Bertz

Disappointing, but this is probably the best case scenario if he wasn't going to choose us. He stays out of the NL and raises the odds that we as baseball fans get to see see Mike Trout in meaningful games while in his prime.

The 40 man guys cost what, 200k apiece or so? I figured 15 on the insurance stuff. At any rate, I think we've got close to 50 mill to spend, AFTER Chatwood, and still have about 10 mill leftover for in season moves. 150k per person. So 150k x 15 is 2.25 million. I also realize now my wording was a little misleading, the 15.5 million is insurance AND guys on the 40. But yeah I think you're spot on. It makes me wonder if we will make a move or two specifically with the LT in mind. For example, buying out Rizzo or Quintana's options would shift some luxury tax burden from 2019/2020 to 2018. If come February we're 20+ million under the cap, it's something to strongly consider.

When calculating the LT, you've also got to be sure to include the guys on the 40 man and insurance payments, which Cot's estimates at about 15.5 million for next year. That plus filling out our roater with league minimum guys puts us at ~138 for next year as of now, and ~161 for 2019 (much less reliable because of arb raises). That puts us about 60 million under the 2018 tax and 45 million under the 2019 tax, as of now.

Chatwood's also a Statcast darling

BTW looks like ZiPS has him at 2 wins in only 140 innings.

I think how I feel about this depends entirely on how much money Cobb gets. I doubt we're getting both, and I like Cobb more, but if it's 3/30 for Chatwood vs. 4/60 for Cobb I think I'm happier going this route.

Heyman had an article on it that was mostly nonsense, but had a few good points. 1. Because the Padres are so terrible, they can most afford to give him a shot at being a legit two-way guy this year. 2. The Padres farm is pretty great, and they have no money on the books, so with Ohtani in the fold they actually look very promising for 2019 on. And Ohtani would be getting in on the ground floor of that. 3. He'd get to be 'THE guy.' (Though he's probably the best player on the Rangers or Mariners as well?) I don't know if I buy those reasons as being worth choosing the Padres, but they're something.

I was a little unsure how our draft would look under the new rules, so I decided to dig in a little bit. Apologies if this gets a bit rambly, the new rules are extremely convoluted. Based on record, we pick 24th in each round. Because we extended Davis and Arrieta qualifying offers, we will receive an extra pick when each of them signs elsewhere. As a large market team that is NOT above the luxury tax, those two picks will be placed after Compeitive Balance Round B (which itself comes right after the 2nd round). The other teams losing QO FA's this winter are the Royals, Rays, Rockies, Cards, and Indians, who I believe all recieve revenue sharing (I'm not positive on this, especially the Cards). Therefore, each of their extra picks would come after the first round. That means that, tentatively, the draft would look like this: Round 1: Picks 1-30 FA Comp Picks for everyone but us: 31-37 Competitive Balance Round A: 38-46 Round 2: 47-76 Competitive Balance Round B: 77-82 Our Comp Picks: 83-84 Round 3: 85-114 That would place our picks at: 24 (1st rounder) 71 (2nd rounder) 83 (comp for Arrieta/Davis) 84 (comp for Arrieta/Davis) 109 (3rd rounder) However, like under the old rule, when a team signs a QO free agent, they lose a draft pick. The way it works now, teams that receive revenue sharing money lose their 3rd pick, while teams that don't lose their 2nd pick (you also lose your fifth if you're over the luxury tax). As mentioned above, there are nine total QO free agents, seven excluding our own. Because of that, those are seven picks that are going to disappear as part of FA compensation. Ideally, that would move every pick after our first rounder up by seven spots, but because of a bunch of wonky nonsense, that's not quite the case. I've included said wonky nonsense in the spoiler tags. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to assume that our 2nd rounder will climb 5 spots, and all picks afterwards will climb by 7 spots. That would give us picks at 24 (1st rounder) 66 (2nd rounder) 76 (comp for Arrieta/Davis) 77 (comp for Arrieta/Davis) 102 (3rd rounder) It's apparently a good and deep draft, so this should be a nice way to replenish our depleted system. Now, my numbers could be off, but barring something weird (or me completely whiffing on some of the rules) nothing should be off by more than 2-3 spots.

