Well, it's not quite that simple either. A Chaim Bloom doesn't trade a Mookie Betts unless he's given a mandate to do so. And if it's all about the facts, it's a fact that Dombrowski had several years in which to sign Betts to an extension but didn't.
It seems pretty obvious neither one of them had much say in the situation. Henry just didn't want to pay what it took.
DD couldn't keep Betts if JH didn't want to offer Betts more than $300 mill.
DD only signed Sale and Bogaerts to the extensions after the talks with Betts broke down.
The stuff about trading guys isn't really relevant.
When the talks broke down that was it. Game over.
The 2019 season was not any kind of disaster IMHO. They won 84 games, the same number as the defending NL champs Arizona. They had a run differential of +73. They scored more runs than the 2018 team did. Obviously they had a lot of banged-up pitchers and that did them in.
But also, 2019 came after a championship and 3 division titles in a row. It's hard to keep a run like that going.
No team has won back to back WS's since the year 2000.
The question I guess is whether some signings and extensions have red flags all over them.
Sale had an injury red flag.
Story had somewhat of an injury red flag.
Yoshida had a 'nobody else thinks he's worth anywhere near that much' red flag.
Yes, and I'm as guilty as anyone.
It's not like the Theo days when you could pencil the team in for 95 wins. Now everything seems very unpredictable, with all the roster turnover, the impact of the guys behind the scenes like Bailey and so on.
It's a stand-alone story for me. It's not about the luxury tax or about the other guys they had to pay or where the team was situated for the future. I think that's all irrelevant to how much JH was willing to pay Mookie.
Henry balked at paying Mookie market value because it was a big number. To me that's all there really is to that story. Obviously the money they didn't pay him goes somewhere else.
And to be totally nasty about it, Yoshida might have no value whatsoever.
When the manager benches the DH for 2 games in April when the team is already decimated by injuries, it's a really bad sign.
Good analysis until you got to Devers, Yoshida and Jansen.
Every team has guys who are underperforming their salaries so far, and a lot of it is just randomness.
I dunno, I'm starting to get a feeling it might happen sooner. Maybe for PR reasons as much as anything. The Netflix doc really needs something.
He's only a little younger than Volpe was starting last year. And Volpe has been a success.
When you start the year with a thin roster and you have injuries to Devers, Story, O'Neill and Grissom, it's just plain ugly.
A lethal combo of bad moves and bad luck.