Padres are said to be out, leaving just the Dodgers and Jays. I'm really hoping the Blue Jays can pull this off (even as a Red Sox fan). It would be great for baseball. BlueJays have acquired $2M in international bonus pool money from Cleveland
Roki Sasaki to be posted this winter
- Thread starter soxhop411
- Start date
Correct. The problem is the Billionaire owners who pocket revenue sharing money instead of investing in Baseball players, scouts and development.
Really sad that the Red Sox didn't even get within sniffing distance of Sasaki.
If I'm reading Cot's right, the Dodgers were estimated to pay $107 million before this signing.
If you're going to have teams that can pay over a hundred million dollars in tax, the tax has to be higher, or the cap harder.
If you're going to have teams that can pay over a hundred million dollars in tax, the tax has to be higher, or the cap harder.
Because this was a dog and pony show from
The start. He was always going to the Dodgers.
Sasaki's salary was fixed by MLB CBA rules. LA is closer to Tokyo than Toronto or Boston.
This was all started with the Otahni deal which allowed the Dodgers to then sign Yamamoto to that huge deal with little immediate financial impact, and now lure Sasaki. And they will continue to do so with high end Japanese talent until MLB wakes up.
I was really hoping Toronto landed him but I knew at 90% certainty that he was going to the Dodgers. Unless MLB steps in this will be a huge issue moving forward. In fact, the Dodgers have set up a situation for the next, what…? 7 years…? …where they might have the best hitter and top 2 pitchers. And the rest of the league just shrugs.
I was really hoping Toronto landed him but I knew at 90% certainty that he was going to the Dodgers. Unless MLB steps in this will be a huge issue moving forward. In fact, the Dodgers have set up a situation for the next, what…? 7 years…? …where they might have the best hitter and top 2 pitchers. And the rest of the league just shrugs.
I mean, every owner is a billionaire. That’s kind’ve baked in…
Or so you mean that it’s sad that some billionaires don’t great returns if they don’t put money into their team?
This is getting ridiculous, we're approaching a KD Warriors situation in the MLB where one team is so dominant that it's detrimental to the league. I guess I'm a Pats fan so I can't talk but that was a bit different as the NFL actually has a salary cap.
I did - 100% wanted the Padres then the Jays. Because it's almost getting to a non-competitive situation with Dodgers so dominant. Talk about the Evil Empire.
All these guys throw 96+. Hitters will get used to the velo and time them up. They need a Tim Wakefield in the rotation to break things up. . .
Seriously, though, the right way to cope i think is to remember that, as great as the dodgers are now, once Freddie and Mookie get old, Glasnow's arm falls off, and Ohtani's deferred money comes due, they'll have a lot of trouble to navigate if they want to stay competitive.
Seriously, though, the right way to cope i think is to remember that, as great as the dodgers are now, once Freddie and Mookie get old, Glasnow's arm falls off, and Ohtani's deferred money comes due, they'll have a lot of trouble to navigate if they want to stay competitive.
That's not really how baseball works, though. I'd still take the field against the Dodgers if I were betting on the World Series winner. They're going to lose 3 out of 5 or 4 out of 7 games plenty of times this season. If they do that in October, they're going home.
Yes, the Dodgers are clearly cheating by spending money on good players and creating a winning team where players want to go and play. And they don’t even have any silly rules about how the players wear their hair…
It’ll be that much better when a scrappy bunch, led by Roman Anthony, Kristian Campbell, Marcelo Mayer & a bearded Triston Casas upsets the Dodgers in a World Series in 7 games as Garrett Crochet takes home the MVP and closes it out in the 9th.
This is the same whining we had at the turn of the century when every player's dream was to play for the Yankees.
Players are competitive and want to win. It's taken the Dodgers ownership a long time to build their organization, back to the Punto trade as one of their first big splashes. They have been doing whatever they can since then to build the team into a juggernaut, and now they are reaping the rewards. They haven't stepped back or tanked for a couple season as an excuse to save (make more) money while "rebuilding."
Any attempt to adjust the limitations on team building (that I've seen) are likely to be born by the players, and will ultimately be an excuse used by other cheapskate billionaires to field barely passable teams while raking in millions. I'm not sure what you can do that will make those owners care more about trying to win than just taking the easy money.
