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What to do with Chris Sale
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Post by awalkinthepark on Oct 3, 2022 12:37:52 GMT -5
Going to bring this thread back because in the Maguire thread, I said that having Sale under contract is a good problem to have, and got some disagreement. I still think that's true and will explain why. The Red Sox can (and should) be taking risky bets with their money. They have so much money to work with that in some ways, I actually think it would be a bad sign if some of there money weren't being wasted, because that means they aren't taking enough risks. The Red Sox are not a small market club. The goal is not to maximize WAR/$, the goal is to win a WS as often as they can. Those are 2 very distinct things, and if you are going for the latter, you should be willing to place risky bets on players with your financial resources. But because of the nature of a risky bet, *some of them will fail*. And the only way to truly avoid a Sale situation is to refrain from giving out big contracts altogether, because predicting future performance is so difficult. Now, obviously if you are constantly missing on the big contracts you give out, it will eventually come back to bite you as it did this year. Sale, Eovaldi, JD Martinez and Price combined for almost no production this year. But having 1 guy like that won't sink a team with the resources of the Red Sox, and 3 out of those 4 will be gone. So we owe Sale ~$50 million over the next 2 years. My honest opinion is, so what? $50 million over 2 years is nothing for a team like the Red Sox on the off chance that he is able to regain his form. That is a risk the Red Sox should be taking, considering how hard it is to find a pitcher of Sale's caliber. So I maintain that having Chris Sale on ice isn't the worst thing in the world. Players get injured, it happens. It would be much worse if the lesson from the Price or Sale contracts was "don't ever sign elite pitchers". Maximizing WAR/$ should result in more WS wins, though. There is an argument for "overpaying" at the trade deadline for marginal wins depending on team performance, but otherwise value is king, especially for teams that want to compete every year. You also haven't justified why risky deals are beneficial, just why you're comfortable with taking on risk. Are you implying that booming and busting at the whims of whether risky FA deals pan out is going to lead to more WS wins? If we had not signed dumb contracts like Sale's, that money would likely have been allocated in a more productive way. We might not have needed a rebuild after 2019. Heck, Mookie Betts could still be playing at Fenway. Having dead weight on your payroll absolutely does matter. I think it's fine to take on risk in a vacuum, but for a risky deal the reward also needs to be greater. I also think that limiting risk where possible is smarter when the intention is to compete every year. Too many risky deals at once increases the likelihood of busts, lost seasons, and a forced rebuild. First, I completely disagree that maximizing WAR/$ results in more WS wins. The Dodgers are the best run organization in the sport right now and the favorites to win the WS, and yet on a rate basis they are paying more per win than a lot of other teams, because they are paying sticker price for the production of Mookie, Freddie Freeman, and Kershaw. There are plenty of other teams that have gotten more value out of the money spent on the field - the Rays, the Mariners, the Cardinals, the Blue Jays - but that doesn't make them better teams. When you have a good team, you should be pushing more chips into the middle of the pot. They Rays would have been much better off with Freddie Freeman at first, and the Mariners would have been much better off with Correa or Seager at SS, even though both of those things would have increased their $/win. As far as Sale goes, you have the benefit of hindsight to know that this money could have been allocated in better ways. No one sets out to sign a dumb contract, certainly not the Red Sox. When the Red Sox signed Sale to his extension, the general consensus was that it was a team-friendly deal, and he left money on the table: blogs.fangraphs.com/chris-sale-finally-cashes-in/He got hurt, but no one at the time knew he was going to get hurt. The most reasonable expectation was that he would continue to pitch at a high level, just with fewer innings, ~150 IP each year instead of the 200 IP he was throwing from 2013-2017. Going into 2019, he was still one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball, and he agreed to a team friendly extension. If he didn't need TJ, and had kept pitching at a 4-5 WAR level, this contract would have been a steal. The only reason this looks like a dumb contract now is because we know in hindsight he got hurt. But injury risks are always there, which is why it is good for the Red Sox to stick to their guns and not give every one of their players market rate extensions. Mookie was obviously a much lower risk player than Sale was, but that is why he demanded so much money. And there is still plenty of time left for that Mookie contract to look bad. We have no idea what sort of player he will be from 31-39. If Chris Sale had signed a 10 year/$325 million contract in 2016 at age 27, it also would have looked like a great financial move a few years into it. But imagine if instead of owing him 2 years/$55 million right now, they owed him 6 years/$170 million like Mookie is going to get for those years. That is a much bigger problem. The combination of these 2 things are why it's not just important to spend money, but to recognize that the time to really go big is when you are doubling down on a WS contender. And this is precisely what Bloom has said over and over again. Timing is the most important factor when giving out large financial commitments. This is why they value financial flexibility to much - they don't want to just spend money, they reserve the right to spend the money on a team that is a strong contender.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Oct 3, 2022 14:12:37 GMT -5
Can we please stop with the "he should take less money for the good of the team" nonsense? Hearing it for years with Pedroia has given me trauma.
