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Hank Chinaski

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Everything posted by Hank Chinaski

  1. I don’t think so; I’m just speculating that a team that has an interest in signing him to a megadeal may be more incentivized to trade for him, so that they get a 2-year head start in trying to negotiate the megadeal. For example, if you’re the Yankees, would you be willing to spend a little more in prospect capital to acquire him, knowing that if you don’t, the Mets might trade for him and then have exclusive ability to extend him for the next 2 years…in which case you may never get the opportunity to sign him. Maybe not, but it seems like that would have some value to them. But yeah, Washington shouldn’t care; they should obviously get as much as they can, whether that’s from the Mets or the Yankees or the Rays.
  2. Ok, counterpoints: 1) Soto is 23. This isn’t anything like giving a 31 year old Albert Pujols a 10-year deal. Signing him now gets you what figures to be the entire prime of his career. 2) you have to consider just how good of a hitter the guy is. What he’s done at such a young age puts him in the most elite of elite company in the history of baseball. 3) Trout’s deal isn’t the reason that the Angels can’t get out of their own way. They paid a ton for Rendon despite his injury history…and lo and behold, he’s been injured for most of his time there. They took on Justin Upton’s contract. They paid geriatric Pujols $30 million for several years. The Trout deal is fine, it’s all the other dumb decisions they’ve made that have been the problem. The Rangers got lambasted for the A-Rod deal, but it turned out that that wasn’t a bad contract at all. $25 million at the end of that deal was not $25 million at the beginning, just as $40 million in 2022 won’t be $40 million in 2037. Signing Soto doesn’t guarantee a team will become a winner; any club will obviously have to have a good team around him. And I totally agree that there is a good argument to be made that tying up that much money in any player is too risky. But given the Tatis and Lindor contracts…why wouldn’t Soto ask for more? That’s just the market. If it were me, I’d probably not tie up that much money into one guy. But I don’t think it’s necessarily foolish to do so if you are, say, Cohen and the Mets. That’s a good team, and a guy like Soto in that lineup makes them a lot better. It takes some spotlight away from the Yankees. And it doesn’t necessarily cripple them from a payroll perspective- they may decide they’ll just pay the luxury tax for a while like the Dodgers have. Again, what I find more interesting is whether they’re willing to pay Soto, the luxury tax, and the prospects it would take to get him now and start negotiating. Now you’re talking about paying him way more than the $500 million.
  3. It is going to be fascinating. If a team trades for him, they’ll have two years to try to sign him to an extension. So maybe the Yankees or the Mets or the Dodgers are willing to give him $500mm…but are they willing to give him that money AND the kind of prospects it’ll take to pull off a trade for him? That’s a fuckton of value. So what’s the value tied to being the only team who can negotiate with him for a while?
  4. Davis, Strawberry and Bo. Straw should have hit 600 HR but couldn’t keep his shit together. Bo’s career(s) would have been fascinating to watch on many levels, as he was still developing as a baseball player. Those guys playing (full, healthy seasons) in the 90s offense era would have been great.
  5. I have no idea how much of a douchebag this Tennessee kid is. I’ll say that at my age, most of them seem like douchebags. They’re kids. They’re dipshits. Most will grow out of it.
  6. Sure, and it was still at least 3 years too long.
  7. I guess it depends on how long we’re talking about. The A-Rod one was good. These 10+ year deals that guys are signing these days are generally in their early/mid 20s. Those could work. But the deals that long for guys in their 30s (Pujols, Cabrera) were dumb and I doubt we’ll see those again.
  8. They have the best farm system per Fangraphs, so they have the prospect capital, and Soto won’t cost that much before free agency. They are already good and should be for a while.
  9. Yeah. I’ll be surprised if he’s moved this season. But in the off-season I could see it. Cleveland, TB, NYY, LAD, NYM could be fits - good farm systems, teams who could win in next two years, and a few that have a shot at extending him. Could definitely see the Mets giving him a $500mm deal.
  10. He turned down 15/$440. That’s…a little nuts. I think. I guess it’s possible he can string together some contracts that offer higher annual salaries…but holy hell. I said earlier that it would be almost impossible for Washington to get fair value for 2.5 years of Soto. That still may be true, but if he’s turning down $440 million…well maybe that changes the calculus a bit. It’ll still take a metric shit-ton of prospect value, probably a lot more than the Astros have. Sadly, teams like the Dodgers and Yankees have better farm systems right now. (And I love Soto; god I hope he doesn’t go to one of those teams.)
