MLB OFFSEASON 2023

[odessasteps]

 

[Kevin Wilson]

Not to sound like a salty sally and I realize the luxury tax is 80% fake, but teams really shouldn't be able to use deferred payments to get around it.

[Brian Fowler]

Also we can now officially pour one out for one the biggest flop eras any team has ever had.

The Anaheim Angels paired the best player of the generation with quite possibly the single most gifted player in baseball history for six years and won zero world series, zero league titles, zero division titles, and zero wildcard slots. That's almost impressive in it's own way 

[Cobra Commander]

2 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

Also we can now officially pour one out for one the biggest flop eras any team has ever had.

The Anaheim Angels paired the best player of the generation with quite possibly the single most gifted player in baseball history for six years and won zero world series, zero league titles, zero division titles, and zero wildcard slots. That's almost impressive in it's own way 

also the one time the Angels made the playoffs with Trout, they lost every game and Trout had one hit for an entire 3 game series

[lostinube]

Pour one out for all the Angels gear bought in Japan that now have to be replaced.

Apparently the Dodgers are still in the running for Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

[Brian Fowler]

1 hour ago, Cobra Commander said:

also the one time the Angels made the playoffs with Trout, they lost every game and Trout had one hit for an entire 3 game series

I hate the fact that he doesn't even have a large enough sample size to really say "yeah Mike Trout was great, but he always came up short in the playoffs."

Guy has been worth 85 wins and won MVP three times and they can't even get him a second playoff appearance where he can either redeem that bad outing or reinforce it?

[odessasteps]

And it’s not that division was the early 80s AL East, with Baltimore, Toronto and Detroit, where you could win 100 games and miss the playoffs.

[RIPPA]

12 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

Not to sound like a salty sally and I realize the luxury tax is 80% fake, but teams really shouldn't be able to use deferred payments to get around it.

Its never going away since the owners want the ability to do it and the players don't care when they get their money (though most aren't going to the extreme Ohtani is)

That being said - because of reportedly how much Ohtani is deferring, don't be surprised if some limitations start being put in place when the small and mid market teams start bitching (especially if it happens a few more times this offseason or next)

[Travis Sheldon]

So, Ohtani is going to be the Dodgers Bobby Bonilla.

[Kuetsar]

That's fuckton of $$$ to be paying for 4-5 years of DH only at least. Likely worth it, but still. . . . .

[sabremike]

Remember when Steve Cohen was LITERALLY HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER WHO MUST BE STOPPED for spending a bunch of money? Why it's almost as if the people who pushed that narrative are disreputable agenda driven lowlife scumsucking weasels or something... 

[odessasteps]

 

[Dolfan in NYC]

23 hours ago, Travis Sheldon said:

So, Ohtani is going to be the Dodgers Bobby Bonilla.

Yes, but the reason Bonilla is funny is because they're paying him for 10,000 years when he was terrible for the time he played under that contract.  Unless something really, really goes wrong, I think the Dodgers will say "worth it" and move on.

 

Also, for those who didn't see the story/timeline...

Ohtani wanted to be a Dodger.  Got their best offer from them but didn't like the amount.   Ohtani's people then leaked to useful idiot Jon Morosi that the Jays were offering more and (this part was unclear) possibly chartered a jet to Toronto.  He dutifully reported it, and the Dodgers naturally freaked out. They upped the offer to 700, and Ohtani agreed. 

Here's Morosi displaying the giant shit sandwich he'll be eating, probably for the rest of his life:

 

[RIPPA]

Aww... you really do love a good conspiracy theory

Quote

Shohei Ohtani’s decision to sign with the Dodgers for a record-breaking ten-year, $700MM deal sent shockwaves around the sports world, though a particularly heavy dose of the impact settled in Toronto.  Blue Jays fans (and possibly the team itself ) spent much of Friday wondering if Ohtani had decided on the Jays as his next destination, and a pair of now-debunked media reports only added to the fever of speculation.

