Cap'n Piranha

Once or twice, I agree, not a huge difference. Except, in the case of SWR; both times he was traded, the team trading him away had relatively low odds to make the playoffs that year. When the Mets traded SWR away on July 30, 2019, they were 51-55, 4th in the NL East, 11 back from the Braves, with a 16.5% chance to make the playoffs. Sure, Stroman had 2+ years of control left, but why make the deal in July, instead of December? Wait, and you don't have top give up as much; maybe you can keep SWR, and give up a less highly-regarded prospect; unless the Mets after having watched SWR thought there was a greater risk of him reaching his potential than they thought. When Toronto traded for Berrios, they were 53-48, 4th in the AL East, 8 back of the Rays. In the Wild Card race, they were behind the Red Sox, Yankees, A's, and Mariners, and only 2.5 up on the Angels--their odds to make the playoffs were 33.2%. The same logic as above holds--wait to trade for Berrios until December 2021, and maybe you only need to give up Martin and a lesser prospect, and you get to keep SWR--this suggests the Blue Jays thought the first 6 years of SWR's MLB career is not worth 12 starts from Jose Berrios in a year they were twice as likely to miss the playoffs as make them. That doesn't scream "we the Toronto Blue Jays think SWR will be a frontline MLB pitcher in 2-3 years" to me. A guy with the ceiling of borderline #1 starter who has yet to start his service clock doesn't get traded twice unless there is a higher than average risk he doesn't reach that ceiling. Maybe SWR makes both the Mets and Jays look silly for trading him, and getting less than 4 years of control on pitchers who were not as good as he became. Or maybe SWR ends up being Fernando Romero, who looked like a potential ace in his first 5 starts as a 23 year old in 2018, and hasn't pitched in the majors since 2019. I think SWR absolutely needs to be in our top 5-7 prospects, but when comparing him to a guy (Joe Ryan) who's floor is late inning bullpen weapon, the chasm between SWR's ceiling and floor needs to be taken into account. I'm not so sure that's happening amongst some posters here.

Whoops, must've missed the "poster is editing this post" notification. You're right, SWR is younger, and that has to be taken into account. But what also has to be taken into account is that his numbers are nowhere near Joe Ryan's, so the idea that SWR is a better prospect at this point is built entirely on dreamcasting improvement that may or may not materialize. As another poster pointed out, SWR has already been traded twice, for a couple of years of a #2 starter each time, and the teams trading him away were each long-ish shots to make the playoffs (NYM were 21.8% to make the playoffs on August 1, 2019. TOR was 34.8% on August 1, 2021). This suggests that those organizations were nervous about SWR's ability to meet his ceiling--if they thought he was pretty likely become a number 2 or better starter, they never would have given him up in a midseason trade during a season they were more likely to miss the playoffs than make them. You're also probably right that Joe Ryan is close to a finished product. Since the beginning of 2019, Ryan has struck out 37.7% of batters while only walking 5.3%, and has a better than 7.0 k/bb ratio. His ERA is excellent at 2.47, and his 0.82 WHIP is spectacular. Here's where those figures would rank amongst MLB starters this year; 1st, 11th, 1st (I used k-bb%, where Joe Ryan is at 32.4--highest in MLB is Burnes at 29.4), 5th, and 1st. There's obviously a big gap between AAA and MLB, but the fact that Joe Ryan has put up MiLB numbers better than essentially any MLB pitcher has put up in the majors suggests we should be taking him a lot more seriously.

You started by mentioning his ability to miss bats. You then reiterated his ability to miss bats. Sure, you mentioned some other things, but missing bats was clearly what you were most focused on. The only thing SWR has going for him compared to Joe Ryan is that he's younger, give up fewer homeruns, and has a greater prospect pedigree. If I gave you the lines of these two pitchers, including what level they were at, but gave no other identifying info whatsoever, everyone would much prefer Joe Ryan. SWR has a 4.09 ERA, Joe Ryan is at 2.67. SWR allows 29.4% of batters to reach via hit/walk, Joe Ryan is at 22.3%--Joe Ryan has actually given up 10 FEWER hits than SWR despite facing 172 MORE hitters. At a certain point, production has to count for more than potential. This isn't to say that SWR might not put it all together, and become Jose Berrios 2.0 (I think we can agree that's his realistic ceiling), and Joe Ryan might become Smeltzer/Thorpe 2.0, but if I had to bet on who was going to provide more WAR in their Twins career, I'm betting heavily on Ryan.

