User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Page rendered in 0.8333 seconds
55 querie(s) executed
|
You are here > Home > Sox Therapy > Discussion
| ||||||||
|
|
BookmarksYou must be logged in to view your Bookmarks. Hot TopicsRIP Tim Wakefield
(19 - 2:54pm, Oct 03) Last: Jay Seaver Over and Out (60 - 1:47pm, Oct 03) Last: Darren We're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat (83 - 7:44am, Sep 19) Last: Captain Joe Bivens, Pointless and Wonderful Halfwayish to Something (81 - 12:02pm, Aug 21) Last: jacksone (AKA It's OK...) Three Trades (17 - 3:46pm, Jul 28) Last: Darren Where We Headed? (34 - 5:09pm, Jul 17) Last: villageidiom Feeling A Draft (22 - 11:27pm, Jul 10) Last: Darren The Case for Doing Nothing (30 - 2:44pm, Jul 10) Last: Darren The First Third (25 - 4:12pm, Jun 27) Last: Captain Joe Bivens, Pointless and Wonderful Lining Up The Minors (72 - 4:28pm, Jun 26) Last: villageidiom That Was a Week (63 - 7:31pm, Jun 25) Last: jacksone (AKA It's OK...) The Only Game In Town (except the Celtics, but I don't care about the Celtics. No you shut up) (87 - 11:27am, May 26) Last: ERROR---Jolly Old St. Nick Yoshida In The Spotlight (49 - 2:09pm, May 12) Last: Darren Reality Check After Series Six (79 - 9:29pm, May 04) Last: villageidiom Shrug Emoji (40 - 7:10pm, Apr 22) Last: Steve Balboni's Personal Trainer Syndicate |
|||||||
|
About Baseball Think Factory | Write for Us | Copyright © 1996-2021 Baseball Think Factory
User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
|
| | ||||||
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
:) Thanks for the laugh today. Much needed.
The only leaked information on the offers came from Lou Merloni, who had what YC called the “We Really Tried To Sign Mookie” defense, as well as the counteroffer that's widely been interpreted as a top-of-FA-market-but-pretty-fair-for-Mookie contract. If Boston is leaking both of those then they're not really mounting a defense. If Mookie is leaking both of those he's mounting not just a defense for not having signed, but he's offering a hint at what it would take for any team trading for him to sign him. If a source is leaking both sides' offers, the motivation for leaking both of them comes sooooo much stronger for Mookie than it does for Boston. But hey, people looking for Serious Concerns to express gotta lean toward the one that causes the most concern.
(I think it's unlikely the two leaks came from different sources, since it's damn unlikely that Lou F'ing Merloni was the only one who was able to get negotiation details from either side, let alone both independently. At a minimum he was the only one who was willing to share it, which means basic journalism stuff like confirmation from independent sources probably didn't happen here. Caveat emptor, res ipsa loquitur, et cetera.)
I don't think any additional leaks about what the Sox offered or what Mookie was willing to sign for will come until AFTER Mookie signs an extension with LA or signs as a FA somewhere. There's no benefit to either side for anything to come out early.
Unless I am forgetting #### we didn't learn about Lester's lowball offer until after he had signed with the Cubs, correct?
It should also be clearly stated that, for some reason, we're assuming in this exercise that there is no scenario in which Betts would have been on the team accounting for wins in future years at some unknown cost, and I'm not sure why it makes sense to do that. I'm reading this as you crediting all of the future years of Verdugo but none of the future years of Price/Betts.
This is also day two of this framing being extremely irritating to me (sorry, I know it was all in one day for everyone else but I ended up having to be out of the office for lame work reasons mid-firestorm yesterday).
Keeping the 2nd or 3rd or whatever best player in baseball on your team is not fan service, and reacting negatively to your team trading said player is not (just) emotional or sentimental or whatever else. Having the best baseball players on your team is excellent, baseball-wise! Always. Adding in the homegrown factor, fan favorite status, historical place within the franchise, etc., sure, that's more on the emotional/sentimental side of things.
