Major League Ready

How does it not matter if a team is paying $30M/year for nothing for several years? It does not matter today which is the only frame of reference many baseball fans can relate to. It most certainly is an impediment for building a team during the years that contract is underperforming. BTW ... This mindset will get your butt fired from a strategic role in a millisecond in the real world.

Just watched High Heat on MLB TV. Russo went on a 5 minute rant about how dumb it was to give Correa 13/$350. He said "The giants should have their heads examined". He went on the say the last several years are likely to be very bad which of course many here have stated.

I agree that if they are not going to compete they should trade the players you mentioned. Cleveland / Oakland and Tampa have 10/10&9 ninety win seasons since 2000. The closest team in the bottom half of revenue is the twins with 6. The difference between Cle/Oak/Tampa is that those teams have been far more aggressive trading established players for near ready prospects. Those teams generally produce nearly 50% of their WAR from players prospects acquired in trade for established players. The twins have had virtually none until the arrival of Duran / Alcala and Celestino. Of course, they are a year removed from the Berrios trade. Oaklands largest free agent deal was Billy Butler 3/$30M. The biggest free agent signing for Tampa just occurred. 3/40M for Efflin. Cleveland's is 3/60 Edwin Encarnación. I use these teams as examples because they are the only teams in the bottom half of revenue that have been more successful than the twins. I would cite examples of teams that employ the strategy you are promoting if they existed, but they do not. You are assuming what strategy will be successful. I am simply citing which strategies have been successful.

You are making my point. We are not LA or NY. Expecting a team that rans about 18th in revenue to outbid the top markets is bound to disappoint. It's hard to win when other teams can double your spending. Perhaps more to the point, you are expecting them to follow strategies that are the opposite of what has produced winning teams for mid and small market teams. I have charted all of those successful teams for the past 20 years. None of them followed the strategy you insist is imperative. Cleveland / Tampa, and Oakland have by far the most 90 win seasons in the mid and small tier. They have not signed one $100M free agent among them in any of the 28 seasons they won 90 games. You have beat this drum repeatedly but you are completely ignoring the facts / history in doing so.

I was one of them. At this point I like a lot of what they have done but you are right the results have not been great. However, they have not been bad either and we simply did not get a chance to evaluate many of the players we thought would allow us to grade this FO last year because of injuries. I think fans just expect 95 win seasons. San Diego has had one 90 win season since the turn of the century. KC has been perennially bad. They had 1 1/2 good seasons and have been consistently bad other than a run that was a product of having high draft choices for 15 years. The Phillies have not had a 90 win season since 2012. Of course, they got hot and won the WS this year. The White Sox have had one 90 win season since 2006! With all the injuries last year, 2023 is a big year for this organization. Ober / Varland / SWR / Winder / Canterino / Alcala / Raya / Balazovic / Moran / Festa and Prielipp are all question marks that could make us feel pretty good or pretty bad about the pitching we have developed. I added Ober because his improved slider at the end of the season could change his ceiling. We still have Lewis / Kirilloff, Larnach, Wallner / Martin. and Julien to figure out on the offensive side. plus, if Martin pans out we are going to be feeling pretty good about the Berrios trade.

Yes. I did not mean to give the impression that one of the secondary options should be the goal. Nola and Severino ABSOLUTELY should be the goal and Giolito if his velocity returns. Snell is another possibility. He really found something the 2nd half of 2022. I started out by saying they will certainly have the money now that they didn't sign Correa and Gray/Mahle are coming off the books. The point of the depth is two-fold. 1) The depth is supply and that will help with the cost and our odds of getting one of them. 2) Having options where we don't go backward will seem pretty good if Nola and Severino just don't want to come here.

I got off on a tangent here. I basically agree and have been saying the same thing with the plan for this year. The point I was trying to make aligns with what you are saying as well. They are going to have the money to spend. I just remain mindful of the situations like Wheeler who are quite set in where they want to go. The point about all the available SPs is that higher supply will make team's less desperate (in theory). Plus, if we just can't convince the top targets, someone like Giolito (assuming he is healthy and the velocity returns) would be a good consolation prize given we are losing Mahle and Gray. The other one to watch is Snell. I have been very down on Snell but he was great the 2nd half last year. Not sure what that's about but he will be looked at very differently if he has a big year.

