squally1313

Mostly fair points, but I think it's a little bit glossed over to use phrases like 'a demonstrated ability to put up high end offensive production' and 'talented enough hitter with enough history'. The dude was legitimately broken offensively for 2 years/900 PAs until he came to Chicago, and the year before that would have made him an offensively average first baseman. Positional flexibility is nice, but if we're going to go this route I would much prefer to see his defense in center 130 games a year (while also turning PCAs potential and coveted team control into immediate 2024 production).

How do you think the Dodgers are going to plan for paying $68m/year from 2034-2044? Just, deal with it when it comes up? Have a giant hole in their budget and play like a midmarket team for 10 years? Or is it possible that the $700m is essentially worthless and they're throwing $45m or so into an investment/interest bearing account every year so that when the bill finally comes due, they have the $68m they need? They're almost definitely committing significant money to the Ohtani contract every year, even if it doesn't come in the form of a check to Ohtani himself.

Sign Bellinger, Morel plus whatever it takes to pry away Bregman, PCA and other prospects for pitchers (Miami, Seattle, Cease, etc).

Yeah, the CBA prescribed interest rate is 5%, which, to very oversimplify, is about what you could get if you took (a lot of) money down to your bank and asked for their best interest rate. $44m annually obviously qualifies as a lot of money. If the Dodgers went to BofA on 1/1/24 and deposited $44m into a savings account at 5% (and wrote Shohei a $2m check), by 2034 they'd have $68.2m sitting in that account. And then repeat that every year of the life of his contract. Obviously they don't have to do that, they'll have plenty of other revenue streams to pull from in 10 years, and at that level of money you should be able to get a lot better than 5% return on your investment. So that's the beneficial part on their end (though the downside is interest rates plummet back to where they were a few years ago and they have to make at least somewhat risky investments). Ohtani is making like $50m-$100m off the field annually right now anyways, and gets to maybe get creative tax wise in ten years when those checks start rolling in. I don't really see an issue with the contract, and think the way it's viewed for CBT purposes makes sense. As a dork, there's interesting financial/tax questions that probably still need to be sorted through. But it's fine. It's a 10 year/$460m deal. If the Cubs signed someone today to a 1 year, $100m deal but deferred the payment to 2075, they could put $10m into a bank account right now and come out $15m ahead by the time the bill came due.

Shohei Ohtani does not determine whether or not Jed is 'conceding the offseason'. When Ohtani signs, there will still be 43 other free agents.

44 of the top 50 free agents remain unsigned.

Option C : The Yankees offered a package the Cubs weren't comfortable matching, for reasons that had nothing to do with salary. I mean, it's not like there was some recruiting pitch that had to be done here.

Fair points, though they're coming off their first losing season in a while and if he's told the alternative is trading their best pen guy, second best offensive guy, and potentially their best starter, he might change his tune a little bit. Edit: Forgot this:

At the prospect cost it would require to get all three of those players, can we just ask for Ramirez instead and then send Yamamoto a blank check?

I'm aware that my thought process here falls into 'waiting for the perfect player at the perfect time, for the perfect price, and so you're left with nothing.' But....the Yankees package there seemingly far exceeded anything that we had discussed as being comfortable with in a hypothetical Soto to the Cubs trade. Did anyone want them to throw in Horton? Or Wicks and a few other solid prospects? I don't know your definition of 'fully attacked' but it also seems very likely that they put in an offer, the Yankees put out a better offer, and the Cubs saw it as an overpay and bowed out. Should we be upset about that?

Per CBS, 6 of the top 50 free agents have signed so far. 'Half' is being unnecessarily pessimistic.

This assumes that the Ohtani decision just comes down to who offers the most money then, right? Does it give anyone any pause in that case that the 'Cubs getting Ohtani' conclusion relies on the Dodgers being like 'oh man, that's too much money, not worth it, we're out'?

The main gap between us and the Astros and Dodgers is that we went years without producing any supplemental talent in our minor league system, had to find expensive bandaids to keep the championship core together, and then it all kinda blew up. If you want to be pissed at the front office and the organizational approach, that's where the main issue lies. It's getting better, but it was bad for a long time. Cubs drafts by top BWAR producer: 2015: Ian Happ, 14.1, Scott Effross the only other positive contributor 2016: Davis Daniel, 0.5 2017: Keegan Thompson, 2.1 2018: Nico Hoerner, 11.6, no other major league players 2019: No major leaguers, no one particularly promising Five years with 2 players, one of which, according to you, is 'marginal'. Not great! The biggest free agent signing in Astros history is Carlos Lee in 2006. Altuve was their largest deal ever at $151m. Alvarez and Bregman also got large deals. All three came through the system. Freeman's deal was smaller than Dansby Swanson's (who had the best year of all the shortstops out there last year), and is their biggest actual free agency contract in history (Betts and Kershaw signed extensions for more) (admittedly, for about 3 more days). The player advancement infrastructure just hasn't been at all enough to match up with those teams (who are, by a decent gap, easily the best two organizations in the last 5-10 years). I think we're comfortably in the next tier, and whether or not we sign Ohtani isn't going to change my opinion on that.

And it won't be, definitively, so this is all stupid. Setting a standard of 'we must beat out all 29 other teams for the coolest free agent player in maybe baseball history' is basically just people looking to complain about something.

To be clear, Swanson > Bellinger, both in 2023 and going forward

It's pretty rude of Ohtani to be the only free agent left who hasn't picked a team yet. We'd be able to start the baseball season if he just hurried up and made a decision to end the free agency period.

Weird....if you click on the video it takes you to the Marquee site, but if you click on the actual tweet it just takes you to twitter and lets you watch it there. Also....has Bruce Levine always looked like that?

The thing about the half billion at 32 point font is that it becomes less of a differentiator when every other team also includes it in the powerpoint. Having said that, if it leaks or if for some reason they try to sell the Counsell move and whatever other player moves as a substitute for cash (rather than a complement), I will be incredibly disappointed at their cheapness/stupidity.

Occam's razor is just 'offer him the most money' for sure. But to the extent Ohtani cares about winning (which we don't honestly know), there's maybe something to him, coming off his Angels run, being wary of some team throwing their checkbook at him just to tap into new revenue streams and boost ticket sales while point to his salary as the reason they can't supplement the team around him. While this wouldn't like, help us beat out the Dodgers, who can just point to all the other HOFers currently on the roster, I could see something like this (and the Counsell hiring) at least making the powerpoint.

Wrong

Eff it, I'm bored Soto: Morel and Assad gives you more value going to the Padres than us getting back Bichette: PCA and Ben Brown gives you more value going to the BJs than us getting back Alonso: Mervis, Canario, Wesneski gives you more value going to the Mets than us getting back All per BBTV, by the way. BP put out the following top 10 list last week, crossed out names would be gone PCA Shaw Horton Caissie Alcantara Ballesteros Triantos Wicks Rojas Brown You can argue that it should be like, Alcantara instead of Canario to give them an impact player back, sure. But that's still leaving the top 10 mostly intact. For a lineup of: Happ Soto Bichette Alonso Suzuki Swanson Horner Tauchman/whoever Gomes/Amaya Will it happen? No. Could it happen? Kinda?

How do you guys expect the Cubs to make a serious run for Ohtani when they've never signed a guy who can pitch and also hit 45 home runs in the same season

I only had the Spanish broadcast and I very much do no speak Spanish but that all seemed especially shady.

Mexico scores at 101 minutes to tie the aggregate score at 2-2 (9 minutes of extra time announced). ET should be interesting.