Welp, as we suspected all along the whole Roki Sasaki interview tour/"homework assignment" was a whole truckload of horse poo poo. He was going to be a Dodger all along. And the Dodgers, apparently the richest team in baseball by a very wide margin were handed an ace pitcher essentially for free. There are several things I feel need to be said here:
1. If parity is good for baseball, this and several other recent Dodger deals are not good for the game. Due to an enormous talent gap between them and their closest competitor(probably the Yankees and the World Series exposed that gap to be not close and it's a lot wider now).
2. The Ohtani deal was an obvious attempt to circumvent, or at least excessively mitigate, the CBT tax. Not saying something like that is going to be repeated anytime soon but whether it requires the Commissioner to make a ruling or the Basic Agreement between MLB and the Players Association being modified, deferred salaries of that magnitude should either be disallowed or the tax should not be devalued by projected inflation.
3. It's ridiculous for a 23 year old established ace from Japan which produces talent very competitive with MLB to be treated the same as a 16 year old prospect from Latin America with zero professional experience. Sasaki should have been a full-fledged free agent with no upper limit of the size or length of his contract. Yes, maybe the Dodgers still end up signing him. If they have that kind of money, more power to them but they should not get him essentially for free for at least the next 3-4 years.
4. Although I can't prove it, I strongly suspect there is an element of NBA-style player collusion to create superteams going on here, first with Ohtani's deferral scheme and now with Sasaki essentially accepting far less than market value to add his talents to what was already an MLB superteam when he could have waited just 2 years and scored a $ Multi-hundred million deal for himself.
What this means for Buster Posey and the Giants, they can't worry about what the Dodgers are doing although, IMO, they should register a grievance with the Commissioner even if they are sure it won't go anwhere. Who knows? Maybe they have? I would not expect such a grievance to be made public. Beyond that, Buster needs to stick to the fundamentals of building a team that can compete for the expanded postseason on a yearly basis. Once you're in the postseason, hey! 2024 notwithstanding, anything can happen!
All three points you made Doc are spot on … MLB’s owners need to get rid of the loopholes and really bring back a level of competition that’s lacking nowadays. Besides parity in rosters, the economics in the sport are really going sideways … did you see where Comcast is upping NBC Sports Bay Area to its highest priced channel package? For now, we’re using YouTube TV, but it just raised its price by $10 a month. And I read on a blog that it might be a matter of time before even third-party services, like YouTube TV, are going to have to pass along those increases to sports viewers who want a dedicated channel for Giants, Warriors and/or Kings games. This would be a good time for the Giants to break away and start streaming games … I’d pay for the service! (The only reason we’re still using a cable-like service with dozens of channels we never watch is because we want to watch the Giants and Warriors, and right now NBC Bay Area is it … unless you want to figure out a way to get around the MLB package’s restrictions on home games.)
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty shocking the talent they'll have in that rotation:
ReplyDeleteBlake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Roki Sasaki, Shohei Ohtani
That's 5 Aces. Two of whom play for peanuts...though, sadly I have to rally around the fact that all have injury concerns.
At what point should we consider the NPB to be a minor league conglomerate for the Dodgers?
The Franchise Tax Board cannot be too happy about losing tax on deferred money. I think money is taxed based on where they play their games and the deferred money will be taxed where the players end up living. So Ohtani gets California taxed on a little more than half the money he’s getting now and then he moves out of California when he retires and taxes will end up going where he goes.
ReplyDeleteFour aces play for peanuts. All but Glasnow have deferred salaries and Sasaki being paid international pool money.
ReplyDeleteMany Dodgers pitchers have injury concerns and I’m wondering if it’s related to the way they use them in their system.
ReplyDeleteThere is a strong direct correlation between velocity and pitcher injury. Almost all of the Dodgers pitchers roll out of bed throwing triple digit MPH's.
DeleteWhere do the Giants go from here? Not much left in the free agent market. Pete Alonso is the biggest fish left, but how would he serve the team with whatever long-term deal that he would require? Alonso could play first base for two years while Bryce Eldridge gets his chops down as a fielder. Eldridge if needed could DH, then when he is ready switch with Alonso. Eldridge at first, Alonso DH. Giants' owners would have to dig deep. We probably have discussed this before, but how much risk is there in Alonso's skills deterioating? 35 HRs is not an unreasonable projection for Pete. Alonso has enough power to hit HRs at Oracle. At this point, I would make the deal, otherwise the Giants chances of just competing with the Dodger All-Star squad and getting a wild card spot over the DBacks and Pads have diminshed.
ReplyDeletePete Alonso's power would look great in the Giants lineup but I'll trust Buster's judgment whether he fits into his vision for the team and his longterm impact on the roster, positive or negative.
DeleteHe hits well @ Oracle, especially the last 2 years.
DeleteHis overall numbers are in a 3-year decline. If this continues on a multi-year deal, it would get very ugly.
Surely no long term deal but a 1-year overpay would give him a chance to try again next year without a qualifying offer.
Forever Giant Curt Casali signs with the Braves on a minor league contract his 11th different organization over 14 professional seasons entering his age-36 season (per MLBTR)
ReplyDeleteHe will reportedly receive a $6.5MM signing bonus (MLBTR), which is significantly more than what has been said LA had: $5,146,200, the same as SF a few days ago.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, Toronto had $8,261,600. Per pool numbers from the AP at 2:18 PM PST, January 17, 2025.