SWR has faced 705 batters in his professional career, and struck out 219 of them (31.1%). JR has faced 877 batters in his professional career, and struck out 326 of them (37.2%). Tell me more about how SWR is ranked ahead of Joe Ryan because of his ability to miss bats.

I'm completely doing this in good faith. I'm verifying what you're saying against previous comments you made, about people being able to choose their employer within their field. I'm curious to know what you think the appropriate way to grant free agency is--is it based on years in an organization? Age? A combination of both?

So you agree that MLB should not be a free market, as concerns a player's ability to choose their direct employer?

Sears and Roebuck is the biggest retailer in the US. People keep saying it will stop, but it doesn't. The idea that just because the value of MLB teams has been going up means they will always go up is foolish. The owners last year offered the players a 50/50 revenue split. The players said no. Also, if the MLB owners won't open their books, how can you possibly say payroll as a percent of revenue has gone down? We can guess, but can't possibly know, but I would hazard a guess that at least in the past two years, payroll as a percent of revenue is very much up--it certainly was in 2020. I do view my wages as pure profit, because that's what it is. Profit is revenue earned after expenses. As the players have no expenses related to being a player (other than the standard ones, like transportation, luggage, etc. that anyone who travels regularly for their job would have), they are free to spend 50% to 60% of their wages (depending on the tax laws of the locality they play their games in) on whatever they like. That's anywhere from $1.5B to $2B. There's no way the owners have that much in post-tax earnings. Not a chance.

Putting aside whether a government should be able to tell someone whether they can or cannot operate a business (I tend to think that so long as you are following all applicable laws, it is none of the government's business what you choose to do with your time), I think MLB is both a governing body, and a corporate parent. It has aspects of both, and there are ways in which players can be seen as employees of MLB (who pays the players who appear in the all-star game? Is it the player's team? The game's host team? MLB?), as well as of their individual teams. That said, even if we look at the 30 teams as separate corporations, there are all kinds of parallels in other industries to inability to move to another organization in a certain field, non-compete clauses being a primary one. If baseball truly operated in a way where any individual was free to play for any team they wanted, for whatever amount they could negotiate, and leave without penalty at any time, do you truly think that would make for a better experience? Who's going to play for Pittsburgh, or Cleveland, or Detroit, or Colorado, or any number of teams that can't compete financially? You'll end up with something like the EPL, where the majority of the league are simply glorified minor league teams, developing players that then get swallowed up for more money by the handful of behemoths. In the last 29 years, the EPL has had 7 different champions--is that really what we want for MLB?

Not if the game is actually dying, and young people aren't interested in it anymore. Not if all 30 try to sell their teams at the same time. What do you think happens to the value of Amazon stock if the 30 people holding the most shares all announce at the same time they are liquidating their holdings? Baseball teams have value for only 2 reasons; either one, they have a perceived value that can't be quantified in dollars, or two, they are a vehicle for making money. A business that does not turn a profit can survive for a time on anticipation of future profitability. But if that doe not materialize, the business will lose value, so the owners are always going to ensure their business is profitable (unless they only want to own the team as a status symbol, or outlet for their competitive ego). Expecting them not to is just foolish, so if the side making billions in pure profit (the players) think it's somehow not ok for the other side to make hundreds of millions in pure profit, then they will be killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

Interesting. The author here quotes Cot's, and says 7 teams under by $145M. I used the site below (which appeared higher in google's ranking than Cot's, for what that's worth, if anything), which shows 12 teams under $100M for a total of $393M. It also shows only 3 teams over $180M, one of which is by a mere $270k, another by ~$11M, and the third by ~$50M. http://www.stevetheump.com/Payrolls.htm

