John_Havok

51 million AAV . The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reports that the deal includes a $75MM signing bonus, while Joel Sherman of the New York Post reports that Soto’s deal contains an opt-out after the 2029 season.

If that's true, good god that's a massive overpay.

And now all the speculation of what the Jays offer was can start. Did they outbid and he just turned them down because of made up reasons to be mad at??

Better pivot quickly I wonder how much will be deferred?

MLB network saying it's down to Toronto and the Mets for Soto. Saw another post that says the Mets are approaching 800 million offer. Grain of salt of course. We know how people love clicks when there's something to click about

To me it's a shuffling of the deck chairs move. Matz projects worse than Yariel at this point so spending 7 million on a the hopes that he'd duplicate his 2021, which may only be a .5-1 win upgrade doesn't seem worth it. Yariel projects at 1.6 next season, Matz career year was 2.7. Yeah it's only 6-7 million in your hypothetical but the payoff isn't worth it when you consider the liklihood of him actually returning to his career peak from 4 seasons ago. It's more likely Yariel puts up 2fwar. If the thinking is that Matz is insurance for one of Yariel or Francis (also 1.6fwar projection) stinking up the place...okay, but even then it's not a needle mover. If the Jays want to add a depth arm, ot should be from the result of signing someone clearly better, pushing someone currently in the rotation out of it. Bumping Yariel for Matz isn't that move.

In a vacuum I see the appeal, but I think if the Jays are looking for a SP that pushes Yariel to the pen, wouldn't ya want to target a guy who you're far more certain would actually be better than Yariel?

Not when you consider the signing bonus and deferrals.

I understand completely how it works, which is why I understand that its a very creative and rule abiding way to not pay as much tax when 70 million leaves the Dodgers every year, but only has to worry about potential penalties on 46 million of it.

As stated above, we'll find out after 2026 for sure. If new rules get put in we'll have the answer.

Spirit of. I get it, it's currently allowed. But that's why they make new rules when people abuse it. Just like the LTIR and salary cap stuff I mentioned in the NHL. Allowed by the rules at the time, then the rules changed because of the spirit of the rule they were abusing.

Didn't say that were circumventing the CBA, just the spirit of the CBT. And well find out in 2 seasons whether the rest of baseball ownership agrees with that.

You're right that every team can defer salary if they want to, and anyone who's been here a while knows I'm no fan of the small market billionaires pocketing all their revenue sharing and pretending they cant afford to ever spend money on free agents. However, to say that every team has the the ability to take advantage of deferrals and massive signing bonuses in the same way the Dodgers currently are, is wrong. Yes, billionaires own all the teams in baseball but, that doesn't mean all their revenue streams are equal. Every team in baseball cant afford to run 300+ million payrols with massive deferrals. It's clear the Dodgers are circumventing the CBT in creative ways and are within the current CBA so ya can't really fault them for it. But ya can look at at it and say "Hang on, that's not what these rules were intended for, you're clearly breaking the spirit of the the rules" and watch them make rules in the next CBA that will prevent it. Easy ways to fix the current mess, is that signing bonuses count against the CBT, and cap both the % you can defer on a contract and the # of deferred contracts you have. It's a simple fix. 'Just like the NHL is doing with the LTIR rules, and limiting the # of salary retention contracts you can have on the books to ensure teams like Vegas cannot keep obviously screwing with it, and Tampa before them. To be fair though, Tampa was greasy, but Vegas took it to an entirely new level of horseshit. But, on the flip side, MLB has to figure out how to convince all these cry poor owners that the practice of taking revenue sharing and rarely reinvesting it in their teams payrolls is also ********. It doesn't have to be a case of every team being able to sign any player every year, but somewhere in the middle would be great

What it means is, the next CBA is gonna be a s*** show and it's not that far away.

I'm not sure what angle the Dodgers are ultimately playing from here. A 5 year deal for Snell seems extremely ill advised. The signing bonus and deferral thing really need to be looked at in the next CBA. They're clearly being abused to circumvent luxury taxes

I disagree with none of what you said. I think Felix was a better pitcher, but like, by thin margins. It's not even 1a and 1b its like 1A+ and 1A. I get why he likely won't get in, and it sucks donkey balls. CC deserves to get in for sure.

Just adding on, the 5 teams that have offers out to Soto are the Jays, Yanks, Mets, Red Sox and Dodgers. Im guessing this process is similar to what Ohtani did last year. IE, gave a specific demand and said talk to us if you're cool with that, make any add-ons you think might help, send it over and we'll call you when you win Friedman

Soto has reportedly received official offers from 5 teams this week.

Its not so much ignoring longevity... just not quite giving as much credit for it as some do, especially since those extra seasons of CC weren't really close to his peak talents, just slightly above average. On the other hand, when a guy can reinvent himself with worse stuff in order to pitch later on in this career, it's no reason to argue against him either. I guess it just sucks to not see Felix go in, who I think is the better pitcher.

Plus so many of Felix's Seattle teams were dumpster fires

I checked and going by 7 year peak, Felix has the edge over CC, imo. CC just managed to have those extra 5 seasons at the end where he wasn't as good, but still decent, so I understand why voters might vote this way.

On first pass, I dont agree with CC over Felix, id probably have voted for them both. I can understand people dinging Felix for his career ending early though. I think Utley should get in too.

That's one way to see it. But, if you consider that signing Soto means they will be operating in Luxury Tax territory, that could also mean blasting past the penalty lines and not just signing Soto, but other upper end guys that fill obvious holes. Kinda like last year, there's a budget for Ohtani+, or a stop gap budget. This year it's probably the same. A Soto+ budget instead tho

This is the most sane and logical back and forth i've seen here in a long time. Kudos.

Jays made their initial pitch to Soto today. Sources describe the pitch as "impressive"