Sale's contract going forward is to compensate him for his going-forward contributions to the team. By negotiating for a player opt-out, the team gave him a minimum guarantee, essentially, for those years of the deal but gave him the option to end the contract if he thinks he can do better. Presumably, they gained a benefit at the time of the negotiation by giving him the opt-out, presumably in lower cash paid in the contract. Him getting hurt on the job was foreseeable and part of the information the parties were considering at the time.
There is no reason for a player to ever voluntarily take a pay cut for altruistic reasons for no return. I still remember Bronson Arroyo signing a very team-friendly deal only to get unceremoniously traded to Cincinnati before the season even started. There's no reason to show a team that kind of loyalty.
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Post by notstarboard on Oct 3, 2022 14:46:42 GMT -5
Maximizing WAR/$ should result in more WS wins, though. There is an argument for "overpaying" at the trade deadline for marginal wins depending on team performance, but otherwise value is king, especially for teams that want to compete every year. You also haven't justified why risky deals are beneficial, just why you're comfortable with taking on risk. Are you implying that booming and busting at the whims of whether risky FA deals pan out is going to lead to more WS wins? If we had not signed dumb contracts like Sale's, that money would likely have been allocated in a more productive way. We might not have needed a rebuild after 2019. Heck, Mookie Betts could still be playing at Fenway. Having dead weight on your payroll absolutely does matter. I think it's fine to take on risk in a vacuum, but for a risky deal the reward also needs to be greater. I also think that limiting risk where possible is smarter when the intention is to compete every year. Too many risky deals at once increases the likelihood of busts, lost seasons, and a forced rebuild. First, I completely disagree that maximizing WAR/$ results in more WS wins. The Dodgers are the best run organization in the sport right now and the favorites to win the WS, and yet on a rate basis they are paying more per win than a lot of other teams, because they are paying sticker price for the production of Mookie, Freddie Freeman, and Kershaw. There are plenty of other teams that have gotten more value out of the money spent on the field - the Rays, the Mariners, the Cardinals, the Blue Jays - but that doesn't make them better teams. When you have a good team, you should be pushing more chips into the middle of the pot. They Rays would have been much better off with Freddie Freeman at first, and the Mariners would have been much better off with Correa or Seager at SS, even though both of those things would have increased their $/win. As far as Sale goes, you have the benefit of hindsight to know that this money could have been allocated in better ways. No one sets out to sign a dumb contract, certainly not the Red Sox. When the Red Sox signed Sale to his extension, the general consensus was that it was a team-friendly deal, and he left money on the table: blogs.fangraphs.com/chris-sale-finally-cashes-in/He got hurt, but no one at the time knew he was going to get hurt. The most reasonable expectation was that he would continue to pitch at a high level, just with fewer innings, ~150 IP each year instead of the 200 IP he was throwing from 2013-2017. Going into 2019, he was still one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball, and he agreed to a team friendly extension. If he didn't need TJ, and had kept pitching at a 4-5 WAR level, this contract would have been a steal. The only reason this looks like a dumb contract now is because we know in hindsight he got hurt. But injury risks are always there, which is why it is good for the Red Sox to stick to their guns and not give every one of their players market rate extensions. Mookie was obviously a much lower risk player than Sale was, but that is why he demanded so much money. And there is still plenty of time left