Bellhorn04

Mike is having a tremendous season. 297/412/588 - 1.000 OPS 2.2 bWAR I looked up his contract status. He won't be a free agent until 2026, when's he's 35 going on 36.

As far as I know, Mookie has never said one negative thing about playing in Boston. So any idea that he didn't like Boston seems like pure speculation.

Daniel Bard's amazing comeback continues. Now the Rockies' closer. Great story.

Gary Sanchez is toast.

Canadians have such good attitudes.

It is interesting that the 365 was the exact midpoint of the 310 and the 420. The other thing we'll never know is how much impact the pandemic had on Mookie's thinking.

It was reported that when the Red Sox made an offer of $310 million, Mookie's side countered with $420 million, and that was the end of "negotiations". We'll never know if the Red Sox could have signed him for a lower amount, but it seems a fair assumption that lower amount would not have been much lower than $400 million.

Well, the final 2 years of Price's deal fall in the first 2 years of Mookie's deal. So it was a hindrance, but not a huge obstacle IMHO.

The jury is out.

Yes, it's been a weird ride. Sure can't complain about the 4 rings though.

Well, if Bloom does his job, we should have a relatively large amount of flexibility going forward, especially beginning in 2023.

The situation with him and Eckersley was a bit ugly.

Here's what Werner said after Mookie signed the extension with the Dodgers: “It’s always difficult to trade a talented player of Mookie’s caliber, but let’s revisit this conversation in 12 years. Hopefully you and I will both still be here. That’s a very, very long-term deal for a team to swallow. You guys know as well as I do that the history of long-term deals is checkered at best. We made what we thought was a generous offer but for us it’s time to turn the page.”

Major contracts on books for 2022-2023 2022 Sale 25.6 JDM 22 Bogey 20 Eovaldi 17 Total 84.6 2023 Sale 25.6 Bogey 20 (if he doesn't opt out) Total 45.6 That's it.

I'm not disputing that point at all. I know there's a lot to consider. But in this particular case, I believe the short-term considerations were far outweighed by the long-term ones. And as I said on the other thread, we have a ton of payroll coming off the books in 2021 and 2022.

In my opinion, there was only one valid reason for letting him go. They didn't want to pay him $350-400 million. I can live with that, because the risk of such a contract would have been astronomical. But the stuff about saving tax and creating flexibility doesn't cut it as legitimate reasons, for me.

