ST 2023 MLB News & Notes
- Thread starter DeadlySplitter
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There's also been a shitshow with Mike Clevinger (domestic abuse investigation) being allowed to roam normally on White Sox grounds for now, with the White Sox GM giving this quote:
View: https://twitter.com/stephapstein/status/1625935482596257792
View: https://twitter.com/stephapstein/status/1625935482596257792
Maaaan, this sucks. When healthy he was one of my favorite pitchers to watch (non-Pedro edition). It's so sad to me that we probably won't ever see that again.
I get that sometimes teams and players can have a difference of opinion on what they are worth, but $740K was the difference between what the Brewers were offering and what Burnes was asking and they couldn't bridge that gap? Fucking yikes. For a team with a projected payroll of ~$133M, I'm sure that 0.55% savings is worth pissing off their ace.
He, too, sounds like a dipshit. "Much different" valuation? With that gap, the inability to split the difference is a failure on both sides.
I will never be able to wrap my mind around why teams do this, I just can't do it.
The thing is, his actual value right now is much, much higher than $10M per season. So it's kind of a false narrative to think of it as "splitting the difference." The real issue is that he's already earning far below his value, and the Brewers went to all that trouble to shave off another $700K or so.
Disagree. $10-11M is already a gigantic discount for one of the top 5-10 pitchers in the game. Only asking for $10.75M already is "splitting the difference" for a pitcher like Burnes. That the team couldn't come up with another half million or so makes them look way way worse here.
Except the independent arbitrator agreed with the team. The gigantic discount is part of the CBA. I agree that younger players should be paid more, but that's not how the finances of the game are set up right now.
Gosh, really hope they don't try to dump him on us. I'll be really made if they send Adames as well.
Well it probably does suck to have to sweat out contract negotiations when pitchers and catchers are already reporting.
So, they “won” and pissed off their best player for $750K. Seems short sighted to me although maybe they figured they had no chance of retaining him anyways at which point it doesn’t really matter. Who knows.
Talking with the Brewers fans I know out here in cheeseland, it's hardly a shock that they pinched him, but it's a sobering open to spring training. I don't think Stearns being gone changes much. It's a reminder that the Brewers will go all in via trades (CC and Grienke come to mind), but don't retain anyone. Fielder was eventually traded off. Weeks, Hardy and Hart all kinda plateaued and they let walk.
I just don't see how 750K matters much to Attanasio, who always seemed like a decent owner from afar, but hasn't really committed to the team he owns all that often.
Maybe they won the arb meeting. Maybe that curries favor with the other owners. To win one.
But it's an atrocious look in the land of curds. And I'm not uncertain that players, within and out of the organization, take notice.
No surprise here, but Manny Machado has announced that he will be opting out at the end of the season.
Those quotes are pretty transparent about what he truly cares about... not that it's a surprise. Although he'd fit in in SD way more than I expected.
Which quotes are you talking about? There is nothing in the linked story that is direct from Machado's mouth.
And if he did say, "I'm opting out at the of this year because I want to get more money", I'm not sure where the issue is. Everyone else on his team is getting paid, why shouldn't he? I mean, it's in the contract that he signed with his employer. I don't see anything illegal or duplicitous, do you?
He's another greedy bastard, just like Manny Ramirez, Johnny Damon, Keith Foulke, Bill Mueller, etc...
I really wish the players would stop taking advantage of the owners. Poor guys, they only want to entertain the nice people.
Sox did the same with Mookie; of course, they lost. But it didn’t seem like something that went over great with Betts and certainly didn’t help the relationship long term. But I believe the difference was a few million?
Yeah, in '18 they offered him $7.5m & he got $10.5m.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/mookie-betts-beats-red-sox-in-arbitration-what-it-means-for-betts-red-sox-and-mlb/
This article lays out that it should make approximately a $12m difference over the course of 3 years:
| 2018 | $10.5 million | $7.5 million |
| 2019 | $17 million | $13 million |
| 2020 | $25 million | $20 million |
| Total | $52.5 million | $40.5 million |
He actually ended up getting $20 & $27m for those last 2 years.
My bad for not providing the tweet where I saw this.
View: https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1626603707063468033
View: https://twitter.com/chelsea_janes/status/1626603707063468033
He should 100% be planning to opt out because he shouldn't be planning to have such a bad season that he would get worse than 5/$150m on a new deal. Of course, plan's could change, but there's no harm in being upfront about one's plans to play well enough to earn more $.
That would be a irony that the Padres lose Manny Machado because they sign Xander to that long contract. With Bally going bankrupt I expect Manny and Soto will sign elsewhere when their contracts are up. So 2023 or bust for the San Diego Padres.
I mean, they literally just signed Darvish to 5 more years, clearly they don't do that if they're thinking '2023 or bust', as he was already under contract for 2023.
I'll believe Machado or Soto signs elsewhere once they actually do, SD was well aware of what was going on with Bally when they made those insane offers to Bogaerts and Judge this winter.
I agree with pissing off your ace over a negotiable 750K is probably bad business. However there seems to be a feeling over here that the team should always give in when there is not a huge gap in the arbitration submissions. Now that would be bad business. Let’s just say the RS always gave in at the last minute to avoid arbitration. If they did that then the agents would abuse them. If the agents work ups on their free agent was say 10 mill, and it was a RS case then why wouldn’t the agent submit at 10.5 or 11 if he knew the RS would cave.
