i cant fathom a team with no talent being beat by a team with as much talent as the Reds. there is no way, should they have the same injury luck the rest of the way, that the Pirates will finish better then the Reds.
You need to take a closer look at the matchups position by position between the Reds and Pirates. While the Reds have much better 1st and 3rd basemen, the Pirates have a more complete team. It doesn’t even come close when you’re objective about it.
The Pirates have missed 2/3 of their outfield all year with injuries (Dickerson only has 11 at bats). The O will pick up when they’re full strength. They won’t average 8 runs per game but certainly will improve.
As for the Reds…..they’re the Reds. They often appear loaded with talent but do nothing. Until they prove otherwise they’ll continue to be….the Reds. Sorry last place again.
This is a business and teams have to think of the future so keeping a guy in the minors for a few weeks to keep him from being a FA for a year is just smart business. Tatis has had a great start but by 2025, they Padres may regret their move to bring him up at the start of the season.
Being a Cubs fan you should know all too well how important that extra year of control is (see Bryant, Kris). By the way calling him up early doesn’t guarantee that he will sign an extension. Not does not calling him up early guarantee that he won’t.
You are correct. Calling him up early doesn’t guarantee he’ll sign an extension. But at this point it really can’t hurt. Bryant will not sign one because he feels he got burned for those 2 weeks, and whoever offers the most in FA, is where he’ll go.
I’m a fan of guarantees over possibilities and the only thing that could have been guaranteed in the whole ordeal was control of Tatis’ 2025 season if they had held him down for the first 15 days.
By the way I’m not convinced Bryant would have signed an extension or given the Cubs any kind of discount even if they hadn’t done what they did. He is a Boras client and those guys typically don’t sell themselves short. Tatis is a Dan Lozano client and although he’s not as infamous as Boras his guys don’t sell themselves short either.
No they can not. There is a HUGE difference between sending a guy down for service time purposes after he has already made his major league debut and shined in the majors and holding a guy down who hasn’t made it to the majors yet and ended last season on the minor league DL for two extra weeks. MLBPA would have a legitimate case for a grievance if the Padres do what you are suggesting.
Not at all. Before the season started the Padres could argue rather effortlessly that Tatis had more to work on in the minors. Now that he has come up and shown that he belongs they can’t make that argument anymore.
How much of a difference will two weeks of a player really make over the course of a full season?
Oh and by the way when they called Tatis up they didn’t know he would play this well. They had reason for optimism but it was just as much if not more of a “maybe” than his 2025 season.
“It’s all relative. If your talent was as rare as Albies’, you might want to be paid fairly instead of your employer getting a huge bargain on you.” Every employer gets a huge bargain for the worker considering they make the profit. Anyone who says they’d turn down 35-45 million dollars is delusional. Regardless your profession u will take the best offer if it sets u up for life. This notion he sold himself short is ridiculous nothing in life is guaranteed except the contract he just signed. Grow up there is risk in any deal involved considering ailbes isn’t even proven yet seems to me he made the smart choice considering his floor is a platoon player.
Isn’t proven yet? He’s about as proven as a player can get with someone still questioning if he’s proven yet. Teams have a great idea of who will be good and who won’t by tripple A (earlier really) let alone after a couple of years in the majors. He got paid a small amount compared to other players in similar positions. I think he is a little different than others and the way his type of player age his market might have been worse by free agency. I do agree this/next year will show what kind of player he’ll be. They know he can play enough to be worth that money but they, agents, others showed how it could have been for him and he decided he’d take the guaranteed money. I thought he’d already be a little better but I liked Peraza also.
One year is a tiny sample size it doesn’t prove much. Chris johnson was an elite player for one year does that make him proven to that one years record?
Chris Johnson had spent 4 years in the majors before he was “elite” for one year. Any by elite I mean slightly better than mediocre.
Then again I don’t know if I would call Albies elite either. His OBP is meh. He hit 24 home runs in a season that Kole Calhoun hit 19 (meaning everyone is hitting 20 this day and age) his K/BB rate was atrocious. Yeah, I’m not calling him elite. Needs to take the next step first.
I agree it was his decision, but I don’t understand how his agent wasn’t able to point out more favorable comparisons to get Atlanta to agree to a better deal then that. The comparables arent close.