I think Giolito has it in him. Wheeler was way more consistent after he signed as a free agent. It could happen with Giolito. Montas is not a #1 but I certainly would not be disappointed if they added him. I was looking at in terms of there are several guys that would significantly improve the rotation. We all want Nola or Severino but there are several other guys that make us better, right?

I remember it all too well. Nola was kind of the same then ... Ultra reliable with upside and I liked him much better than Gordon.

I agree with Nick where Urias is concerned. Which of these would you not want. For me, there are at least a half dozen that would be nice additions. Lucas Giolito Tyler Mahle Luis Severino John Means - Assuming he returns to form after surgery. Frankie Montas Jordan Montgomery Aaron Nola Blake Snell - If he pitches in 23 like he did the last half of 2022. Martin Perez - Just might surprise us with another good year. Urias and Ohtani serve a purpose two. They soak up some of the budget from top revenue markets. If they were not there the top markets would soak up the next top two. I would really like Nola. That guy has been the most reliable of the bunch and it's not close.

I hear ya but they need to replace Mahle and Gray so while I hope for an upgrade replacing them would something equal would be better than not replacing them. There are quite a few guys as good or better than them. Mahle has had 1 good season and Gray has had 2. Montas would be a good add and Blake Snell really rebounded last year. It will be very interesting to see what he does this year. Giolito is great when he is right. He had a down year last season but he would be a good target if he shows he can bounce back this year.

I agree there is NO WAY they get Ohtani. That leaves a dozen other very good free agents on the list? How is the extremely low probability they won't sign Ohtani relevant?

You might be right and it's perfectly reasonable to wonder if this is simply their way. Maybe they just won't do it. However, I see a VERY different set of circumstances. They will have virtually the entire roster filled with low cost players. In previous years they were filling holes with players like Pineda, Schoop, etc. Will they operate differently with a very different set of circumstances? IDK, but that's what good management does ... They manage based on influential variables. We will find out if this plays out the way it looks like at the moment.

The response was to someone suggesting the 2024 free agent class is terrible. However, I think there are a couple reasons next year might be different. 1) Because they have 2 veteran pitchers that become free agents next year. 2) Assuming they trade Kepler or don't pick-up his option, their payroll will be $110M if they sign a SP for $30M AAV and a RP for $10M AAV. 3) This year's class had 3 really good SPs. Two of them (Rodon/DeGrom) were very high risk. 4) This year the top revenue teams had a ton of money to spend. They can't do that every year. 5) A greater number of pitchers and less money available from the big markets helps our odds.

I doubt it will make any difference because the odds of Correa reaching 1 WAR player those last 3 years (age 39-41) are very low. Heck, the last 5 years. Miguel Cabrera had 5.1 WAR his age 33 season and never produced 1 WAR in his last 6 seasons. Robinson Cano a negative 2.5 WAR for his last 6 seasons where he never produced 1 WAR. Robinson Cano had 6.8 WAR at age 33 and he slid to 1 WAR by age 36.

IDK about position players but the list of pitchers looks pretty deep. Shohei Ohtani Julio Urias Lucas Giolito Frankie Montas Aaron Nola Tyler Mahle Luis Severino Martin Perez Sonny Gray Jack Flaherty Blake Snell Brad Keller Chris Flexen German Marquez – $16MM club option with a $2.5MM buyout Jakob Junis John Means Jordan Montgomery

If they are a 90 loss team without Correa we have much bigger problems than not signing Correa.

I could only find 9 contracts of 8 or more years that have reached their conclusion for position players. I calculated the average WAR per year for the back half of these contracts. For contracts with an odd number of years, I used half of the middle year. The results may ease the pain of losing Correa on a 13 year contract. 7 of the 9 averaged less than 1 year over the last half of their contract. As ugly as the 8-10 years contracts have been, these 13 year contracts taking a player past age 40 are likely really ugly. fWAR bWAR Derek Jeter 4.42 4.16 Dave Winfield 1.98 2.22 Joey Votto 0.82 0.92 Alex Rodriguez 0.77 0.64 Robinson Cano 0.26 0.22 Albert Pujlos 0.15 0.21 Jason Hayward -0.05 0.30 Miguel Cabrera 2.60 -0.27 Prince Fileder -0.18 -0.18 Averge 1.20 0.91

I hear you but the shared gate is only one form of revenue sharing. The other form of revenue sharing that would be more effective would have been to keep the luxury tax threshold near where it was and increase the escalation. If my memory is correct the owners wanted the increased the escalation. That would have reduced the amount l;arge markets could spendon one end and increased the amount distributed on the other end. Regardless, they could no doubt find a better plan for revenue sharing but the players would have to agree and which they don't appear inclined to do.

