drewski6

Good post. I agree that Durans arm is a knock / demerits/ negative points, but not a deal breaker regarding him in CF. But when you also factor in the lapses in focus, Im getting less comfortable. I really thought he was an energy guy / leader and I was on here saying you all will appreciate Duran when we get to the postseason because you want a guy like that. An alpha mentality. I wanted to see him talking sh*t through the media (whatever happened to that?) Instead I saw a guy who was NOT locked in neither at the plate nor in the field. Small sample size, sure, but I didnt think he would have one of his "duran" moments in the playoffs, and that was a bad drop.

Nice, Fred!

Youre actually making good points for both sides of the debate. Yes the Rangers won without contributions from their big contract pitcher (DeGrom), but this also shows that they were able to overcome all that dead money. Partly becaues these didnt let it stop them from pursuing Eovaldi or other pitchers. Understood it prob made them pause on "large and long" contracts for at least awhile and thats understandable. But the point here is that even in your examples of a team winning without a large and long contract for a contributing pitcher, they were still able to overcome the bad contract in DeGrom. Im also thinking back to the 90s/2000s Yankees teams where they would seem to always have a bad contract like Kevin Brown or Ellsbury and we would always think woohoo, this is gonna slow them. And they just went right over it with a speed bump. Im not necessarily saying you cant win without a large and long contract for a pitcher or anyone, Im really just saying that when we start talking about how we dont want them, or how they dont help, or how thats the yankees/dodgers way...Well those of us who say that, it feels a lot like towing the company line and I dont lick boots. Not to imply that you or anyone else is actually doing that. But I like the comment about gotta pay to play. There are exceptions to that rule, for sure. So maybe you dont HAVE to pay to play, but you are disadvanting yourself considerably by not paying to play. And I wonder how much Seager was making when the Rangers won. Im a dont avoid a bad contract at all costs guy, Im not a you need to have one high paid FA pitcher, that might be a distinction between me and Hughs views, even though I mostly agree and like what Hugh2 is saying.

The reason why you cant approach your roster strategy from a standpoint of trying to minimize mistakes and bad contracts and be super shy to take a risk and go long....The reason why you cant go about it this way is simple: Scared money dont make money You reallllllly dont wanna be scared money at the poker table with sharks like me in the water

Meant to respond off this but Im jumping tabs too much. But my point is - with this in mind, arent you GLAD that crochets contract isnt for 3 years? Because Skubal is gonna change the game, set a new precedent all that stuff and we got our boy locked in first. Theres a positive side to going long. It protects against inflation risk Obvs i understand far more dont work out than do but im a cost of doing business kinda guy

I just miss Canseco and Clemens and rising from my chair and screaming at my TV. But Im fine cuz I also watch hockey (and wrestling). I do think baseball needs a good fight tho.

cmon take the bait, take the bait

2 things 1. In that light arent we GLAD that Crochets contract isnt for 2 more years , its for more? Doesnt this illustrate that shorter isnt always better? The best contracts are the ones you lock in right before they scale up. Thats something I try to identify. 2. When are you going to give your fans what they want. (I dont know how, I responded to the wrong comment, meant to reply to your comment about how because we are a fw years into coles contract, skubal gonna be scary)

If I can get an elite pitcher right now for 30m/yr, I do it and its an easy decision. Because 30m / yr was top of the market 10 yrs ago, and if its still top of the market still 10 yrs later, the top of the market AAV for an elite pitcher is due to adjust north. So I wanna lock my guy in before that adjustmetn. Shorter isnt always better.

