DJ Spinoza
Registered User
- Aug 7, 2003
- 25,980
- 4,576
Yes, in the end it can definitely be reduced to Nutting's cheapness, but I do think at least in terms of the policy for arbitration, it's on Cherington a little bit. What I mean is just that unless a long-term deal is coming, we are going to go all the way through arbitration now no matter what, instead of seeking to meet in the middle ahead of time.
The decision to do that can itself still be traced back to Nutting, so I'm not trying to bash Cherington. Still, at the end of the day this is an embarrassing look which doesn't really speak to the idea that they are trying to build a winning culture or take steps towards getting better. What other young players or potential free agents see is a player who had an MVP season who is now going to be dragged through arbitration by a team with almost no salary commitments at all, which just dispatched a bunch of veteran players simply to save another couple of million.
On an unrelated note, I had the perverse thought today of a way to actually solve service time manipulation and incentive continually putting the best baseball product on the field. If a ranked prospect has had enough ABs at AA and above and performs to a certain level, then any team who would still send him down should have to expose him to being added to the 26-man roster of every team that finished higher in the standings in the previous year. Obviously, this is impractical since there are subjective decisions that enter the mix when it comes to deciding whether a player is "ready", not to mention that no teams would agree and the MLBPA probably wouldn't ever want to advocate such a shoot from the hip idea.
In general it's just hard to feel excited about this team. They suck, made no attempt to get better, and the writing is already on the wall with relatively young, star players, even in a context where there are no short, medium, or long-term payroll commitments. The exciting rookie is going to be forced onto the AAA team in a brazenly cynical move. There are some intriguing small questions for diehard baseball fans, but it's hard to offer up any real defense of this franchise other than they've done a fair job of gathering a lot of young talent.
Even playing it out and saying that we won't try to "full throttle compete" until 2024, with how things are structed, Reynolds could be making 20-25 million in each of 24, 25, 26, and 27 and it would barely have any affect on the payroll being that high, because the only young players who would be on pace to hit arbitration prior to 25-26 are Hayes and then Contreras and Cruz. We'd have room to pay Reynolds and multiple free agents along with the rookies even if we weren't going to sustainably have a payroll over 90M until 2024 and beyond. There are just no excuses and no defense to run a baseball team like this. We'll see what happens, but in a microcosm nickel and diming Reynolds for 1-2M is the exact reason Nutting should be forced to sell.
The decision to do that can itself still be traced back to Nutting, so I'm not trying to bash Cherington. Still, at the end of the day this is an embarrassing look which doesn't really speak to the idea that they are trying to build a winning culture or take steps towards getting better. What other young players or potential free agents see is a player who had an MVP season who is now going to be dragged through arbitration by a team with almost no salary commitments at all, which just dispatched a bunch of veteran players simply to save another couple of million.
On an unrelated note, I had the perverse thought today of a way to actually solve service time manipulation and incentive continually putting the best baseball product on the field. If a ranked prospect has had enough ABs at AA and above and performs to a certain level, then any team who would still send him down should have to expose him to being added to the 26-man roster of every team that finished higher in the standings in the previous year. Obviously, this is impractical since there are subjective decisions that enter the mix when it comes to deciding whether a player is "ready", not to mention that no teams would agree and the MLBPA probably wouldn't ever want to advocate such a shoot from the hip idea.
In general it's just hard to feel excited about this team. They suck, made no attempt to get better, and the writing is already on the wall with relatively young, star players, even in a context where there are no short, medium, or long-term payroll commitments. The exciting rookie is going to be forced onto the AAA team in a brazenly cynical move. There are some intriguing small questions for diehard baseball fans, but it's hard to offer up any real defense of this franchise other than they've done a fair job of gathering a lot of young talent.
Even playing it out and saying that we won't try to "full throttle compete" until 2024, with how things are structed, Reynolds could be making 20-25 million in each of 24, 25, 26, and 27 and it would barely have any affect on the payroll being that high, because the only young players who would be on pace to hit arbitration prior to 25-26 are Hayes and then Contreras and Cruz. We'd have room to pay Reynolds and multiple free agents along with the rookies even if we weren't going to sustainably have a payroll over 90M until 2024 and beyond. There are just no excuses and no defense to run a baseball team like this. We'll see what happens, but in a microcosm nickel and diming Reynolds for 1-2M is the exact reason Nutting should be forced to sell.