The full story of the Jays’ pursuit of the two-way star might not be known for some time, yet in pure financial terms, it seems as though the club at least came close to the final asking price.  Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith hears from a source that the Blue Jays’ offer to Ohtani was “right there,” so it doesn’t appear as though the Dodgers’ $700MM deal was too far removed from what the Jays (or potentially other suitors) put on the table.

As Nicholson-Smith notes, there have already been conspiracy theories launched that Balelo and CAA used the Jays’ interest as a smokescreen to get the Dodgers to up their offer at the last minute since Los Angeles was Ohtani’s preferred choice all along.  Or, perhaps the simplest answer is true — the Blue Jays did enough to make themselves a genuine consideration in the two-time AL MVP’s mind, regardless of where the Dodgers may or may not have ranked for Ohtani heading into the offseason.

Learning that the Jays got within the ballpark of signing Ohtani probably doesn’t ease much or any of the sting for Toronto fans.  The fact that the Blue Jays were willing to spend perhaps upwards of $650MM, $675MM, or whatever the final bid was also doesn’t necessarily mean that the team has that much to spend in general this offseason, considering the special nature of Ohtani’s on-field ability and starpower.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2023/12/blue-jays-made-competitive-offer-to-shohei-ohtani.html

[odessasteps]

Their spending at Chelsea doesn’t seem as bad now. 

[Cobra Commander]

Remember this if baseball passes rules to make sure this never happens again

[RIPPA]

32 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

Remember this if baseball passes rules to make sure this never happens again

Yeah - I had hinted that teams were going bitch.

With this news teams are DEFINITELY gonna bitch and at a minimum language is going into the next CBA

Side note - it should be noted that Ohtani makes $50 million a year in endorsements and other "off field revenue streams"

[Cobra Commander]

excited to find out where the common ground between teams and the MLBPA ends in regards to salary deferments because you gotta think the MLBPA isn't thrilled either

[John from Cincinnati]

 

[Kevin Wilson]

All it takes is one owner to go so far against the spirit of a rule to get it changed. Owners and players didn't have an issue with deferred payments but they took it to such an extreme I can't imagine it not being brought up in the next CBA. As now there will other owners that say "well the Dodgers did it, so can we" and suddenly players will be offered a lot more money but with a massive deferment. Which kinda breaks the point of having some sort of quasi salary cap, even one many teams already ignore.

[Cobra Commander]

the current CBA is through 2026 if you wanted to put it in your notifications when the next labor/ownership rockfight would be

[Kuetsar]

That Ohtani contract is some weapons grade bullshit right there. . . 

[odessasteps]

I saw someone say the A’s offered Ohtani $1m for 700 million years. 

[RIPPA]

Note that this comes from an article that was very pro-Deferred money (hence the tone). That being said - in regards to will MLB do anything...

Quote

So, is this a problem?  Does deferring 97.1% of a huge contract mean baseball is broken, and does it represent a major point of contention when the CBA expires after the 2026 season?  Lindsey Adler of the Wall Street Journal wrote tonight, “According to league and union sources, MLB has proposed limiting deferrals in prior CBA negotiations, but the MLBPA has declined those limits because deferrals allow a player flexibility that allows a contract to be worth, let’s say, $700 million instead of $460 million.”

When this came up previously in CBA talks, it was probably more of a “nice to have” for MLB, but not something for which they’d actually make a concession to the MLBPA.  The MLBPA won’t want to give this up, for the handful of players who actually want their payment deferred 20 years into the future.  As you know, money is worth more now than it is in the future, so players have not exactly been clamoring to wait until retirement age to receive 97.1% of their contract.  I’m sure deferred money will come up in the next CBA talks, and may even be eliminated, but one player doing it does not translate to a hot button issue or something where billions of dollars hang in the balance.  They’ll find more consequential things to fight about.

 

[Cobra Commander]

The Royals signed Seth Lugo for 3/45 and they’re closing in on Chris Stratton.