2021 MLB Regular Season thread

There’s a roller derby team in Cleveland that is about to be very well-funded.

http://www.clevelandguardians.com

 

Exactly. He's 29, having the season of his life, almost 100 points above last season, and 50 points above his career norms (.276-278). If he's making 4 million now, count on him doubling that in arbitration. History shows players like that almost always revert to their historical norms. He'll be 30 next year, close to starting the downside of his career. Do you really want them paying $8-10 million over the next 3-4 years to a second baseman with no power and no speed?

I totally get your frustration. But on many levels this trade makes perfect sense.

 

If he was due to be a free agent after this season, that would be a relevant point. It would still demonstrate a certain amount of ignorance regarding the situation, but it would make more sense.

Think about what the Pirates did. They were so desperate to avoid paying whatever Frazier might get in arbitration next season that they gave the Padres $1.4 million, so they covered most of his salary for the remainder of the season. They got one decent, but not great, prospect and a couple of scrubs. It doesn't seem like a great deal, but it's not terrible on its surface. Then put it in context. It is yet another deal where the Pirates dealt from a position of weakness. In trade negotiations, you have to be willing to walk away. You have to be able to tell the other side that they aren't giving up enough value, so you're just going to keep the player. Every GM in MLB knows the Pirates won't do that. Frazier was going to have to go because the bottom line must be maintained.

It isn't about this season, which was lost before it began. It was about these being the same old Pirates, trading their best players for prospects whose upside is less than the veteran they are dealing away because the other team knows the Pirates aren't going to just keep the guy no matter how bad the offers might be.

 

I get why you might think that, but see my response to Songbird. It's part of a pattern, one that leads to a constant drain of talent out of that organization. It is systematic failure driven by the one real constant the last three decades, the owner.

Frustration isn't really the word I would use. It is disdain. I lost my rooting interest in that team a long time ago, but I can still be disgusted by the way they run the franchise. They are playing in the best ballpark in the game, one paid for by public money after they claimed they needed it to compete. That implies a public trust that the Pirates have been violating for decades.

 

That doesn't explain why they can't play one team against the other. Why isn't it as effective to threaten to walk away into the White Sox offer as to just keep him?

 

Pretty much all franchises now are playing in parks overwhelmingly financed by public money. And virtually all of these franchises argued they had to have the new stadiums to "remain competitive in the talent market."

 

That is the only reason they got more than a bucket of baseballs, the threat of going to another team. The threat of both puts teams in a stronger negotiating position.

 

How many of them pinch pennies and pocket profits like the Pirates? It is a damn short list.

 

Other than paying off the contract of Miguel Cabrera they signed 5-6 years ago, the Tigers haven't spent shit in half a decade.

 

In a vacuum this trade is fine, even well done. But the Pirates are just sitting back collecting their league welfare money and not doing a damn thing to reinvest in the team.

 

Yeah, it's one thing to strip a team down to the studs and start over. Every franchise has done that at one time or another in their histories. But to strip it down and then just spend a decade sitting there is another.

 

Damn. Even you agree with me. I might be on to something. lol