Transmogrified Tiger

Something I looked up the other day that I think informs this. Outside the two Japanese pitchers, most of the best remaining FA are Boras clients. Montgomery, Bellinger, Chapman, Hoskins. He's very unafraid to wait out the market, and especially given the questions marks and QO considerations that surround them, I wouldn't be surprised if the FA market slows until January. It's because of that dynamic that makes me curious what Hoskins wants. If he wanted to sign a Bellinger-style pillow contract, presumably that would be done by now. Maybe he's a bit more interested in a multi-year deal given his age and comparative lack of ceiling?

Yeah there's two main points here. One is 'how good is Bellinger's bat', and I'm not gonna tell people 'no absolutely not he's a 125 wRC+ hitter for sure' if you're super worried about the batted ball peripherals, even if I disagree. The other is 'even if he hits he's not a great fit since we have PCA and a ~120 wRC+ is only okay for 1B', and that one I structurally think is incorrect given the lack of certainty from PCA, the value he would actually add at 1B, and the practical upshot of what positional needs the team has.

Oh one other thing on this that really informs my thinking. From the 3 OF spots, 1B, and DH you need 810 games each year. Even if you have 6 guys you love for those spots, with equal playing time they're still averaging 135 games each, and less than 4 players per team exceeded that mark last year. Injuries, rest, matchups, and poor performance will happen, so I'm not really cowed by him not being an insanely snug fit on Day 1. Doubly so in the case of someone like Bellinger with a well rounded profile and doesn't need to be signed until he's 38.

I don't want to be a broken record about this or trivialize that it would be a somewhat tricky management challenge(earn your money Craig, I guess?), but Bellinger can play RF and Seiya can DH. For that matter, maybe Seiya *should* DH given how he's graded out at the position over 2 years and how much emphasis the roster has around defense. And even if you're convinced the 'if PCA hits' outcome is definitely 1B, don't forget that Bellinger adds value above the typical 1B with his speed, and as such even with offensive regression would still be around a 3 win 1B. I understand how that may not be optimal given the power composition of the rest of the lineup, but it doesn't scare me off making the upgrade if that's what's there. Though I am on the team that doesn't want PCA up until Memorial Day and am trying to remind myself that the odds are decent he's a platoon or worse bat in a lot of different outcomes.

Most players put a lot fewer balls in play than Bellinger and do so at a lower launch angle too. Only 13 qualifiers had a sub-20% K rate(Bellinger 15.6) and > 16 degree launch angle(Bellinger 17.2). That group outperformed their xwOBA collectively by an average of about 20 points, and it's littered with some of the most consistently excellent hitters in the game. Betts, Lindor, Ramirez, Bregman, Arenado, Semien, plus a few other professional hitters most every team would want(Wade, Turner, Paredes) along with a few speedsters scraping their way in(Friedl, Albies, K Hernandez). This illustrates what my central thinking is as it relates to Bellinger, is that when we get this deep into batted ball quality conversations, we twist ourselves into slices of data that may feel like outliers, but are instead just as much a testament to a super talented player's ability than they are signs that the player is in for a fall.

Those 2 years were also correlated with injury problems that certainly appear to have resolved, but my point there is not that Cody Bellinger has always been this guy. It's that this isn't Cody Bellinger reaching heretofore unreached heights of offensive production and we have low confidence he can be successful outside this specific way he did it this year. He's a top prospect with an MVP on his resume that has been this caliber of hitter in multiple ways before even reaching the Cubs(look at the K rate from his ROY season compared to his MVP season). We can lean on his top of scale talent as comfort that he doesn't have to succeed in this narrow way to be similarly productive, because he's done it in multiple ways before and demonstrated an ability to make adjustments.

The CBA actually requires this, or some close approximation depending on the wording.

I think with Bellinger people have gotten too far in the weeds and worried about very specific slices of production that do not definitively tell us much about what to expect going forward. He's an extremely talented hitter who has already shown a demonstrated ability to put up high end offensive production and is still just 28. Take this most recent talking point, Bellinger had a .386 BABIP with 2 strikes last year, if that were to drop to .325(which feels appropriate given his approach and talent, for comparison Mookie was at .340 last year) he'd lose 11 hits. Call that 9 singles and 2 doubles since the the luckier/weaker contact is going to skew 1B-heavy, and this regression has dropped his wRC+ to roughly...123 by my best napkin math and comparison? And again this specific composition of batted balls is not certain, there's nothing that says we should expect him to be at his xwOBA next year or that he will be right at what we expect his BABIP to be in certain slices. He's a talented enough hitter with enough history that if his 2 strike approach is less fruitful he can likely make adjustments to mitigate the impact. All that said, I would not expect him to be a 135 wRC+ guy going forward, nor do I think that level is unattainable in a season or 2 over his next deal. But with his defense, speed, and positional flexibility I do not need him to be at that level to be interested in giving him a very healthy contract.

Works for me, Alfaro is a solid bet for AAA/3rd C. Can run into a fastball every now and then, and has a plus arm which is especially important these days.