“Every employer gets a huge bargain for the worker considering they make the profit.”
So employees should just be happy with whatever they’re paid? Depending on the business, that would be true if all those employees were either, (a) paid the same as everyone else, or (b) paid according to each worker’s worth.
The problem with the Albies contract is he’ll be paid less than he’s worth and less than players of equal, or even, lesser ability.
Fans love to put it relative to the average person, saying things like $35M is more than most will see in a lifetime. But how would that average person feel finding out that he was being paid less than his fellow employees, some of which weren’t as good at their jobs as he was? Ozzie may not care about that now, but how will he feel in a few years, especially if, as is possible, he is one of the top players in the game?
The young man signed a contract for $30-some million. No one held a gun to his head. He and his agent could have said “no thanks, let’s revisit this after the season”.
The mantra pushed on this site every time a player signs a contract for less money then the writers think he should be getting ends up painting the owners-front offices as some sort of mean-spirited bullies that take advantage of unknowing players.
This is as ridiculous as writing articles blaming pitchers for taking advantage of batters that swing and miss at pitches out of the strike zone. People in this business put themselves in it, and have to live with the realities.
How come I never see an article about the ridiculous discrepancy between the revenues of large market vs. medium/small market franchises? How fair is that to lifelong fans of medium and small market teams? In fact, I seem to be about the only person on here that comments on that.
If MLBTR wants to campaign for salaries being given to players be similar for like performance – then is is only logical that they campaign for all revenues to be put into a pot and shared equally by all 30 teams.
All teams should also have to spend the same amount on payrolls each season.
MLBTR isn’t campaigning for anything. We are simply calling a spade a spade – Albies signed a terrible contract. In an objective sense, that’s the truth, even if Albies is happy with the deal. Whether the player likes his bad contract is not relevant to our discussion here – presumably all players who sign extensions are happy with the terms.
There’s simply no reasonable scenario where Albies’ best financial move right now was to take a five-year, $35MM contract with two $7MM club options, at age 22.
Could you see the issue as anymore two-dimensional? You seem to be as short-sighted as the Braves FO.
I love how you say “enough already” and then go on with false analogies like blaming pitchers, when the two are not analogous in the least.. Don’t insult us with ridiculous straw-man arguments. Come back in a few years when less talented guys are doing less, making a lot more money, and tell me how happy Albies is about it.
How is the Braves FO short-sighted? They just locked up a potential all star for 9 seasons at pennies on the dollar. Now they have extra millions they can spend on other needs. They made out like bandits. Don’t think for a second that any other major league club wouldn’t have emphatically jumped at the opportunity to do the same. If you’re going to call anyone short-sighted in this it would be Albies and his agent.
Max Scherzer turned down $144MM. Players turn down amounts of money all the time that normal people would find staggering.
Let me ask you this as a thought exercise: if Albies had signed a seven-year, $15MM deal, would he have sold himself short in that case? You’d say no, right, since $15MM would also have set him up for life?
Would you also agree that Vlad Jr should sign a ten-year, $15MM contract if the Blue Jays are to offer it to him now? Or at least that if he did, he did not sell himself short, since nothing in life is guaranteed and technically he could get hit by a bus or something?
Tim when u didn’t own your own company and you were an employee how much say or wiggle room would u have in your pay? Most ppl don’t have a choice in there income as the employer no matter the job controls your wage. You can be best worker in your business and still not be the best paid for that work. Your logic seems quite broken
I think this is funny because multiple players have turned down much more than $30-$45 million. In a business where players are able to earn millions, even hundreds of millions, there is something amiss when a player signs a contract which hinders their earning potential. It’s very possible that Albies values being secure more than other players who have held out for larger salaries. It’s also possible there was some sort of predatory behavior on the part of the team. Whatever reason Albies had to accept does not negate the fact that players in similar situations to his signed noticeably larger deals. Those comps are even outdated, and Albies still chose to settle for this contract which is much less than those (much less when considering the inflation of MLB salaries).
People disagreeing with you aren’t haters. Every writer on here has a crappy attitude about these extensions. It’s not for me or you or any other fan or sports personality to decide if a player should accept a contract. A simple yes or no when the offer was made is all that matters. That shows the players comfort level with the amount offered. It’s not up to a player to worry about the next players contract.
