Bertz

Agreed, but his election helps tremendously with the backlog. Rivera and Halladay are locks to get in on the first ballot next year. Edgar will also get in since it's his last year. Hoffman getting in and more importantly getting out od the way makes it more likely a fourth makes it goes in next year as well, Mussina maybe?

I'm digging into Darvish's numbers and it's better than I realized. So by Fangraphs and BR, Yu last year was very good but not quite back to the ace level he established pre-TJ. However, if you look at BP's numbers, which take into account a bunch or extra stuff like framing and quality of competition, he was the 9th best starter in the league, worth 5.2 wins. Also, his velocity post TJ is about an MPH higher than it was pre-TJ, which probably bodes well for how he'll age.

[tweet] [/tweet] $150 million isn't a number we've seen in a while, even though it's what was expected coming into the winter. I'm gonna laugh when after all the hand wringing about collusion and baseball's broken economy this winter most guys end up right around where they were expected to be.

Gimenez was also the Twins' designated "Position Player who pitches in blowouts" so this is about as fun as a minor league deal to a catcher can be.

Ademan (#78) and Alzolay (#84) made Law's list. I think those two plus Caratini are guys who could make any given Top 100 but are not good enough to say they definitely should.

Yeah I'm not too worried about the midseason stuff. Maybe some deal requires you to throw in an extra back of the Top 30 type prospect in exchange for salary relief. It shouldn't be too hard. I do hope this means our big signing is close. I assume they did this because they knew approximately what Darvish/Cobb/whomever are going to cost. Otherwise they would have held off, right?

I think we needed another lefty so I expected someone Duensing-esque closer to ST. I'm mostly just surprised it's for 2 years.

I like Eloy a lot, but his likely outcome is basically Schwarber: a good but not amazing hitter with little defensive value. That's a really nice player, but he has to REALLY hit to be worth losing sleep over.

I'd disagree but accept Don Larson's perfect game above it because of the circumstances, but I don't think I could buy an argument for any other game. Kerry's start is fairly objectively the best start ever, so you need A LOT of context to put something else above it.

There's gotta be more right? Musgrove and Moran should get you a good setup man, not Gerrit Cole.

I thought I did it based on what Cot's has, but looking now they have it as ~$14 for player benefits and $2.25 for the 40 man, which would have me off by about $750k. Then again, that's part of why I rounded up everywhere I could, so as to insulate against any mistakes or changes that go the other direction (for instance, KB making $1m last year even though he was a 0-3 player). But yeah, I think the moral of the story is that if we do Darvish or Arrieta we probably have enough room for a backup catcher and not much else. Further, it probably leaves us enough room for Harper next year but not much beyond that unless we get lucky and Heyward opts out or we dump a salary dump or two.

This is where I've got our payroll at right now. Obviously arbitration is hard to predict this far out so this isn't really perfect beyond 2018. For everyone who's already gone through arb I just gave them a 50% raise every year (the yellow/gold cells) and for the guys who haven't gone through it but will in 19/20 I just ballparked some numbers based on looking around at what guys are getting today (the dark orange cells). Edit: I initially fat fingered Seal Boy

I really appreciate the time it must take them to do it and them putting it out there as a reference point but I don't think it's that hard to hit estimates within a reasonable margin of error. If they have a guy(s) taking the time to do it with the amount of information out there to compare similar players/past amounts I don't think it's crazy tough to find the 2-5 most similar comps for players and add a % increase for inflation/rising salary costs and hit in the ballpark of the final salary. I don't think it takes some super complex model. What makes it so impressive to me is how small that margin of error seems to be. I think building a decent model wouldn't be that tough, but this one goes above and beyond IMO. And while the sample is huge, when you're slicing and dicing by so many factors (position, service time, production) you end up with some pretty small cohorts for some guys. Basically as someone who has generally failed when trying to build out these types of models, I've got a lot of respect.

It's crazy how good the MLBTR guy's model is for projecting these salaries. I know some of it is that teams and agents are using them as a benchmark to negotiate from, but that actually makes it even more impressive.

I don't think I'd pay that price, but at the same time I don't think it's necessarily an unfair ask. Why wouldn't you do it? What player out of that bunch is the one that makes you say "nope, that's too much" ? It's two parts the guys we're losing and one part liking but not loving Yelich. Losing both of Almora/Happ and two of our top prospects basically cleans us out of valuable disposable assets. So this summer or next winter when some hole pops up we're that much less likely to have the pieces to fill it via trade. That's not the end of the world, but I guess I don't think Yelich is enough of an upgrade to want to put the team in that situation. Particularly with how thin our pitching staff is, I think we need to have the resources on hand to be able to go and grab a guy when something inevitably goes wrong. Basically I'd rather win 93 games and save our bullets than push our chips in to win 95 games. Though like I said I don't think it's an unreasonable price, he's a very good player on a fantastic contract.

