moonslav59

Sale says he's fine. I find it funny you won't let go of Sale's health concerns while downplaying Paxton's lack of big inning seasons. You want to compare our playoffs team to the team we have to start the 2019 season, but then speak of 108 wins like we got those wins with the current team. We won a ton of games before we got Eovaldi & Pearce. We won a ton of games while Sale was on the shelf. We breezed through the playoffs basically without Sale and an extremely shaky Kimbrel. Be consistent with your comps. If we might be worse off because Sale might be like he was in October of 2018, then why not then claim we'll be better off without Kimbrel, because he sucked in October of 2018. 4 more months of Eovaldi & Pearce could very well make up for the loss of CK & JK. We might get more starts from Sale & ERod and more good appearances from Brasier. We might get something from Thornburg. We might not. The Yanks might miss Didi. The Yanks may see a swoon from Voit. Yes, you had injuries last year, too and expecting more from Sanchez and Judge is reasonable, but we saw Betts, Bogey, Devers and others miss time and Pedey miss a whole season. We have a lot of hope for being as good as last year. 108 games good is hard to repeat, for sure, but to me, we look better now than we did last February. (So do the Yanks.)

More about top paid player salaries, thinking the trickle down effect would take hold.

If you still pay the player who is booted off the tax budget, it only helps teams that are facing a tax. It opens up nothing for those not close to paying the tax.

Last year, he went over 4 months of steady hitting (Mid June through the playoffs). He hit .825 since June 14th, not counting the playoffs. (.791 from May 28th to Sep 30.) Here are JBJ's monthly OPS since he started playing FT in August 2015: 1.163 .739 (2016: 1 bad month/ 1 so-so) .807 1.175 .805 .839 .651 .731 (2017: Very steady, but not all that good) .713 .766 .713 .766 .776 .713 (2018: 3 bad/3 very good) .600 .599 .653 .801 .827 .826 (.835 Playoffs) I'm not saying his career hasn't been streaky, but your characterization is not accurate. Last 20 months 4 months between .599 and .700 8 months between .701 and .799 5 months between .800 and .899 0 months between .900 and 1.099 2 months over 1.100

..and many more according toMLBTR: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2018/11/mlb-free-agent-predictions-2019.html Some who did not get the money MLBTR projected got more money per year but less years.

Pablo's deal is over after this season, so his money would only have helped us with 1 year deals, if the reset after 2019 is for real.

Another big boost to the lower paid players would be to expand the roster to 26 or 27 players. The Major-Minor yo-yo players would spend more time in the majors and get paid more. 1-2 more slots would greatly increase job security. Double the minimum wage. Start the arb process a year or two earlier. Just these few ideas would help way more players than raising the luxury tax or doing away with penalties for spending too much..

So, keep free agency on track but start the arb years 1-2 years earlier and have 4-6 possible arb years.

I still count JD as the back-up OF. he starts when one sits. True, if he starts at DH, then someone else has to be the back-up. BTW, JBJ is busting out this year- no PH'ing will be necessary!

Depends on what the job is.

Are we the only team that values Leon's defense? (Note: I am not for trading Leon or Vaz.)

JD is the back-up OF'er. Swihart may play 1B better than Holt, so basically, Nunez and Holt are the back-ups at 2B, 3B and SS while being extended depth elsewhere. Swihart, Moreland and Pearce can also play LF. I'd rather have Lin than Swihart (Pedey or no Pedey), which is one reason I have suggested trading Swihart 679 times this winter.

I was just fighting insanity with hyperbole.

Probably as important is having the first arb year 1-2 years earlier. Players make good money in arbs, even if they are just decent.

$18M/1 would not hurt on the "rebuild", except for the drop in our draft slot by 10 picks. IMO, it would be worth it. A 2 or more year deal would mean saying good bye to someone I like more than the (somewhat) aging CK.

So is declaring Henry is nuts for not bringing Kimbrel back.

Let's see how Feltman does vs AA and AAA hitters before deciding. Same with D Hernandez, who needs to start gaining some control. Kimbrel does not guarantee a duck boat parade, but he pretty much would guarantee an irreversible cliff after 2019.

That's why I said the players should "wise up" and demand raising the bottom. They hold the vast majority of the votes for ratification. This whole average pay of MLB player salaries rising is misleading. Someone should do a study and see how much each quadrant has risen over the last 10 years. My guess is the top quadrant has risen by a much larger percentage than any other quadrant. All we hear is the "owners wised up," when it's the players that need to follow suit. Plus, it is probably what's best for the game, in terms of moving towards parity.

I'm pretty sure I never agreed with you more.

