2011-12 Hot Stove Thread

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

Which also means bye-bye C.J. Wilson.

Not a fan of this. Nathan had good numbers when he came off the DL, but he turns 37 tomorrow and the Rangers want to make him the closer. I'd use Nathan as an eighth-inning guy and close with Mike Adams.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

It wouldn't surprise me if they just move Adams or someone else to closer if Nathan falters. If Feliz does as well in the rotation as everyone expects him to, then I doubt you hear much talk of moving him back.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

Holy mother of WTF almighty, the new CBA details are coming out and this is a complete seismic shift in the way baseball operates.

Draft spending is now effectively capped. You can go overbudget, but doing so by more than 10% and you are already into the "lose a first round pick" portion of the punishment, which no team will ever do. Overslots are a thing of the past.

International free agents are now capped at a very paltry $2.9 million per team per year, and the plaers must register with MLB before being eligible for signing. This is roughly 1/4th of what the top spenders have been spending in recent years.

The 10 teams in the smallest market will get a free draft pick at the end of either the first or second round (decided by lottery), and that draft pick is tradeable.

This will completely change how MLB organizations operate. A number of organizations, large and small market, had been cleaning up with superior scouting and development operations and signing amateur talent. That money will now have nowhere to go except into the owners' pockets or the big league payroll. The effects on competitive balance remain to be seen.

I believe this will have a humongous negative effect on the actual development of baseball talent, however. There is no incentive for teams to buy players out of HS and get them into the minors, where they receive far better instruction than in college. There is no incentive for teams to maintain academies in Latin America. There is no incentive for star two-sport athletes to be bought into baseball.

It's going to be interesting.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

Surprised the players agreed to all of that stuff, especially the limiting of draft pick bonuses and things like that.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

Unions always favor senior members.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

Why not just give the small market teams four outs an inning. Absurd.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

The small market teams are the ones who get screwed in all this, imo.

Take a look at the teams who were taking the most advantage of the ability to overslot and sign UFAs, and it was mostly smart small- and mid-market teams.

Now there's only one place teams can spend, and that's the MLB payroll.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

Who cares? 80 percent of the players drafted into minor league baseball never make the majors anyway. Maybe a lot of those guys would actually be better off going to college.


Baseball talent will develop anyway. Every year a certain number (actually it's a pretty mathematically constant number) of players slip below the replacement-level performance threshold due to age or other factors (mostly also related to age).

MLB will figure out some way to replace them.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

The international free agent thing matters if you don't give them a major league contract. And I like the clause that says you can trade money in your pool to other teams.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

You fix money inequities with money solutions, like revenue sharing, caps etc. You don't introduce it into the competitive arena like the draft. This is a major and imo negative step.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

You may be right, but the average fan doesn't see the spending on talent development, so they don't care about it. This is more about perception than anything.

Guy is right about the draft pick. If baseball wants to properly fix inequities, do it by adjusting revenue sharing, adding a salary floor and/or salary cap, not this.

 

Re: 2011 Hot Stove Thread

This probably does encourage competitive balance, but not between large and small market teams. By taking the ability to decide how to allocate their resources between major league and minor league talent, they've effectively narrowed the gap between smart and dumb organizations.