kenmeister

The Sale extension was done at a time when Sale was coming off a season which he ended with significant physical issues. I give you permission to be angry about it.

Makes me hate the Sale extension all the more.

Porcello I'd bring back at $6 million or less. Thornburg - good riddance Wright - he'll never be healthy again; he should retire. Cashner - I thought he did well out of the pen, but I wouldn't pay him more than $2.5 million Chacin - Happy to take another flyer on him for $1.5 million.

I think we wait to see if JD opts out before determining their spending limits.

Given that the points for wins kind of take care of the wild card game anyway, it could be: Winning 82 games - 1 point Winning 91 games - 1 point Winning 101 games - 1 point Making the Division Series - 1 point Making the Championship Series - 1 point Making the World Series - 1 point Winning the World Series - 1 point So a World Series winner will vary from 5-7 points based on their regular season win total. And this way I can go back before 2012.

As a fun little project, I thought I'd go back since 2012 and create a spreadsheet to measure parity in baseball. I was thinking of awarding points to each team as follows: Winning 90+ games but missing playoffs - 1 point Making the Wild Card game but losing it - 2 points Making the Division Series but losing it - 3 points Making the League Championship Series but losing it - 4 points Making the World Series but losing it - 5 points Winning the World Series - 6 points If I went back further it gets tricky because there wasn't a wild card game. Thoughts on the point structure? Thoughts on how to include both before and after wild card game years?

Great point.

Next time we see Sale pitch will be mid-2021 then. Or maybe he misses both 2020 and 2021. Sorry for the pessimism, but the guy's broken.

We need to work Castillo into this deal.

Interesting!

I could have written this post myself. My thoughts exactly! Except Mookie isn't my favorite player; right now that's Rafael Devers or Eduardo Rodriguez.

So you have a 25 man roster (until the 26 comes). Of the 25, you have 9 starters in the lineup, 5 starting pitchers, and these days 6 relievers that all see a lot of work, for 20 more or less "full-time" players, and 5 "part-time" players. The luxury tax - which has effectively become a salary cap, is $208 million I think? I believe the best teams are the ones where that top 20 players are all very competent, so the financial reward should in theory be more spread around. If you have 6 stars all making $30 million a year, that's $180 of your salary. Way too concentrated. In other words, I don't think paying anyone $30 million per year is worth it. Possible distribution: 5 best players @ 20 million per year = $100 million 5 good players @ 12 million per year = $60 million 5 average players @ 6 million per year = $30 million 5 young players @ 2 million per year = $10 million 5 part-time players @ 1 million per year = $5 million Total: $205 million payroll. Of course when you have young stars like Rafael Devers making the league minimum, it throws the above math off, freeing up more room to overpay veterans, but that feels like a bad strategy to have a handful of $30 million per year players and then the rest all making almost nothing in comparison.

Sometimes I don't get WAR. Last year, Mookie had a 6.8 WAR, Xander had a 5.2 WAR, and Rafael had 5.3 WAR. From following the team I would have thought Betts was the least of the three. Was it defense that made the difference?

I just don't rate him as highly as you do. I think 2018 was an outlier.

I'd like to go one more year on Price & Eovaldi before looking to move them; I'm actually hopeful they bounce back and have good seasons. Sale, on the other hand, I'm very concerned about. Extending him looks like a horrible move. I'm concerned he'll never be the same. I'd love to be proven wrong.

Given that Ellsbury will probably never take the field again, I don't view him as an outfielder.

I wonder if JD does opt out, if he ends up getting as much money as he would have had he stayed with Boston.

Very cool research. Think about how much money Ellsbury made for himself due to that one season ...

Am I the only one not panicking about Beni? Age 24 seasons: Benitendi (2019): .266 batting average, .774 OPS, 13 home runs Betts (2017): .264 batting average, .803 OPS, 24 home runs Bogaerts (2017): .273 batting average, .746 OPS, 10 home runs Bradley Jr (2014): .198 batting average, .531 OPS, 1 home run JD Martinez (2012): .241 batting average, .685 OPS, 11 home runs Vazquez (2015): was either injured or demoted that year Youkillis (2003): hadn't reached the majors yet Even David Ortiz wasn't David Ortiz yet. Ortiz (2000): .282 batting average, .810 OPS, 10 home runs Maybe age 24 is just hard??? They can't all be one of the greats: Boggs (1982): .349 batting average, .847 OPS, 5 home runs Lynn (1976): .314 batting average, .835 OPS, 10 home runs Pedroia (2008): .326 batting average, .823 OPS, 17 home runs Rice (1977): .320 batting average, .969 OPS, 39 home runs

Ok, so looking at the starting pitchers ... the last time I brought up Pineda somebody almost spilled their beverage, so looking past him ... one of Wheeler/Odorizzi/Bumgarner?

You might be right, but having taken a look at Myers, I can't get very excited about that one. At least with Price he has the second half of 2018 performance to hope for a resurgence of.

It seems like we're always waiting to shed bad contracts. First it was Beckett and Crawford. Then after we ditched them, we took on the Ramirez and Sandoval contracts. Now we're (probably) stuck until the Price & Sale contracts end.

Assuming JD opts out and they (somehow) get rid of JBJ, how much money can they spend? I ask before I start posting ridiculous things like, "Hey, Anthony Rendon is available!"

Oh yikes you guys are right. I hadn't followed him last year. Only 13 starts and 58 innings. But at least his ERA was still 2.45. I guess it all depends on the expense. For a $2 million pick up he's worth a flyer.

I was hoping for that. Should never have let him go in the first place.