I used to be a union rep for over a decade. We always fought for the top man to get the best raise, because we all knew someday we'd be that 20 year guy. Management always played us against each other by offering faster raises for the newer guys, making them get to the higher pay quicker, and since there were more newer guys than senior guys, it often worked. We tried to reason withe the newcomers by showing how their bigger early raises amounted to less in the long run than raising the top pay brackets more. MLB is not like this. Pay is not based on seniority (years of company service). I may be missing something, but it makes much more sense to me for the players to band together and demand higher pay for the bottom 50-80% of the players and not raising the luxury tax limit in hopes the big FA contracts will trickle down to the mid range guys and on and on... Many ML players never even reach free agency. They don't last to their arb years, or when they reach free agency they make a tiny fraction of what JD Martinez makes. Don't tell me Moustakas made as much as he did because JD made so much. It may have some affect, but not that much.

No, the entire FA market did not falter. JD and maybe a few others got less than originally projected, but the funny thing was, JD signed with the one team paying the max tax. This totally shatters your argument. It's not the tax. It's the owners not wanting to sign aging stars to huge long term deals. It's something we've wondered why about for decades. I know the resets hurt the FA market and there was a trickle down effect, but the solution to raising player salary is not by raising the tax limit.

If the mega taxes were such a big deterrent, why aren't we seeing the Yankees, Dodgers, Giants and Cubs all ending up real close but under to the $20M and $40M lines? The tax line certainly seemed to play a role in the Yanks and Dodgers resets last season, but wasn't the expectation they'd be spending heavily this winter? Now, suddenly we are supposed to believe they are afraid of the max tax? These teams could have signed Machado or Harper and not go over the $20 or $40M lines. Cots has the Yanks $36M under the max line. They also could have signed MM or BH and not signed someone else and stayed under the $20M tax line. The Dodgers are at about $20M over right now. SF is $34M below the first tax line and is looking to trade salary- it's not the tax changing their spending ways. The Astros are a strong contender and far away from the luxury tax. The tax means nothing to them.

That's 5 or 6 teams driving up the prices on a handful of FAs every season. Sure, they pay some mid range deals, too, but the vast majority of players never see those big paydays. Sure, when one FA gets $25M, one who is almost as good tries to get $22M and on and on, but when only 5-7 teams are spending big, the well is not deep enough to satisfy maybe 90% of the players in MLB. Yes, the owners have "wised up," but maybe the players have (will) too. Think of it this way, if the highest spending 5 teams all spend $30M more due to smaller or no taxes, that's $150M more. If the lower 25 teams all spend just $6M more, it's equal, but the vast majority of players get a significant raise. Going from $550K to $1.1M is a 100% raise for hundreds of players. If the players "wise up" they push for paying the bottom players much more and not touch the luxury tax limit much at all. Raising the lower spending team's budget's by $12M or more would be a windfall. Higher minimum wage Higher pay to yo-yo players Arbs moved up 2 years Free agency moved up 1 year Possible incentives given to small market teams only if they spend more on arbs and free agency. In the long run, most major sports leagues see the value of more parity. It's not easy to structure it to obtain it, but this may just be a side effect of evening up the pay for the lower and middle paid players in MLB.

So, it's stopped one team from spending more that $40M over the line. Changing that does not make much of a difference. Wouldn't raising the minimum wage to $1M or more would be a huge thing for many players. Move the first arb year up 2 years and lessen the last year by one year. This would be a windfall for many players who never make the big payday. Low spending teams would have to pay more. Expand the roster by one or two players would offer much more job security and ML salary security for 30-60 more players plus the players that yo-yo up and down all year. Instead of taxing big spenders, what if small spenders were given incentives to spend on free agents? I'm not sure how you set all that up, but it would help way more players than raising the luxury tax line significantly or taking away the penalties on big spenders. I'm not saying the luxury tax has not prevented some teams from spending more and more. Of course it has. But, how many teams and players has this directly affected? It's miniscule within the scope of 30 teams and 800+ players. I know opening day payrolls data can be deceiving, but in 2018 only 2 teams (BOS & SFG) were over $187M, which is pretty far from the first luxury tax line. Now, I know several teams came very close to the line by season's end, but only 6 teams started the season over $169M. Half the teams were under $155M on opening day. That's $40M under the first tax line. The tax means nothing to way over half the teams- probably something like 22-25 teams. Nine teams we around or under $100M. The way to get more player paid more money is not to drive up the salaries of the top 10-20 players but to raise the salaries of the bottom 400-500 players by maybe just a half million pre-arb and much more when the reach arb 2 years earlier.

Well said, but I'm not expecting the new CBA to help the well-to-do teams. It may give players a bigger share, but that might not translate to much higher tax lines. It may focus on giving incentives for smaller teams to spend. It may greatly raise the minimum wage, restructure the pay for yo-yo players (ML-minor league back and forth players), shorten the wait for the first arb year (huge plus for every player who sticks around long enough), expand the roster to 26 players and not raise the luxury tax line at all. This would help more players than raising the luxury line by $25M. I'm not even sure raising the luxury tax line would make a big difference in salaries anyways, except for maybe 2-3 teams and 2-3 FAs per year.