Players are competitive and want to win. It's taken the Dodgers ownership a long time to build their organization, back to the Punto trade as one of their first big splashes. They have been doing whatever they can since then to build the team into a juggernaut, and now they are reaping the rewards. They haven't stepped back or tanked for a couple season as an excuse to save (make more) money while "rebuilding."
Any attempt to adjust the limitations on team building (that I've seen) are likely to be born by the players, and will ultimately be an excuse used by other cheapskate billionaires to field barely passable teams while raking in millions. I'm not sure what you can do that will make those owners care more about trying to win than just taking the easy money.
One thing the NBA that was smart is give teams an advantage in holding onto the home grown players - which is a good idea.
Your point about "super teams" is a good one - particularly wrt to the early 2000's Yankees teams.
It's worth remembering that the Dodgers let Trea Turner and Corey Seager walk.
I hope this frees up the rest of the free agent market now. It's getting deep into January and there are still a lot of guys unsigned. I'm hoping Pivetta signs somewhere soon so we get that pick. (Blue Jays, now that they "lost out" on Sasaki?)
Joining a super team seems less like "being competitive and wanting to win" than "being insecure and not wanting to lose." Luckly there are some players out there who still like the idea of trying to take down the giant, even if they come up short.
Sasaki thing is bad for two reasons & I’ve skimmed a bit but I haven’t seen mentioned.
Firstly, the way the posting system works. Because he forced his team to post him early, the Dodgers could sign him on a minor league contract for a fraction of what they’d pay if he came over at 25 like Yamamoto did. The Dodgers had to pay up for Yamamoto even though he wanted to go there. That’s how it should work. But Sasaki coming over early fucked over his Japanese team, the Chiba Lotte Marines. They didn’t want to post him before he turned 25 but supposedly there was a handshake agreement in his contract to allow him to force a posting early and there were some suggestions that he would refuse to play next season if this wasn’t granted.
The way this now works is that the Marines get $1m as their portion of the posting fee and the Dodgers get an elite 23 year old talent for a fraction of what he’d cost if he was treated as an actual free agent and not bundled in the same category as 16 year old Dominican amateur players from baseball academies. The rules changed since Ohtani came over: he wanted to post early too but the posting fee system has changed since then.
View: https://twitter.com/yakyucosmo/status/1879039637832061346
The arguments that the Dodgers are just doing every team should are…disingenuous, to put it mildly. Should all these rich owners spend? Yes, without a doubt. But the Dodgers setup where Ohtani deferred all that money to make it easier to acquire premium talent - I’m sorry, but that contract remains an abomination. Of course Japanese players want to play with Ohtani and of course LA is an attractive location for Japanese players. But please let’s not act like they stumbled onto this, and that they aren’t run by a hedge fund consortium of multiple billionaires. I don’t think even the richest teams have the resources available to them that the Dodgers do. Their TV deal is $8.35 billion dollars and that cash flow alone can cover payroll even before you look at all their other income streams. Meanwhile, the regional network situation has affected a ton of teams across the league.
The other thing is that, I suppose, the beauty of the draft means all teams have access to elite talent. With anti tanking measures in place now, owners can’t run out dogshit teams for years to stockpile draft picks anymore. I don’t know. I just think there’s something good about Pirates fans getting to enjoy Skenes every five days - and they could do that for his whole career if their awful owner ever spent some money on the team and extended him and put players around him. Meanwhile they likely have him for at least five years. I just can’t enjoy the superteam approach where one team stockpiles all this talent and the rest of the league is left with relative scraps. And I don’t think any of us should welcome the idea of an NPB - LAD pipeline where young talent goes through this circus every offseason only to sign with LA for pennies. I think that aspect of it is profoundly uncompetitive.
Sorry for length of the post and incoherence but I hope you guys understand my points. Tl;dr I think it’s very boring.
Firstly, the way the posting system works. Because he forced his team to post him early, the Dodgers could sign him on a minor league contract for a fraction of what they’d pay if he came over at 25 like Yamamoto did. The Dodgers had to pay up for Yamamoto even though he wanted to go there. That’s how it should work. But Sasaki coming over early fucked over his Japanese team, the Chiba Lotte Marines. They didn’t want to post him before he turned 25 but supposedly there was a handshake agreement in his contract to allow him to force a posting early and there were some suggestions that he would refuse to play next season if this wasn’t granted.