for that Mookie contract to look bad. We have no idea what sort of player he will be from 31-39. If Chris Sale had signed a 10 year/$325 million contract in 2016 at age 27, it also would have looked like a great financial move a few years into it. But imagine if instead of owing him 2 years/$55 million right now, they owed him 6 years/$170 million like Mookie is going to get for those years. That is a much bigger problem. The combination of these 2 things are why it's not just important to spend money, but to recognize that the time to really go big is when you are doubling down on a WS contender. And this is precisely what Bloom has said over and over again. Timing is the most important factor when giving out large financial commitments. This is why they value financial flexibility to much - they don't want to just spend money, they reserve the right to spend the money on a team that is a strong contender. The odds of winning the WS even with the best team in the majors is low enough that it's not useful to focus on which teams are favorites or on examples of teams that did or didn't win. You also have to caveat this because $/WAR from free agents will be less than homegrown players, so a team going big on free agents during a certain tax cycle is going to look worse in $/WAR even if they've been very cost efficient. Even with those caveats, the Dodgers right now are absolutely not paying more per win than other teams. They've been darned efficient. I don't have the energy to make a spreadsheet and do the full comparison, so take the other teams with top-10 salaries as examples ($ from Spotrac's luxury tax payrolls list; it's probably somewhat inaccurate since it seems to be counting singing bonuses for prospects against the luxury tax, but I have no better source to use):
NYM: $314 million / 49.3 fWAR = $6.4 million / fWAR
LAD: $283 million / 62.4 fWAR = $4.5 million / fWAR
NYY: $277 million / 53.2 fWAR = $5.2 million / fWAR
PHI: $266 million / 44.3 fWAR = $6.0 million / fWAR BOS: $252 million / 27.0 fWAR = $9.3 million / fWAR
SDP: $234 million / 39.7 fWAR = $5.9 million / fWAR ATL: $233 million / 50.7 fWAR = $4.6 million / fWAR
CWS: $228 million / 32.2 fWAR = $6.2 million / fWAR LAA: $212 million / 28.8 fWAR = $7.4 million / fWAR
HOU: $212 million / 54.7 fWAR = $3.9 million / fWAR
Citing franchises like Tampa and Seattle that do not spend big on free agents as counterpoints doesn't make sense, because they're buying much less of an entire asset class (i.e. valuable free agents) that does worse in terms of $/WAR. $/WAR is still every bit as important within that asset class. That's why it makes more sense to compare LA's spending with the other top spenders in the league, and you have to go down to teams spending like $20 million below the cap before you can match LAD's efficiency.
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Sale has so far been paid $90 million, all of which has counted against the luxury tax, for a grand total of 1 fWAR and 9 bad playoff innings. That is literally worse than Rusney Castillo ($72 million, most of which did not count against the luxury tax, for 0.9 fWAR). If you just drew random free agents' names out of a hat they almost certainly would have been more valuable than Chris Sale has been. We paid an order of magnitude more for 1 fWAR than it's worth on the open market.
In most cases I don't like faulting the FO for signing a player who then gets hurt, but Sale had already had elbow issues before he was extended and he was signed a year before hitting free agency. It's also true he has two more years. Feeble excuses in this case. Even if he pitches reasonably well and stays healthy in 2023 and 2024 it was an absolutely braindead extension.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Oct 3, 2022 16:03:32 GMT -5
FWIW, you can't fault the Dombrowski FO for not foreseeing a season in which he hurt his rib working out, his hand or whatever it was on a comebacker, and then his wrist falling off his damn bicycle.
"There might be a TJS in there sometime" makes sense. "Someone will have a Chris Sale voodoo doll" is another.
