The Reds finalized a three-year, $16.5MM contract extension with Sean Marshall earlier today, so now let's check in on the latest from the NL Central…
- Marshall will earn $4.5MM in 2013, $5.5MM in 2014, and $6.5MM in 2015 according to the AP (via John Fay of The Cincinnati Enquirer on Twitter). The southpaw can earn $1MM more per year if he closes for the Reds.
- “We’re obviously very excited about it,” said Reds GM Walt Jocketty to reporters (including MLB.com's Mark Sheldon) about Marshall's deal. “When we made the trade for him, we made it intending to extend him. We felt confident we would do that. We wanted to approach it sooner than later.”
- The Pirates are still willing to work out a long-term extension with Andrew McCutchen, reports Rob Biertempfel of The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. McCutchen's camp is looking for something close to the $51MM given to Justin Upton while the club is coming in around $10MM below that.
- Jeff Francis told Jon Paul Morosi of FOX Sports that his final decision came between the Reds and Mets (Twitter link). The southpaw signed a minor league deal with Cincinnati last month.
- "We saw this coming years ago," said Pirates team president Frank Coonelly to Biertempfel when asked about the new draft spending restrictions. "We pushed money up to make sure we'd be taking advantage of opportunities we had last year and the year before."
McCutcheon doesn’t have Upton’s power though.
He has more upside, in my opinion.
Keep in mind that Upton is actually 1 year younger than mccutchen, but has been superior in every season.
Upton has also had season ending shoulder surgery. Not saying he isn’t good, but Mccutchen undoubtedly deserves more money for his role on an atrociously bad team. Don’t forget that people considered this guy a legit MVP candidate mid season when the buccos were in first place.
I don’t think LazerTown was saying that Mccutchen was bad, but that Upton is superior and younger.
Case in point:
Mccutchen was an MVP candidate mid season
Upton was an MVP candidate all season
Did we say he’s younger too?
let’s not overplay the shoulder surgery – “non-throwing” is how you should classify it.
Upton doesn’t have McCutchen’s fielding or speed, nor has Cutch had any sort of major injury.
Granted they play different positions and defensive metrics suck but,
Mccutchen bdWAR 0.0
Upton bdWAR 2.9
They have different swings, but Mcutchen has better speed and will get many more triples and stolen bases than Upton can.
cinci paid way too much for a reliever…apparently it’s really, really easy to spend $17M.
He’s getting paid $3.1M this year to be an elite set-up man. He will then get paid $5-7M to be the closer for 2013-15. That’s a pretty cheap closer considering we just paid Coco Cordero $12M to close out games and give the city heart attacks while he tried to get the last out (look at his 4+ FIP).
Not trying to start anything here.. But nobody complains about teams like Pittsburgh spending over 15m on the draft, yet a big market team spends 9-10m and it’s a whole different story altogether.
Um, thats the only way for teams that have no money to compete guy. Hope they get lucky in the lottery that is the MLB draft.
Jerry Reinsdorf complained. Bud listened. Amateur athletes across the globe get shafted.
Actually thats the main reason why they set new spending limits on the draft. Now the bucs have no advantage of getting an overslot player like Bell. They also have no shot at more then 1 star player on the entire roster. That big market team can outbid by 10 mil and suck the life right out of the burgh.
Any team and every team should spend 10m+ on the rule 4 draft.. there is -0- excuse for teams to spend less than that, yet as I recall.. less than 10 teams in 2011 spent as much as 9m.. Why? They have no problems spending 3m each on washed up bench players? Why not give that to an over slot star, drafted in the…5-10th round instead? Smart teams have been doing that for years!
Pittsburgh finally learned this lesson. How do you think Tampa got so good? Boston managed to put the majority of their stars on the field? Oakland develops their stars, then trades them away when they get expensive? The Rule 4 draft, yet these teams, that would rather get cheap, complain about athletes and now?? 2 sport stars will go to football, SMART athletes in HS will go to college.. It is a lose-lose situation.
Having a great scouting and development staff has been washed away now for the most part and many of the great prospects at the age of 18-19 will be middle prospect at the age of 21-22 now before the farm systems get ahold of them with bad habits formed.
This goes to show you how poorly news gets reported outside of a local city.
Everybody in Pittsburgh knew that Frank Coonelly was hired to be president of the team because he was the man in charge of setting up the new draft rules to be implemented 3 years down the road (which have gone into effect this year).
With his knowledge of what was to come, the Pirates, just as it was foretold, took full advantage of their last chances to spend big in the draft. This news is at least three years old.
Yet, only now, the rest of baseball and the media outside of Pittsburgh is just finding out about this? The national media is highly imcompetent.
Yikes. 15M+ for McCutchen? Yuck.
Blue Jays have 5 year max policy for FA. I doubt Votto comes here so forget about it.
Scott Rolen, Brandon Phillips, Ryan Madson, Ryan Ludwick, Miguel Cairo and Willie Harris come off the books after this season. Rolen and Cairo will likely retire and it’s unlikely they will pursue resigning Harris. Ludwick is a question mark and his re-signing will depend heavily on his success in left field this season. Those six contracts coming off the books would give the Reds about 29.9 million dollars to play with (Out of an estimated 85 million dollar payroll in 2013).
2014 Reds’ free agents include Joey Votto, Bronson Arroyo, Bill Bray and Nick Masset. The two contracts of Votto and Arroyo alone are worth $23.5 million; Bray and Masset are still subject to arbitration, so I expect them to receive one year deals.
Now, take that 29.9 million for 2013 and the 23.5 million for 2014, that gives the Reds about 53.4 million dollars of expiring contracts to spread around between Phillips, Votto, Madson and any players who will see their salary increase as stipulated in their contract, or in arbitration.
Madson likely won’t re-sign, so take him off the books. Say Phillips costs 12 million per year, which leaves the Reds with about 41.4 million to spend. Then if you add in a Votto extension worth say 23 million a year, that leaves the Reds with 18.4 million. That 18.4 million would go into raises through contract conditions/arbitration raises, as stated above.
To say things simply, there is a better chance than you seem to let on that the Reds could re-sign him. The numbers don’t lie, and this is based off a 85 million dollar payroll, which could go up if a deep playoff run happens/raise in attendence.
Votto was asked about the potential of playing for the Jays in an in an interview with Jon Morosi and he “Did not sense great enthusiasm on his part.” … doesn’t sound like JV is much interested in playing for his home town team
That’s what they told Bautista.
I could see them opening the vault up for a Votto-type.
Bautista wasn’t a FA signing rather an extension. They have clearly stated they will not sign FA with 5+ year contract.
What neither of you have considered either is that they would need to replace those players with someone who can actually play decently to stay in contention.
The other issue I noticed from TophersReds was the fact that he was projecting payroll to stay at 85 million. Each of 2013 and 2014. I really believe that it will continue to climb unless there are some major injuries either season. I predict by at the latest 2015 the reds Payroll will be near 100 million. I believe it is over 85 million this year already. Probably closer to 90 million.