I know in the past there were several teams that basically had an unwritten rule to not allow negotiations to stall and reach arbitration, at least not unless the player was asking for a number well out of line with the arbitration escalators. That's really all it should take – all the agents have calculators for this process and know what they can reasonably ask for. If someone steps out of line in their bargaining every 4-5 years, the team can take them to task, but otherwise it's in everyone's best interest to keep the players happy. It simply wasn't considered worth dickering over a million dollars to go in front of an arbiter and the player and bastardize some statistics to exaggerate how little the player means to them.
I haven't looked up actual case numbers, but it feels like the number of cases reaching arbitration has gone up recently (or maybe it's just that in the age of information, I see the list for everyone without even looking for it instead of just hearing about my team). Of course, if I remember the list posted earlier in the off-season, over 25% of this year's cases across all of MLB were with the Rays... I recall a couple of them being over as little as $200,000. Tampa either locks their young talent up in cheap long-term deals or trades them within their first couple of years in arbitration. This is also the organization that took advantage of shipping optionable players back and forth to AAA so often that the union and MLB agreed to a new rule last year to try to curb some of that activity... so it's been obvious for a while the Rays couldn't care less about the relationship between management and the players.
I haven't looked up actual case numbers, but it feels like the number of cases reaching arbitration has gone up recently (or maybe it's just that in the age of information, I see the list for everyone without even looking for it instead of just hearing about my team). Of course, if I remember the list posted earlier in the off-season, over 25% of this year's cases across all of MLB were with the Rays... I recall a couple of them being over as little as $200,000. Tampa either locks their young talent up in cheap long-term deals or trades them within their first couple of years in arbitration. This is also the organization that took advantage of shipping optionable players back and forth to AAA so often that the union and MLB agreed to a new rule last year to try to curb some of that activity... so it's been obvious for a while the Rays couldn't care less about the relationship between management and the players.
Agree to a certain extent. I think it's very much a case by case, "where does this guy fit into our future type thing" when considering the difference in the ask. I think that "your ace" is the key phrase in this case. I don't see why a team would risk fracturing relations with their "ace" over this amount. Even if you have no intention of keeping him long term, that's not the sort of difference that would prevent another team from pursuing him in a trade.
They did keep Yelich, and that has blown up in their faces spectacularly, so they may be a little gun shy over that.
It's a good point. And one to be gun-shy.
Any time back injuries are involved, everything is in question. At the time, it was a phenomenal team deal. Did yelich know something and was keeping it under his cap (as you should)? Probably not, but it's possible. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
The Brewers farm system is strong, and there may be guys they want to extend in the near future. Maybe they love Ashby (I actually am a big fan; just dubious he becomes anything close to woodruff, let alone Burnes. Ultimately, 750k isn't even worth the headache of having a bad PR hangover to start spring training, let alone the perception of upcoming and current players in their thoughts towards MKE imo.
As a Sox fan in dairyland, I hear some of the same charges about being cheap that were thrown at Bloom (not a hater, but not in love either), for money thrown and the 40 man space thrown at Yu Chang, or about how Richards was brought in a few years ago. In a smaller market, the smaller problems are bigger. But they aren't THAT small.
The money ain't worth the agita, and it certainly isn't worth the repercussions imo.
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This is maybe not the right thread for this thought, but one thing I don't get about Bloom* is that he's not necessarily cheap, he's just cheap with regard to stars - couldn't extend Mookie or Xander, showed no interest in getting Juan Soto or signing Judge or whomever. But he's willing to lay out pretty significant amounts of cash for mediocrities like Richards whom you mention, or Adam Duvall, James Paxton, JBJ, etc... So we still end up spending lots of money and have little to show for it. It's not good to blow your brains out with Christian Yelich or Pablo Sandoval, but ending up spending over the luxury tax threshold to get the 2022 Red Sox ain't so good either.
* and by Bloom, I really mean the collective brain trust that seems to have soured on big free agent contracts but is still willing to fill out the roster with "talent" that isn't exactly cheap.
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The anti-Bill Veeck approach?
"It isn't the high price of stars that is expensive, it's the high price of mediocrity."
I’m not sure his apparent aversion to stars, not a phrase I’m necessarily willing to concede, is the concern. It’s his apparent aversion to albatross contracts that seems more likely. A one year, $10 mil contract to G. Richards isn’t going to ruin plans in 2029-34 but signing up to pay a 40 year old X could definitely do that.
File under things I did not see coming. First pitch clock violation of the spring is on the Mariners' Tom Murphy.
For not setting up as catcher on time.
For not setting up as catcher on time.
Funny, I was just coming here to post this:
How does a hitter alert the pitcher? Later article says this:
So a batter can be penalized if the ump doesn't think he's sufficiently focused on the pitcher?
It was weird, because the broadcast posted a ball, and announced that it was on the catcher, but later Melvin said it was on Machado.
And it isn't that the hitter has to "alert the pitcher" it's that the hitter has to "be alert to the pitcher", I think. (Edit: Just saw your last line, which covers this).
And it isn't that the hitter has to "alert the pitcher" it's that the hitter has to "be alert to the pitcher", I think. (Edit: Just saw your last line, which covers this).
How does one judge whether a hitter is alert to the pitcher? I feel like this is going to cause issues and won't be worth saving a couple of seconds per pitch.
They get used to it, and umpires are being way more strict about "alert to the pitcher" now than they will be once the season starts. If AA batters can get used to it in a week like they did last year, MLB batters will be fine. I promise.
It's not that I'm worried that hitters won't get used to it. It's that the call is so subjective. I look forward to the first time a third strike is called because the ump doesn't think the batter is focused enough on the pitcher.
That wasn’t my read on it. It didn’t sound financial. It sounded like him as a player. They valued his contributions to the team in such a way that they blamed him for the team missing the post season - not the dollar amount they were off by. It’s just awkward with his use of the word valuation.