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Post by patford on Oct 3, 2022 16:57:07 GMT -5
Can we please stop with the "he should take less money for the good of the team" nonsense? Hearing it for years with Pedroia has given me trauma. Sale's contract going forward is to compensate him for his going-forward contributions to the team. By negotiating for a player opt-out, the team gave him a minimum guarantee, essentially, for those years of the deal but gave him the option to end the contract if he thinks he can do better. Presumably, they gained a benefit at the time of the negotiation by giving him the opt-out, presumably in lower cash paid in the contract. Him getting hurt on the job was foreseeable and part of the information the parties were considering at the time. There is no reason for a player to ever voluntarily take a pay cut for altruistic reasons for no return. I still remember Bronson Arroyo signing a very team-friendly deal only to get unceremoniously traded to Cincinnati before the season even started. There's no reason to show a team that kind of loyalty. Really I wish he would just opt out. He does not need to take less money for the team. I'd just like to see him gone. Not that he's a bad guy I just don't think there is more than a very small chance he will ever be useful.
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Post by freddysthefuture2003 on Oct 3, 2022 17:03:13 GMT -5
Can we please stop with the "he should take less money for the good of the team" nonsense? Hearing it for years with Pedroia has given me trauma. Sale's contract going forward is to compensate him for his going-forward contributions to the team. By negotiating for a player opt-out, the team gave him a minimum guarantee, essentially, for those years of the deal but gave him the option to end the contract if he thinks he can do better. Presumably, they gained a benefit at the time of the negotiation by giving him the opt-out, presumably in lower cash paid in the contract. Him getting hurt on the job was foreseeable and part of the information the parties were considering at the time. There is no reason for a player to ever voluntarily take a pay cut for altruistic reasons for no return. I still remember Bronson Arroyo signing a very team-friendly deal only to get unceremoniously traded to Cincinnati before the season even started. There's no reason to show a team that kind of loyalty. Really I wish he would just opt out. He does not need to take less money for the team. I'd just like to see him gone. Not that he's a bad guy I just don't think there is more than a very small chance he will ever be useful. Opting out would be taking an even bigger hypothetical paycut haha. Nothing is going to change with this situation going forward, just cross your fingers and hope for the best.
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Post by awalkinthepark on Oct 3, 2022 17:55:14 GMT -5
First, I completely disagree that maximizing WAR/$ results in more WS wins. The Dodgers are the best run organization in the sport right now and the favorites to win the WS, and yet on a rate basis they are paying more per win than a lot of other teams, because they are paying sticker price for the production of Mookie, Freddie Freeman, and Kershaw. There are plenty of other teams that have gotten more value out of the money spent on the field - the Rays, the Mariners, the Cardinals, the Blue Jays - but that doesn't make them better teams. When you have a good team, you should be pushing more chips into the middle of the pot. They Rays would have been much better off with Freddie Freeman at first, and the Mariners would have been much better off with Correa or Seager at SS, even though both of those things would have increased their $/win. As far as Sale goes, you have the benefit of hindsight to know that this money could have been allocated in better ways. No one sets out to sign a dumb contract, certainly not the Red Sox. When the Red Sox signed Sale to his extension, the general consensus was that it was a team-friendly deal, and he left money on the table: blogs.fangraphs.com/chris-sale-finally-cashes-in/He got hurt, but no one at the time knew he was going to get hurt. The most reasonable expectation was that he would continue to pitch at a high level, just with fewer innings, ~150 IP each year instead of the 200 IP he was throwing from 2013-2017. Going into 2019, he was still one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball, and he agreed to a team friendly extension. If he didn't need TJ, and had kept pitching at a 4-5 WAR level, this contract would have been a steal. The only reason this looks like a dumb contract now is because we know in hindsight he got hurt. But injury risks are always there, which is why it is good for the Red Sox to stick to their guns and not give every one of their players market rate extensions. Mookie was obviously a much lower risk player than Sale was, but that is why he demanded so much money. And there is still plenty of time left for that Mookie contract to