The way this now works is that the Marines get $1m as their portion of the posting fee and the Dodgers get an elite 23 year old talent for a fraction of what he’d cost if he was treated as an actual free agent and not bundled in the same category as 16 year old Dominican amateur players from baseball academies. The rules changed since Ohtani came over: he wanted to post early too but the posting fee system has changed since then.
View: https://twitter.com/yakyucosmo/status/1879039637832061346
The arguments that the Dodgers are just doing every team should are…disingenuous, to put it mildly. Should all these rich owners spend? Yes, without a doubt. But the Dodgers setup where Ohtani deferred all that money to make it easier to acquire premium talent - I’m sorry, but that contract remains an abomination. Of course Japanese players want to play with Ohtani and of course LA is an attractive location for Japanese players. But please let’s not act like they stumbled onto this, and that they aren’t run by a hedge fund consortium of multiple billionaires. I don’t think even the richest teams have the resources available to them that the Dodgers do. Their TV deal is $8.35 billion dollars and that cash flow alone can cover payroll even before you look at all their other income streams. Meanwhile, the regional network situation has affected a ton of teams across the league.
The other thing is that, I suppose, the beauty of the draft means all teams have access to elite talent. With anti tanking measures in place now, owners can’t run out dogshit teams for years to stockpile draft picks anymore. I don’t know. I just think there’s something good about Pirates fans getting to enjoy Skenes every five days - and they could do that for his whole career if their awful owner ever spent some money on the team and extended him and put players around him. Meanwhile they likely have him for at least five years. I just can’t enjoy the superteam approach where one team stockpiles all this talent and the rest of the league is left with relative scraps. And I don’t think any of us should welcome the idea of an NPB - LAD pipeline where young talent goes through this circus every offseason only to sign with LA for pennies. I think that aspect of it is profoundly uncompetitive.
Sorry for length of the post and incoherence but I hope you guys understand my points. Tl;dr I think it’s very boring.
This sums it up for me. If Sasaki were truly combining a competitive spirit with proximity to Japan, then he would have chosen San Diego or Seattle - teams with a reasonable chance to contend that he could help put over the top. Joining a superteam is probably the least competitive thing a professional athlete can do when money is not at issue.
Isn't the owner a cheap bastard?
https://www.instagram.com/thecouchgm/reel/DEsYMbIvT1e/?locale=zh_tw&hl=am-et
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8iCyiVaXAk
Thanks for being so condescending.
Yes I know how this works and that his signing is capped by international signing bonus rules in the CBA.
That doesn't change the fact that the Dodgers are a model organization while other owners are not reinvesting money in their development process to make good baseball teams.
Also, thanks for the geography lesson. I had no idea the proximity of Los Angeles to Tokyo played a part in this.
Is this what you guys do? Explain the obvious to people to burnish your own fragile feelings of superiority?
Pathetic.
There are owners in MLB who are not in it to produce Major League talent or contribute to the product on the field at all. The A's and Pirates are two organizations in particular who have flouted these rules, and instead of trying to build sustainable winners by investing in their Baseball Ops, are being forced to pay mediocre free agents to keep the free money faucet running. That's a problem.
13 years ago the Dodgers were not a model organization. It's not just money. Sasaki wanted to go somewhere that has a track record of developing pitchers.
Do the Dodgers have a great track record of developing pitchers?
The last homegrown pitcher they developed and had an impact with them is Bueller. They have had a lot of highly ranked prospects the last 5 years but none have been great. Pepiot was pretty good for the Rays last year.
Tony Gonsolin had one great season and has two years left. Dustin May has looked very good in small samples, but hasn't been healthy much. And then there's the unfortunate Urias saga, but I guess he slightly predates Bueller.
I don't think any of that really contradicts your point. It is a good reminder that the difference between "good track record developing pitchers" and "bad track record developing pitchers" is just a couple guys' outcomes over a few years, and we all understand how fragile young pitchers are.
I'm still crossing my fingers for the day Eastern Europe becomes a baseball hotbed. The Guardians will have their pick of the top Hungarians and Polacks.
The Netherlands is a player, when you wrap in the Antilles. How are the Yankees not taking advantage of this?
