as transparent as you might think. Players and agents generally don't tell teams exactly what the other offers are -- it's often better for them if teams are bidding blind. And a blind bid doesn't necessarily mean some team wouldn't have been willing to match or beat a higher bid, if they had the chance. And as I mentioned in my last post, simple time is a factor too -- the Astros may have been willing to sign Marwin for 2/21, or perhaps even more, but earlier in the offseason, he was asking for $60 mil. So they acquired a different player. I suppose you could say they weren't willing to wait and sign him for that much, but it would be incorrect to simply say they weren't willing to pay what the Twins ultimately paid.

No, it's not, if there isn't a better way to allocate those resources to achieve the same ends. For the Twins and Keuchel right now, you can absolutely make the argument that there's a better allocation, but for the Angels and Trout, it's not even close -- there's no way they can confidently reallocate $36 mil annually and a few extra prospects right now to replace a projected 9 WAR player. The luxury tax affects the market -- it prevents teams from offering what they would otherwise be willing to spend. Heck, so can time -- player's demands can change (i.e. Marwin Gonzalez). Let me remind you that you made this relative to the market -- you said "By definition, any deal signed in free agency is a bad deal, as you are paying more than anyone else is willing to spend."

First of all, Upton is hardly an albatross. 3.8 bWAR last year, 5.2 the year before, and he's only 31. He's not a superstar, but he's not a burden right now either. (Like all contracts, he may become a burden by the end, but that doesn't nullify any present-day value he can provide.) Second, you're speaking in some serious absolutes here. Yes, the Angels are no one's World Series favorites right now -- but they're not hopeless. Fangraphs has them with a 20% chance of reaching the postseason in 2019 with neutral luck. You may call that "treading water" but there is value in being in that position. I'd call it "striking distance" instead -- they're only a bit of good luck (or a bit of Astros bad luck) away from meaningfully better outcomes. Trading a projected 9 WAR player (!) would pretty much sink those chances, and would also force them to trade good players like Simmons and Ohtani lest they squander them away. And as you've already pointed out, by ~2022, they will already have "extremely clean books" anyway because Pujols and Upton will be off the MLB payroll. The utility of having an extra $36 mil for 2022 is pretty minimal (especially as you've noted that the utility of $36 mil in any random FA market isn't necessarily all that great). I can't see any prospect package today as remotely being worth the present-day downgrade of trading him, even if they're also getting an extra $36 mil to spend in 2022. They'd probably need pretty good luck with the prospect return, and with reallocating the $36 mil, just to get back to that same "treading water" / "striking distance" position in 2022, let alone meaningfully improve on it.

A few things wrong with that "definition": 1. Not every team gets the same benefit from signing a particular free agent -- the Twins would get more benefit from signing Keuchel now than, say, Cleveland would, because of Cleveland's current rotation. The Twins would also get more benefit from that signing than teams like KC, Detroit, etc., who are further away from contention -- a marginal win isn't worth the same to those clubs as it is to the Twins. It's not a sign of a "bad deal" if the Twins are willing to pay more than those teams. 2. Because of the luxury tax and its penalties, the same salary will effectively cost more for some teams than others, sometimes even prohibitively so. 3. Some economist could probably use the right technical terms, but MLB FA isn't a transparent market with perfect information and opportunity provided to every team. It's quite possible that multiple teams would like to sign a player for the same price, but only one can. Lastly, I'm sensing a contradiction here -- I'm not sure how you reconcile calling Trout's salary a "massive impediment" to winning, yet at the same time you say that spending money is a "laughably inefficient" way to win. If the latter is true, it severely diminishes the utility of the Angels freeing up that $36 mil, no?

