Loria Expects Stanton to Opt Out

MakMan44

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Andrew said:
 
How on earth is that "shady"? 
"This after the Marlins sat there throughout an entire press conference patting themselves on the back about how big a commitment this was to the Miami fans and how they believed Stanton would prove to be worth this deal. Samson in particular pontificated about how Stanton was worth this money."
 
Probably that part. I didn't watch the presser, but taking that at face value, you can point to that and say that they're playing this publicly as a show of good faith to the people of Miami after the Blue Jay trade a couple of seasons ago, while privately crossing their fingers that they save as much money as possible. Really, it's smart business but since it's Loria, it's going to get spun as his usual behavior.  
 

Hank Scorpio

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I kind of expected this when I saw how absurdly back-loaded his deal was, and it does indeed feel shady to me. Almost like they know they can profit on Stanton at 6/107 whether they contend or not. The final years of his contract are probably undesirable for Miami, and they're probably counting on him opting out. Getting any player, even Stanton, to opt out of 7/228 guaranteed is a tough proposition, but I can imagine a player in his 30s wouldn't want to stick around a poorly run, half-assed organization for another seven years, even if it means taking a pay cut (if Stanton regresses enough to warrant it).
 

NDame616

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I'm sure everyone in baseball who saw the contract expected him to opt out after the 6th year. It isn't exactly shady or anything. 
 
And if he performs like he is now, he will opt out and probably sign another 8 or 9 year deal, worth $30M per season
 

Schnerres

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Rudy Pemberton said:
Doesn't it being "absurdly backloaded" make him less likely to opt out?
If you have the same contract (13 years, 330mil) and you get 210mil in the first 7 years, there´s no reason he will stay. If he gets 120mil in the first 6 years, and the contract is absurdly backloaded, then that´s the reason why you would stay, to earn the 210mil in the last 7 years.
(--> the numbers aren´t correct for Stanton, i just wanted to explain it with an example)
 

grimshaw

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How is it shady?  Stanton is getting paid either way, and if he's a monster like he's supposed to be, he'll earn even more.
If they can't win a championship in the next 6 years, they'll be huffing gas as an organization anyhow and will need to move him.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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It's shady because, once again, Loria is lying to his fan base. What's more he's also lying to Stanton in the sense that they are pretending that they have committed to him but in reality want him gone when he starts to get really expensive.
 
The sad part of this is that comments like this will only increase the likelihood of an opt-out - thus enabling future shadiness by Loria.
 
Edit: It's beyond me how anyone would think this is a completely acceptable way to run a business. Maybe is should be considered a litmus test in Business Ethics 101
 

Average Reds

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MakMan44 said:
"This after the Marlins sat there throughout an entire press conference patting themselves on the back about how big a commitment this was to the Miami fans and how they believed Stanton would prove to be worth this deal. Samson in particular pontificated about how Stanton was worth this money."
 
Probably that part. I didn't watch the presser, but taking that at face value, you can point to that and say that they're playing this publicly as a show of good faith to the people of Miami after the Blue Jay trade a couple of seasons ago, while privately crossing their fingers that they save as much money as possible. Really, it's smart business but since it's Loria, it's going to get spun as his usual behavior.  
Rudy Pemberton said:
Doesn't it being "absurdly backloaded" make him less likely to opt out?
 
Rudy's post demonstrates why this is not even remotely smart business.
 
If Stanton outperforms his contract and is likely to make more by opting out, he will.  This means that Loria has deprived himself of the benefit of having one of his core superstars locked up in a below-market contract for an additional 7 years.
 
If Stanton has a significant injury or underperforms his contract, the Marlins are locked in.
 
Outside of the (theoretical) savings generated by including it, an opt-out that can only be triggered by the player does not benefit the team   Loria has screwed himself here and there is no way this can be characterized as smart business.
 

MakMan44

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Average Reds said:
 
Rudy's post demonstrates why this is not even remotely smart business.
 
If Stanton outperforms his contract and is likely to make more by opting out, he will.  This means that Loria has deprived himself of the benefit of having one of his core superstars locked up in a below-market contract for an additional 7 years.
 
If Stanton has a significant injury or underperforms his contract, the Marlins are locked in.
 
Outside of the (theoretical) savings generated by including it, an opt-out that can only be triggered by the player does not benefit the team   Loria has screwed himself here and there is no way this can be characterized as smart business.
It's smart business to WANT Stanton to opt out. Including it is dumb for all the reasons you pointed out, but wanting Stanton to exercise it isn't something I'd be surprised to hear a lot of teams say if they gave him that deal. 
 

