Major League Ready

No doubt GMs all prove themselves along the way to getting the top jobs. Most people don't start down a career path with an MLB team that could eventually lead to a GM job, so it’s fair to say that access to such jobs is extremely limited. It’s also fair to say that the people who could most likely handle the job have achieved similar positions in other industries. Access or getting these jobs is the same everywhere. People are given those jobs with the requisite education, experience, and past performance that indicates they should have said job. How many of the people who always assume incompetence on the part of the FO have actually been responsible for a $300M P&L and/or negotiated 8 & 9 figure contracts in other industries. Andrew Friedman earned a B.S. in management with a concentration in finance at Tulane. He went on to be an analyst with Bear Stearns from 1999–2002, and then was an associate at MidMark Capital, a private equity firm from 2002-04. Do you suppose he knows a little more about asset management than 99% of baseball fans? Before Jeff Lunhow joined the Astros he earned dual degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in economics and engineering. He earned an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He then worked as an engineer, management consultant, and technology entrepreneur. He went on to work for McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm, for five years and then founded and served as president and chief operating officer of Archetype Solutions. It would be fair to say others with similar credentials could join a MLB team in the front office and handle the job.

I would not use permanent ink to write that lineup. There will be a couple additions.

Are there any reports of us flipping Snachez or is this speculation?

Calling the Cruz trade a salary dump is extremely simplistic thinking. Trading a rental in a 90+ loss season for a good pitching prospect is a great trade.

Donaldson had negative trade value so this can't possibly be true. The trade favored the Yankees because of that negative trade value. However, you are failing to recognize the $20M/AAV saved. Therefore, if they sign Story, it would be fair to say this the two trades netted Garver / Donaldson / Rortvedt for Story / Urshela / Sanchez and Henriquez. If they don't sign Story or something similar it's a different story, pun intended.

Yes and I think the twins are willing to go there. All of the other stuff points to them having this in hand. I think they already have a deal or they would not have moved IKF. I don't have any inside information but that's sure the way it looks.

There are not many team with the money to sign Story left looking for a SS and Houston would appear unwilling to go to age 35 for a SS. Plus, other teams are looking to move him off of SS. I don't think he is getting a 7 year deal, especially if he wants to remain at SS. 5 years/110M or 6/120M is my guess.

IDK what I was thinking on Urshela having 5 years control so that takes some of the shine off that swap. However, I have always said I would trade Donaldson if they could get someone to take most of his salary. Of course, there is no upside if they don't invest the money elsewhere. I would bet we see some additional investment.

You noticed I did not even mention Sanchez. He does not matter much in this deal. He gets moved or used as a DH / emergency catcher. I know I am going to be checking the Story rumors every hour!

This is not at all confusing if their goal is to add Story and given the uncertainty of their SS prospects that makes sense. With Story, the net of all of this is a huge improvement at SS, plus a front line SP, plus a big defensive improvement at 3B. Plus, when Miranda takes over we have a great utility player or trade asset. I am a Donaldson fan but he had negative trade value and his defense at 3B was definitely fading. He may or may not be more valuable than Urshela this year but getting him off the books for 23 and the $8M buyout in 2024 provides the opportunity for other additions. Urshela has 5 years of control. He had a bad year last year but he produced 3.1 WAR in 2019 and 1.6 WAR in 43 games during the covid year. That equates to 5 WAR had he played 135 games. I like this trade. They will be worse a Catcher but much better at SS and starting pitching. An infield of Kirilloff / Polanco / Story / Urshela looks pretty darn good to me. Add Sonny Gray and this year looks waaay better then it did a week ago. It's also noteworthy that this almost certainly takes the Yankees out of the free agent SS market.

Actually, I found my head shaking in agreement when Mike said he did not understand this move because up until now the actions looked focused on the future. This move looks focused on the present. It looks to me like an attempt to put a pretender on the field. By that I mean a team that is in contention but not a real contender. This is just fine if it does not impede the process of retooling. At least it's two years. I guess I understand it from a business perspective. Keep a viable product out there today and work all of these prospects in as you go. If things go really well, they might actually put a contender on the field in 2023. It's a relatively low risk / profitable approach.

They didn't trade Garver for IKF. The traded Garver for IKF and a pitching prospect. Most everyone is looking at this purely from a current year lens. I agree it makes no sense if Henriquez has no value. If the front office believes he has value, and if you look beyond the current year, this is not a strange move at all. This is the exact pattern they followed in Cleveland so I don't find it at all curious they would make this type of trade.

You might be right about Oller but Strotman is 25 1/2 as well. Oller aside, a team with little chance of being a legit contender trading a prospect with a good chance of giving you 6 years as a really solid SP for 1 year of Bassit would be incompetence on the part of the front office. That's how Oakland got Bassitt to begin with. That's why they have had the most 90 win seasons in the past 20 years of any team with below average revenue. Following the exact opposite strategy as Oakland is not a good idea,

The rough equivalent is something like Winder and Strotman. Trading those kinds of prospects for 1 year of Bassitt in a year the team has a very meager chance to have a legit contender would be borderline negligent.