To call this deal a "massive impediment" to winning a world series would mean that, all else being equal, the Angels would have better odds of winning a world series by trading Trout (or letting him leave as a FA, I guess). I don't see how that could possibly be true. Yes, having a rookie Mookie Betts circa 2014 would be more efficient than having Trout right now on this deal -- but trading Trout doesn't guarantee you get a rookie Mookie Betts in return. In fact, the odds of that are quite low -- not only are Mookie Betts type rookies pretty rare, but judging by the history of MLB trades, teams generally don't trade Mookie Betts type rookies even if they have them. No one doubts that there may very well be some years in this deal, likely toward the end, where having a diminished Trout at this salary might reduce his team's odds of winning. But you also have to balance that with a bunch of years, starting right now, where Trout, even at this salary, greatly improves your odds of winning.

I'd like to see Berrios extended too, but I'm not sure the best use of 2019 payroll resources is paying bonuses to lock up Berrios, Polanco, *and* Kepler. I think we need to add wins as much as lock up the ones we have.

Yeah, it's not too far off. But I don't know about using 2019 payroll resources for even more extensions -- we really need to add more talent, not just pay existing talent more!

SpoTrac is missing an additional $9 mil of Hughes' salary which we paid in 2018. Also, the "final payroll" for 2018 reflects our seller status last summer -- the Yankees ate $2 mil of Lynn's salary, and the Diamondbacks absorbed about $1.5 mil for Escobar.

So to follow up, I emailed Jeff at Cot's (BP) and got a fast response about option buyouts: "Buyouts are generally paid in the five-day window after the World Series. So clubs usually include those cash amounts on their books in that calendar year, which would be the last guaranteed year of the player's contract. For annual payroll purposes, each team is free to juggle the accounting as they wish." That makes some sense -- unlike the remaining Hughes salary, those option buyouts were guaranteed and paid prior to 2019, so it's kind of silly to lump them in with 2019 expenditures. Under that accounting, the Twins 2018 opening day payroll could be considered $2 mil higher than actually reported, which would make the current drop in 2019 even steeper. Not Twins-related, but I also asked about how option buyouts are figured in luxury tax calculations: "For the luxury tax, any buyout amount is pro-rated over the life of the guaranteed years in the contract. So luxury tax figures basically assume the option is declined. If a club exercises an option, it receives a credit for the unpaid buyout. That buyout amount usually is deducted from the option year salary for tax purposes. A good example is the Red Sox, who exercised the club option for Craig Kimbrel for 2018. His salary for the 2018 option year was $13 million, and for luxury tax purposes, Boston received a $500,000 credit for the $500,00 buyout the club did not pay."

I have to say, though, that as a fan of Dollar Dog games, your post just about gave me a heart attack. And I'd prefer to achieve my heart attack through more Dollar Dog games.

Dollar Dog games for 2019 are still listed here: https://www.mlb.com/twins/tickets/promotions Every Wednesday game seems to be denoted with "Game Highlight: Schweigert™ Dollar-A-Dog Day".

Do you have a link? Your memory has been demonstrably proven fallible several times recently... If you're referring to Roster Resource, they estimate the Twins 2019 payroll at $123 mil right now -- but that's not opening day payroll -- they include 31 guys to get that number, with only 1 (Sano) slated for the DL right now. That shouldn't be directly compared to last year's opening day payroll (which was only the salaries of the 25 man roster plus MLB DL as of opening day -- edit to add: plus the cut Anibal Sanchez). https://www.rosterresource.com/mlb-minnesota-twins-info/ Cot's opening day payroll is based on 26 guys including Sano. (No option buyouts, though, which would represent another $2 mil for the Twins if you want to include them: $1 mil each for Ervin and Morrison. Cot's is consistent about excluding buyouts across the site, though. I might ask them about that!)

FWIW, Cot's Baseball Contracts has the Twins payroll at $118 mil right now, $10 mil less than opening day 2018. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17Ks25huKVP_ducCpWbLmo7h-N09oIGBGoa940Uergz8/pubhtml Of course, about $6.5 mil of that wasn't adding player for 2019 -- it was just frontloading the Kepler and Polanco extensions.

