Not even remotely close to how they handled Yordan and Bregman. You are talking about laying 10-12M a year too much for the FA years and doing it for a guy way more likely to be injured. It’s literally an insane deal that neither the Astros nor any other team in baseball would offer to someone with Arb 1,2 and 3 left, especially a pitcher.
This. Also behind a lot of the abuse hurled at college players... it's coming not just from passionate fans but highly degenerate gamblers.
Let’s bet on humans. If it doesn’t go our way let’s threaten those same humans and their families, including young children. There’s your likely answer to those that did this.
Bregman made $30 million a year his last two years as an Astro… for an extension he signed back after the 2018 season (both FA years). Either baseball salaries are not rising at the rate of all sports (possibly true for some tiers, but likely not true)…. Or they were forward thinking in terms of making an offer that made sense for both the player and the team. Of course you have to offer more for the FA years now. With the full expectation that FA years at that point will inevitably be more expensive, but you’re also only having to pay PRIME FA years and not the back-end years that always have diminishing returns. Yes, pitchers have injury risks… and if thats the only reason you don’t want to lock guys in, then no pitcher should will ever have a deal more than 3 years (at least with the Astros), and they better keep developing younger guys if they want to stay relevant.
We really need Rodgers to pan out. We really got cheap and put all our 2b eggs in his basket. When Myers comes back to Earth we are going to have 2 black holes on offense and will end up sacrificing future pitching depth to fill our holes.
I don’t think the Astros got cheap, they just had very limited options. They offered Polanco a fair contract but he decided he wanted to stay in Seattle. They tried to get Arenado (which would’ve moved Paredes to 2B) but he voided the trade. The only other viable FA 2B was Gleyber Torres and for whatever reason the Astros weren’t interested in him but they could’ve afforded him. There weren’t many options on the trade market. I suppose you could fault them for not resigning Bregman and moving Paredes to 2B but there’s no certainty that was even an option as it seems like Bregman had his eyes on Boston. If there was any reasonable way to trade for Brendan Donovan or Brandon Lowe before the season they should’ve done that, but we can’t know if that was an option.
As Marshall already said, I can pretty much guarantee it is gambling related. Could they still be Astros fans who bet on the Astros last night? Sure. But no one is doing this over a game in May otherwise. This is very common these days.
Yes but at a number that wasn’t insane. And they are position players so way less likely to be hurt. It was a deal that fit within economic sense. Yours doesn’t.
There is still hope for Meyers. Now, I'm not saying that he is going to finish in the top 10 in the AL batting race, or even that he will finish the season "good". I fully expect some regression. However, there are actual metrics that point to legitimate reasons why he is better this year and those may project to his fall being lesser than last year. Chase rate down from 31.6% to 25.1% Whiff % down from 27.0% to 23.6% So he's swinging at fewer pitches out of the zone and making more contact when he does swing. His hard hit % is up from 37.0% to 42.0% so his contact is better. Now, his ground ball % is extremely high, but at least he is pulling the ball less than last year. Almost 2/3 of the time he hits the ball up the middle which is better for a guy who has speed. His BB% is also up from 6.8% to 8.3% and his K rate is down from 22.8% to 19.0% He finished last year with a wRC+ of 86, or 14% below average. I expect him to cut that in half, finishing at 93. If he can do that, he will be a very valuable #9 hitter, just not a good #7 hitter.
Bregman got 40M a year for 3 years. The astros still got a 25% discount on the FA years they paid out and they did NOT overpay for his arbitration. Any deal on an extension that gets signed needs to account for 3 things, 1) no overpayment of arbitration years (because why would you- absolutely no reason to) 2) discount for team in FA years (because they need an incentive to give player guaranteed money very early) 3) Still get the player to FA in time for them to get another big contract (or failing that make him a member of that team for life like the M’s did either this big boy CF). 6/150 for Hunter does not do 1 or 2 so the Astros wouldn’t offer it (no team would).
From what I remember, Nook was saying we were offering Polanco something in the range $5M. He signed for $7.75M. If we would have offered him $8M+, there’s a decent chance he would have came here. When Arenado vetoed the trade, we hadn’t signed Walker yet. We signed Walker the day after Arenado vetoed a trade to us. I think it’s much more likely if that trade had gone through that Paredes would have been moved to 1B. That being said, Nook mentioned something about Donovan being discussed as well in a deal with them so perhaps he would have came over too.
Ok. No need for irritation. You seem irritated. So the AAV is what MLB looks at and counts toward payroll. Like I said, it doesn’t matter how the money is broken up year to year. 25 million per year is a bargain for an elite SP. In 3 years it will he even more of a bargain. Not sure why we are butting heads. Yordan - 5-120 (4 or 5 years ago?) Bregman- 5-100 (6 years ago?) Brown 6-150 (after this season if he continues to dominate) does not seem like an unreasonable jump. Again, how the money is broken up year to year is not important. What else are we talking about?
Polanco is easy to look at now, but this winter, he had just finished his 4th straight season of decline, was on the wrong side of 30, and his OPS last year was worse than what Rodgers and Dubon did last year. So you could have been paying $8MM for the same performance you would have hoped for from Rodgers/Dubon - both of them just managed to get worse while Polanco is having an out-of-nowhere career year.
How it's broken up doesn't matter but the 3 years of arbitration matter because you already have cheap cost certainty in those 3 years. So the extension value is really the new contract value minus his arbitration value, and what you're getting for that is the extra years of FA. So 6/150 when you already have him at say 3/30, is really just an extension of 3 years for $120 million ($40MM/yr) for performance 4-6 years in the future. You can decide if that's worth it or not. But it's only $25MM over 6 years if you account for the fact that you're losing a guy you're only paying $10MM/yr to over 3 years right now.
