Even if Yoan posted a 900 OPS at 2b, if his defense still sucked as much as it did during his first 1.5 seasons, he wouldn’t be worth more than what he’s doing at 3b this season.
Not at all. Cuba has a smaller population than the State of Illinois and I imagine the process of defecting from their homeland creates a bond and life experience that unites countrymen like this that white boys like Eaton and Frazier could never relate to.
I wouldn’t say impossible but it certainly makes things much more difficult. They are going to need insane production from their farm system to make it work with their assumed payroll constraints. Hosmer/Machado will likely account for 35-45% of their team payroll over the next several years. That’s a big number.
Overcoming an annual expenditure of $50M between two players (Hosmer and Machado) that combine to produce 2-3 fWAR annually is not an easy task for a mid market team like the Padres.
Yep. Been saying this for nearly a year now and he has yet to prove me wrong. I wouldn’t take this guy and his salary on even if the Padres gave him to the Sox for no player in return. His contract carries negative value imo. It will be an interesting comparison in future years seeing how the Padres approach to their rebuild compares to the Sox. They’ve had a stronger/deeper farm system over the past few years. Yet, will the mega signings of Hosmer and Machado act as anchors that ultimately limit their potential and result in less success than the Sox over the next 5 years, a team that has preserved their financial flexibility to this point in the rebuild?
As I said in one of the Machado threads, he’s still got some work to do to hit 3 fWAR this season. Currently sitting at 2.6 and his wRC+ is down to 107, along with an OPS of below 800. If the Sox had signed this guy, people would be ripping Hahn right now.
I think it was @Balta1701 who said 1 WAR is equal to approx $10M on the open market. So by that measure, the over/under for fair value on Machado over the life of his contract is 30 WAR. Yea, I’ll take the under easily.
Is it truly a down year for him though? He’s had worse years at the plate and his 108 wRC+ this season isn’t that far off his career number. His performance last year was the outlier imo, not this season.
I’d think he’d bounce back a little offensively at some point over the next couple seasons but I can’t imagine his defense will improve as he ages so those may very well offset.