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Yes. No deal = no bet. In fact, if the players involved in the deal change, no bet. You said I was being 'churlish' to think these players (Gonzales, Beckett and Crawford) were worth their contracts. I offered even odds that those three would put up more WAR next year than whoever Boston uses their money to acquire instead.
If it's true that this trade was being discussed before the deadline and the players were put on waivers specifically to allow the mega-deal to happen, then the teams may very well have agreed that the Sox would pull the players back if it were to fall apart for any reason.
Millions of dollars make people do ugly things. Right now the Dodgers have won the waiver claims for Adrian and Beckett. If the Red Sox want to stick it to them they can and there isn't a thing the Dodgers can do about it except whine.
"As good as"? There is one good player on that list of three. The Crawford deal was dumb as dogshit when made, and his being injured hasn't made it better. I have every confidence that even this FO will be able to get someone who will outperform him next year and beyond.
Of course. And yet people occasionally do behave honorably even when millions of dollars are involved.
I'll make you the same bet. $20 bbref sponsorship that those three players put up more 2013 WAR than their 2013 Red Sox counterparts.
If it's true that this trade was being discussed before the deadline and the players were put on waivers specifically to allow the mega-deal to happen, then the teams may very well have agreed that the Sox would pull the players back if it were to fall apart for any reason.
I am confident this is the case. I'd be shocked if the Sox decide to just stick LA with Beckett if the deal doesn't work out.
Sure but the notion is that the Red Sox will screw this up but about the only way they can do that is if they pay for all the players they are shipping out and get nothing back.
That bet is rigged and you know it. You make a trade like this so you can pay that money to more than three guys.
If you want to make that bet on Crawford, I'll do it every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I don't think many teams put in claims for players with eight-figure contracts just for the kicks.
I don't think that either. And the two teams that might have been most likely to put in a claim on general principles just happen to have spent a ton of dough on first basemen last winter. But there are a couple of contending AL teams that could use a 1B/DH and have some money to throw around. What's left on Gonzalez' contract is about what the Orioles were rumored to have offered Teixeira, for instance.
Yea, but how much better? Enough to make the playoffs? Because if youre spending 60 million and theres no hope those guys will get you over the top, whats the point?
Ortiz gone via free-agency? Probably. Same with Dice-K. Pedroia traded? I dunno, can Boston get someone like Neil Walker back? Lackey with $30M or so over the next two years might go somewhere if Boston picks up about $27,000,000 of it.
That's the top seven contracts, according to Cot's.
You: ""As good as"? There is one good player on that list of three... I have every confidence that even this FO will be able to get someone who will outperform [Crawford] next year and beyond."
You: "That bet is rigged and you know it. You make a trade like this so you can pay that money to more than three guys."
Shrug.
He may look less than massively overpaid, but almost no one is cheap at $23M/year. Unless you're suggesting he's going to be routinely posting 6-7 WAR seasons for the next 3-5 years, this just doesn't fit the contract commitment.
Aha! But (as KM is no doubt furiously typing at this moment) Duquette knows the Sox would never deal with the O's on a deal like this, and his waiver claim could only scupper a deal that, given the implication of a Sox rebuild and the limited tenure of the average GM, would clearly be to Duquette's advantage. And the result? Advantage Duquette! Not sure about the other 12 teams though.
(I do look forward to the stories about Nick Punto being a clubhouse nightmare that we're surely about to see.)
I think it would have been pretty crazy for Baltimore to risk taking on Adrian Gonzalez.
Texas, that I could have imagined, especially since letting him go in the first place was Jon Daniels' greatest disaster.
contacts:
http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/sports/red_sox/index.php/2012/08/24/source-dodgers-would-pick-up-more-than-95-percent-of-red-sox/
If thats anywhere near the truth...THANKS FOR 07 Josh! See ya baby!
I dunno how much credit can be given for getting out of a hole that you dug for yourself, but I will say this. It seemed like J.P. Ricciardi milked the "my predecessor stuck me with bad contracts" excuse for about a decade. Cherington was able to get himself out of the straitjacket in his first season.
Sounds like they're getting rid of most of the contributors of the soap opera.
I highly doubt that. Same for Pedroia. I wouldn't mind sacrificing Lackey to a volcano god, though.
He only stayed on the Twins so long because he had kidnapped Joe Mauer's parents and held them hostage.
Holy shitsnacks.
How high can you count?
That would entail getting rid of ownership, the Boston media, and a significant portion of the entire population of New England. Are the Dodgers building an island out in the Pacific somewhere for all these people?
Hamilton in Boston would be a disaster.
BTW, anyone thinking this deal is anywhere near done, thinking that it won't go down to the last second of the 72-hour window, with multiple ups and downs in between, has not followed any of the Sox dealings in the past decade.
As part of the agreement, he will be allowed to pitch in a burqa.
Wait, why would the Dodgers whine about getting Gonzalez and Beckett for free?
Why would it be messed up. It's been pretty well established for the past decade or so that this is the risk you take when you put a claim in.
