BTS

What does the team even have to trade for Robert?

Of course not. We anoint Atkins as a king after he gets Pete Alonso for 3/75 and wins the offseason by getting Alonso, Tony Taters, and Hoffman to sign for dirt cheap.

So if Ross lands Alonso and Scherzer are we thinking him and Shapiro get standard 4-year deals or do we try locking them up forever so that nobody can poach them?

I have no issue with what the Dodgers are doing. The deferrals are accounted for in the CBA. Other owners are going to use LA's spending to garner fan support for more restrictions, but the reality is that every owner in the league could have afforded Snell or Teo or Yates or Sasaki. These guys chose LA because they've made themselves into a world class organization that does what it takes to win. The obvious answer here is for other owners to get better at owning a baseball club. Also, it's fun having villains. The NHL has a hard cap, and honestly it f***ing sucks. Great teams are forcefully dismantled in order to create parity. It rewards mediocre orgs, and forces teams to compete in cycles instead of sustainably. There are like 4 very good teams, 4 very bad teams, and 24 teams that are average and may or may not make the playoffs in a given season. And it makes trades really hard to come by.

I'd rather have Santander than Teo all else being equal. I take him at his contract every time over Teo at his.

14M CBT hit for Santander is crazy good. Ross Atkins striking back at all the haters and the losers.

It is still objectively funny that they traded Teo 2 years ago because they weren't interested in a FA contract for a bat only corner OF, and now they're signing a bat only corner OF for 92.5M.

281

This takes us to 262.7. Already 1.7M past the second threshold.

https://www.fangraphs.com/roster-resource/payroll/blue-jays Roster Resource already has it at 5/92. Not bad

It's scary because the deal is underwater as soon as he loses anything offensively. There are no secondary skills, and the carrying skill (his bat) isn't good enough to make him an asset if it slips by even 10%.

That 58th percentile xwOBA for a guy with 25th percentile fielding and 18th percentile speed. Desperation is the absolute stinkiest of colognes.

Yup. Overwhelming odds is that this is just ends up a 5-year deal.

I'm guessing a 100M guarantee

Apparently its closer to 30M a year if you factor in the CBT penalty.

The half that would trade an entire season for a cap. I wouldn't want a cap if it cost 0 games, let alone if it wiped out a season.

Even then - Straw isn't worth more than a MilB deal and spring training invite. It's kind of funny though, because Ross Atkins has given us an all-time offseason that will be a part of Blue Jays lore for decades (for the wrong reasons): - Losing the Sasaki sweepstakes so bad it actually cost the franchise $12M. - "We are definitely interested in figuring out a way for it to be a possibility." - After two years of fan complaints about offense, making his big offseason move a 100M commitment to a slap-hitting glove-first 2B. - Literally turning the Jays into an industry-wide meme for being so undesirable a location that they can't close any free agent deals despite waving a wad of cash around.

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/01/poll-would-you-trade-the-2027-mlb-season-for-a-salary-cap.html Half of MLBTR readers are apparently stupid. Which isn't surprising really.

Disappointed at the lack of Prince Fielder comps when it comes to fat 1B. They even both have a career 137 wRC+ through their age 25 season. # Name Team G PA HR R RBI SB BB% K% ISO BABIP AVG OBP SLG wOBA xwOBA wRC+ BsR Off Def WAR 1 Vladimir Guerrero Jr. TOR 819 3540 160 475 507 20 9.9% 15.6% .213 .304 .288 .363 .500 .367 137 -14.8 139.8 -91.5 17.0 2 Prince Fielder MIL 675 2804 160 382 453 14 12.3% 19.1% .267 .300 .284 .381 .550 .391 137 -19.8 112.0 -74.7 12.7

It's the kind of move that you'd actually like to see if the team is rebuilding. We'd want Rogers spending cash to stockpile prospects. It just doesn't make any sense given that the team is trying to contend this year, and the 5-6M or whatever that's being spent on Straw this season is probably 5-6M they can't spend on something else to help the 2025 roster.

The Mets might be the last team I want to see acquiring Vlad. There just aren't a lot of pieces that would make for an exciting centerpiece, but at the same time I could see Atkins being interested in their guys because they're very close to MLB ready. We're looking at guys like: - Brandon Sproat (pitcher) - Christian Scott (injured pitcher) - Jett Williams (might not be able to hit) - Luisangel Acuna (might not be able to hit) And then post hype guys like Mauricio, Baty, Even Vientos has warts. Likely settles in at 1B going forward, but does he have the bat to actually make a difference there? Only a 0.331 xwOBA last year, doesn't walk enough and strikes out too much. A 110-120 wRC+ 1B can't be the biggest piece for Vlad. That's not at all a rare asset.

Yeah. There really isn't a defense for it. There are basically 3 rationales for the deal, and none of them are defensible: 1) It was done for Sasaki. Obviously Atkins got owned by Cleveland in this scenario. 2) It was done because the Jays just like straw. I think we can all agree that 5M on Straw is not an optimal use of limited 2025 CBT space. 3) It was done because the team was willing to spend 10M on prospects. This would actually be a very good move... if the team were rebuilding. It's an insane move for a team that's basically all in on winning in 2025.

It's frustrating, but I don't really understand why people are calling for a cap. Sasaki didn't sign with the Dodgers for the money, he signed with them because they're a world class organization. There are a ton of things Toronto could do to make themselves competitive under the current climate, but they don't do them because they're run by idiots.

Ross Atkins just got absolutely dog walked by whoever runs Cleveland these days. Agreeing to this deal hours before a Sasaki decision was made is absurd. The team already had limited payroll to work work with, and now 5M of it was lit on fire, for a guy who is probably worse than guys like Clase and Lukes. Like, there's no way that deal wasn't going to be there tomorrow. Cleveland would have been desperate to shed that money.

I still can't wrap my head around someone hating Ohtani. He's so inoffensive, and might be the best baseball player of all-time.