look bad. We have no idea what sort of player he will be from 31-39. If Chris Sale had signed a 10 year/$325 million contract in 2016 at age 27, it also would have looked like a great financial move a few years into it. But imagine if instead of owing him 2 years/$55 million right now, they owed him 6 years/$170 million like Mookie is going to get for those years. That is a much bigger problem. The combination of these 2 things are why it's not just important to spend money, but to recognize that the time to really go big is when you are doubling down on a WS contender. And this is precisely what Bloom has said over and over again. Timing is the most important factor when giving out large financial commitments. This is why they value financial flexibility to much - they don't want to just spend money, they reserve the right to spend the money on a team that is a strong contender. The odds of winning the WS even with the best team in the majors is low enough that it's not useful to focus on which teams are favorites or on examples of teams that did or didn't win. You also have to caveat this because $/WAR from free agents will be less than homegrown players, so a team going big on free agents during a certain tax cycle is going to look worse in $/WAR even if they've been very cost efficient. Even with those caveats, the Dodgers right now are absolutely not paying more per win than other teams. They've been darned efficient. I don't have the energy to make a spreadsheet and do the full comparison, so take the other teams with top-10 salaries as examples ($ from Spotrac's luxury tax payrolls list; it's probably somewhat inaccurate since it seems to be counting singing bonuses for prospects against the luxury tax, but I have no better source to use):
NYM: $314 million / 49.3 fWAR = $6.4 million / fWAR
LAD: $283 million / 62.4 fWAR = $4.5 million / fWAR
NYY: $277 million / 53.2 fWAR = $5.2 million / fWAR
PHI: $266 million / 44.3 fWAR = $6.0 million / fWAR BOS: $252 million / 27.0 fWAR = $9.3 million / fWAR
SDP: $234 million / 39.7 fWAR = $5.9 million / fWAR ATL: $233 million / 50.7 fWAR = $4.6 million / fWAR
CWS: $228 million / 32.2 fWAR = $6.2 million / fWAR LAA: $212 million / 28.8 fWAR = $7.4 million / fWAR
HOU: $212 million / 54.7 fWAR = $3.9 million / fWAR
Citing franchises like Tampa and Seattle that do not spend big on free agents as counterpoints doesn't make sense, because they're buying much less of an entire asset class (i.e. valuable free agents) that does worse in terms of $/WAR. $/WAR is still every bit as important within that asset class. That's why it makes more sense to compare LA's spending with the other top spenders in the league, and you have to go down to teams spending like $20 million below the cap before you can match LAD's efficiency.
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Sale has so far been paid $90 million, all of which has counted against the luxury tax, for a grand total of 1 fWAR and 9 bad playoff innings. That is literally worse than Rusney Castillo ($72 million, most of which did not count against the luxury tax, for 0.9 fWAR). If you just drew random free agents' names out of a hat they almost certainly would have been more valuable than Chris Sale has been. We paid an order of magnitude more for 1 fWAR than it's worth on the open market.
In most cases I don't like faulting the FO for signing a player who then gets hurt, but Sale had already had elbow issues before he was extended and he was signed a year before hitting free agency. It's also true he has two more years. Feeble excuses in this case. Even if he pitches reasonably well and stays healthy in 2023 and 2024 it was an absolutely braindead extension.
If you only compare the Dodgers to other big market clubs, then yes, their value is going to look good. But that's because they have been really good this year. If the Red Sox won 100 games this year with the exact same roster, their $/WAR would look favorable as well compared to the Angels. Which is why you absolutely should be comparing every team to one another, because every team has the same set of options. Given those options the goal is not to be the most profitable baseball team, it's to win the most games. And even though the players on the free agent market aren't the best value, they still help your team win baseball games. From a pure surplus value standpoint, there are a lot of guys that are more 'valuable' than Mookie and Freeman. But there aren't nearly as many players that have been as good as Mookie and Freeman. Would it have been better for the Dodgers to not sign Freeman and instead promote a AAA first baseman that was making the major league minimum? They probably still win over 100 games in that scenario, and their payroll is $27 million lower, which gives them a better $/WAR. But how is that better? So much of the discussion around $/WAR and the contracts the Red Sox give out almost always seems to boil down to "I want the Red Sox to spend a lot of money, but only on good players who don't get hurt". If only it were so easy!
