There have been 14 of these contracts in history; 2 have won titles. Most are still in the early years or haven't even started yet. Stanton is the only one I would say has really disappointed so far. Trout has lots of availability issues, but is still a top-3 player whenever he does play, but he'd be the other potential disappointment. The rest are all earning their ~$30MM-ish/yr. These contracts may suck in 7 or 8 or 10 years, but so far, the players have all performed up to expectations. It's unlikely most of those teams would getting better returns spending that $30MM/yr elsewhere in the short-term.
Is this for this year, now? Would we alternate Bregman at 3b with the Marte or keep Marte fresh in the minors then he is ready for 2025. Looks like we would come out w a top prospect at 3b and some mighty fine adds as well. You sure bring some ideas and options that make sense. Keep it up ID!
Unfortunately this is for this year. I don't think the Astros get this much in return or the Reds have the same needs if it waits a year, or even until the trade deadline. Benson fills in for Tucker in RF. It's about a loss of about 3 WAR. Marte replaces Dubon as backup at 2B, 3B, and SS with Altuve getting DH days when Yordan is in LF or scheduled off and Bregman getting some to keep him fresh. That is likely an increase of 1-2 WAR. Dubon can then be traded (Maybe SF for Yaz?) Overall position players have more depth and insurance, but - 1-2 WAR. Lodolo isn't the guy I thought he was. I was looking at 2022 numbers not 2023. They may be able to do better or think he is fixable. The K and BB numbers are great. But it would be huge for 2025+ with minimal negative impact in 2024.
I disagree that it would be minimal in 2024. Tucker led the league in RBI's for a good part of the year. 29 HR's 30 stolen bases. Top 5 offensive player last year. That is a huge loss any way you look at it. I think we are all in with the current roster this year. I doubt we have any more significant trades until the deadline and I doubt that will be major either unless we lose a TOR starter.
The CBA explicitly allows for unlimited amounts of deferred money on any given contract. This is just an incredibly unique situation. From the player's perspective, you wouldn't defer that much of your salary unless you had other significant sources of income. Ohtani made $40 million in endorsements alone last year. No other MLB player made more than $5 million. Also, very few other teams are capable of committing to pay $680 million over a 10 year stretch 10 years from now. This is truly a 1/1 situation. Deferrals will continue to happen, but never again will they happen to this extent.
I think it could impact players signing their 2nd big deals. For example, Bregman could happily defer money to get his $300MM deal and also not hamstring his team in the short-run - he has plenty of money to live on in the meantime from his last contract. Deferments don't make much of a difference to LA because they don't have short-term cash-flow issues, but for teams that do, it could be a route to signing a player in the short-term to help a franchise. Now that a player of Ohtani's caliber has done it, I could other big name players doing it.
FWIW I agree with you. Tucker woukd bring a good return next offseason, but I think it would be short of this return. I also think the Astros are jot considering trading Tucker at this time and no way this happens. I just think it would. But if they do decide to trade Tucker next offseason, then this deal no longer makes sense, as Cincy will have addressed the logjam of position players and added veteran leadership and Marte will have a year to establish himself and probably is no longer available.
There’s no way the Astros trade Bregman or Tucker. They haven’t done this with any one yet and aren’t going to while they are in contention.
I agree they don't do it have never done it and will not do it But they should absolutely consider trading Tucker though, after the haul the Padres got for Soto. He's clearly gone after 2025 and It's the only way this team has any chance to compete between 2026-2027.
They may not be competitive those years regardless. At least they’ll still have a window for 2024 and 2025. A lot can happen in 2 years. 2 years ago, had plenty of unknowns with JV coming off TJ surgery and a bullpen that had no proven high leverage arms besides Pressly.
Money is still money for an owner of any market team. I just don’t see us doing something like this that will come due when we are out of a window again. Yeah. Great for player. But when we are losing 100 games, ticket prices are down, and we suck - I don’t see jim being excited to pay out 100s of millions to a retired player. Makes sense for the dodgers Yankees and Mets. That’s about it.
That makes a lot of sense. Crane has always wanted to keep commitments short and having to pay deferred money is a commitment.
On Deferred payments, the Dodgers will put around 46 million into an escrow type account beginning next year and let it draw interest for the duration of the next 10 years, then they are estimated to have the 680 million needed in that account to begin paying out. I HATE the dodgers, but it's a very smart organization and this deal is very smart for them too. They will spend less than 500 million actual dollars of their own to pay it all out As for Ohtani, dude is not just great at baseball he is very smart too. He will be taxed in California on his 2 million salary (and actually about half of it cause only pay the local/state taxes per game actually played in Cali...so with all the SD/SF games and so forth yea more than half) Then, once done playing, if he chooses to move to a state with a better tax situation, he will not have to pay the higher California state taxes on the majority of the contract. Now, if he moves back to Japan I have no idea how that would work, but I'd assume he will at least keep a residence here in the States somewhere
I think him wanting to keep commitments short is more about the risk of not knowing what a player will be in 6-7+ years Plus, the post you were replying to isn't how the actual money really works anyway. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, the team would be putting a lesser amount into an escrow to pay the deferred money from. Hence the lower tax hit, that's basically how it's calculated