"Crawford has 3 team no-trade list. As luck would have it, #dodgers are 1 of 3. As of few minutes ago he was yet to be asked"
Maybe they should ask to borrow Gonzalez' cell phone.
It got very distracting when he kept showing off the pictures of gardenhire with the goats that he used to stay in the lineup all those years.
The deal is DOA.
It's also bizarre to me that Sox fans are relieved to maybe get out from under Josh Beckett's contract. He's owed all of $31 million for 2013-2014, which is basically nothing - essentially a short two-year deal for not-outrageous money - and there's a good chance he'll be worth it anyway.
Much ado about nothing, all of this is.
Again, if the trade negotiations led to the players being put on waivers instead of the other way around, then the Dodgers would basically have no choice but to put in "blocking" claims. Whether that makes it "messed up" for the Red Sox to stick the Dodgers with Beckett and pull Gonzalez back is debatable.
I'm not so sure. On paper the Sox got a guy who was younger in AGon and cleared the way for one of their top prospects in Middlebrooks, which looks like a fairly orderly transition to a younger core. They also got Jackie Bradley Jr and Blake Swihart as draft compensation for Beltre.
The main factor is how do you like Beltre in his later '30s vs AGon's mid '30s? I would've bet on the 1Bman who knew how to take a walk (but then I can't figure out why he stopped walking this year anyway).
So you're not buying Michael Silverman's source?
EDIT: on second thought... It's over. It's always been over.
But wow, for the Dodgers to take on these contracts, just wow...
I don't know who Michael Silverman is, let alone his source.
Oh, I don't doubt that the teams are talking about it, even talking seriously. But they Will. Never. Agree. On the money.
It would be professional suicide for Colleti to take on that much payroll for that many years on the wrong side of 30.
Mind you, I'd love to get out from under Crawford's contract, and given Gonzalez's relatively poor year (for him), I'd be ok with gambling that he's declined and trading his contract as well. I simply don't see it happening.
But the path the took also ended up in them blocking their top prospect.
Beltre is signed through 36 (37 if his option kicks in) for $16 mil/year.
Gonzalez is signed through 36 at $20-22 mil/year.
I'd bet on the more athletic guy aging better (not that I was saying so then, IIRC).
You're absolutely right. But people still get it wrong every time this situation comes up.
So you're saying it's over.
**See post 101
Wait, who? Bogarts? At the time this deal was done had he even had his break out yet? Looking at the tools in question I'm fine with Middlebrooks at 3B and Xander in RF.
I'd still bet on AGon aging better (he's seemed more durable over the course of his career), and the last part is the kicker; most of these moves looked much better on paper than they turner out.
Well, someone tweeted something. I know I'm sold.
Now, I'm confused. You were saying that the trade was good because it opened a path for Middlebrooks. But in fact Middlebrooks was still blocked. That's all that I was getting at.
Of course, if they hadn't made the deal, they'd also have been blocking Rizzo--what a tragedy that would have been!
Even if this just winds up a Beckett salary dump, I'd be thrilled. If it comes off as Beckett-Crawford-AGon-Punto + $10 million for a bucket of balls I'd be thrilled. That we might get living, breathing prospects instead of a bucket of balls has me over the moon.
Seriously, this cannot possibly be true. I'm still in disbelief.
If it's his call - given the new ownership in LA, he might be getting a lot of suggestions...
This ignores the point I was making. They had "no choice?" Why? Only makes sense if another team might take him, which is why Crawford wasn't claimed because of course no one would take him. If another team might take Beckett then that team thinks it is a positive, not "messed up" but it becomes messed up when they let LA have him? If the Sox are willing to let LA, or anyone, just have him then the whole "trade negotiations led to the players being put on waivers" makes no sense unless the Sox would be doing it just because they know LA wouldn't want that so they would do it purely out of spite as a punishment for LA not completing the trade and that scenario seems pretty nonsensical to me.
Use logic, Matt. Neither team could agree to what the other team's terms would have to be.
Well, I suppose they could - Epstein did sign Crawford to a dumb megadeal, so these things do happen - but one of them would be foolish.
? This entire subject is gossip.
I prefer evidence to logic, when I can get it. Alex Speier has demonstrated over the last year that he's a very good and ethical reporter. He could be getting things wrong - like general managers, reporters can do foolish things - but I take his report as good evidence of what's going on.
I don't really understand why you're here at midnight on a Friday night talking about sports if you don't care to read about sports. But whatevs. I'm not saying you ought to read Speier if it wouldn't give you happiness. I just think there are fair distinctions to be made between different sports reporters as to how well and how seriously they do their jobs.
EDIT: And, hilariously, I now see from your Sox Therapy post that you agree with this. You wrote: "This is bugnuts insane, but also totally fascinating."
Yes.
For real. The emergence of Alex Speier is, hands down, the best thing that's happened to serious Red Sox fans this year. The guy is a ####### godsend.
