Teams don't lose star players for nothing as long as the star player played to his abilities while he was under contract. The Astros will have a ton of money to spend as long as they don't acquire other great players before then. It would take injuries or some very extreme regression for the Astros not to be contenders. I will say 2026 looks to be an interesting year for the AL West. Astros look to be a lot weaker. Mariners and Rangers are already spending, and could end up with a lot of guys past their primes and too few guys in them.
Though many announcers have said stupid things. It just makes it easier to cut ties if it is a 1-year deal.
Is that typical in the industry then? I've never followed MLB-related broadcast team contracts that closely.
Hosmer to the Cubs. They were rumored to be pursuing Mancini so that probably won’t happen anymore. Wonder where he lands.
Not sure about industry, but I think the Astros have been doing 2 years at a time since Kalas joined. Going year to year seemed inevitable.
2021 was a nice year other than playing poorly in the World Series. The Astros SS was a Top 10 player. The Astros RF was simply amazing after a cold start to the season (0.320/0.387/0.600) and could easily have been confused for a Top 10 player that year if one overlooked the cold start. I would not be certain that these two guys can't be Top 10 players a couple of years later if they have good years.
Potential is all we know right now as 2023 season hasn't happened. On wanting to be paid, the Twins paid Correa more than the Astros have paid Correa and Tucker combined.
One more contract by a large market team (and his hometown team nonetheless) off the books for Pena down the road.
this would be my top 10 in baseball right now. 1 Ohtani 2 Judge 3. Alvarez 4. Trout 5. Alcantara 6. Verlander 7. Betts 8. Goldschmidt 9. Machado 10. Valdez Tucker would be in top 15, Javier, Altuve in top 25. 5 top 25 players!
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/ It appears an issue I raised about contracts is at issue with the Dever's deal. Confusion about both the amount and years covered are contradictory as would be the CBT calculations. It appears the Red Sox are manipulating the CBT by calling it Two Agreements, one for $17.5 M to cover 2023 and an extension for 2024-2033 for $313.5M for a total of 11 years for $331M. By treating it as 2 agreements, they are trying to reduce the 2023 CBT from ~$30M to $17.5M. They are saying they already had an agreement on the buyout of Arbitration for 2023, which might be true, but it might also be like the SF and NYM agreements which were not yet in place pending a physical. It will be an interesting precedent set because it is a Most Favored Baseball team and we know it would not be allowed if it weren't.