Makes sense. Maybe the Twins share you opinion and have convinced him to work toward a BP role. At this point in his career, it seems futile to keep doing the same thing.

This is a tough medium for this type of discussion. If I understand you correctly, you are saying the additional wins will cost them at least as much as the revenue generated. If this is the case, why should any small market team try to win? I think you are equating the cost of wins via free agency. The other possibility would be to keep players with extension like Cleveland did with Jose Ramirez. He produces more WAR than Correa for 58% of the cost. Correa produced roughly 1 WAR for $7M where Rodriquez produces 1 WAR for every 3.5M. Tampa kept Javier because they were able to extend him giving them much better odds to similar value as compared to signing a free agent. This is great for Tampa and Cleveland fans! IDK what Cleveland's salary capacity but let's just say it's $120M. Rameriz represents 16.67% of that capacity where a free agent like Correa would represent 29% of payroll capacity. If revenue sharing increased by $20M, those percentage go to 14.3 and 25% respectively. Basically, the difference is that a team up against their spending limits could keep Jose Rameriz instead of having to trade him away.

I totally agree there are better ways. I don't know the level of motivation of owners to improve the system but I sincerely doubt that matters. Concentrating the wealth is good for the top players and based on the last negotiations it's hard to imagine the union would accept more revenue sharing. The enormous contracts that were just handed out proved their strategy and made it even harder to ever get them to consider parity. I think your revenue model has some flaws. You are assuming Oakland would need to more than double what they were spending to get better. Oakland has the 6th best win percentage in MLB since the turn of the century and they are doing that spending less than $100M in total. It's a real stretch to suggest they would need to increase spending by another $100M to make significant improvements. They have literally spent half of the dollars per win compared to many other teams so there is no basis to assume they would have to double their payroll to produce more wins. They could use that money like Tampa did to retain Wander Javier. There is a great deal of angst on this site over retaining players because of our revenue disparity. Just imagine if we could only spend $90M instead of $140. Those fans deserve better IMO. Win Percentage since 2000 Yankees 0.583 Dodgers 0.563 Cardinals 0.559 Red Sox 0.553 Braves 0.541 Oakland 0.537 Angels 0.524 Giants 0.523 Astros 0.511 Phillies 0.506 TWINS 0.501 Mets 0.500 White Sox 0.499 Cleveland 0.498 Cubs 0.498 Mariners 0.497 Tampa 0.491 Brewers 0.490 Rangers 0.488 Nationals 0.488 Blue Jays 0.488 Dbacks 0.483 Padres 0.473 Reds 0.470 Rockies 0.466 Marlins 0.465 Tigers 0.463 Pirates 0.446 Orioles 0.445 Royals 0.440

It would be huge if two of Varland / SWR / Winder prove they are here to stay over the course of 2023. That would give them 4 prearb starters plus Paddack at a modest sum. They could afford to sign anyone they want. Obviously, they still need to convince them to come here but they will have the money to spend.

That option already exists. They can field a team with a $40M payroll if there only interest is a profit. What we know with absolute certainty is that reducing revenue sharing would make it even harder for the majority of low revenue teams that are interested in competing. Does it make sense to penalize all the other teams receiving revenue sharing that are trying because Pittsburgh won't spend?

That's basically what Cohen is doing. Man it would be great to have an owner willing to operate at a loss of 10s of millions. We all share your wish! However, the other owners determine their budget based on how much revenue they produce, just like you and me and every other business on the planet, including non-profits. If I were to speculate on the budget without the benefit of projected revenue and operating costs, I would look at the fact the Twins revenue has been about $40M under league average the last few years, and hope they would be aggressive enough to spend league average.