Looking at the pitching prospect they got was less than encouraging given he is 5'10". However, the right up on him actually looks pretty decent. I am a big Garv fan but if this works out to be a solid bridge to Lewis and they get a decent starting pitcher, sign me up. They need sold D at SS more than they need Garver's bat.

Were the Ray's tanking when they traded Snell in route to a 100 win season? Were The White Sox tanking when they traded Sale and Eaton or was it the best way for them to build a contender? The Cubs and Astros basically did the same thing in route to building WS winners. The Mariners are looking like they are the latest example. Their rebuild started with trading Cano & Diaz to the Mets which looks pretty darn smart now.

Bassit and Semien were acquired for a pitcher Samardzija) with one year of control.

This not getting done because of the implementation of an International Draft is absolutely absurd. It's good for American players but a problem for international players? Not to mention it would be good for the game. They should be packing their bags for spring training.

When we submit business reports with conclusions in the real world, we list our assumptions as they are generally crucial in validating the conclusions being presented. In this case, there is an assumption an agreement will be reached in less than X days where X represents the number of missed games before television revenue has to returned. Of course, if this went on until near that date, the players would just hold out because their leverage would change significantly once that date was reached. Without that revenue, teams would be losing the nearly all their revenue sources. We are also missing fixed operating costs. If you are not familiar with this term, it’s costs that are not variable. For example, player travel is a variable operating cost. In this case, the cost of the all of the non-player personnel is ignored. Do they have debt service to pay? Leased equipment, office space, etc? Determining if there would be a profit or loss is not all that complicated if our assumption is that it is not reasonable to assume that a CBA will be reached within days of the TV rebate deadline. In that case, the loss would be estimated as whatever revenue streams remain which is next to nothing, less the cost of all non-player personnel, debt service, equipment, monthly contracts such as data center, security services, and monthly subscription services. The players on the other hand won’t be making anything but there expenses are limited to whatever the spend to stay in shape. The premise that the side that gains the most if this persists is the side with hundreds of employees to pay is not credible unless you believe the players are so monumentally stupid they would cave just before the league had to return tv revenue.

Grant Paulson asked a couple different Milb pitchers about it on his radio show. in a nutshell, they said it became so natural that they barely noticed it.

A step in the right direction to promote parity.

I hear the short career argument often and like you never understand the point. Using the players that are not good enough to remain in MLB to make any point about compensation makes absolutely no sense. Thousands never make it to MLB at all. Should we bake that into the calculations as well? The average career is 2.7 years because the guy that plays 4 games go into the denominator. Take all of the guys out that play less than 1 year and what's the average then?

The way it works in this type of negotiation, at least the ones I have been part of when there is a non-starter, one side will say we can talk when the non-starter is no longer an issue. They started talking again when it was removed. This is exactly what I would have expected. You also fail to recognize these framework for these talks had started months earlier. It is very hard to believe the reduced time to free agency had not been addressed months earlier. Yet, the players held to this demand along with a very long and aggressive list of other demands. It was not until 1/24 that they actually did anything but insist on 100% of everything they wanted. Once again, this is consistent with the message they started with which was basically we are holding out. We are unified, we are driven, bla, bla, bla. Not exactly the tone of people looking to find a solution via compromise and if you look back to my posts in January and stated this would happen.

They did not drop this until Jan 24th. How long before that do you think these negotiations have been going on. At that point they had literally not made any concessions from a list of demands that in aggregate were absurd. Dukette and Bowden discussed this on their show right before they dropped this demand. Both said this thing was going nowhere until the players realized lower the years of control was never happening and that they were not going to get everything they asked. They both were frustrated specifically with the people the MLBPA had put in charge. Are you really going to suggest their message has not been we are going to stand united until we get everything we want. Are you really going to suggest the offer that was not made was not reasonable? You don't like the facts so now you want to pull the I will shut you up card. Go. ahead. Prove you can't stand someone pointing out facts you don't like.

It's not that surprising and we are getting exactly what I expected. The players have been very animated in their resolve to get what they are demanding. How much have we heard about their resolve and war chest, etc. During the much talked about six weeks with no offer and the six months prior, the players were told the 5 year free agency was a non-starter. We all know that was never going to happen. We know for a fact they had not come off this demand nor had they come off of any of the other demands until recently. All of these demands were individually substantial and collectively were extreme beyond reason. Yet, the players held firm. We also know that in the Pandemic year they literally did not budge 1% and let's keep in mind they were given service time for a full year. The major hang-up now appears to be the increase in the CBT. Smaller market teams clearly understand their disadvantage. 3 below average revenue teams have won the WS in the past 25 years. Why wouldn't we expect the owners to hold the line on this issue, especially given the other increases and elimination of draft pick compensation. More importantly why wouldn't any twins fan share their unwillingness to exacerbate the existing problem. With all the complaining about losing free agents, why would any Twins fan want any increase at all in the advantage held by top revenue teams? I would bet, they could have gotten the $20M in the minimum had they agreed to the CBT. I would also bet that they are not willing.