Any plan that involves signing Harper is going to take the Cubs over the luxury tax, or be really bad. The one exception would be a Heyward trade/opt-out, which is basically a non-starter at the moment. That's okay, as long as they stay under this year they don't have to be all that concerned about how much they exceed it by in order to get Harper, but they will exceed it nonetheless. As an example, my path upthread which is basically Ohtani, Yelich, Cobb, and 2 relievers in terms of 2019 expenditures, leaves them about 13 million under the threshold in planning the '19 offseason. There's no path to being 30+ under entering 2019 that doesn't make 2018 much worse. Yeah, I think I fat fingered something with the Darvish scenario. As of right now, we are ~55 under for '19, and Harper will be something like 35 by himself. I don't expect us to be under the tax in '19, but i do expect that we can't go too far over. Specifically, I expect us to stay within 20 million of the tax to avoid triggering the next tier of penalties. I imagine that means one of our rotation spots will need be filled cheaply in terms of dollars, whether that be Ohtani or a trade. It also means that at least one of our 3 bullpen slots will go to a one year prove it guy in the mold of Duensing.

Ohtani makes this whole exercise especially fun. For instance, we could sign Darvish and two Morrow/McGee types to multi-year deals and still be approximately a Bryce Harper under the luxury tax next year. Or you could trade for Archer knowing that losing Happ's lefthanded power off the bench is suddenly much less painful. I think if we get Ohtani I don't go after Cobb. I would want to either go way above his talent level and build a super rotation or go a little cheaper (and no draft pick) and save our bullets for more goodies next winter.

I don't think there's a specific thing. It's mostly just a compulsion for transactions (the M's literally have ~2x as many as the next team during his tenure) and a generally high energy personality.

Oh I already did that a few pages back but it was the Big Bowl in Streeterville

A big part of the survey was about how a team would assimilate Ohtani and keep him healthy and productive. Texas showed they can do a great job on all counts with Darvish (unless you are a weirdo who blames them for Yu's TJ surgery).

Heck could they make a late play for Stanton if they got Ohtani? Not sure what sort of payroll they can afford My understanding is they have 20-30 mil to play with, so I'd think so. Though with them needing to play Cruz in the OF more to accommodate Ohtani, I doubt they'd go that direction.

I'd be going nuts right now if I was an M's fan. They're a fringey wild card team as is, but add Ohtani and another big move (Lorenzo Cain?) and suddenly they look as good as anybody. Same with the Giants. Stanton doesn't get them to the Dodgers level, but Stanton+Ohtani plus a decent 3B like Todd Frazier and they're right there.

[tweet] [/tweet] !!!!

Also. my understanding is that Spring Training in Florida is WAY worse than ST in Arizona from the players' point of view. In Florida apparently everything is stupidly far apart, you spend half your day in the car/bus.

This is why I expected both to be tendered. I figured ~1.5 million was a worthwhile gamble, considering how much payroll we presumably have. Either Rondon's arm is seriously horsefeathered, or we've got less money to play with than I thought. If the latter, I wonder if it means we plan on spending a ton or if we're going to tighten the belt a little in preparation for next winter.

Sounds like that is not allowed. Standard minor league contract plus however much bonus you can offer. They could probably hire his pick of translator or something but thats about it.

ZiPS has Cobb worth 3/39. It's not gospel obviously, but you generally see signings in its projected neighborhood. I could see a 4th year to help with the luxury tax, but he's not getting 18 million a year.

I have a really hard time believing a guy described like this Is someone we should be so sure is choosing between New York, Chicago, and LA. There's a very good chance that this is a guy who would easily play in a third-tier city like San Diego or Milwaukee if they checked enough of his other boxes.

Yeah I don't think we have a prayer unless there's some soft factor we haven't considered, like Michael Jordan is his icon or he horsefeathering loves Joe Maddon's whole schtick. With money not being a factor, there are four things that IMO are likely to influence his decision: 1. Competitive Outlook 2. Geography 3. Willingness to utilize him how he'd like 4. Fame We match up with anybody on #1, though it's not a huge advantage. We're one of five or six teams that looks great in the short to medium term. But in the long term you'd take the Dodgers or Yankees purely because of money. For 2 through 4, we don't look so hot. Geographically, it'd be an a shock if he didn't prefer the west coast. For #3, maybe Joe's outsized reputation for creativity helps us, but I think pretty clearly favors every AL team over any NL team. #4, if it matters, strongly suggests the Yankees or Dodgers. I just can't see him coming here at all. I think it ultimately comes down to two things. First, does he care more about fame or geography? Second, would he rather be "THE Guy" on a good team, or "A Guy" on a great team. Framing it that way, I think I think it comes down between the Yankees and Mariners. Based on this article from Jeff Passan, he doesn't sound like he's interested in the spotlight: I really think he's going to end up a Mariner, but honestly it sounds like no one, even the industry folks, actually has any idea.