I don't love the word 'never' for things like this. Could we swap some names and not write a similar story about Andrew Friedman circa 2019? He had been in charge in LA for 5 years by the time he signed such a deal, and it had to be an extension of a recently acquired player rather than winning a bidding war. Mindsets evolve, circumstances change. Sometimes they don't, but I'm not convinced this offseason is closing the book on Hoyer being aggressive at the top of the market. I also don't really get the 'and now we don't know how much the Ricketts will actually allow' sentiment, I think this requires focusing much harder on vibes than actual facts on the ground . They've paid the luxury tax before, they've signed top of market FA before, they've signed 6, 7, and 8 year deals before. Everything they've ever said about payroll is it's there if the front office thinks it's the right decision. Maybe there's an unknown if they would've signed up to pay Ohtani 68 million until the heat death of the universe, but this suspicion seems to be overwhelmingly driven by (well-deserved) animus towards the Ricketts for their activities outside the Cubs, or an overreaction to the 2020 offseason which is a set of once in a lifetime circumstances.

LT payroll(which is the payroll we mean when we talk about going to 240-250) was 227.7 million per Fangraphs, 5 mil under the LT line. This includes Candelario, though between salary already paid and money kicked in he moved the needle less than 1 million.

without looking, what do you think their payroll was last year

70 million in AAV added is right before the second LT threshold, 20 million over the LT.

I alluded to something similar in the other thread, but the part of Jed's approach to team-building I like the least has been over-indexing on certain pitching traits that end up with him priced out on the types of guys they're still missing to really headline a team that can be dangerous in the postseason. Maybe I just lack vision, and he's gonna give up less for Bieber and extend him(a pre-FA extension has at least been floated in the media), and then Chapman's market is never gonna materialize and they'll get him for like 3/60 or whatever and PCA comes up and no batted ball ever finds grass again. But the road to an offseason I'm really happy with is pretty narrow now, and probably relies on at least one or maybe two uncommon things happening.

The Glasnow trade is the first thing that's really discouraged me, because there aren't a ton of really electric arms out there that can help differentiate in the postseason, while it's easier to slug your way into and through the playoffs even if you don't have one of the 5 best hitters in the game. There's still some reasonable paths to taking a step up for next year, but I'm getting concerned that the pitching side of it is not going to have the dynamism I'm hoping for.

Same guy says it will be Pepiot and DeLuca, which especially with Margot included feels like roughly Wesneski and Canario? Wouldn't have been a perfect world scenario but I sure wouldn't have been upset, gonna be bummed if this does come to pass. For as much trouble as some folks give Jed for not dropping 300 million on a player in free agency, he also hasn't really done any trades for MLB pieces, the closest being the Kimbrel sell trade which does not look like a windfall. I guess Cuas for Velazquez is the other, and that one while not intended to be a cornerstone move doesn't exactly illustrate a keen eye for leveling up the roster(at least not yet). That muscle is far more important given his long term contract convictions, and with the team entering a (hopefully indefinite) phase where they expect to contend he's gonna have to demonstrate it early and often now.

The Padres signing Bellinger would be objectively hilarious, like Preller took the dril budget tweet and tried to make a roster in homage to it.

I get the impulse for sure, and I don't think I'd need some type of 75% discount on that price to seriously consider a move. But as an example, surely the Nationals could be convinced to move Hunter Harvey, and is that going to come close to the potential cost for Clase? 2 years vs 3(though given reliever volatility you may see this as a feature), but is there a chasm in their expected performance? I'd say no.

I think my answer to that question would probably be 'never'. Maybe if you've got the Cubs current farm system depth and the MLB roster of a Dodgers/Braves and that's the maximum significant upgrade that you can get, but it's nigh impossible for me to think of circumstances where giving up those resources for Clase(or any pure reliever) is a better decision than using the same resources towards a SP(to use one example of opportunity cost).

I will again point out that Bellinger is not locked into 1B if PCA hits, Seiya has been average at best defensively in RF and players need rest/insurance from injury.

LA Times Dodgers beat writer:

Maybe I just lack imagination, but I really struggle to see the slippery slope created here. There's zero question that if Ohtani wanted the money straight that he would've gotten it from someone, including the Dodgers. Any team proposing this in free agency risks alienating the player, and there aren't so few winning teams that a very good team can leverage a player down(if that were true winning teams would just do this with pure AAV now). The only way this persists is if a player is insistent on signing with a specific team and also being able to claim a specific top line contract number. The unsavory side of it is on the player/union end of the deal. I don't disagree that this is against the spirit of the way the CBA is designed, but I think in the same way that Ohtani the player is a unicorn, his contract is probably unlikely to have much imitation either.

The player still has to agree to it though, and they have agents and lawyers and accountants to make the equivalency of value clear. Plus there's reporting that this was Ohtani's idea to begin with. If this deal had been reported as a 10/460 deal originally would we be calling this an abuse of the system? In the way we talk about contracts that's what it is. Let's ask ourselves this, do we think that the Dodgers offering and Ohtani accepting a straight 10/460 was possible/likely? I have no reason to think the answer is no. So in that case the main beneficiary of the deferrals is Ohtani himself(along with his agent and the players union). They get the contract he was destined to sign and they get to hold up a new record number. The Dodgers get the guy who wants to play for them at the CBT number they were always destined to offer.

If Ohtani signed a straight up 10/460 deal when others had offered more, would we want that voided? There's basically zero difference between that hypothetical and the actual deal, to Ohtani or to the CBT.

Yeah, it's not really a loophole, it's no different than a player taking a couple million less to play for a winner, or close to home, etc. The only thing that is 'won' from this is various parties being able to technically claim the 700 number, which doesn't appear to have ever been a possibility from any suitor in PV terms.