Mighty Joe Young

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MakMan44 said:
It's smart business to WANT Stanton to opt out. Including it is dumb for all the reasons you pointed out, but wanting Stanton to exercise it isn't something I'd be surprised to hear a lot of teams say if they gave him that deal. 
 
I agree that, when the contract became public it was totally obvious why an opt-out was included. But to publicly (or even mention to a colleague) that that was the stated goal shows an enormous amount of cynicism and disrespect for the fanbase.
 
Since his carpetbagger days in Montreal he has been a complete disaster as an owner. 
 

Hank Scorpio

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I'm thinking more towards the middle ground. Say six years from now, Stanton has performed well, but perhaps not quite up to expectations.
 
His value on the open market might be something like 6/168 (28M+ AAV) vs the 7/228 (32M+ AAV) he's owed. Financially, it's a no-brainer to stay with the Marlins, even if they hope he opts out.
 
But consider, at this point Stanton is 31 years old and looking at spending the next seven years of his career in an organization that does not appear to be very serious about winning. One on hand, $60M guaranteed is a lot of money to pass up, but on the other, there's some value in being playing for the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, Cardinals, et cetera, versus playing for an unambitious and uncompetitive Marlins team.
 
Obviously if he's Ryan Howard or Mark Teixeira in five or six years, he doesn't opt out. But I don't think he has to perform to or above the valuation of his last seven years to say "You know what? Screw this."
 
Loria probably knows that, and is probably fine with making "no, seriously, we're gonna compete!" moves every second or third off-season and then shipping them off a few months later.
 

mauf

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Hank Scorpio said:
I'm thinking more towards the middle ground. Say six years from now, Stanton has performed well, but perhaps not quite up to expectations.
 
His value on the open market might be something like 6/168 (28M+ AAV) vs the 7/228 (32M+ AAV) he's owed. Financially, it's a no-brainer to stay with the Marlins, even if they hope he opts out.
 
But consider, at this point Stanton is 31 years old and looking at spending the next seven years of his career in an organization that does not appear to be very serious about winning. One on hand, $60M guaranteed is a lot of money to pass up, but on the other, there's some value in being playing for the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, Cardinals, et cetera, versus playing for an unambitious and uncompetitive Marlins team.
 
Obviously if he's Ryan Howard or Mark Teixeira in five or six years, he doesn't opt out. But I don't think he has to perform to or above the valuation of his last seven years to say "You know what? Screw this."
 
Loria probably knows that, and is probably fine with making "no, seriously, we're gonna compete!" moves every second or third off-season and then shipping them off a few months later.
 
In your scenario, someone will offer Stanton something like 10/260, and he's not going to turn down the extra guaranteed money for a higher AAV and an opportunity to hit the market again at age 37.
 
If Stanton doesn't opt out, it's because the last 7 years of the deal are a huge overpay, which would be a disaster for the Marlins.
 

benhogan

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Average Reds said:
 
Rudy's post demonstrates why this is not even remotely smart business.
 
If Stanton outperforms his contract and is likely to make more by opting out, he will.  This means that Loria has deprived himself of the benefit of having one of his core superstars locked up in a below-market contract for an additional 7 years.
 
If Stanton has a significant injury or underperforms his contract, the Marlins are locked in.
 
Outside of the (theoretical) savings generated by including it, an opt-out that can only be triggered by the player does not benefit the team   Loria has screwed himself here and there is no way this can be characterized as smart business.
You get it, but its not entirely surprising that Loria and their front office doesn't after watching them make some boneheaded trades over the last week.
 
Options confuse a lot of intelligent/successful people:
 
For example, most of the largest corporations in Japan (i.e. Sony, Hitachi, etc) for many years issued billions of Convertible Bonds, with the option to call them back. When interest rates declined, they wouldn't exercise the call and continued to pay higher interest rates, costing their shareholders profits.  They felt it would be dishonorable to call the bonds back. Many of the largest Hedge Funds arbitraged this for dozens of years to their profit.
 

Harry Hooper

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It's time for the next sequel to "Major League." This time around the owner makes his team so wretched that his highest-paid player willingly rips up his megadeal in order to get out of town.
 

AbbyNoho

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It would be shady if it was a team option they had no plan of picking up, but it's not their choice so all the hoping in the world won't affect it. I don't see anything shady about this. Shady implies there is something hidden. There is nothing hidden. The deal is exactly as reported and nothing Loria said in that press conference was untrue outside of maybe trying to predict his personal feelings, which I really don't think are relevant. 
 