  11. Also, nobody has enough depth to offset the concurrent absence of the best hitter and best second baseman in MLB (in addition to another good hitter in Brantley).
  12. It’s not a free fall, it’s regression, and it was inevitable. Did you really think this was the best MLB team ever a few weeks ago when they were on a 120-win pace?
  13. If Dusty sits Bregman or Tucker for a game in which Altuve, Alvarez and Brantley are unavailable…well I’ll be terribly annoyed by the stupidity of the whole thing, and also completely unsurprised.
  14. I love how they’ve already concluded that Ewers is a headcase and won’t succeed, and that Manning is magnificently overrated on account of his family. Like, they’ve already accepted these as facts, and based all of their opinions on these assumptions, which are really just wishes. Also I’m old enough to remember them saying the exact same shit about VY and Colt. Those idiots legitimately thought that Reggie McNeal was a better QB than Vince Young. Hell, I bet you could still find some that would make that argument, despite one being in the CFB HoF and the other being completely anonymous and forgotten.
  15. I’m aware it’s not possible because it doesn’t make financial sense. That doesn’t change the fact that a set of 162 games does a better job of identifying the best teams than a set of 7 games does.
  16. Well yeah, it’ll never happen - it’ll actually go the opposite way and the playoffs will become even more watered-down. But it would be a better system in terms of actually pairing the best teams in the WS. As it is, we play 162 games - enough to reliably identify the best team - but the “champions” are decided by short series, which, in baseball, are reasonably close to 50-50 propositions. In other words, we choose to crown champs based on a sample size of 7 when we have a sample size of 162 just sitting there.
  17. I used to like it a lot more before interleague regular season play started in the 90s. I wish they would go back to that model (in which Al and NL teams don’t play each other). I also wish they’d go back to no divisions in the 2 leagues and no league playoffs. World Series is the winner of the AL v winner of the NL. (Yeah I know we aren’t going back to any of that.)
  18. It’s why I don’t gamble - I could win thousands and it wouldn’t get me that excited, but if I lose $20 I’m apoplectic.
  19. Yes. VY is the best college football player of the last 40 years, and Texas was the best team in CFB in 2008 and got royally fucked out of the title game are two things I will go to my grave believing. I like to think I’m a reasonable person who can be swayed by a solid argument, backed up by data/facts. But good fucking luck convincing me that I’m wrong about this.
  20. I was at some party with my girlfriend that night. Wine and cheese crowd, not a lot of interest in the game (even though I was in Austin). Despite how incredibly frustrating that entire game was, I kept it together pretty well…until that roughing penalty on the punt. Then I completely lost my shit. I erupted, lunging from the couch and screamed some incoherent string of the most offensive words I could come up with. I stopped, looked around and realized everyone in the house was silent and staring at me. I looked at them, yelled “motherfuck!” and left the house and walked the 5 or so miles home. It was not my proudest moment (ok it kinda is). That relationship went south very soon thereafter.
  21. Holy shit. This is hysterical. The incessant discussion, among mostly/presumably grown men, about this pool party (what the actual fuck happens at this party anyway?) is marvelous. The seemingly earnest confusion about what’s different between last cycle and this cycle, and the panic that this confusion is creating, is fantastic (I mean, I don’t even really follow recruiting very closely and it seems fairly obvious what has changed). But the best part is still just the complete lack of self-awareness that the ags have turned into an art form. I used to think they were just intellectually dishonest or were masters of cognitive dissonance, but alas, I’ve come to accept that…they aren’t. It’s sincere, and that is really something.
  22. Mancini (apparently) can play in the OF (though he’s mostly played 1B this season) which probably makes him a little more desirable than Bell. Offensively they’re similar, but I prefer Bell (higher BB%, lower K%). I wouldn’t be that excited about Cruz, would definitely prefer more position versatility. I like Benintendi…in that I’d feel better with him in there than Chas or Siri…
  23. This, haha I absolutely love reading this. It truly warms my heart.
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