MLB 2018-19 Offseason Thread

To be fair, they already traded for Realmuto and Segura. If they also add Kimbrel or Keuchel, they may not be Harper or Machado, but those are three significant additions.

 

It's not that their bad acquisitions per se, but when the owner shoots his mouth off about shooting for the moon in free agency, if he comes back with a couple of asteroids fans are gonna be disappointed.

 

They may be the Phillies' back-up plan, but are there no other teams interested? If anybody else is interested, it wouldn't make any sense to wait until the Harper thing is resolved.

Maybe their agents feel like their market value will go up once Harper is off the board?

 

Kimbrel's nice, but looking at his similarity scores on Baseball Reference is like a red, flashing warning sign against giving him a long-term deal. Through age 30, most similar players: Kenley Jansen, Chapman, Huston Street, F-Rod, Papelbon, Wetteland, Armando Benitez, Robb Nen, Rod Beck and Trevor Hoffman. I'd be fine giving him a two or three year deal, but five at $20M per is crazy town.

 

I would be surprised if Kimbrel is not back in Boston at a reduced rate.

 

This may sound naive, but how much does the player control his own destiny?

Why can't Harper tell Boros "I want to play in (city here) and the team's offer of five years and $150 million is acceptable." Maybe he'd rather be in LA or San Francisco for five years than Philly for 10.

The agent is out for his and each contract sets the market for the next, but at what point does a player get to pick where he wants to be?

 

I've been hearing Atlanta as a likely landing spot.

 

Well, somebody's getting paid at least ...

And Yankees fans (and maybe YankeeFan) are gonna be so, so mad.

 

The Union has a lot to do with it, too. Players taking reduced salaries hurts the entire membership. They always push players to take the max value. A guy like Markakis can get away with it. Harper, though, is a star.

Aside from the fact that I don't think Harper has ever wanted anything less than top dollar, he'd be a pariah among the players if he settled for half of what Washington offered him in the first place.

 

Yep. One of the rationales the Yankees leaked to the media for passing on Machado was that they preferred to pursue Arenado next year (or via trade) instead.

I am a bit surprised Arenado would do that deal, though. He almost certainly could have gotten more in free agency than Machado got.

 

$255M for 8 is around $31M a year, plus he can opt out after three years. He was on a two-year, $29.5M per year deal that covered 2019 and 2020. So, he essentially extended his current deal for one year. If he's still an all-star / MVP level player after three years, he'll opt out and get paid again. Almost no downside for him.