Agree that no one has worn out their welcome on this thread--it's an interesting trait of our current society that in some ways disagreement with a person's opinion is now seen as dislike for that person. We'd be much better off if we could be better at divorcing people from their ideas when interacting with them. As for the baseball stuff, I think both you and Mark are partly right on the structure of MLB vis-a-vis teams. In some ways, MLB is the governing body that 30 corporations acknowledge. But in other ways, the 30 teams are more like branches of the larger MLB corporation. They have standardized processes they have to follow, but they are also free to institute their own ideas and policies. I think the biggest argument for MLB being the corporation is that MLB is the only body that can open or close one of it's branches. That is, I can't start my own team, and immediately start using MLB-related things for my own purposes. I can't schedule games against MLB teams, even if those teams wanted to schedule a game against me. I can't see my team compete in the MLB postseason, even if my team has a better record. No government restricts new companies from competing on legally equal footing with existing companies (at no government should). MLB absolutely restricts any baseball team from competing on legally equal footing with it's 30 branches. As such, it's more like MLB is Amazon, and the teams are Whole Foods, imdb, Zappos, etc. I've never understood why people say they show up to watch the players on the field, not the greedy owners, but fail to acknowledge that without the greedy owners writing literally billions of dollars in checks every year, there is no MLB. Seriously--what do you think happens if next year all 30 current MLB owners decide it's not worth it to run an MLB team, and decide to not field teams (but still honor existing contracts by paying them) while simultaneously putting the teams up for sale. Do you think there is a season in 2022? If so, how many teams are there--8? 10?

Where are you getting this from? I outlined this in a previous post that showed salaries would go up by a minimum of $330M this year.

I covered this in a different post--that team will simultaneously trade for less valuable players on expiring contracts. Say this past year the Diamondbacks want to trade Escobar for prospects, but that would put them below the floor. They could talk to the Twins about acquiring Simmons, Pineda, or Colome.to offset the salary. It will make teams less nervous about signing FA deals, because they'll now have an enhanced ability to get out from under those deals.

So then how much the owners make compared to us would also be irrelevant, no? I also don't think any more money goes to the owners--there's a decent chance more money goes to the players. The average payroll this year is $119.7M, which is pulled down by 12 teams being under the $100M threshold. Even if we assume that no team exceeds the luxury tax by so much as a dollar (an unlikely occurrence), when you bring the three teams over $180M down to $180M, bring all teams below $100M up to $100M, and leave everyone else the same, the new average payroll is $130.6M, so almost $11M per team.

Not if those large market teams want to keep winning at the rate they're accustomed to. The Rays are outperforming the Yankees despite spending only $70M; what will they do if forced to spend $30M more? You think the Yankees are going to just spend less, and let the current performance gap get even wider? The Dodgers, Yankees, Mets and Red Sox will all keep spending, luxury tax be darned, but it will create more revenue to go to the lower tier teams. I'm not sure how else you stop tanking, other than forcing teams to employ a collection of players generally considered to be worth approximately $100M, at minimum, every year.

Who cares if a huge majority make the minimum if it's 40x what the average American family makes in a year. Combine that with a revamped system that sets free agency at years since drafting/signing or age, and what you'll end up with is a system that spits out Jake Caves in order to get Austin Martins to the majors sooner. Is that really such a bad thing?

That's why there would be a cap on individual player contracts. Imagine how much more fun free agency will be when every team can compete on exact level footing (at least with an individual player). If the Rays payroll is projected to be $90M, they may very well offer Gerrit Cole $25M per. Maybe he doesn't take it--but maybe he thinks the Rays are a really well-run org, and he'd like to be there, and there's no financial disincentive to that now.

I could. The list of MLBPA members making $2m or less is much larger than the list making $20M or more. If the owners were truly smart, they would put forth a proposal that would set minimum salary at $2M, but cap the max salary at $20M-$25M. You think Ober, Jax, Arraez, Kiriloff, Larnach, Gordon, Astudillo, Garcia, Gant, Garza, Jeffers, etc. are all going to vote against a tripling in their pay, just so 30-40 players can make 30 to 35 times what they do, instead of 10 times?

Sounds like there will not be a hard cap, just a luxury tax. Dropping it still will help. Currently, the threshold is set at $210M, and penalties are 20% for year 1, 30% for year 2, and 50% for year 3 (so long as those years are consecutive). That means this tax would be an extra $6M to $15M for a team at the $210M number or higher. One thing this will do, that will be fascinating to watch, is mitigate the risk of bad contracts. Imagine you're a team with a $105M payroll, and you're losing, so you want to trade your expiring contracts for prospects. You'll need to simultaneously acquire a different expiring contract in order to stay over the floor.

Also, yet another response crammed with insight and analysis.

The idea or me?

I'm gonna guess it didn't look like ball 4 until it was too late to stop his swing.

Agreed. Also, batters should be required to stay in the box unless they want to call a timeout. Each time gets 4 timeouts they can use while batting. Leaving the box during a PA is an automatic strike, doing it twice is an automatic out, and the offending hitter is ejected.

It's not the app's fault the teams are taking 30 seconds in between each pitch.

Thorpe for sure, maybe Coulombe and one of Garcia/Garza?