MakMan44

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Andrew said:
It would be shady if it was a team option they had no plan of picking up, but it's not their choice so all the hoping in the world won't affect it. I don't see anything shady about this. Shady implies there is something hidden. There is nothing hidden. The deal is exactly as reported and nothing Loria said in that press conference was untrue outside of maybe trying to predict his personal feelings, which I really don't think are relevant.
You might not, but fans of the Marlins probably disagree. 
 

Hank Scorpio

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maufman said:
 
In your scenario, someone will offer Stanton something like 10/260, and he's not going to turn down the extra guaranteed money for a higher AAV and an opportunity to hit the market again at age 37.
 
If Stanton doesn't opt out, it's because the last 7 years of the deal are a huge overpay, which would be a disaster for the Marlins.
 
You can't foresee circumstances where a team might be willing to pay Stanton 6/168 but not 10/260? I think it's plausible a player would walk away from guaranteed money in order to escape an absolutely wretched situation. People do it in real life every day. I'm a student working a full-time job making close to $35,000 per year. It's not much. I have my boss practically begging me to take a promotion that would pay close to $55,000 per year. The tradeoff is, it would provide less stability (needing to travel more, working stuff like 11-7 and 12-9 instead of 8-3) and interfere with my longer-term goals. Sure I'm not leaving millions on the table, but I could use that extra $20,000 per year more than Giancarlo Stanton could use an extra $3-5M per year. He'll presumably want to play in front of a crowd and make a run at a World Series. I want to finish school and move on with my life. Money isn't everything.
 
YTF said:
I wish nothing bad for Stanton, but it would be some epic karma if he grossly under performs, doesn't opt out and collects every penny
 
How about Stanton sucks horribly for a few years, declines his opt-out and a furious Loria trades a heavily subsidized Stanton to Boston in a salary dump. And then he goes back to OPSing .950+?
 

benhogan

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Papelbon's Poutine said:
 
They overpaid a bit for Gordon/Haren (I'll believe Dan Haren turns down $10M because he doesn't want to pitch outside of LA when I see it), with most reviews being split bad on if you believe in Gordon or not. Then they made a very good deal for Latos. Am I missing something? Where were the boneheaded trades? 
 
You're right I was a little harsh on the Marlins front office as far as the trades go.
 
On second thought, the Gordon trade wasn't that bad.  The Dodgers picked up both Haren and Gordon's pay next season ($12.5M). If Haren quits then the Marlins can use his salary to pick up some cheaper assets (maybe Allen Craig?)
 
I'm not a Latos fan, lost 2 mph off his fastball last season, had an assortment of injuries.  At his price I'd rather have rolled the dice on a guy like Masterson.  But I guess they figure if Latos is healthy he'll get his 2 mph back and be his former self, maybe its a decent gamble after they looked at the medicals.
 
It looks like Florida gave up a couple of OK prospects, according to this fangraphs article.
 
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/why-steamer-doesnt-like-mat-latos/
 

MrNewEngland

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Average Reds said:
 
 
 
If Stanton has a significant injury or underperforms his contract, the Marlins are locked in.
 
Outside of the (theoretical) savings generated by including it, an opt-out that can only be triggered by the player does not benefit the team   Loria has screwed himself here and there is no way this can be characterized as smart business.
 
I was thinking this... what if the beanball to the face has more side effects that originally thought - either mental or physical.  Imagine paying Tony C. this kind of money for the 13 following his beanball incident?  
 

JimD

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I know I'm supposed to be outraged because Jeff Loria! but ... eh.  How is this any different than the patently happy talk that goes on at any signing ceremony? 
 
Maybe if the Marlins fanbase was a long-suffering group that supported an unworthy or bumbling ownership group (think Buffalo Bills) I'd feel differently, but the Miami fans have shown themselves to be wisely skeptical of Loria and his shenanigans so I don't think there's much risk of their getting hoodwinked here.
 

Mighty Joe Young

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JimD said:
I know I'm supposed to be outraged because Jeff Loria! but ... eh.  How is this any different than the patently happy talk that goes on at any signing ceremony? 
 
Maybe if the Marlins fanbase was a long-suffering group that supported an unworthy or bumbling ownership group (think Buffalo Bills) I'd feel differently, but the Miami fans have shown themselves to be wisely skeptical of Loria and his shenanigans so I don't think there's much risk of their getting hoodwinked here.
 
So .. it's OK for scoundrels to behave like scoundrels as long as they are Known Scoundrels? And in that case it's strictly caveat emptor?