2020 -4.9 (Verdugo+Graterol-Price-Betts)
2021 +2.4 (Verdugo+Graterol-Price)
2022 +2.7 (Verdugo+Graterol-Price)
It only credits one year of Betts, because that's what was traded, not Mookie Betts himself, but rather exclusive rights to exactly one year of Mookie Betts. The only additional value that might be appropriate to consider is the exclusive negotiating window you get for the next 9 months, but as it seems clear that Mookie intends to test the market, that window is probably worthless, or nearly so. Possibly if you think the trade poisons the relationship with Betts and it is now impossible to sign him as a FA, you could assign some (impossible to quantify) negative value to that.
I went and had a bit of a google. Best I can tell, when the betting lines came out at the start of December, the Red Sox opened at around 94.5 wins, and around 11-1 to 12-1 to win the World Series. Now they are at 84.5 - 85.5 wins, and around 33-1 to 40-1 to win the World Series.
This trade is absolutely, entirely, totally indefensible on baseball grounds. And people need to stop pretending it is. You don't punt mid-90s win seasons under any fucking circumstances.
1. The Red Sox are absolutely, absolutely awful for trading Betts;
and
2. They made a pretty good trade here.
But you don't seriously believe the reason that people are upset about this is the return, right? Has the entire past 36 hours on this website happened because there is confusion on that front?
I think this is a good rule of thumb but not an absolute. A very smart and disciplined team could reasonably decide to "re-tool" in a year where they might have otherwise won 90+ games if they are confident that it will make them much better in Years X+1, X+2, X+3, and so forth.
I have no idea if this is what the Red Sox are doing or not. Certainly the other decisions this offseason have not seemed smart and disciplined.
Of course not. Why do you think I think that? I didn't say that.
I will echo a comment from yesterday. There's a repeated pattern in these threads:
Person A: This trade is totally unjustifiable!
Person B: I get why you hate it, but actually I think it is justifiable. Here is why.
Person A: Don't talk to me about stats and dollars!!
"Excellent" does not mean "can't be improved by changing".
Setting aside the cap-specific financial motives for the moment, the Red Sox are, baseball-wise, worse off for 2020 than they were before the trade. They are also better off for 2021 through 2025, and in total, than they were before the trade. They went from "excellent" to "better". The cost, in baseball terms, of this improvement was to be worse in 2020. If we're not bringing emotion into it, that's what happened here.
Any argument that says the team is worse off after the trade - that doesn't rely on sentiment or emotion to make the case - has yet to be made. Feel free to start.
Yeah this is definitely something you and others have said (repeatedly) but it's also not a thing that's really happening.
So I genuinely don't get the commitment to being antagonistic in a community of people who have engaged in these conversations for more than a decade. What gives? This has been you and Darren throughout these threads (and PF, who is also a prince among men but not a Red Sox fan so whatever).
The only baseball case to be made is to assume that preemptively taking themselves out of the business of employing Mookie Betts is not part of the baseball case. I think your post here is great. It doesn't say this, that's fine, but yes, if you assume that it doesn't make sense to pay Mookie market-value into the future, then they have likely made a solid baseball move with this transaction. But you're handwaving that decision away, and pretending it's not part of the baseball-side of this discussion.
Once that decision was already made? Sure, this looks like a decent move. But I don't think that point was really broadly being argued (there are a couple comments here and there to that point, I acknowledge).
No, what the case actually assumes is that the trade has zero impact on Mookie signing with the Sox for 2021. It assumes that what Mookie does in 2021 is immaterial, because the Sox never had an inside track to signing him, and so this trade doesn't change anything.
Mookie Betts is the single-greatest combination of skill and appeal in a player the Red Sox have developed in my lifetime, and several lifetimes before me. I would have had no problem with either the Sox or Mookie if, after the end of the 2020 season, he opted to test the market and went elsewhere. I'd wish him good luck (unless he signed with the Yanks), and look forward to what came next for him and the team.
But dealing him away a year before that happens absolutely sucks. And I'm less interested in the Sox because of it. Sure, it may be irrational, but rooting for grown men in pajamas I've never met and probably wouldn't like to outscore similarly clothed men in a totally frivolous pursuit is inherently irrational anyway, so that's not much of an argument.
And I don't see any reason to make those assumptions. A. By at least one account, he's put out a counter-offer (perhaps that is total BS, I can't know). This would show a willingness to talk longterm contract, and they would have been the only team with the ability to have those talks. And B. If the Red Sox were committed to doing what they could to keep him, they wouldn't have made themselves significantly worse in 2020 before doing so.