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Post by Guidas on Oct 3, 2022 19:51:40 GMT -5
First, I completely disagree that maximizing WAR/$ results in more WS wins. The Dodgers are the best run organization in the sport right now and the favorites to win the WS, and yet on a rate basis they are paying more per win than a lot of other teams, because they are paying sticker price for the production of Mookie, Freddie Freeman, and Kershaw. There are plenty of other teams that have gotten more value out of the money spent on the field - the Rays, the Mariners, the Cardinals, the Blue Jays - but that doesn't make them better teams. When you have a good team, you should be pushing more chips into the middle of the pot. They Rays would have been much better off with Freddie Freeman at first, and the Mariners would have been much better off with Correa or Seager at SS, even though both of those things would have increased their $/win. As far as Sale goes, you have the benefit of hindsight to know that this money could have been allocated in better ways. No one sets out to sign a dumb contract, certainly not the Red Sox. When the Red Sox signed Sale to his extension, the general consensus was that it was a team-friendly deal, and he left money on the table: blogs.fangraphs.com/chris-sale-finally-cashes-in/He got hurt, but no one at the time knew he was going to get hurt. The most reasonable expectation was that he would continue to pitch at a high level, just with fewer innings, ~150 IP each year instead of the 200 IP he was throwing from 2013-2017. Going into 2019, he was still one of the top 5 pitchers in baseball, and he agreed to a team friendly extension. If he didn't need TJ, and had kept pitching at a 4-5 WAR level, this contract would have been a steal. The only reason this looks like a dumb contract now is because we know in hindsight he got hurt. But injury risks are always there, which is why it is good for the Red Sox to stick to their guns and not give every one of their players market rate extensions. Mookie was obviously a much lower risk player than Sale was, but that is why he demanded so much money. And there is still plenty of time left for that Mookie contract to look bad. We have no idea what sort of player he will be from 31-39. If Chris Sale had signed a 10 year/$325 million contract in 2016 at age 27, it also would have looked like a great financial move a few years into it. But imagine if instead of owing him 2 years/$55 million right now, they owed him 6 years/$170 million like Mookie is going to get for those years. That is a much bigger problem. The combination of these 2 things are why it's not just important to spend money, but to recognize that the time to really go big is when you are doubling down on a WS contender. And this is precisely what Bloom has said over and over again. Timing is the most important factor when giving out large financial commitments. This is why they value financial flexibility to much - they don't want to just spend money, they reserve the right to spend the money on a team that is a strong contender. The odds of winning the WS even with the best team in the majors is low enough that it's not useful to focus on which teams are favorites or on examples of teams that did or didn't win. You also have to caveat this because $/WAR from free agents will be less than homegrown players, so a team going big on free agents during a certain tax cycle is going to look worse in $/WAR even if they've been very cost efficient. Even with those caveats, the Dodgers right now are absolutely not paying more per win than other teams. They've been darned efficient. I don't have the energy to make a spreadsheet and do the full comparison, so take the other teams with top-10 salaries as examples ($ from Spotrac's luxury tax payrolls list; it's probably somewhat inaccurate since it seems to be counting singing bonuses for prospects against the luxury tax, but I have no better source to use): NYM: $314 million / 49.3 fWAR = $6.4 million / fWAR
LAD: $283 million / 62.4 fWAR = $4.5 million / fWAR
NYY: $277 million / 53.2 fWAR = $5.2 million / fWAR
PHI: $266 million / 44.3 fWAR = $6.0 million / fWAR BOS: $252 million / 27.0 fWAR = $9.3 million / fWAR
SDP: $234 million / 39.7 fWAR = $5.9 million / fWAR ATL: $233 million / 50.7 fWAR = $4.6 million / fWAR
CWS: $228 million / 32.2 fWAR = $6.2 million / fWAR LAA: $212 million / 28.8 fWAR = $7.4 million / fWAR
HOU: $212 million / 54.7 fWAR = $3.9 million / fWAR
Citing franchises like Tampa and Seattle that do not spend big on free agents as counterpoints doesn't make sense, because they're buying much less of an entire asset class (i.e. valuable free agents) that does worse in terms of $/WAR. $/WAR is still every bit as important within that asset class. That's why it makes more sense to compare LA's spending with the other top spenders in the league, and you have to go down to teams spending like $20 million below the cap before you can match LAD's efficiency. --- Sale has so far been paid $90 million, all of which has counted against the luxury tax, for a grand total of 1 fWAR and 9 bad playoff innings. That is literally worse than Rusney Castillo ($72 million, most of which did not count against the luxury tax, for 0.9 fWAR). If you just drew random free agents' names out of a hat they almost certainly would have been more valuable than Chris Sale has been. We paid an order of magnitude more for 1 fWAR than it's worth on the open market. In most cases I don't like faulting the FO for signing a player who then gets hurt, but Sale had already had elbow issues before he was extended and he was signed a year before hitting free agency. It's also true he has two more years. Feeble excuses in this case. Even if he pitches reasonably well and stays healthy in 2023 and 2024 it was an absolutely braindead extension.
