Players I would be considering right now: Pitchers: Chris Bassitt Corey Kluber Chris Archer(see if he can be fixed) Catchers: Mike Zunino Christian Vázquez IF/Utility Jean Segura Justin Turner Brandon Drury OF/DH Joey Gallo Michael Conforto Will Meyers Andrew McCutchen Michael Brantley J.D. Martinez
No one can touch Cohen except Jays owner. Mets will continue to spend more than any other franchise and it won’t be close.
If the Mets don’t win the WS, they won’t continue to spend at this rate. They’re going for it… but no team spends big forever without championships. Dodgers have curtailed some of their spending. The Yankees have also shown a semblance of fiscal conservativeness that they likely wouldn’t be considering if they were winning titles (or even going to WS). The lower market teams actually get more revenue when the Mets violate the tax more and more, so you won’t see much complaining out of them.
But “cheating”. There is no more fundamentally unfair advantage in baseball than it’s current spending realities. All the trash cans in the world could never come close to making a dent in the advantage teams enjoy with a 300x payroll.
They spent like this last season too. Cohen can afford the run for an extended period of time. But im more interested to see if it pushes other owners to go an extra year, a few million more, an earlier extension, etc.
good list. I’d probably add Narvaez at catcher and would pass on Martinez at this point — I think you need someone capable of picking up a glove, which I don’t think he is now (was DH only in 22 - and numbers fell hard in the 2nd half). I also think McCutchen is washed up. One other name to throw out is Adam Duvall - too much swing and miss, but can play all outfield positions and could be reasonably priced. He’s kind of a Joey Gallo-lite I suppose.
I'm thinking 3-$30M range ($10M AAV) for each. That's a little above Statcast, but not enormously so in light of the market this off season.
Glad to see people coming around on Vazquez. No brainer signing from the moment free agency started. Late to the party, but welcome the water's fine.
I think most had written him off because the word was he wants to start. Hard to see him not being amongst the top ~30 catchers in baseball, so figured he’d get it somewhere.
Vasquez was always desirable, but not expected to be available because he wanted to start the majority of the games. There are a lot of us in this group. One reason I am thinking 3 years is that assures him of 2 years beyond Maldonado. He is a slightly above average defender and near average OPS+ over the last 5 years. He'll be 32 in 2023, 33 in 2024 and 34 in 2025.
They’ll spend to keep winning. We shall see what happens when/if the spending doesn’t equate to winning. The Angels still spend and don’t win. The Rangers tried not spending but just couldn’t help themselves. The finances will still support teams continuing to spend more and more every year.
If its Vazquez we are able to sign, Dusty better start him 75% of games. If not, Vazquez isnt worth it.