#33 - We're all just guessing on this factor. The reporting is not much to go on. But this is why I point to Henry's history as an exemplary owner in multiple sports - perhaps Henry does know something. He could know two things: he could know that the Sox will never sign Betts. He could also know that the Sox have a terrific chance of signing Betts, and that trading him in the meantime doesn't reduce that chance in any way.
I mean there's guessing and there's guessing. Do you agree that it's more likely than not that making a trade that will probably make them worse in 2020 is a pretty strong signal they're taking themselves out of the Mookie sweepstakes?
But trading him in a way to duck under the luxury tax this year makes it sliiiiiiightly more likely they take a run at him than if they traded him in a way that did not duck under the threshold.
But that's not the only motivation. If it were, they could have made a move months ago. Back then I was saying that the reason they hadn't made any move was that they were holding out for the best baseball deal available. Because while they were clear this was a business decision, they were also clear that they want to compete; and this deal helps them to compete next year and beyond. To demonstrate that, I had to set aside the obvious financial motivation to see if there is an actually sensible baseball deal here, which there is.
And therefore, while I acknowledge there are a lot of angles from which one can look at this, one way to frame it is that one of the richest teams in baseball has (likely!) preemptively taken themselves out of the bidding for a guy who will be the best and youngest free agent to actually hit the open market since maybe ARod.
EDIT: And I think we would all be pretty upset about the Red Sox doing that even if the guy in question wasn't Mookie.
That's not the only motivation for making this specific trade among many other options, but it is the only motivation for trading him at all. I think that you think I'm just making a pedantic point, and maybe I'm just doing a bad job of articulating it, but I think that decision (to trade him, period) was a very bad baseball decision.
Edit: So either they did bid (unsuccessfully) on a guy who will be the best and youngest free agent to actually hit the open market since maybe ARod. Or, if he 100% wouldn't even listen to offers, then we can throw out the assumption that they won't bid on him as a free agent.
To the first part, I am understanding contract negotiations to be an ongoing thing until they are resolved one way or another. So I look at this as them saying uncle and bowing out.
But yes, your second sentence might be true. I don't have access to Clapper's many sources so it's possible the offer/counteroffer report is not at all accurate and he was never willing to talk. If that's the case, I suspect we'll hear about it in the press relatively soon.
And let me take this chance to reiterate that they should have kept him for 2020 (or at least until mid-summer) even if it was 100% set in stone that he was gone afterwards. And that the trade is stupid.
A. Because of your last paragraph, and B. because, yes, I think keeping him on the team would have given them the best possible shot to sign him long term. They shouldn't have been outbid by a rival team next winter anyway, and this would have given them 9 or however many months to try to get out ahead of it. (So no, not "bluffing," but if there was a number that they could get to to make it work, yes, I see no reason to think he wouldn't have signed).
Torres should be signed for 10 years tomorrow.
But I'd much, much, much rather sign Mookie Betts for ages 28-37, than sign Judge for ages 31-37, or Sanchez for ages 30-36. The Yankees control Judge and Sanchez through the 2022 season already.
The top 30 biggest baseball contracts in history have been signed by:
Angels
Phillies
Marlins
Yankees
Padres
Yankees
Rockies
Rangers
Tigers
Nationals
Mariners
Angels
Reds
Red Sox
Dodgers
Tigers
Nationals
Diamondbacks
Yankees
Twins
Cubs
Yankees
Tigers
Mariners
Nationals
Giants
Yankees
Orioles
Other than a whole lotta Yankees, not much of a pattern there. No A's or Royals, to be sure, but I think it's clear that random mid-market teams will almost invariably emerge as suitors for major FAs.
I find it hard to believe that someone would make up a thing like that. If someone actually took the time to go on a baseball message board and make up facts about rumored contract offers, it would certainly be very concerning.
You wouldn't, you would just shift the terms slightly, that's your deal.
That said, acquiring _______ instead of signing Free Agent Mookie could also be about making themselves better beyond 2020, depending on how the blank is filled. It's entirely possible they don't sign him. Hell, it's entirely possible they never get the chance, as the Dodgers have 9 months to prevent Free Agent Mookie from happening. That's the part I find second-most disappointing. (Most disappointing, of course, is that Betts is not on the Red Sox this year.)