Here is a piece from The Ringer that was written about a week after the trade. The Myths Behind Boston’s Mookie Betts Trade Justification The Red Sox are ostensibly aiming toward payroll flexibility by trading their best player to the Dodgers. Here’s why that explanation falls flat. By Zach Kram Feb 13, 2020 When a baseball team trades its best player, it had better have a good reason. When that player is not only talented but a recent MVP, not only beloved but a homegrown hero, not only productive but, in fact, the most productive young player ever to be traded in MLB history, that reason had better be unimpeachable. The Red Sox have tried to explain themselves both before and after trading Mookie Betts, a 27-year-old super-duper-star, and the Red Sox have failed. After some delays and tweaks due to uncertain medical info, the momentous trade was finalized earlier this week: Betts, pitcher David Price (a fine player in his own right), and half of Price’s salary to the Dodgers in exchange for young outfielder Alex Verdugo and two prospects. The Dodgers added the second-best player in baseball, behind only crosstown outfielder Mike Trout. The Red Sox added payroll flexibility. But that imbalance hasn’t prevented a week of attempted justification for Boston’s decision, or even outright praise. “Boston did really well,” one executive told ESPN’s Buster Olney. “The Red Sox will reset fast,” said another, adding, “they’ll have money to spend in the next offseason.” Many of these optimistic interpretations of Boston’s side of the trade are centered more in myth than reality. So as spring training begins and Betts prepares for the first non–Red Sox camp of his career, let’s tackle some of those myths and expose the rotten underbelly of Boston’s trade. Myth No. 1: The Red Sox Weren’t Going to Compete in 2020 Anyway (Let's skip this one.) Myth No. 2: Trading Betts Will Save the Red Sox Money for Years to Come Most analyses in Boston’s favor concern the financial aspect of the deal more than the on-field effect. These are misguided as well. Baseball’s Byzantine accounting system facilitates this sort of justification because this area is such a challenge for fans and media members to understand. So let’s examine Boston’s actual savings from the Betts trade. Most of the focus concerns the competitive balance tax, or CBT, a surcharge on top of a team’s payroll commitments if they rise above a set of escalating thresholds. (The luxury tax applies only to the overages, though—none of the hundreds of millions of dollars under the lowest CBT threshold are subject to extra taxation.) Crucially, if a team remains above the thresholds for more than one season, the taxes grow more onerous. Here’s what they look like for the 2020 season. Competitive Balance Tax Penalties Pre-tax Payroll First-Time Offender Second-Time Offender Third-Time Offender or More Pre-tax Payroll First-Time Offender Second-Time Offender Third-Time Offender or More Under $208 million 0% 0% 0% $208-$228 million 20% 30% 50% $228-$248 million 32% 42% 62% $248 million or more 62.5-65% 72.5-75% 92.5-95% If a team dips back under the lowest threshold even once, it resets the penalties to reenter the “first-time offender” column. Looking at the percentages, it’s easy to see why a reset is desirable. The Yankees and Dodgers did so recently, meaning their taxes this season—with Gerrit Cole’s and Betts’s contracts, respectively, pushing them into the penalty area—won’t be as high. Red Sox owner John Henry told the Boston Globe in January, “I think every team probably wants to reset at least once every three years.” But that’s the key number: three years. Teams reach the highest level of CBT penalties if they go over the tax for three consecutive years, so if the Red Sox plan to reinvest the money they’re saving this season, they would vault back over the tax line in 2021 and return to the highest tax level in just three seasons. Thus, speculation that the Red Sox might save money for a decade or more from this one season of stinginess doesn’t pass muster. Moreover, the collective bargaining agreement between players and owners—which details the CBT and attendant penalties—will expire after the 2021 season. Given the increasingly fraught economic state of the game, it’s possible that the entire nature of the CBT structure will change after 2021—meaning, in effect, that the duration of Boston’s savings could shrink from an already small three years to only two. Myth No. 3: Boston Will Reinvest the Money They Save Into the Team (Let's skip this one too.) Myth No. 4: Henry and the Red Sox Will Save Substantial Amounts of Money by Dipping Under the Luxury Tax Thus we arrive at the greatest myth of all. In 2020, of course, they’ll save a lot of money, but mostly because they shed all of Betts’s $27 million and half of Price’s $32 million for the year. Subtract Verdugo’s pre-arb contract and that’s about $42 million in salary savings this year, plus about $11 million in projected luxury tax payments that will no longer arise. The savings from resetting the luxury tax and becoming first-time rather than third-time offenders dry up quickly beyond 2020 unless the Red Sox plan to run truly exorbitant payrolls. No team under the current CBT structure has ever gone so high as to make the difference between those two rate levels really matter. When the Red Sox won the 2018 title with the sport’s highest payroll, for instance, they paid only $12 million in CBT payments—a small tradeoff for a World Series trophy, in a year in which Boston collected an estimated $516 million in revenue. This chart shows how much Henry would save, on average across 2021 and 2022, at different levels of spending in those seasons. (For ease of analysis, for the latter season this projection assumes that the CBT system will continue as presently constructed in the new collective bargaining agreement.) If the Red Sox stay below the lowest CBT threshold, they wouldn’t save anything. If they go above, the savings would be minimal at the lower levels. Red Sox Projected CBT Savings, 2021-22 Pre-tax Payroll (Millions) Average Annual Savings (Millions) Pre-tax Payroll (Millions) Average Annual Savings (Millions) $200 $0 $210 $0 $220 $2.3 $230 $4.8 $240 $7.3 $250 $9.8 $260 $12.3 $270 $14.8 $280 $17.3 $290 $19.8 $300 $22.3 Even with a pre-tax payroll of $250 million, which would represent the highest payroll in franchise history, Henry would save only around $10 million per year from diminished luxury tax payments. (Some other, harder-to-calculate factors might play a small additional role, like Boston’s collection of a complicated tax revenue rebate, which FanGraphs’ Craig Edwards estimates could work out to an extra $3.75 million per year. But the gist of the chart remains the same in any case.) If they want to contend this year or in 2021 or 2022, they’ll need to immediately eat into some of those savings to replenish the rotation, or risk falling even further behind in the standings. This prospect is made more difficult by the Betts trade, because by paying $16 million per year to the Dodgers to cover half of Price’s salary, they limit the effective payroll they can spend on the actual Red Sox roster—unless they’re planning to pay more on payroll than they would have had they kept Price, which doesn’t make sense because then their tax burden would increase. Going the cheaper route doesn’t make much sense either, though—this is the Red Sox, one of the sport’s premier and richest franchises, and they should always be in contention. Except they need a pitcher now to get there, and Price, ironically, would help fill that hole. And the savings from trading him and Betts, again, aren’t even that large in the first place, relative to a typical Boston payroll. For context for that chart, when the Red Sox won the championship in 2018, they paid Hanley Ramírez and Pablo Sandoval a combined $40.8 million despite cutting them in May and during the previous season, respectively, and that extra cost didn’t get in their way. Even if the Red Sox run an unprecedented $300 million payroll the next two seasons, Henry would ultimately save just half the amount of money that he gave Ramírez and Sandoval to not play in 2018. A splurge to $300 million likely will not occur, though. The club’s actions this winter all point toward future frugality rather than exorbitance—even beyond trading its best player, Boston also barely dipped a toe into the free agent pool. And in general, no team is approaching payrolls of the sort that would actually threaten Henry’s pocket book. Aside from extending current young players like Devers—which might only reinforce the disappointment around Betts, whom Boston failed to extend—it’s hard to envision how Boston will reinvest all of its 2020 savings given next winter’s possible targets. Many of the top potential free agents have already signed extensions that will keep them off the market: Mike Trout, Jacob deGrom, Paul Goldschmidt. George Springer could prove enticing, or a breakout pitcher from the Marcus Stroman–Robbie Ray–Trevor Bauer group. But none of those players will be worth the kind of colossal contract that could incur luxury tax shockwaves. Only one impending free agent, in fact, could command such a deal. That player, of course, is Mookie Betts. And it’s clear that Boston doesn’t want to pay him what he’s worth.

Right. One WS appearance since 2003.

In that case, Cherington's 2013 ring should get him off the hook for everything else too.

Also, those "report card grades" are a wee bit exaggerated.

What was Theo's record in his first couple of seasons with the Cubs? Can't always go just by the W-L record, Den.

You are Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Plenty more to come.

It was actually: Ottawa Rough Riders and Saskatchewan Roughriders I kid you not, they were different. It's now Ottawa Redblacks LOL I've said it before, the CFL and NFL make a perfect metaphor for Canada and the US. We are like the minor league of the US.

Wait for tonight's new thread!