I think this is good post, and I'd extend it a bit. The idea that every team should spend like the Dodgers is obviously false; the AAV of the Dodgers starting rotation alone represents a third or more of total revenue for most teams in the game, and is higher than the full payroll of a third of them.
But beyond that, even if more teams were willing to eat into profits to sign better players (and I think they should), there's a talent bottleneck. There aren't enough elite pitchers in existence for every team to field a rotation like LA's. There isn't a free agent left on the market that would crack their 6 man rotation. Most teams could have spent $450m to beat out ARI and NYY on Burnes and Fried and still had inferior pitching to what they're working with out there. That's the part of the Sasaki decision that's galling; he represented an honest chance for any team to fight back against baseball oligarchy, just a little bit, and he joined them instead.
Well, yeah, but the rules can’t do much about a guy who knowingly leaves hundreds of millions on the table to put himself in the situation where he can choose any team. If he came over in two years seeking a Yamamoto deal, I don’t know if he’s a Dodger.
It’s also telling that private equity ownership (RedBird’s stake) is used on this board in a Red Sox context as a reason that the team *won’t* spend, although I’m not sure that hypothesis will hold up across the success cycle; meanwhile, in a Dodgers context, Guggenheim is talked about (not here) as the reason they’re *able* to spend so much: they’re reported/speculated to be fully funding these huge deferrals in trusts managed at Guggenheim, and the sense is that they are going to actually be able get returns on that money much better than those anticipated by the CBA’s discount formula. If that’s true and they’re right, they are in effect splitting those returns with the players they sign.
We need more creative finance guys.
Yes, a billion or so of which are reportedly Dodgers’ deferred payroll commitments. Also the structure is very different. The Dodgers’ main owner is a partner at Guggenheim, but Guggenheim itself is also reputed to do some of these very interesting things for the team as a client; in contrast, their FSG minority stake is just one of Redbird’s assets.
I won't worry about catching the Dodgers until the Sox decide to become procures of major league stars, until then the Yankees and Mets can worry about the Dodgers, our peers are in the AL Central.
Can’t understand why anyone is blaming the Dodgers for doing what ever it can to ensure it has a team that is built to win..
It’s not geography that is driving the bus it’s the willingness to pay the price to acquire players that are different makers.
Baseball has as a cap system aimed at making the owners willing to put their hands in their pockets penalized for doing so while rewarding the owners whose goal is to increase profits
.
You think they'd be spending half a billion a year if they played in Cleveland or something and were losing hundreds of millions a year? Of course it's geography
Yeah, I think people want to think that this is all about all the other owners being cheap and LA just being the only ones brave enough to do this sort of thing, but of course it has far more to do with the cash they have coming in. There isn't a single owner out there who doesn't want to make money on their baseball team, it's just that almost none of them are as valuable as the Dodgers are.
This has gotten a lot of play, obviously - "look, the Red Sox are only earning 50 million less than the Dodgers, why don't they spend like them, the cheap skates!" But of course, if they were spending as much as the Dodgers, their revenue would look a lot more like the Washington Nationals' or the Los Angeles Angels, or even the Athletics or the Chicago White Sox, perennially miserable teams. LAD, like the Yankees, just have access to a much, much larger market than the Red Sox do.
Why would the Red Sox revenue go down if they spent more? Given their issues getting people into the stands and eyeballs on NESN the past 3-4 years, it would almost assuredly go up. Revenue is purely a top line number, increased expenses dont bring revenue down.
This is well stated. The Sasaki issue is a bit of a one-off, but should create some thoughts as to why a 23 year old player who has 5 years in the NPB is an international minor league free agent. Maybe it becomes rare enough, but its an even worse application than NBA max player contracts and leads to the same results. Seems easy enough to have an exception for players who have accrued X number of seasons in NPB.
Otherwise, most MLB owners are pocketing absurd amounts of money and other than a few teams (NYY, NYM, PHI, LAD), we are seeing some of the impacts that the players were worried about with the three wild cards; teams are only building to be good enough to be in the middle of the pack and then see what happens and pocket as much of the guaranteed revenue as possible.
Hell even the Sox may have their cash spend on players in 2025 be less than national media revenue share plus revenue sharing. That would have been shocking to hear anytime in the last 25 years up until well maybe 2023/24.