That's an overblown issue when half his games would be at hitter friendly Fenway where countless players over the years have had the same sort of favorable home/road splits as Coors. Bogaerts has a career home OPS of .866 and road OPS .754 and has an .816 OPS at pitcher friendly PETCO v. .870 at Fenway.
The splits were more extreme than that IIRC, one the order of more than 200 points of OPS.
Well that's my very point: he wasn't going to maintain his Coors numbers which everyone knew and got him a middle-road contract instead of a top tier one. It was a concern for GMs.
FTFY.
There is some value in a resources/risk/consequences type of analysis, but I doubt that drilling down on Story is going to produce any kind of universally applicable insight. (In no small part because of the Xander uncertainty and the prospects in-system - there were a lot of moving pieces there.)
I'd love to see a survey about shopping for results in the middle of the market; my off the cuff recollection is that such contracts are usually pretty poor bets to work out, but that may well be the freshness of the Sale extension and Story contract (168 and 140 million) being fresh in my mind.
I think the largest risk for FA contracts is really the Sale type of outcome in a general sense. Meaning, a situation where you have a significant % of the budget tied up for multiple future years, and a huge question mark as to the player's ability to take the field and/or their effectiveness when they get there. Because they're also one of the 26/40 at some point.
Well, you also have to consider Milwaukee went to the post-season last year and are heavily favored to return. Adames is a key cog in their current configuration.
Disagree with the bolded. If the Padres offered Bogaerts for Story right now, Breslow would laugh at them.
X put up more WAR in SD last year than Story has in 2. I'd far rather pay more for some production then pay less and get nothing.
That's more a factor of playing time than skill. I mean if you want to show me a post from the time of the Story signing saying "this guy's going to be injured for most of the next 3 years" then sure, you were right and we were wrong. But barring that you're arguing hindsight here.
X's 5 year OPS+ was a bit higher than Story's at the time of the free agencies, by about 10 points or so.
Someday Bogaerts's contract may be looked back at as a high-water mark in spending lunacy.
I generally think with large contracts like that one that there is an expectation that the player will not be worth every penny of it. You're overpaying because the player is freely available. The question becomes if it's worth it to the signing team to pay X $280 million and perhaps only receive, say $200 million worth of WAR.
That was a truly exceptional overpay. I think most people expected Xander to top out at 180 mill or thereabouts. 280 mill was stunning for a player of his pedigree and age.
I agree with you on the age (the term for a 29 year old player was shocking), but his OPS+ leading into the contract were 135, 139, 118, 128, 129, and 131. All from a defensive position that is difficult to fill. That's exceptional offensive production. Even if a usual decline phase, starting from such a level would be an extremely productive player for a very long time.
But there was always speculation he'd eventually be moved off SS. And it's already happened.
Additionally, @Smiling Joe Hesketh is there anything about Xander's profile as a hitter that argues for a slow decline, as opposed to the risk of a rapid one?
I'm no stats expert but his Fangraphs page shows only small changes in K rate, BB rate, and ISO from year to year. I don't think he was ever one of those "young players with old player skills" that are so vulnerable to complete statistical collapse.
I can't believe people are still doing this. There are a lot of people, like me, who liked Xander and wanted the team to keep him. We wanted him extended before he ever hit free agency. Some people say "Boras never does that with his clients," but he will if the client wants it, which is what Xander did in 2019. So some of us were hoping for a Story-like deal to keep Bogaerts. As far as I've seen, NO ONE on this board has EVER suggested they wanted the Sox to give him what the Padres gave him.
We've since learned why it happened. Peter Seidler was dying and wanted to see his team win, so the mandate seemed to be to throw money at people until they said yes. He understood that you can't take it with you and left it for other people to figure out how to deal with it later.
Which is all understandable. But wasn't it reported that there was a major auction on Xander with several teams involved? That seems plausible because not even the Padres would bid against themselves.
The funny thing is if Sale does what I expect and balls out this year and puts up like 4-5 WAR, his extension won’t look nearly as bad but the Red Sox will look worse because they lost out on the majority of his production on the extension and paid his entire salary for him to do it elsewhere.
He was the same fielder last year in San Diego that he was in Boston. About middle of the pack by OAA and with a positive defensive WAR. I think Xander would still be a SS on most teams. He was only moved off SS by San Diego because they have another guy who happens to be incredible in the field. It’s not like Bogaerts was moved because he couldn’t handle the position any longer.