I'm not sure where you were looking, but the Twins averaged only 3.73 runs per 9 innings in Gibson's starts in 2018, so yeah, I'd say run support could be an issue with looking at his W-L record. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=gibsoky01&t=p&year=2018#run_support::none The Twins scored 121 runs in Gibson's 32 starts, an average of 3.78 per game. The Twins scored 617 runs in their other 130 games, an average of 4.75 per game. So a full run of support less, per game, of support for Gibson than their other starters.

Like Hicks, Matthews Jr. wasn't any good until age 27. But unlike Hicks, Matthews Jr. got his big contract at age 32. Hicks is only 29. If Hicks performs like Matthews Jr did from age 29-31 (10.2 WAR), that would largely justify the whole contract, regardless of what he does from age 32-35. Pretty sure that's the Yankee thought process here.

Won't make it through alive? I think we've been through this before, but I don't think anyone expects Hicks to "make it through" in the sense of being particularly valuable in his age 35 season. I'm guessing the Yankees hope for some plus performance in the first few years, and they can easily eat the last few years if necessary. Although even that hope is being tested this spring. The Yankees signed two big extensions this spring -- Hicks and Severino -- and both are on the shelf right now. (Not that I'm complaining about bad luck hitting the Yankees!)

That was a pretty good bullpen turnaround in 2002, although actually Guardado had been solid for quite a few years by that point already (it was partially masked by league run scoring being very high). Hawkins was effective in 2000 and the first half of 2001 too before collapsing, although credit to him for putting collapse behind him and kicking up his performance another notch in 2002. Mike Jackson was getting old by then, so he was on a minor league deal in spring 2002, but he was a pretty good reliever in his time and was probably a lock for the roster. Was the closer on some pretty good Cleveland teams, and even got MVP votes in 1998, apparently. Career 18.9 WAR which is impressive for a career spent mostly as a setup guy. Wells was pretty good in 1999-2000, but pretty bad in 2001-2002 too. I remember being puzzled when we gave him a multi-year deal covering those years. (And Wells wasn't much of a failed starter in his pro career -- mostly just an undrafted free agent who did some spot starting.) Rincon wasn't much of a factor until 2003.

I never thought of the Metrodome that way before, but it might help to explain some of my fondness for the place.

Luke Bard, in Angels camp on a minor league deal, was just added to their 40-man roster. A bit strange, at this point in the spring. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/03/angels-select-luke-bard.html

Well, if they get to remove the "print at home" option from their website, maybe that helps streamline things. I suspect that home printed tickets might be harder to scan sometimes? If they are worried about counterfeits, self printed counterfeit tickets would be harder to track, especially if they were bought from a street scalper. (Also going digital helps get rid of street scalpers in general, I imagine.)

I read this as "73,000 year old scouting reports".

Duffey has only burned option years in 2016 and 2018 so far, so he still has one left. In 2017, he was on the MLB roster the whole season, and in 2015, he wasn't added to the 40-man until August, so he wound up spending fewer than 20 days on optional assignment.

I think it's just a ban on tickets printed at home. https://www.latimes.com/sports/angels/la-sp-mlb-rule-changes-ohtani-angels-20190314-story.html Most Stubhub tickets, and those from other resellers, are electronic these days anyway -- they scan them from your phone when you enter, just like tickets from the MLB Ballpark app. Note that Stubhub is still "the Official Fan to Fan Ticket Marketplace of angels.com": https://www.mlb.com/angels/tickets/stubhub

Why do you assume that people complaining are still buying the concessions? Or at least buying them at the same rate they would if the prices were lower? Not only are my concession purchases limited, sometimes the concession prices discourage me from attending altogether. I also wouldn't assume that people are only complaining here and not directly to the Twins. (Although the Twins are high profile enough that I don't believe feedback necessarily has to be private and direct to the business. I suspect they can easily hear and consider general public feedback here as well as on social media.)