No…evaluating players’ contracts is one of the core parts of MLBTR and has been since its inception. So if a guy signs a deal like the one Albies did, or something on the other extreme, we’re definitely going to talk about it, as we always have.
This is a silly comment to me because the discussion is hardly whether they should have accepted, although it admittedly boils down to that. The discussion is, and should be, “Could he have gotten a much larger sum by agreeing to a different contract or not signing one at all?” The answer to that question is unequivocally yes. Albies could have done much better. That’s has many logical implications about whether he should have accepted. This garbage about it being a simple matter of a player agreeing to receive a large sum of money is so short-sighted. In fact, that point of view seems about as dense as I could imagine.
Lol. I agree that Albies could have done better and wish him nothing but a long and successful career but I almost want to see something bad happen to him and the Braves end up paying $35m for basically nothing just to make all the people slamming the extension look bad.
Maybe he turns into a light hitting 2b which he isn’t far from already. Maybe he gave up a few too many years, maybe he knows something we do not. Just like the new “tanking” its no different than its ever been. Maybe teams are done offering absurd contracts that dont work out. Front offices have their nerds now. Shifts and moneyball. Goose gossage had it right
The Rays are the real deal and will keep on winning. Their offense might not be as good over the rest of the season but who cares when you have 3 aces, 2 lights out Long relief pitchers, 2- 100 mph openers. 2 LH-RH 100mph closers, 2 TJ SPs almost healed, and 3 SP BA 100 best prospects! Sad that you never mentioned the Rays are built on pitching formost, (1.85 era leads MLB!)
i cant fathom a team with no talent being beat by a team with as much talent as the Reds. there is no way, should they have the same injury luck the rest of the way, that the Pirates will finish better then the Reds.
“i cant fathom a team with no talent being beat by a team with as much talent as the Reds.”
This sentence indicates that you believe the Reds have a negative talent level since you can’t fathom them beating a team with no talent.
This might be accurate, but…
You need to take a closer look at the matchups position by position between the Reds and Pirates. While the Reds have much better 1st and 3rd basemen, the Pirates have a more complete team. It doesn’t even come close when you’re objective about it.
You’re talking about an “on paper” scenario. The Reds’ pitching staff won’t stay healthy, and the bullpen won’t be able to hold teams down.
i dont think the Pirates have the offense to compete with the Reds, even with a more healthy pitching staff.
The Pirates have missed 2/3 of their outfield all year with injuries (Dickerson only has 11 at bats). The O will pick up when they’re full strength. They won’t average 8 runs per game but certainly will improve.
As for the Reds…..they’re the Reds. They often appear loaded with talent but do nothing. Until they prove otherwise they’ll continue to be….the Reds. Sorry last place again.
This is a business and teams have to think of the future so keeping a guy in the minors for a few weeks to keep him from being a FA for a year is just smart business. Tatis has had a great start but by 2025, they Padres may regret their move to bring him up at the start of the season.
Absolutely. It’s completely ridiculous that anyone was defending that one.
It’s not ridiculous if he signs a 8 year extension. You’ve been proven wrong, you’re welcome.
Being a Cubs fan you should know all too well how important that extra year of control is (see Bryant, Kris). By the way calling him up early doesn’t guarantee that he will sign an extension. Not does not calling him up early guarantee that he won’t.
You are correct. Calling him up early doesn’t guarantee he’ll sign an extension. But at this point it really can’t hurt. Bryant will not sign one because he feels he got burned for those 2 weeks, and whoever offers the most in FA, is where he’ll go.
I’m a fan of guarantees over possibilities and the only thing that could have been guaranteed in the whole ordeal was control of Tatis’ 2025 season if they had held him down for the first 15 days.
By the way I’m not convinced Bryant would have signed an extension or given the Cubs any kind of discount even if they hadn’t done what they did. He is a Boras client and those guys typically don’t sell themselves short. Tatis is a Dan Lozano client and although he’s not as infamous as Boras his guys don’t sell themselves short either.
If the Padres fade this year or underperform next year they can send him down for 3 weeks.
How is that any different than a player staying at the beginning of the season? People will still throw a hissy fit.