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence? Huh. You're an imbecile. However, I would be willing to revise my opinion if any new information turns up.
there is plenty to be disappointed about. I just read about Verdugo's possible involvement with/presence at some sort of assault. Details appear somewhat hazy in part because "alcohol was involved" but it just makes it that much harder to root for him if he's a total #########.
--Yankee fans coming to Sox Therapy to troll
--Every Red Sox transaction has to be dragged out beyond all reasonable expectation
Crucially, no one is accusing snapper, PF, or ElRoy, the first three other non Red Sox fans posting in this thread, of trolling. Just you.
The unspoken problem with the Mookie Betts trade - Alex Verdugo was credibly implicated in a sexual assault. Why doesn’t that seem to matter?
People talk about not watching if Mookie’s gone, I understand it, but for me rooting for laundry always end up winning out when it comes to losing players. But stuff like this, yeah, not watching if it is true.
I sort of hope they didn't? Because this seems pretty straight forward. So if they were okay with these allegations, rather than merely incompetently negligent in their research, that might be worse?
Turns out, maybe?
Concur.
There has been a reckoning coming on front office ethics for a long time and it is long overdue.
What *should* team policy be? If you are ever accused of sexual assault you cannot play in MLB? Do you have to serve a suspension? What if no charges are ever filed? When is a team allowed to sign a player who's got that on their record? Never? 5 years? 1 year?
I am not in any way trying to minimize sexual/domestic assault, I just want to push a bit and think more on this. "he did that, he is a scumbag, I don't want him on my team" is such an easy, shallow reaction. It's pretty easy to bury some random prospect, but what if it's Kobe Bryant and he's played a huge role on the team before and after the accusations? Were LA fans ever able to cheer for him without cringing?
The assault claims against Verdugo were 5 years ago, he was 18-19 years old, is there any consideration that this was a drunk teenager, not some middle-aged man drunkenly hitting his wife?
Yeah, it's shitty to feel icky about the guy replacing Mookie Betts, I get that, guess I think people can have a tendency to pearl clutch a bit too hard.
And I apologize in advance, that probably came out poorly, not trying to stir #### up, or dismiss anyone, just think you've got to step past that first reaction sometimes. How would you want your cousin, brother, son, nephew viewed if they ###### up once? How *should* they be viewed?
There are a lot of guys that worked hard, deserve a shot, and didn’t participate in such an activity. In the abstract yes, forgiveness and reform is lacking in our society, but in practice, I would not want to be the one to make the leap in an organizational setting. Some mistakes have lifelong consequences. Doesn’t mean the guy can’t go on to be a good human and do great things, but it does mean it will always be a part of his life.
Where I also have a rather large issue is how often the relative talent of the offender is determinative. Distressed asset morality. Is his present character representative of our organization, yes or no, should be the question. Not yes, he committed this act, isn’t really sorry, but is unlikely to commit such an act again and represents value for money.
I personally look forward to watching Verdugo and Graterol -- they sound like interesting players.
No one is obliged to hire him if they think he's a despicable person.
Hiring despicable people that other teams won't touch was actually the Astros's strategy.
Kobe Bryant should have been in jail for 10+ years. The details of the case are absolutely sickening, and the amount of evidence is frankly overwhelming. That he managed to use the press and a horde of sycophantic fans to bully and harass a 19 year old victim into no longer being willing to testify... well that's probably the best defense he played in his career.
As for Lakers fans, they have no shame, so cringing was never in their repertoire.
Red Sox fans cheered Steven Wright after his incident.
Robbie Alomar spit on an ump and got cheered.
Aroldis Chapman, Roberto Osuna, etc...etc....etc...
There's a line (I hope, I think) but so far fans have indicated that they only care about transgressions when it's the other team's guys. I'm not sure what should be done. I suspect there are a LOT of bad people playing professional sports and that's not even getting into people who have viewpoints we might find reprehensible but just talking about people who have acted badly.
I don't know what the right answer is of what SHOULD be but I do know with some certainty that with the exception of murder fans have so far demonstrated they are willing to rationalize all manner of horrible behavior* if the player is good enough.
