Balta1701

I really don’t care about the White Sox losing money through this stupidity on their part, I already laughed at the fact that Hahn guaranteed him $4 million against suspension with his stupid buyout and option. I would care more about taking the money from the suspension out of Clevinger’s accounts. He got that contract by keeping an abuse case quiet, a penalty would be nice.

If he was suspended for half the season it takes $4 million away from him compared to buying out his whole deal:

What's changed is that this has been made public in a way that was out of the control of the league. That could mean that the acquiring team is simply uncomfortable with playing him to start the year.

Now that this has leaked, "administrative leave" during the investigation seems plausible.

You mean Bill Veeck?

There was zero reason to do that stupid mutual option if they weren't casually moving it onto their 2024 budget. It won't be picked up because mutual options are almost never picked up. "Oh there was actually no reason to do this but they did it anyway and it turns out that it gave Clevinger an extra $4 million" is not a defense for him, it actually is even dumber!!!!

It wasn't fine if he was told he had only $17 million to play with, and dropping the money onto 2024 was already dumb even before it turned out here that it really backfired. And oh, Clevinger jumped at the money because he knew he was going to be suspended and happened to take advantage of Hahn's foolishness - just super embarrassing.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions on that, these investigations are notoriously slower than it seems like they should be for these professional sports leagues. I do not know why, but it's quite consistent.

If Rick Hahn came into Jerry Reinsdorf's office and said "I need $30 million to create a competitive team" and Jerry Reinsdorf said "The budget this year is $17 million, sorry", it's not Reinsdorf cowering out of hard decisions and instead acting like a capped out GM, it's Hahn. This should never have been a strategy regardless of the budget, and it's perfectly ironic for it to come back and cost them several million dollars and a PR nightmare.

And in this effort to defend Hahn, you've just said "Rick Hahn got outsmarted by Clevinger".

Well first of all, based on how much I was saying they needed to clear payroll at the trade deadline to avoid this situation, I would never have let myself get into this spot. But if I was hired as a new GM to fix this mess, I would have made harder choices. Either I would have said “I have $17 million to spend so I’m only going to spend $17 million” or I would have traded away a player to clear more money. Acting like a capped out NFL team trying to compete for one last year always creates a bill that comes due. A baseball team punting money into next year to sign players this year is just silly, and they deserve to have it bite their GM in the ass.

Oh Lord I just realized this. Hahn could have paid Clevinger $12 million, but instead he had to pay him $8 million this year and turn $4 million into a buyout. If Hahn paid him $12 million straight up, and he was suspended half the year, he’d be owed $6 million. But because of Hahn’s shenanigans, if he’s suspended half the year, he is owed $4 million, then a $4 million buyout, for $8 million. I am not as certain on this, but I think if he’s suspended the whole year he would still be owed his buyout. If that’s right, then he would have been owed $0 if suspended the whole year and instead he’d be owed $4 million for the buyout instead of zero. Ricky probably handed him between $2 and $4 million because he wanted to defer money to 2024. Good work.

I don’t know what the difference is in some of these cases, but recently many of the domestic violence suspensions look to have been about half the season. Carlos Martinez received a half season suspension last fall. Sam Dyson received a full year in 2021 and then of course there’s Bauer. Without knowing the circumstances, half a season seems to be the most likely number. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_players_suspended_for_domestic_violence

It can be for some people but for baseball it isn't. Baseball's domestic violence agreement is very clear about this that people can be suspended regardless of whether or not there is anyone charged or convicted of a crime.

Jones has 67 career fWAR and Rolen has 69. Almost everyone who has that many WAR eventually gets into the Hall unless there's something like steroids in the way. Rolen has 70 baseball-reference WAR and I believe coming into this year he was the only eligible non-steroid player with 70 career WAR who wasn't yet in the Hall.

Beltran not getting in on his first ballot was absolutely related to the Astros cheating scandal.

I think that's correct yes, and I think the buyout - since it's a mutual option - will be paid out no matter what.

I looked at this yesterday - they actually were supposed to have paid him for the administrative leave, but this changed when the Arbitrator ruled against the league. Administrative leave means he still gets paid, suspension no pay. When the arbitrator ruled, they decided to count the long administrative leave as part of his suspension, which meant no money during the administrative leave, but his contract resumed from the point the suspension ended. This is a unique case since it's the only MLB domestic violence suspension that went to an arbitrator.

I got this tweet from that article. Note that the tweet was from his time being run out of Cleveland.

The GM himself wouldn't check a player's background, but for a $12 million commitment, it sure seems like they should absolutely be spending >$10k on a detailed background check. Particularly in the case of a person where you have reason to believe a player has had previous personal issues. If the article yesterday is accurate, and this isn't the first time he's done this or the first woman he's done this with, one would suspect somewhere that there could be a paper trail, and that would have turned up with an appropriately done background check.

I was legitimately thinking you were talking about bringing him out of retirement and turning him back into a starter.

They are telling you right now how much confidence they have in these guys.