2024-2025 Offseason Thread

[Namaste]

Awesome!

X is a very humble, down to earth kid! His Dad was drafted in the 4th round by the Dodgers back in the day. Broke his ankle in AAA and said he was never the same.

[Namaste]

The Giants gave Adames the contract we all knew Bruce wouldn’t.

[fish16]

The Giants gave Adames the contract we all knew Bruce wouldn’t.

Almost all of us. They never had a shot at him, and honestly that’s not a good contract for a team with limited resources. I’m fine with developing from within and signing the core early as a means of building a winning team. The talk every year of us signing a major free agent is just such a waste of time, which is why I give Lou shit for it

[nny]

X is a very humble, down to earth kid! His Dad was drafted in the 4th round by the Dodgers back in the day. Broke his ankle in AAA and said he was never the same.

Damn yeah, was curious so looked up his baseball reference page. Easy to figure out what year it was when he got injured lol: 63-13 SB-CS from '84-'86, then 10-14 the next year and then basically out of baseball. Looks like he had the same skill set as X, taught him well. Good luck to your son!

https://www.baseball-reference.com/r...d=edward001jov

[nny]

But I came here to mention the Dodgers 26 man roster has more wealth in deferred money than Bruce Sherman does. And this is effectively the offseason they will probably break me as absent a salary cap it is going to get outrageous with top 5-10 spending teams very quickly with these $600m dollar deals. You can see cheap teams surviving if the big boys only spend high $100 millions, but these guys going into $250-300+m payrolls just completely wipes things out on a depth level. I can't see how anyone competes with what is about to happen in free agency. If you're not spending over $150m, you're going to be left behind in the dust. This sport needs a salary cap badly. I imagine the antitrust talk perks back up shortly.

I'm sure you know this but just pointing out too that you can't just slap a salary cap on, they need to completely revamp the entire financial system. Because having both a cap while suppressing the vast majority of players salaries via the arbitration system would just be insane - especially the fact a player's salary is club-controlled for 3+ years. Also part of the issue is that the majority of the money is going to old players who are now bad instead of the people actually on the field (like our payrolll), and so getting rid of that suppression would help massively since "the money" is actually performing on the field.

They obviously can't do anything too big, but even something like 1 year of cost control (so that there is no financial disincentive to calling up a player) and 2 years of arbitration would go a long way. And comes out a lot closer to NBA/NHL/NFL rookie contracts, at least from what I can tell. Can even do stuff like adding arbitration years based off age of when a player was called up, to incentivize calling up young players instead of keeping them down for their prime years.

But that's all pure spitballing. They definitely need to do something because the whole thing is a mess, from all sides. But giving the players a better arbitration system and the teams a salary cap I think goes a long way.

[Namaste]

So Soto will make $50 million in his age 41 season?

[fish16]

This team is never going to win a division. We are playing an entirely different sport than these teams

[rmc523]

This team is never going to win a division. We are playing an entirely different sport than these teams

I know games actually have to be played vs on paper, but I find my interest waning daily…

[rmc523]

Soto’s deal is worth $41M more than the Marlins’ last 9 opening day payrolls combined….

[sports24/7]

I’m usually for players getting all of their money, but it feels bad for baseball for the Mets to just give Soto a blank check simply because their owner didn’t want to lose the bidding war. It just makes things so much harder for the smaller market teams when that’s what good players get on the open market. I don’t think it’ll come, but they need a total revamp of how contracts are done in baseball. It’s silly that most of these guys don’t hit FA until their late 20’s, and that these kinds of deals are getting handed out. I kind of got it for Ohtani because he’s such a unicorn, but for Soto’s deal to eclipse that one like it has, all things considered, just a year later seems crazy.

[lou]

Almost all of us. They never had a shot at him, and honestly that’s not a good contract for a team with limited resources. I’m fine with developing from within and signing the core early as a means of building a winning team. The talk every year of us signing a major free agent is just such a waste of time, which is why I give Lou shit for it

It's not a good contract. To reiterate, the hope was spending would be under check after a few years of some reserved spending (ala Montgomery and Bellinger and Snell) so they could slip in around $125-130m, and then well, Adames had an explosive summer and it appears certain ownership groups are completely drunk. More than Swanson is way too much.

[lou]

I'm sure you know this but just pointing out too that you can't just slap a salary cap on, they need to completely revamp the entire financial system. Because having both a cap while suppressing the vast majority of players salaries via the arbitration system would just be insane - especially the fact a player's salary is club-controlled for 3+ years. Also part of the issue is that the majority of the money is going to old players who are now bad instead of the people actually on the field (like our payrolll), and so getting rid of that suppression would help massively since "the money" is actually performing on the field.

They obviously can't do anything too big, but even something like 1 year of cost control (so that there is no financial disincentive to calling up a player) and 2 years of arbitration would go a long way. And comes out a lot closer to NBA/NHL/NFL rookie contracts, at least from what I can tell. Can even do stuff like adding arbitration years based off age of when a player was called up, to incentivize calling up young players instead of keeping them down for their prime years.

But that's all pure spitballing. They definitely need to do something because the whole thing is a mess, from all sides. But giving the players a better arbitration system and the teams a salary cap I think goes a long way.

Yes of course, but Soto has a larger contract than at least 5 ownership group's net worth so something is going to have to give here and quickly. It is a much larger discussion to be had across the board for sure. The Mets are on a different planet than the Marlins how are they supposed to compete?

And I think the start of this is if the antitrust exemption was a person, they should be shitting bricks right now, and next time a CBA rolls around there will be fireworks. Things like this are going to start popping up, and frankly half the owners are going to lock themselves out against Steve and the Dodgers with what is happening.

[lou]

I know games actually have to be played vs on paper, but I find my interest waning daily…

I can genuinely say, this is the least I have cared about baseball since the 80s. This offseason has finally broken me of cautious optimism they can make smart decisions around things.

You're just going to get pummeled by one of these top 6-10 teams spending eventually as one of them will work out annually. What Steve is doing in New York is outrageous. The only way around this is drafting 12+ killers all in a 3-4 year span that mature at the same time. And I mean, that's hard because the spenders are going to spend more on their scouting departments too so you're going to have a theoretical disadvantage there. And arbitration buyouts moving forward? Why are any of these kids doing that when they are seeing these numbers and they can take out an insurance policy on their health if they get catastrophically injured?

It's becoming like the Marlins are Temple in college football and expecting to beat Ohio State annually. It's just not going to be a thing. Hence, this whole thing is broken. MLB needs major structural change to survive. And quickly.

[sports24/7]

Jon Morosi says Luzardo is drawing interest at the winter meetings. He hasn’t been the best source on the Marlins, but at least it’s something.

[rmc523]

Jon Morosi says Luzardo is drawing interest at the winter meetings. He hasn’t been the best source on the Marlins, but at least it’s something.

I guess. If we like the continual shipping out of players.