* except kneeling during the national anthem. That of course is unforgivable.
I agree, that's a terribly misleading description. The story is that Baldwin and the teen were in the room alone when the sexual assault happened. From the account I read, Verdugo was in the room when the teen vomited on the bed, then was forcibly removed by two other women, who punched and kicked her while doing it.
None of this is to excuse anything, just clarifying.
Process thinking, with ethical concerns only being worth derisive mocking. This isn’t limited to American sports. Liverpool’s head of analytics recently did a Q&A with some lower league personnel. One lower league guy said his club had an don’t bring in an ####### policy. The Liverpool analytics guy’s response was to say your competitors will be obtaining the ########, the implication being that the don’t bring in ######## strategy is for rubes.
Now obviously an “asset”can just be an #######, or maybe the “asset” is a rapist or a murderer. Maybe the Liverpool guy really did just mean ########. Like Jose said the line can be hard to define. But for more and more organizations there doesn’t appear to be a line. *
* I have been careful to say “if true” about Verdugo. If The Red Sox checked it out and he wasn’t involved or the incident didn’t occur that is obviously different.
Name Age Years Amount Pre-FA FAYrs Yr1WAR Yr1Acuna 21 8 100 5 3 4 2019
Yelich 23 7 49 5 2 3.8 2015
Albies 22 7 35 5 2 4.3 2019
Bregman 25 6 100 4 2 5.4 2019
Mookie 24 6 100 4 2 5.9 2017
Ramirez 25 5 26 4 1 3.3 2017
Mookie 25 8 200 3 5 5.5 2018
Trout 23 6 144 3 3 9.6 2015
Trout 27 12 426 2 10 5.4 2019
Stanton 25 13 325 2 11 5.4 2015
Mookie 26 10 300 2 8 6.7 2019
Arenado 28 8 260 1 7 4.5 2019
Bogaerts 26 6 120 1 5 3.8 2019
My takeaway is that the reported offers to Mookie doesn't look out of place here. Only Stanton and Trout were offered more.
More importantly, perhaps, there's so much we don't know about the negotiations:
--When did they take place, exactly? Early enough in the offseason that people were still talking about Machado and Harper getting $400 million? Or later when people were saying that they had overplayed their hands and would not get $300 million? Or after they both did? Or after Trout got $420 million?
--What was in the Red Sox offer? Were there opt outs? A deal that pays 4/$140M in the first 4 years followed by an opt-out is a lot different than a 10/$300M deal with no opt-outs.
--How was Mookie's counteroffer made. Was it, "we're looking for 12/$420M" or "unless you're willing to go 12/$420M, we're going to FA"?
FA Yrs WAR SigningName Age Yrs $ Pre Post Yr1 Year
Yelich 23 7 49 5 2 3.8 2015
Albies 22 7 35 5 2 4.3 2019
Bregman 25 6 100 4 2 5.4 2019
Mookie 24 6 100 4 2 5.9 2017
Ramirez 25 5 26 4 1 3.3 2017
Mookie 25 8 200 3 5 5.5 2018
Trout 23 6 144 3 3 9.6 2015
Trout 27 12 426 2 10 5.4 2019
Stanton 25 13 325 2 11 5.4 2015
Mookie 26 10 300 2 8 6.7 2019
Arenado 28 8 260 1 7 4.5 2019
Bogaerts 26 6 120 1 5 3.8 2019
....................FA Yrs WARName Age Yrs $$ Pre Post Yr.1 Yr.1
Yelich 23 7 49 5 2 3.8 2015
Albies 22 7 35 5 2 4.3 2019
Bregman 25 6 100 4 2 5.4 2019
Mookie 24 6 100 4 2 5.9 2017
Ramirez 25 5 26 4 1 3.3 2017
Mookie 25 8 200 3 5 5.5 2018
Trout 23 6 144 3 3 9.6 2015
Trout 27 12 426 2 10 5.4 2019
Stanton 25 13 325 2 11 5.4 2015
Mookie 26 10 300 2 8 6.7 2019
Arenado 28 8 260 1 7 4.5 2019
Bogaerts 26 6 120 1 5 3.8 2019
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main