You're taking the same risk, but you are investing nothing. The only risk is that they fail. If you trade or sign for a ToR starter you are investing massive amounts of money and/or prospect capital. If you do that, and they fail, it can single handedly dismantle an entire rebuild or competitive window. It wouldn't surprise me if the Pirates look back on last year as the moment where they gave away any chance at being competitive for Archer.
The Mets would have to be out of their minds to let the whole "trading within the division" trope prevent them from accepting the best deal on the table. That mindset is super outdated and it doesn't hurt anyone except the team that is moving the player. I know I would be pissed if I found out we were shopping a player and took a lesser deal in order to avoid sending him to the Nats or Phillies.
clvclv (11-04-2018)
Yeah, but Sale doesn't yet fit within the confines of his conditional. He said someone who had been successful for the duration of his contract. That may end up being the case for Sale, but not yet.
And it my opinion that is something to consider. If we made some crazy trade for a big money pitcher on a years long contract, I'd want to gauge both the short and long term prospects of such a deal. I'm pretty risk averse when it comes to "buy" type trades. If we traded for a ToR arm on a 5 year deal, won a WS with him next year, and then he was awful for the next 4 and it ended up costing us our competitive window... I'm not sure I would consider that a good deal. I know a lot of people would seemingly be happy with one WS and then being terrible for years and years (kinda like the Royals currently). But I think we've built something that has a chance of lasting for 6 or 7 years minimum and I don't want to mortgage that for an aging pitcher.
Has there EVER been a statement and question a certain someone should absolutely never have made and asked publicly more than...
Kinda pathetic to see yourself as a message board knight in shining armor. How impotent does someone have to be in real life to resort to playing hero on a message board?
I say let's get creative with a Harper contract $450M contract structured as: $30M, $30M, $30M, $30M, $30M/player option, then $3 per year every year for the next 100M years! largest contract in MLB history in terms of both dollars AND years! Win/Win
Per MLbtraderumors
The Braves have been mentioned as speculative suitors for Harper and Machado, and Atlanta even had some interest in Machado at the trade deadline. A pursuit of either player this winter, however, might not be in the cards, as per GM Alex Anthopoulos’ comments in an interview with Jim Bowden and Jim Duquette of MLB Network Radio on Siriux XM (audio link). “We can be in on any player, we certainly have the dollars to do that. I don’t know that it makes a lot of sense….to do deals that are ten years in length and longer at significant dollars with the payroll that we have,” Anthopoulos said. “It’s not a rule for us, but I tend to not see a ton of value from our club that that would make sense for us….That doesn’t mean we won’t at least explore some things and see if we could line up on the right deal and the right term, but I am reluctant to go extremely long in terms of length.” Freddie Freeman‘s eight-year, $135MM deal (signed in February 2014, long before Anthopoulos was with the franchise) is the biggest contract in Braves history, though that extension was signed while Freeman was still 24 and in his first arbitration-eligible year.
Get off my lawn!
MLB put out their blurb about FA matches. Thought Evoldi would match well with us. I would be cool with him if we don’t have to go too high on him or at least not too high with 4plus years. He scares me as much as he excites me.
Coppy
Yeah I would put Sale and Max in this category. Kershaw on the other hand looks to be going south. He performed well the first 2 years when he hit the 30 million per year figure. 4.6 war in 17 and 3.5 in 18. 3 more years at 30+ now. He will also be 31 next year.
Fact remains that in most of these deals. Especially when paying for it in FA or huge extensions it doesn't end well for the teams. But that's usually understood or should be when going into these deals.
I'd be more apt to do what the Sox did with sale and trade prospects on an ace with a few cheap years left if your going to get one. FA deals are the worst.
Have absolutely no interest in Eovaldi personally. He's going to turn a nice playoff run into a good contract like Brandon Morrow did last year (and good for both of them BTW), I just hope AA continues to stay away from guys like that. Neither has ever been able to stay healthy even though they have talent worth dreaming on.
If you spend your limited free-agent dollars chasing a star, I can live with that choice. Eovaldi is nowhere close to that TOR arm you can count on, and he's going to cost a lot more than guys like Kluber, Carrasco, and Paxton who you have to feel are a lot more capable of filling that role. Sure those guys will cost you prospects, but there simply isn't room for all the arms we have that are ready or close to ready.
If you're going to add a SP, trade some of those prospects for a better SP (rather than a #3/#4 - yeah, I'm not sure Eovaldi slots in front of Folty or Gausman, and even Newk when he throws strikes) if you intend to upgrade the rotation. I love his fastball as much as anyone else does, but committing $60 million to a guy who has already had TWO Tommy Johns and can't consistently throw strikes (and also has no breaking ball) is nuts in my book.
AA's in a position where he needs to move some of these arms and if he's not going to pony up for Realmuto, he'd probably be better off spending them on a serious rotation upgrade and spending his FA dollars on Grandal and a corner OF.
Has there EVER been a statement and question a certain someone should absolutely never have made and asked publicly more than...
Kinda pathetic to see yourself as a message board knight in shining armor. How impotent does someone have to be in real life to resort to playing hero on a message board?