Theres no upside in teh 1 yr prove it contracts (agreeing with you). Worst case you wasted your money like Kluber or Buehler, best case they bounce back/opt out and you had 1 yr with them. With term, if they bust out, you have a very nice asset for a while (a player playing above their pay grade) ANother thing that gets overlooked by those who hate going long is inflation. I remember when Beltre signed like a 5 yr deal at 18m, and everyone was like "great player, but thats too much!" And then 2-3 years later, everyone was trying to trade for that contract because contracts caught up Like when Jaylen Brown signed the first contract after the CBA and was for like 1-2 months the highest paid player in NBA. And some of my friends were complaining about that, and im like, just give it a year. Same thing with Elias Lindholm on teh bruins. Contract inflation is real My thing is this: the contract you are signing or considering, how long ago were those threshholds broken (total dollars and aav). So for example, its been 10 years since David Price signed a 7 yr / 217 contract. And weve had a LOT of inflation in those last 10 years. So a 7 yr / 217 contrract today for a pitcher SHOULDNT be top of the market because it was top of the market 10 years ago. So if 30m AAV/215M total was top of the market 10 yrs ago and I can sign an elite pitcher for that (maybe its Skubal on an extension after we trade for him) you bet your butt im going to because if 30m/215m total was top of the market 10 yrs ago, the nthe top of the market contracts are due for an adjustment and i wanna lock my boy in before that adjustment happens. Once the threshhold is broken , its broken. Theres a lot to be said for setting a precedence for ffuture guys and setting the market. I consider this kind of stuff. And similarly, if you didnt get a raise this year, you got a pay cut because your cost of living went up. It applies in baseball. If your payroll in 2026 is equal to your payroll in 2025 , you decreased your payroll.

The Red sox were passed last year by the cubs and now are 4th in revenue. But theyll prob climb back to third next year if they are good. They own their TV broadcaster (remember the year everyone was cutting back because their TV broadcast partner folded and like 20 teams lost big dollars from TV contracts) - it didnt effect the Red sox , but they saw opportunity and pulled back because so many otehr teams were. And thats when like the yanks/mets/dodgers really put themselves ahead. But like the Rangers. Coming off the WS started trying to be super careful w payroll. But they had an excuse, their TV revenue went into jeopardy. That year was the worst becuase the other teams had a reason to dial back and we just did because ..... I dont know There is simply no excuse to be okay with being outside of the top 6

Im 41, which may come as a surprise because I was on BDC over 15 years ago

I dont know why they put me in LF vs RF when I cant read a fly ball for crap but I do have some arm. I always thought it was because I was bad and they were trying to hide me but yeah more balls to left than right. Maybe because Im a righty?

Agreed, I was thinking that and dont know why it didnt make it into my post. The #1 reason why it would be hard to act on Alonso is because his agent is going to make you pay up if you want him now as theres no reason for Alonso or his agent to "settle" at this point in time. So to ink him right now, you prob have to go that extra year and/or that extra couple mil/year

Thats a lot of eggs in the Alonso basket and Im jsut not sure it wont turn into a bidding war. Prob beter to act fast before like Tudcker, Schwarber, Bichette are off ht eboard and teams looking to add start running out of options.

Too late and now I have this to say, "plenty of arm for third base, bruh" (speaking on Tolle)

He seems like his lifts weights unlike half our team!

Everyhthing I just said being said, I can live with a Duran trade. He dropped a ball and lost focus in a playoff game, and hes had too many lapses in focus at this point for me to consider that an aberration. It was an awful drop in my eyes. I didnt think hed do it in a playoff game. Thats kind of when I went from you dont trade your rally captain to okay, i think if we get value , I can live with it

Sign me up!

Baseball needs to bring steroids back because theres just not enough testosterone in the game today

I still fell like Duran is most willing to throw a punch, and I always played more confidently and more locked in when we had a goon talking trash to the other team and getting our "us vs them" juices flowing I also feel like Duran leads by example in the weight room Baseball has gone soooooooooooooooooo soft. It needs a fight. A real one, not a clear the benches and nobody gets punched. Im tlking a legit scrum.

