Balta1701

"We're going to trade Tim for a Haul so we will pick up his $14 million option but we don't actually want him on the team so I hope nothing goes wrong with this strategy" seems super familiar.

The answer could absolutely be "regular playing time" as well. It could also be that one team goes to 2/$26.

I’m not a gambler, but the Twins were 1.5 run favorites in this game and boy did I think seriously about figuring out how to create an account to take that one.

What do we think the money looks like? Get rid of Anderson and Eloy and they're at maybe $90-100 million as a starting point, assuming no bad money comes back for Eloy. Rizzo has a $17 million option, so assuming the Yankees turn that down let's say $12 million for him? Matt Chapman has been a 3-4 WAR player each of the last few years, so this seems like a "team record contract" guy? Bleacher Report had him at $25 million a year a while back, let's use that number. Duvall was 1/$7 last year and, although he didn't finish a full year, he was a lot better than he was in 2022, so it doesn't seem ridiculous to guess $10 million. Heyward actually outhit and outplayed Duvall, so I'm going to give him 1/$7 million. Rosario is completely up and down, I honestly don't know, I'm going to guess $7 million but feel free to disagree with me, that's Spotrac's market value on him. DeJong: I'll just guess league minimum. Hedges was signed for $5 million and was bad, so let's drop that down to $2 million I've added about $70 million to the payroll, pushing the team up to basically the payroll where it was last year. Given that free agent costs always run high, I might well still have underestimated things, maybe I'm a bit high on Chapman but under on a couple other guys. The problem, of course, is that it now has a starting rotation of Cease, Kopech, Toussaint, possible undead zombie, and Urena. They have a bullpen where their closer may need arm surgery (Santos), they have a couple of lefties in Crochet and Bummer but both were awful last year (although Crochet may have a real chance of contributing next year), and...I honestly don't know what else they even have. Does Shaw count? How many of these guys are even big leaguers? There's your problem. It basically takes "Spending up to last year's pay" to have a remote shot of even fixing the offense and improving the defense. You've done that...even then there are still issues such as a lack of depth and injury-prone positions and a catchers' spot that may hit .090, but you have no money left to fix the pitching staff! You need like $70 million to bring in 2 starters, a swingman, and a couple relievers, and even then you're still relying on Kopech and Toussaint who might well be terrible! You need like $70 million to fix the offense. Unless the White Sox are going to put out a payroll to rival the Dodgers, and blow past the luxury tax line, you can't do all of this while still finding pitchers.

The other part where it probably matters is later in October. Last year, having the Phillies pitchers do the extra round while the Astros pitchers were fresher was absolutely, 100% certainly key in that World Series. Both the starters and the bullpen for the Phillies were simply worn out by the time they got there.

Somewhat on topic - wow, Detroit has exactly 0 players under contract for next year. They have 2 player options, Baez and Rodriguez, and Baez is the only one who will probably pick it up. They only have a handful of arb-eligible guys, it looks like they have a starting payroll of $50 million-ish including Baez and all of their arb guys (and I'm not sure they will keep Meadows). They had a $125 million payroll last year. They have a ton to spend even if they hold Baez.

"We need to bring in new players to change around the culture." "I don't see how us bringing in new players will affect the team". Any contradiction there?

On the free agent market, everything is an overpay, on average. You have to be willing to seemingly overpay to get guys to sign here. Guys who you think were worth $10 million a year are now getting $12 or $13 million a year because salaries are growing that quickly. Ya just gotta be prepared for it.

So they're quoting a guy talking about cheating who actually made Josh Donaldson correct when he yelled "it's not sticky any more" at him?

Nothing other than the risk of having no starting SS on the roster if Anderson gets a better offer somewhere else (or frankly, if he wants to leave and is willing to take less money to do so - and for a reminder this has happened to a White Sox player recently). This could lead them to having to sign a different SS, perhaps one they can't necessarily say "allows them to compete next year".

For Vaughn, yeah I don't believe there's a strong justification for moving him. His value right now is "backup 1b", you might as well wait to see if he does anything next year before we talk about non-tendering him after 2024. For Eloy, there is some potential benefit in clearing out the contract, and I do believe his contract is still movable.

Where is this new culture coming from?

I agree. Go to town.

You can say that if they have 3 losses. 1-2 with 1 game to play isn’t a pattern in this sport. The Braves went 1-2 against the White Sox with a ‘27 Yankees offense. If the team with the buy won 66% of the games, there would be plenty of years where they went 2-2.

Houston? Verlander’s shutout start?

We call this rooting for the meteor.

If you’re not going to open the roof when it is 76 degrees, with low humidity and light clouds, don’t pay for the retractable roof.

As is typical in the offseason, somewhere I think you're missing a few million, if Clevinger is retained and goes to $12 million I would have them at $123 million before the arb guys, (not counting $1 million for Abreu that was deferred in his last deal). This doesn't change the conclusion that they have money to spend.

Whether these items are related or just coincidence based on when he has been moved to this position I do not know, but I do find it worth adding that his career OPS as a DH is .739.

I will definitely admit this was a significant improvement and IIRC somewhere in this thread I was begging him to just throw the ball into the area of Moore and let him make a few plays so it's darn nice to see this happening. They have better weapons this year than last year, so he does need to make use of them. He's got to both keep it up and show up against better defenses though, if you want to think about this as a long term option.

This is a lot better than where we were 2 weeks ago, but there's a couple things worth keeping in mind: 1. We have seen Fields put up good numbers the last 2 weeks against teams that aren't particularly strong, both are in the bottom 10 defensively in yards/game, so the games against better defenses in the Saints and Lions later this year will be particularly telling. 2. The other factor to keep in mind if you have an opportunity to draft Williams with either of those picks is the contract extension. This offseason, Fields will be a free agent in 2 years, so either next year or the following year you are going to have to commit a contract extension to him if you aren't picking up someone else. The Daniel Jones model suggests that the salary for keeping a middling QB on their 2nd deal right now is $40 million a year. If you were to trade that pick and go with Fields based on this performance, you better be confident enough to extend him. If you're not confident enough to extend him, then trying to trade him to a team that thinks their close (Saints, Bucs, Falcons, apparently the entire NFC South it seems) and pick up a mid or late first round pick looks like the smartest option to me. You continue the rebuild with Williams and you let a team take a 2-3 year attempt to compete with Fields before they fully commit to extending him.

Are you counting Hendriks or assuming they opt out of that? If you opt out of Anderson, Hendriks, and Clevinger, they're at $102 million before pre-arb guys. If you keep Anderson (my guess is they keep him), they're at $115. I wouldn't be surprised if they found a way to turn Hendriks's option into a 2 year deal that keeps him around a little bit longer, and that might take this starting point over $120 million, but there's still a ton of money to spend here.

I can't say what they will do...but they absolutely do have room to add significant salary if they want to. Their payroll right now is somewhere close to $100 million, depending on exact arb numbers and such, and that's quite low for them. When they were "competing" in 2015-2016 they pushed to over $120 million, and when they were "Competing" in 2022 and 2023 they pushed their payroll to $190 and $180 million. I would expect something of a payroll drop since attendance, ratings, and presumably advertising sales have collapsed, but even a payroll of $140 million leaves them with tens of millions of dollars to spend.

I can't believe Crochet is already arb-eligible. They did not use his pre-arb years particularly well. Personally I wouldn't pay that for Toussaint either.