From Brett (via Kaplan) I don't think I'd pay that price, but at the same time I don't think it's necessarily an unfair ask.

I'm generally the type to roll my eyes at best shape of his life stories, but considering Schwarber's biggest problem is range in the outfield stemming (mostly) from lack of speed, this might actually be meaningful.

This is a really good point. I could see it affecting the Dodgers, Yankees, and Giants as well. All three of them are ~15 million under the tax. The Yankees seem to want another starter, and the Giants want another outfielder. The Dodgers seem to be done, but maybe they're talking to Addison Reed or one of the second tier starters like Jaime Garcia. Hell, the Astros are in a similar position to us as well, ~40 under the cap and talking to Darvish.

I think Nagy's my guy. I like the idea of a younger coach, Andy Reid's coaching tree has generally done well for itself. Pat schurmer and brad childress? I guess I was mostly thinking of John Harbaigh, though Childress did fairly well for himself for a few years, and Shurmur might have just been a victim of whatever is in the water in Cleveland. It's in contrast to Bill Belichick, whose guys don't have a great track record in the NFL (though he does have Nick Saban to his credit)

I think Nagy's my guy. I like the idea of a younger coach, Andy Reid's coaching tree has generally done well for itself, and I've been a big fan of what the Chiefs have done the last few years with their use of the spread and the fun stuff they've done with Tyreek Hill. Also he was a QB coach so he should be good for Mitch's development. McDaniels would probably be good but he's seemingly a huge horsefeathers, and I like what I've read about DeFillipo but would have reservations about a guy going straight from QB coach to running a whole team.

I'd buy this. ZiPS pegged him at 3/39 IIRC. I expect that some team will cave and give him a fourth year, but probably not until they've lost out on Darvish. I still think 4/60 is his ceiling.

Here's the quote from the article. Brett read it wrong. This is saying that maybe Tatis or Urias (top 50 prospects) could be the Padres' long term answer at SS, not part of the deal with us.

Also, I LOVE LOVE LOVE Contreras, but he's a catcher we already have locked up through his age 30 season. I'd wait until closer to crunch time before giving him guaranteed money.

Like others, I don't think it's collusion, I think it's just a perfect storm of factors coming together to make a slow market. There was a trade deadline two or three years ago that was similar, it just happens sometimes. I think the big one is a lack of parity in the league is the big one. 5 of the 6 divisions were pretty much already locked up the second the off season started. Horsefeathers will happen and one or two of those teams will fall short, but second-tier teams like the Twins aren't going to go balls to the wall just on the off chance that everyone in the Indians' rotation contracts lupus. Especially since with the Angels being gifted Ohtani and resigning Upton, both AL wildcards look pretty much locked up already as well. Teams like the Twins and Rangers aren't going to just fold it in, but they're probably going to be more opportunistic than aggressive. I think an underrated secondary factor is Scott Boras. He represents most of the major players left, and he's always been willing to wait teams out. Normally, a top player signs and that reverbs both further down at that guy's position and also across to the other top guys on the market (there's only so many teams willing to throw $20+ million at a single player in a given off season). It sets off a game of musical chairs both vertically and horizontally. But right now Boras has JD Martinez, Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Jake Arrieta, and Greg Holland. That's 5 of the 7 best FA's remaining, with Darvish and Lorenzo Cain being the exceptions. If teams want to play chicken, he can play chicken. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if nothing else big happens until Darvish signs. That'll thaw out the Boras guys a bit, and also let teams move on to Cobb and Lynn. Beyond that I think it's the other factors that have been cited. The luxury tax, next year's FA class, and the offseason effectively starting late because of the Ohtani/Stanton situations.

Whoops. I got mixed up with the mention of the other names. I don't really like Cobb at all as his AAV creeps toward Darvish's. If he's as cheap as we were talking before, then whatever. Personally, I don't think their AAV's wind up THAT close. My guess at this point is 4/70 on Cobb and 5/140 for Yu. I'd still take Yu in that scenario myself. If Cobb costs that much I'd rather just grab Jaime Garcia or someone similarly mediocre on a 1 or 2 year deal. Cobb's not actually all that good. I agree big picture though. On the pitching front we've probably got two moves left, and on the position player front we're probably done but we'll look to be opportunistic. Darvish and a super cheap reliever in February looks like the smart money right now, but I could just as easily see something like Cobb and Reed.