It's just hard to see the upside for him down the line. He got offered the Chapman contract. Now he's a little better than Chapman, and a year younger, but the offers don't reflect a difference. Will he get much more a year later and a year older? Unless he returns to his 2019 form, I doubt it. Imo the taint of the cheating scandal hangs on him and drags him down in some big markets. He might not sell the jerseys and drive ticket sales based on that.
Nope, they've already replaced him. If they are going to spend that kind of money, it's going to be on an outfielder.
We should know his medicals better than anyone and still offered him a decent contract so doubt that’s the case. The Astros publicly pulling out and the Yankees not being killed his market. I’m sure the Sox would like him but they don’t NEED him. The Tigers aren’t going to outbid themselves. He’s likely still holding out for a 7+ year deal that is never going to come.
Hard to pin it on that when Springer and Correa (guys who were considered to be even more the "face" of that) got big deals, and got them closer and more recent to it. Comes down to how many teams are in the market for a 30 year old GG 3B with ample playoff experience. Would need to be a win-now team as well. Prior to the end of the season, the market was Houston, Detroit, NY, Washington, Arizona. 3 of those teams allocated resources elsewhere. He doesn't need to return to 2019 form to justify the 6 year offer he was given. The 2022-2023 version of him would pay for that (presuming no defensive regression). He pressed last year, but even that won't scare people off the 6 year deal. The Astros set the market for him and nobody will exceed that. Either he has to settle for something similar or try and re-create the market for next year.
I wonder who would say no to houston for 6/156, now, him or us? Still think 10/200 and guarantee of Astro for life made sense for both parties. Him highest actual total dollars guaranteed. Us- lower AAV and eat whatever is left on back of deal. I told everyone who scoffed at that earlier that it would make sense for him because if he doesn’t get more than 200M this time around there’s certainly no guarantee he gets another contract at 37 or something like that, and if he does it’s probably not a big one.
No 10 year deal made ANY sense for a 31 year old player from a team perspective. Honestly, the Astros will be better off letting him walk to whatever team he signs with so long as they can pick up a decent outfielder to replace some of what Tucker brought. 3rd base is a wash now that they've brought in a sufficient replacement and 1st base should be a massive upgrade.
I think there are still a couple of teams that probably have an offer slightly better than that so I still think he tops our offer, however everything equal if you told Bregman how the offseason would play out he probably would have taken our original offer and avoided the headache/slight embarrassment. I doubt that offer is sill there from us.
Boras/Bregs misread the market for Bregs. This is really pretty simple. Crane has a history of offering fair 5-6 year deals and if the player can get more on the open market then so be it and Crane moves on. Take the deal Crane offers or play somewhere else is how Crane looks at things and Crane sticking to his guns, not being sentimental is a big reason for the Stros dynasty.
The fact that the Astros pulled to ripcord entirely and moved on. While we don't have a perfect read on the market (nobody really does) Bregman's camp must have made it pretty clear they at least had slightly better standing offers in hand just not quite as good as they hoped. Of course I could be wrong, maybe Boras was in fact arrogant and stupid enough to "hope" for better offers to materialize after they told the Astros to f**k off one last time with the current best offer on the table.
Let's also put in perspective what Correa and Springer have done with the Twins and BJays. Nothing but first round exits in the playoffs. Both of them went to teams supposedly on the rise and not to a major market and they couldn't quite build around them, and now the BJays may blow their team up completely. Smaller markets took note that one x-Astro is not the answer and major market teams would rather get players like Bregs at a cost savings. The Astros were the only team that Bregs could literally get everything he wanted to end his career. This actually bodes well for the next crop of Astros that want to test the market, and bypass the Astros seemingly fair offer. Stay and flourish with more cash than you need, or risk not being happy the rest of your career.
I'm guessing they weren't thinking the Astros would pull out and sign Walker that early. They probably would have been able to use the Astros as leverage to get a better deal elsewhere, but once that leverage was gone, it made things a lot tougher. If he truly has a better deal than the Astros on the table right now, he would be signed. I'd bet money he ends up on a 3 year opt out type deal. Could be wrong too though.
Spoiler Initial observations: Boston, Texas, CHC, ATL, LAA and STL all have longer-standing ownership stake in TV networks that have historically been much higher in revenue than what the Astros have, yet all attempting to have lower payrolls. Toronto has a very high payroll for basically no playoff success. Then there are teams like Seattle, Milwaukee, Washington, Baltimore, Detroit, Cleveland, and Colorado…. All could afford to spend much more than their ownership has signed off for…. And thus the middle to upper middle tier players “suffer”. Arizona and Houston are likely the only upper-middle markets currently spending commensurate to their revenue, market size, and win expectation. Baseball economics needs a total intervention… for both teams and players.
Was a pretty sound strategy to initially create a bidding war between Houston, Arizona, Detroit, Washington… and maybe the NYY. Detroit previously had a history of going hard for targets, even if a slight overpay. The Nats have also taken some years off of the big deals since Strasburg/Scherzer, so they seemed poised as well. Arizona still spends frivolously, but they decided to go pitching (and possibly make the same mistakes they’ve made in the past with Greinke, MadBum). The Yankees can afford to wait out all these teams too. It’s not just the Astros that decided to go to plan B…. And once you decrease the suitors, the existing ones should wise up to that (which apparently Detroit has?). I still think he’ll get more than what the Astros initially offered but we’re in blink first territory.