It will be interesting to see, going forward, if earning a bye increases the odds of a team getting to the World Series, however. I also agree, signing Sale was Dombrowski completely ignoring his recent/present injury, engaging in magical thinking, and not learning from past mistakes. It probably cost Dombrowski his job.
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Post by gregblossersbelly on Oct 3, 2022 20:00:08 GMT -5
Cost DD his job. And, us the pleasure of watching Mookie🥲
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Post by Guidas on Oct 3, 2022 20:01:20 GMT -5
Really I wish he would just opt out. He does not need to take less money for the team. I'd just like to see him gone. Not that he's a bad guy I just don't think there is more than a very small chance he will ever be useful. Opting out would be taking an even bigger hypothetical paycut haha. Nothing is going to change with this situation going forward, just cross your fingers and hope for the best. Anyone who says they would take a paycut or opt out is either being disingenuous or naive. Put another way, if your projected career was only 10-15 years long, you signed a 5-year deal with one employer, and then you seriously hurt yourself performing your job, would you resign or rehab and go back to work - especially knowing if you did not sign the 5-year deal, your employer would drop you like a hot coal after your on the job injury?
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TearsIn04
Veteran
Everybody knows Nelson de la Rosa, but who is Karim Garcia?
Posts: 2,835
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Post by TearsIn04 on Oct 3, 2022 20:41:33 GMT -5
The contract was nutty from the beginning but the FO agreed to it, so we, as fans, are stuck with it.
All Sale owes the Red Sox the next two years is an honest effort (which I think he'll provide) and $600 for a new flat screen TV. It's ridiculous to think he has some kind of ethical obligation to take less money or opt out.
What gets overlooked in rating the contract is that D-Dom gave him a five-year deal when he still had a year left on his existing contract. D-Dom was actually making a bet that Sale would stay healthy for six years, not five. This was just after Sale had failed to pitch a full season in 2018.
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Post by patford on Oct 3, 2022 21:17:59 GMT -5
The contract was nutty from the beginning but the FO agreed to it, so we, as fans, are stuck with it. All Sale owes the Red Sox the next two years is an honest effort (which I think he'll provide) and $600 for a new flat screen TV. It's ridiculous to think he has some kind of ethical obligation to take less money or opt out. What gets overlooked in rating the contract is that D-Dom gave him a five-year deal when he still had a year left on his existing contract. D-Dom was actually making a bet that Sale would stay healthy for six years, not five. This was just after Sale had failed to pitch a full season in 2018. I don't think anyone said he had an ethical obligation to take less money. My comment was he's brought up a few times that he feels like he's let the team down or feels bad about not being on the field. What I said is if he really feels so bad about it he should opt out. Not for one second do I think he will.
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Post by incandenza on Oct 3, 2022 21:23:49 GMT -5
The contract was nutty from the beginning but the FO agreed to it, so we, as fans, are stuck with it. All Sale owes the Red Sox the next two years is an honest effort (which I think he'll provide) and $600 for a new flat screen TV. It's ridiculous to think he has some kind of ethical obligation to take less money or opt out. What gets overlooked in rating the contract is that D-Dom gave him a five-year deal when he still had a year left on his existing contract. D-Dom was actually making a bet that Sale would stay healthy for six years, not five. This was just after Sale had failed to pitch a full season in 2018. I don't think anyone said he had an ethical obligation to take less money. My comment was he's brought up a few times that he feels like he's let the team down or feels bad about not being on the field. What I said is if he really feels so bad about it he should opt out. Not for one second do I think he will. If you're saying he "should" do something then you're saying he has an ethical obligation. That's what "should" means.