If you are me, you jsut try to position yourself behind the ball and know that you are playing everything off a hop haha. But like usual, you are absolutely correct. The only good plays I ever made were ones where I let the ball drop in front of me (well didnt let, im just slow and bad at reading so i played so conservatively in left) but it worked out a couple times cuz people knew i was an overall bad defender sotheyd try to take third from first and i gunned down a few people down that way. But my dWAR was very negative, dont get it twisted. Just a few times during the season I would gun someone down at third and the team would go nuts that I made a play. But it was more of a bait. There was a time I prob could have caught the ball but let it bounce in front of me cuz i knew the lead runner was going to try to take third and i had him DOA

Hes absolutely right though , that the ball comes at you faster in LF than in CF and it was yet another awesome 5GGOF75, post. Ive heard plenty of announcers talk about that. I played left field because I was a bat first player and the coach tried to hide my D, which I feel is typical. "Hide him in left". I cant speak to left vs center or right because I almost always played left, but I imagine I would have been a trainwreck at CF and RF as well. I could make throws but Im slow and dont read balls off the bat well. But the thing here that nobody is talking about is the arm. You arent ever really throwing to first in LF (but you are throwing to third from RF and CF) and usually the throw homes are shorter from LF. So arm matters too.

My only pause before I can confidently say that he willget to 255m in payroll, or be within a stones throw of toronto is that in free agency there is a finite amount of people worth spending big on. What happnes if schwrber/aonso/bichette all prefer to stay where they are and a differentteam throws 6 or 7 years at bregman and we arent comfy going there. I think he will still spend, but it will be more like giving high AAV to second tier guys and sure the 2026 payroll will be there but only because you gave O'Hearn and a 3rd tier sp an overpay from an AAV standpoint because you didnt want to commit the years needed to gget the top of the free agent class (like we did with Gio). Id rather they go the trade and extend route before they go this route (giving 2nd and 3rd tier free agents high AAV deals becasue you wont give anybody any term). Being cheap goes beyond just hte 2026 payroll But I do agree that the cheap thing is probs overcooked.

The context here is that I waiver back and forth about how much to blame Henry for a significant downturn in payroll over the last 7 years, where we've fallen into the bottom half in terms of % of revenue spent on payroll and have had a frustrating and disappointing team during that span. So I was agreeing with a post that was like Im not sure all the blame that JH gets is rational, but he prob should spend more, especially right now, so I agreed with that but also wanted to point out that Im just not going to be the dude on here defending billionaires because I believe nobody should hoard that much wealth. It hurts all of us to take that kind of wealth out of circulation. So I was throwing in a point about how I dont feel like I need to defend billionaires and used a recent quote from Billie (somebody who I like) who made a quote that I like. She told a bunch of billionaires that anybody over a billion in assets isnt giving enough away. In you come, you said "she was just telling audience what they want to hear" which makes no sense and is the opposite of what she did. You started talking about her sexuality and I assume she is 25% your age so gross, and not only are you commenting on her sexuality, you are incorrect (she is gay, that is very well known) and the only reason you even brought up her sexuality was to discredit her. You then fell back to "well the thing that I brought up, wasnt from me, Im just saying what I heard" which is the twerpiest of moves. I have no idea why you even went down this road or why you are so determined to discredit Billie in order to defend billlionaires, but this is text book boot licking behavior. I am no longer having fun talking to you, this place was better before you (Earth, not Talksox), and so Im ending this, but heres some parting advice: 1. Dont believe everything you read on Twitter 2. You dont need to lick boots 3. Be true to your word, if you are going to eventually fall back to "I didnt write the article, Im jsut repeating what I read.." If you need to fall back to that, dont bring up what you heard or read if you arent going to defend it because its twerpy 4. Dont comment on womens sexuality who are 1/4 of your age, you gross perv 5. Dont bring up someones sexuality in an effort to discredit them 6. Maybe use google before saying and doubling down that a well known gay person isnt gay 7. Charli XCX (straight, with a big gay following) and Billie Eilish (gay) are different people, you barely know either so maybe dont get involved in back-and-forths about them. But Id bet money you are confusing them. 8. Dont talk to me anymore because you are the worst and your takes are bad. Id even rather read seabeachfred talk about how campbell is an elite defenisve shortstop and abreu doesnt deserve either of his gold gloves