No they can not. There is a HUGE difference between sending a guy down for service time purposes after he has already made his major league debut and shined in the majors and holding a guy down who hasn’t made it to the majors yet and ended last season on the minor league DL for two extra weeks. MLBPA would have a legitimate case for a grievance if the Padres do what you are suggesting.
The argument is the same. Nobody believes what they are doing so who cares.
Not at all. Before the season started the Padres could argue rather effortlessly that Tatis had more to work on in the minors. Now that he has come up and shown that he belongs they can’t make that argument anymore.
Sacrificing wins now because of what may or may not happen in 2025 seems like an odd way to do business…
How much of a difference will two weeks of a player really make over the course of a full season?
Oh and by the way when they called Tatis up they didn’t know he would play this well. They had reason for optimism but it was just as much if not more of a “maybe” than his 2025 season.
How was the dog walk gatorman?
“It’s all relative. If your talent was as rare as Albies’, you might want to be paid fairly instead of your employer getting a huge bargain on you.” Every employer gets a huge bargain for the worker considering they make the profit. Anyone who says they’d turn down 35-45 million dollars is delusional. Regardless your profession u will take the best offer if it sets u up for life. This notion he sold himself short is ridiculous nothing in life is guaranteed except the contract he just signed. Grow up there is risk in any deal involved considering ailbes isn’t even proven yet seems to me he made the smart choice considering his floor is a platoon player.
Isn’t proven yet? He’s about as proven as a player can get with someone still questioning if he’s proven yet. Teams have a great idea of who will be good and who won’t by tripple A (earlier really) let alone after a couple of years in the majors. He got paid a small amount compared to other players in similar positions. I think he is a little different than others and the way his type of player age his market might have been worse by free agency. I do agree this/next year will show what kind of player he’ll be. They know he can play enough to be worth that money but they, agents, others showed how it could have been for him and he decided he’d take the guaranteed money. I thought he’d already be a little better but I liked Peraza also.
One year is a tiny sample size it doesn’t prove much. Chris johnson was an elite player for one year does that make him proven to that one years record?
Chris Johnson had spent 4 years in the majors before he was “elite” for one year. Any by elite I mean slightly better than mediocre.
Then again I don’t know if I would call Albies elite either. His OBP is meh. He hit 24 home runs in a season that Kole Calhoun hit 19 (meaning everyone is hitting 20 this day and age) his K/BB rate was atrocious. Yeah, I’m not calling him elite. Needs to take the next step first.
I agree it was his decision, but I don’t understand how his agent wasn’t able to point out more favorable comparisons to get Atlanta to agree to a better deal then that. The comparables arent close.
“Every employer gets a huge bargain for the worker considering they make the profit.”
So employees should just be happy with whatever they’re paid? Depending on the business, that would be true if all those employees were either, (a) paid the same as everyone else, or (b) paid according to each worker’s worth.
The problem with the Albies contract is he’ll be paid less than he’s worth and less than players of equal, or even, lesser ability.
Fans love to put it relative to the average person, saying things like $35M is more than most will see in a lifetime. But how would that average person feel finding out that he was being paid less than his fellow employees, some of which weren’t as good at their jobs as he was? Ozzie may not care about that now, but how will he feel in a few years, especially if, as is possible, he is one of the top players in the game?
Enough already…..
The young man signed a contract for $30-some million. No one held a gun to his head. He and his agent could have said “no thanks, let’s revisit this after the season”.
The mantra pushed on this site every time a player signs a contract for less money then the writers think he should be getting ends up painting the owners-front offices as some sort of mean-spirited bullies that take advantage of unknowing players.
This is as ridiculous as writing articles blaming pitchers for taking advantage of batters that swing and miss at pitches out of the strike zone. People in this business put themselves in it, and have to live with the realities.
How come I never see an article about the ridiculous discrepancy between the revenues of large market vs. medium/small market franchises? How fair is that to lifelong fans of medium and small market teams? In fact, I seem to be about the only person on here that comments on that.
If MLBTR wants to campaign for salaries being given to players be similar for like performance – then is is only logical that they campaign for all revenues to be put into a pot and shared equally by all 30 teams.
All teams should also have to spend the same amount on payrolls each season.
Let’s make MLB a rotisserie league.