(Either that or it's a practical imperative, like "if your car breaks down you should take it to the mechanic," but that's obviously not the relevant use here.)
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Post by patford on Oct 3, 2022 21:40:36 GMT -5
I don't think anyone said he had an ethical obligation to take less money. My comment was he's brought up a few times that he feels like he's let the team down or feels bad about not being on the field. What I said is if he really feels so bad about it he should opt out. Not for one second do I think he will. If you're saying he "should" do something then you're saying he has an ethical obligation. That's what "should" means.
(Either that or it's a practical imperative, like "if your car breaks down you should take it to the mechanic," but that's obviously not the relevant use here.)
I don't agree. Unethical would be some kind of shady situation like a player faking an injury or negotiating with another team behind the back of MLB. Sale has the option to not opt out. It's his right. It's his advantage and making use of it is not unethical.
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Post by ematz1423 on Oct 4, 2022 5:09:52 GMT -5
The contract was nutty from the beginning but the FO agreed to it, so we, as fans, are stuck with it. All Sale owes the Red Sox the next two years is an honest effort (which I think he'll provide) and $600 for a new flat screen TV. It's ridiculous to think he has some kind of ethical obligation to take less money or opt out. What gets overlooked in rating the contract is that D-Dom gave him a five-year deal when he still had a year left on his existing contract. D-Dom was actually making a bet that Sale would stay healthy for six years, not five. This was just after Sale had failed to pitch a full season in 2018. I don't think anyone said he had an ethical obligation to take less money. My comment was he's brought up a few times that he feels like he's let the team down or feels bad about not being on the field. What I said is if he really feels so bad about it he should opt out. Not for one second do I think he will. Love him or hate him sale is a competitor. I'm sure he is upset at the way the last few seasons have gone. Who wouldn't be upset at being perennial hurt for 3 years running. Absolutely doesn't mean he should opt out of a guaranteed 50 million coming his way whether he feels he let the team down or not. I don't understand why you keep saying he should opt out based off a few comments he's made. That's the last I'm gonna say on the matter because it's a waste of time discussing something with a 0 percent chance of happening.
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Post by Chris Hatfield on Oct 5, 2022 12:30:07 GMT -5
If you're saying he "should" do something then you're saying he has an ethical obligation. That's what "should" means. (Either that or it's a practical imperative, like "if your car breaks down you should take it to the mechanic," but that's obviously not the relevant use here.)
I don't agree. Unethical would be some kind of shady situation like a player faking an injury or negotiating with another team behind the back of MLB. Sale has the option to not opt out. It's his right. It's his advantage and making use of it is not unethical. You are suggesting that he do something illogical because he feels bad. We can argue semantics about the use of the term "ethical" but the point stands that there is no reason for him to opt out of his contract that pays him to throw baseballs for the next 2-3 years because he feels bad about getting hurt and missing most of the last 3 years unless it's for some kind of "ethical" or some other reason that removes or trumps basic logic that he should not opt out if he does not think he will receive a better contract by doing so.
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Post by awalkinthepark on Oct 5, 2022 12:56:31 GMT -5
Was it "ethical" when Chris Sale put up production worth $60 million in 2017 alone, while he was only paid $12 million? This is just how the game is structured - young players are radically underpaid relative to their worth, and teams either use that money to subsidize older players or the owners will pocket it. And considering the attrition rate of pitchers you could make the argument that it isn't fair to make them wait 6 years before they can cash in.
Sale paid his dues. From 2010-2019, he made the White Sox and Red Sox a ton of money, while only being paid a fraction of it. Fangraphs pegs the value of his career at $350 million, and yet he has earned $150 million to date. Injuries are part of the game. Managing that risk is what good organizations do.
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Post by lostinnewjersey on Oct 5, 2022 13:17:19 GMT -5
When Chris Sale struck out Manny Machado in the most humiliating possible fashion to win the 2018 World Series, he earned every dollar the Red Sox would ever pay him.
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