You're acting like baseball teams never make "insane deals", which is clearly false. And you're also ignoring the factors that push the Dodgers toward making this deal, despite any "insanity": namely the fact that they have new ownership that is trying to buy back the credibility that Frank McCourt spend most of the last decade pissing away. Meanwhile the Angels had made huge inroads towards taking a dominant position in the LA market, especially with the huge offseason they had. Right now the Angels seem to be falling on their faces in a decidedly 2011-12 Red Sox fashion, so the Dodgers have a unique opportunity to reverse the trends of the last decade and become THE LA team again. Is that worth $260M in contract commitments? Tough to say, but it's not unreasonable that their new ownership might think that money will be well spent, especially with new TV deals coming up in the near future.
edit: And as some others have helpfully pointed out, Colletti is probably pushing this too as it's probably his last chance to show the new ownership that he deserves to keep his job.
* a 30 year old outfielder coming off two lost years and signed to a huge deal that was silly even at the time of its signing when he was 28 and coming off a good season;
* a 30 year old first baseman who is having a slightly worrisome off year; and
* a 33 year old pitcher with a notable drop in K rate who is coming off of two lost years out of three.
(And whatever Nick Punto is. Not expensive, at least.)
Why would they do this? If you're spending that kind of money, you need to be getting stars at the top of their game. The Dodgers would be completely buying low for players in their 30s who already have problems. They would be taking on Crawford's albatross contract that looked like an albatross at the time, let alone now. And ponying up on a huge commitment to a first baseman having a down year.
Not even close. This deal is somewhat defensible for the Dodgers. The Wells trade was just straight-up dumb. That is like the Joe D 56-game hitting streak of bad trades. It's astonishing that it ever even happened in the first place, and there's almost no way it will ever be topped.
That's a fair point, but there is insane and there is insane. And usually, teams make insane trades because they overvalue players. Or undervalue them. (Or it's a young player who blossoms.) That's not really the case here. How could someone overvalue Carl Crawford at this point, and given his contract? You can think that Gonzalez will bounce back, but you would NEED him to to make the deal worth it.
What deals of the past couple of decades would be as bad as this one? I'll spot you Vernon Wells.
It would seem an odd way to go about that.
But not that odd. The CW believed before the season started that the Dodgers were likely to make a big splash at the trade deadline. They were off by one month.
I think truly bad trades are when one team gives up lots of value and gets no return. Here the Dodgers are getting an All-Star at a position where they've gotten nothing for half a decade, plus a solid average pitcher, plus a lottery ticket in Crawford that could turn into an All-Star. They're paying way, way too much money for these players, but that happens a lot. They are getting real value for their ballclub, just at too high a price.
Trading for Hanley Ramirez isn't making a big splash?
When he jumps in the pool he makes a pretty big splash nowadays.
Hmmm, maybe I should have written "the biggest splash?"
They are getting "valuable baseball players" who are on contracts that let them go unclaimed by every team in the AL and most of the NL. If that many other teams think they have negative value given what they are being paid you can't just say "at least they are getting some decent players." The money matters and that is what makes it stupid. If they had simply claimed Crawford it would obviously be worse than the Wells trade IMO. Throwing in two other players on contracts no one else wants doesn't make it better, it makes it worse.
But this is likely over-stated:
a) for whatever reason, you basically never see waiver trades to non-contending teams. I don't know if it's a gentleman's agreement or what, but I bet it would be very rare for a 2nd division team to put in a claim on Gonzalez or Beckett even if they wanted them.
b) a substantial number of teams "can't afford" the Gonzalez contract anyway. Beckett probably anybody could afford.
c) lots of teams have good 1B already, sometimes signed to long-term deals.
In the AL, Tex and the O's are the only teams that seem to make any sense for Gonzalez and Texas is getting good, cheap production out of Moreland these days (but not Young so Gonzo works there I guess). Possibly Seattle as a bolt out of the blue.
In the NL, he never made it as far as the Nats (some sense), Braves (no sense), Cincy (no sense), Cards (some sense) or Giants (some sense). Arizona has Goldschmidt and I don't imagine the Pirates want any part of his contract. Two more high payroll teams -- Phils are stuck with Howard; Cubs have Rizzo. I'm not sure the Mets consider themsevles high payroll team at the moment.
For Beckett though I'm not sure I can make that argument too well. There are lots of teams that could use a "true $15 M" starter.
This is a reasonable position, but I assume some teams think that Beckett is more trouble than he is worth at this point.
That is exactly what is happening. The new TV deal is going to be enormous and they don't have to pay revenue sharing on the increase.
If they have revenue and are worried about recapturing parts of the fan base they lost to the Angels, then they're obviously going to overvalue getting to the playoffs and advancing in the playoffs. Doesn't this trade advance that? Whether it's the best use of revenue or impacts life years down the road, well those are different questions.
I'm not saying I like it but I do think it is a plan
With even the Yankees seemingly determined to decrease payroll because of the new harsh luxury tax is now really the time to pick up the plan they themselves have now abandoned?
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