MLBTR isn’t campaigning for anything. We are simply calling a spade a spade – Albies signed a terrible contract. In an objective sense, that’s the truth, even if Albies is happy with the deal. Whether the player likes his bad contract is not relevant to our discussion here – presumably all players who sign extensions are happy with the terms.
There’s simply no reasonable scenario where Albies’ best financial move right now was to take a five-year, $35MM contract with two $7MM club options, at age 22.
“No one held a gun to his head.”
Could you see the issue as anymore two-dimensional? You seem to be as short-sighted as the Braves FO.
I love how you say “enough already” and then go on with false analogies like blaming pitchers, when the two are not analogous in the least.. Don’t insult us with ridiculous straw-man arguments. Come back in a few years when less talented guys are doing less, making a lot more money, and tell me how happy Albies is about it.
How is the Braves FO short-sighted? They just locked up a potential all star for 9 seasons at pennies on the dollar. Now they have extra millions they can spend on other needs. They made out like bandits. Don’t think for a second that any other major league club wouldn’t have emphatically jumped at the opportunity to do the same. If you’re going to call anyone short-sighted in this it would be Albies and his agent.
Max Scherzer turned down $144MM. Players turn down amounts of money all the time that normal people would find staggering.
Let me ask you this as a thought exercise: if Albies had signed a seven-year, $15MM deal, would he have sold himself short in that case? You’d say no, right, since $15MM would also have set him up for life?
Would you also agree that Vlad Jr should sign a ten-year, $15MM contract if the Blue Jays are to offer it to him now? Or at least that if he did, he did not sell himself short, since nothing in life is guaranteed and technically he could get hit by a bus or something?
Tim when u didn’t own your own company and you were an employee how much say or wiggle room would u have in your pay? Most ppl don’t have a choice in there income as the employer no matter the job controls your wage. You can be best worker in your business and still not be the best paid for that work. Your logic seems quite broken
I think this is funny because multiple players have turned down much more than $30-$45 million. In a business where players are able to earn millions, even hundreds of millions, there is something amiss when a player signs a contract which hinders their earning potential. It’s very possible that Albies values being secure more than other players who have held out for larger salaries. It’s also possible there was some sort of predatory behavior on the part of the team. Whatever reason Albies had to accept does not negate the fact that players in similar situations to his signed noticeably larger deals. Those comps are even outdated, and Albies still chose to settle for this contract which is much less than those (much less when considering the inflation of MLB salaries).
People disagreeing with you aren’t haters. Every writer on here has a crappy attitude about these extensions. It’s not for me or you or any other fan or sports personality to decide if a player should accept a contract. A simple yes or no when the offer was made is all that matters. That shows the players comfort level with the amount offered. It’s not up to a player to worry about the next players contract.
No…evaluating players’ contracts is one of the core parts of MLBTR and has been since its inception. So if a guy signs a deal like the one Albies did, or something on the other extreme, we’re definitely going to talk about it, as we always have.
This is a silly comment to me because the discussion is hardly whether they should have accepted, although it admittedly boils down to that. The discussion is, and should be, “Could he have gotten a much larger sum by agreeing to a different contract or not signing one at all?” The answer to that question is unequivocally yes. Albies could have done much better. That’s has many logical implications about whether he should have accepted. This garbage about it being a simple matter of a player agreeing to receive a large sum of money is so short-sighted. In fact, that point of view seems about as dense as I could imagine.
Lol. I agree that Albies could have done better and wish him nothing but a long and successful career but I almost want to see something bad happen to him and the Braves end up paying $35m for basically nothing just to make all the people slamming the extension look bad.
Maybe he turns into a light hitting 2b which he isn’t far from already. Maybe he gave up a few too many years, maybe he knows something we do not. Just like the new “tanking” its no different than its ever been. Maybe teams are done offering absurd contracts that dont work out. Front offices have their nerds now. Shifts and moneyball. Goose gossage had it right
The Rays are the real deal and will keep on winning. Their offense might not be as good over the rest of the season but who cares when you have 3 aces, 2 lights out Long relief pitchers, 2- 100 mph openers. 2 LH-RH 100mph closers, 2 TJ SPs almost healed, and 3 SP BA 100 best prospects! Sad that you never mentioned the Rays are built on pitching formost, (1.85 era leads MLB!)