I didn't say all the position prospects, I said one of the position prospects and one of the pitching prospects.
The Braves have 3 elite position prospects (Albies, Acuna, Maitan), and 4 elite pitching prospects (Allard, Soroka, Anderson, Gohara). The rest of the system is fodder when talking about a player as valuable as Yelich. Of those 7 players, I would be willing to deal Anderson (lowest ceiling), and Gohara (biggest bust risk).
It will take at least 2 elite prospects to get Yelich, so if the Marlins are willing to deal him for a package centered around Anderson and Gohara, go for it. I seriously (bolded, underlined, italicized) doubt they would be willing to do that though, and no way do I think the Braves are in position to give up a position prospect the caliber of Albies/Acuna/Maitan for a "win now" piece like Yelich.
I don't agree. I think it protects you from potential downside.
So we sign Stanton to an 8 year deal at $25M per, bc that's what we had to do get him. Give him an opt out at year 4.
Stanton is a beast for 4 years and opts out. That means we got a stud who provided surplus value for 4 years... and we AVOID the near certain down turn of his career in the 30s, while some other team pays up for it out of desperation and inflation.
If he doesn't opt out, that means we're right where we started by signing him.
Correct. So you get all the downside without as much upside.
The downside of any contract is that the player doesn't perform, gets hurt, etc. The upside is that they do perform and are worth the contract. So if they do perform, you get them for a shorter period of time, reducing the upside. If they don't perform, you're stuck with the downside.
In this scenario, the club would love to sign the player to 2 years/60 million, but because of its long term cap situation does not want to commit to 20 million over five years.
So you essentially sign the player to the deal you want if he opts out. If he doesn't opt out, you carry the final three years at a discount to what you would otherwise have paid him.
to the player, he gets paid bigger his first two seasons and plans on opting out sooner to revisit the market for a long term deal, but has the security of knowing he will get basically the same amount of guaranteed money (over the life of the deal) if things go poorly.
We could give up Albies and be fine I think, but giving up Acuna or Maitan for Yelich would certainly be pointless. With his defense, power, and walk rate I think Demeritte can at least be an average 2B overall, even if he hits .230ish. I'd be fine with trading something like Albies, Gohara, Toussaint, and another lesser piece for him, which would be around what it would take I think. And I have a hard time seeing a person like Yelich who's signed through 2022 as a win now piece.
But if we made that trade I'd want to see us go hard after Donaldson for 3B after the 2018 season, on a 4-5 year high dollar deal. Once Acuna replaces Kemp that would give a very good lineup overall both offensively and defensively.
One other thing you have to factor in if say we did a blockbuster deal. Say we get Yelich, Stanton and Prado. That is THREE positions we do not have to sign a player and possibly loose a draft pick. That's gained assets also. I know most don't think they would do that, but when new management takes over ...they do dumb things. We attached Kimbrel to just get rid of BJ.
Yelich is the definition of a win now piece, just not a win now only piece. A huge portion of his value is tied up in the cheaper years of his contract that are valuable now...when the Braves suck. Your line of thinking is exactly how the Braves wasted the bulk of Teheran's value on a losing team.
The Braves need to wait to acquire win now players like Yelich until 2019 when they have a real chance at being a contender. If they acquire him now they will be bidding against teams that benefit by having him now AND in the future...which is a terrible proposition for the Braves in terms of value.
Further, this entire exercise is predicated on a new owner immediately blowing up the team and rebuilding. When was the last time a new owner has done that?
Last edited by Enscheff; 06-08-2017 at 06:47 PM.
This is true, but like you said, this entire exercise is based around the idea of the Marlins being sellers due to payroll issues, which could change things quite a bit as far as timing and cost. And I'm assuming this sort of trade would happen in the offseason, not now. Not that big of a difference between 2018 and 2019 in terms of timing, particularly when Allard and Soroka are likely coming up at the end of 2018 most likely anyway.
And Yelich would be completely different than Julio. Yelich is 25 and will be hitting his peak years in 2019 when we are ready to compete. Julio has had declining stuff and was almost always going to be going downhill in the last years of his contract, and obviously should have been traded last year as you and I and many others were asking for at the time.
Southcack77 (06-08-2017)
Hey, I agree with you. I don't think it's a smart idea at all. We just need to stay the course. IF you mention Stanton to me...Yelich needs to be involved to bring back some surplus. That's the only way I take on Stanton. It's also the only way I acquire Yelich. I'm not blowing so many prospects on one guy. It "might" be worth the gamble on Stanton having enough good years if you also get Yelich and others. You also speed the rebuild up a ton, if you add Yelich, Stanton, Prado and/or Realmuto to our current team. We would possibly be contenders as soon as 2019.
Also, because our payroll decreases each year from here on out. The money will actually be there.
We should trade Julio for Yelich!! I really doubt Marlins bite..
I think Yelich's age and contract is such that acquiring him for 2018 is probably still a long enough term play that it would be a positive thing in 2019.
The question of course is how much it costs and whether it makes sense given the Braves ability to make other moves.
I understand what you're saying, but don't think that's how it works in reality.
You're assuming the player stays at a fixed production level.
I'm assuming the player will decline each year after he's past his prime.
So if we have a chance to sign a 27 year old stud, we'd ideally sign him for 4 years, right? But the market won't let us, so we HAVE to give him 7-8 years or else we lose out on him.
So we give him the opt out after 4. If he performs great - then fantastic for us. We got our production at the contract time table we would have signed without market influence.
If he doesn't do great, it's no different than us just giving him the 7/8 year deal. We're stuck with a bad contract like we would have been regardless.
I certainly agree to a point. I will say that I think any concern for the record last year, this year and to an extent next year was and is detrimental to the most efficient rebuild.
The Stanton trade premise that I have thrown out is based on the idea that IF you can't be patient and be willing to accept the ugly baseball along the way to a full rebuild, then a trade like the trade I proposed is one way to cut the rebuild short. The downside is that there is significant risk associated with the move.