Here is my attempt. Luckily for me there's still been no movement so I still have free reign. Generally, I went into this assuming that the club can't go much beyond the luxury tax limit until the new TV deal kicks in, and also being mindful that I REALLY want Bryce Harper (and am willing to 'settle' for Machado :-) ). So this plan leaves us ~$40 million under the cap in 2019 with only a few lower leverage spots in the bullpen and two spots on the bench left to be filled. For FA contracts, I went with what Jon Heyman predicted they'd get where possible. I found that the best way to get through the offseason was to throw money at the bullpen, and then use trades to fix the rotation. There are no super-relievers out there this year (I don't trust Davis at all going forward) but there's a lot of B+ guys and intriguing bounce-back candidates. I went with these three guys, but there's about a thousand permutations with this money and these years that adequately fix the bullpen. Brandon Morrow 3 Yrs, $24 Mil Jake McGee 2 Yrs, $14 Mil Luke Gregerson 1 Yr, $7 Mil Morrow was a monster last year, so he's signed with the hope taht he keeps it up, but priced with the reality that he's a living medical red flag, and may miss time or quickly lose effectiveness. Jake McGee is a quality set-up guy, there's not much to say beyond that except that maybe Hickey and/or normal altitude can get him back into dominant closer territory, so there's a little bit of upside there. Luke Gregerson I really like. He's been a good-but-boring set-up guy for like a decade. He lost velocity and some ground balls along with it last year, but still looks like he was very good and just the victim of some flukey homeruns. Speaking of flukey homeruns, I don't cut Rondon in this scenario. He's not the guy he was a few years ago, but at minimum he's a decent 7th innning guy with upside, I'm not sure there's actually a better way to spend ~$6 million. For the rotation, I use up our major league trade assets, but generally keep from dipping too much into the minors. There is probably a little bit more needed to make these deals work from the minor leagues, but no one too painful should have to go in addition to the major league assets. I think in general on the trade front this offseason, even outside of this exercise, I'd try to use our closer to the majors position players and further from the majors pitchers. e.g. I'd rather deal Albertos than Alzolay, and Charcer Burkes more than DJ Wilson. Anyways, here are my trades to fill the rotation Vic Caratini+ to Oakland for Kendall Graveman Javy Baez and Mike Montgomery for Chris Archer and Adeinny Hechevarria I'm a big Graveman fan. I think there's more in there, but even if there's not he's a league average-ish starter today. Oakland desperately needs position players, and they've got a lot of interesting pitching at both the major and minor league level, so I think they match up really well with us. In the Archer deal, giving up Javy sucks, I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. But there are enough issues with him that I think I'd rather trade him and backfill with Hechevarria than trade Happ. Finally, I bring back Rene Rivera for 1 Yr, $3 Mil. This gives us a roster of C - Contreras/Rivera 1b - Rizzo 2b - Happ/La Stella/Zobrist SS - Russell/Hechevarria 3b - Bryant LF - Schwarber CF - Almora RF - Heyward SP - Quintana/Archer/Lester/Hendricks/Graveman BP - Morrow/McGee/CJ/Wilson/Strop/Rondon/Gregerson/Grimm(?) Payroll ends up right around $180 million after insurance/40 man/etc., so there's still room to do some work at the deadline. I think the one thing this team is kind of missing is a long man/swing guy after the trade of Montgomery, so I would probably look for someone in the Trevor Cahill mold who is jobless in February and give them Grimm's roster spot. But I think this team rocks, is still pretty deep on the position player side, and I've generally "kept the powder dry" at least in terms of $$.

Did we know about Benedict before today? He's a pretty big deal. He's responsible for a sizeable amount of the Ray Searage devil-magic during the Pirates' recent run of success.

In that same vein, in a deal where we send them Baez or Russell for Archer, I could see us taking back Hechavarria.