Orgfiller

Not at all. The signing bonus is added to the total value of the deal for AAV purposes. e.g. a straight 2/20 contract with $10M salary per season is treated the same by tax calculations as a 2/20 deal with a $5M bonus, $5M salary in the first year and a $10M salary the second. The Jays themselves might care about the difference for their yearly budget calculations, but the CBT does not.

Our star player meeting with just be Gausman pulling up with an iPad showing a compilation of his splitter whiffs, followed by Bowden Francis showing his success over the past two months of the season with the same pitch that he learned from the former. Pretty effective pitch if you ask me.

I think the question here when it relates to Varsho is if he has the ability to change his swing enough to square up the ball more. Like basically, does he have the hand-eye coordination to get it done. He's not an egregious chaser, 67th percentile last season although it's been below the 50th percentile for most of his career, which also saw an uptick in his walk rate. But I guess that in itself was an adjustment, take a few more pitches at the expense of quality of contact. He makes contact often enough, 76% for his career which is not bad, higher than guys like Bryce Harper, Matt Chapman, Rafael Devers to list a few. He honestly could stand to swing a bit less and work on being selective with his swing decisions. His biggest issue nonetheless is the totally exploited pitches up in the zone, he gets killed by those, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was a big reason why his IFFB is brutal, he's either whiffing up there or softly popping it up. He either needs to work on outright not swinging at those pitches, or change his swing to not be exploited by it. Can he do this? Does he have the talent to adjust in this way? That's the biggest question.

lol @ -1.6 projected reliever WAR. What the f***

I feel like one of Nimmala, Yesavage, Bloss could have made it. I understand Tiedemann and Orelvis dropping due to how their 2024s went, although for Orelvis the performance certainly was positive.

The limit is essentially the amount of international bonus money available. This is relative peanuts compared to the money that he would get as a non amateur free agent. Think Ohtani's first signing with the Angels versus the deal that Yamamoto got. International bonus pool will range in the ~$6-7M(?) per year, total, for a single international signing period, which resets each year. Teams can trade for additional pool money, but generally this is like +$1-2M max. It's not really a question of money. Sasaki is doing this because he wants to come to the MLB ASAP and face the best competition available, not because he's looking to maximize his earning potential. After he comes over, he'll be subject to the same team control that your typical top prospect making his debut gets, 2-3 years at league minimum followed by 3-4 years of arbitration (depending on Super 2 status), where the team has all the power. Sasaki is as even a playing field as you can get in terms of money in this league. It's like if the #1 pick in the MLB draft could choose where he wanted to play, with every team having roughly equal amounts of bonus available to spend on him and other draft picks.

There's basically no way to overpay here. Since Sasaki is bound to international amateur signing bonuses, it's already apparent he's not really in it for the money. $1-2M extra signing bonus isn't going to make the difference here. This actually puts us at a relative disadvantage since instead of bidding for his services with our wallet, we have to do it by convincing him that our development will make him the best version of himself. And then there's the other factors like the city, which I would actually think could be a positive for an international player, if only we weren't an East coast team.

Any team would be "all-in" on the idea of signing a top 10(?) prospect in baseball who is MLB ready for like $5-6M. I doubt we're even in the top 5 of teams vying for Sasaki, if only for reasons such as we're not a West Coast US team or have international reputation like the Yankees do, let alone other real factors like pitching development and state of the franchise.

With Clement I feel like you just hope that the BABIP favours him somewhat, because if he's swinging at everything and not necessarily hitting the ball particularly hard, there's bound to be some variance to the profile. As long as he's not getting totally exploited on pitches that even he couldn't hit - thinking breaking balls far outside the plate. Doubtful he'll gain any plate discipline, but I think the article shows that it's not a mirage that his ability to make contact is legit. If he can stick around league average on offense with excellent defense and good baserunning we'll take that. The defense is legit and he can play all over the infield at a high level.

He's pretty much a butcher everywhere. The Reds didn't even play him at 3B in 2024 and they continually trotted out some serious butchers at the position in that campaign. He has some decent physical tools, above average as a runner (73rd percentile) and arm strength (78th) so maybe you hope you can teach him routes in LF to become playable? But the profile is a bad 1B/LF defender with average hitting for the position. It's not like he crushes the ball or is particularly good at squaring it up or hitting it at a good launch angle. You could platoon him, but then why spend resources acquiring a guy like that via trade unless he's basically given away when you could sign a lefty masher like Grichuk for cheap in FA.

He has options, the Reds don't need to move him. Also, he was WOEFUL at 3B last season, there's a very high likelihood that Ernie is 2+ wins better and that's not even saying much about him.

Would never take a pitcher over a hitter in this kind of challenge trade. Langford just put up a very respectable age 22 season, and projects very well, this is without even taking into account the absurd prospect pedigree he carries. Excellent runner with SB potential, power potential, and in no risk of not having a position any time soon, decent defensive metrics for whatever that's worth.

I wonder if the Scherzer and other players' deferrals are baked into it. Either way, Strasburg and Patrick Corbin have been some tough pills to swallow for Washington. At least they've properly built a solid farm system and have a nice young core, I'm sure they'll spend again when another contention window opens up. The Rockies though? Big yikes

Steer sucks and Candelario can’t play 3B anymore. I feel like either McClain moves to 3B, or Elly moves there with the former taking over SS duties. Lux could also be a platoon option for some of these guys, Steer and Marte are both RHH.

This is fair for both sides. On the surface it seems like a steal for the A’s, but Booker still had a lot of cheap years of control and is 30 years old as a DH only player. One season of regression or some age related decline as he enters free agency and he’s lucky to see half of that figure over the rest of his career.

lol @ the Rockies. The f***ing Dodgers though, god damn. Light years ahead.

It kind of makes sense that as a switch hitter he'd gain some HRs at the RC compared to the atrocity in Candem Yards in LF over the past couple of seasons. The dimensions are more extreme both ways, tall wall in RF, tall and absurdly far wall in LF (which is now coming back in). RC became harder overall but probably still more favourable for pull power hitters than Candem Yards.

Yeah, basically split the difference on a 5/90 deal, reduce the tax hit with a lower AAV while spreading out the risk with the added year.

I just can't see anyone actually willing to go to 5/100 for Santander. Either he really doesn't want to come here and is pushing us to go above our limit, in which case someone else will get him for the reported ~4/82 figure, or he's overvaluing himself and he'll remain unsigned until he settles at his projected price with another team closer to ST.

The translation and the tweet you posted don't line up. All the tweet says is the Jays are rumoured to have the strongest interest and are probably leading the pack among the other interested teams - which include the Tigers and Yankees. What is this "BeisbolPlay" you're referring to? Nowhere does it say a deal is imminent.

For what it's worth, MLBTR has him projected at 4/56 and in general they've been more closely aligned from projected to actual signing terms. I'd feel a bit icky going to 4 years on a 30 year old reliever with only two years of elite performance, but if you could bring down the AAV by making the total guaranteed amount closer to $50M or below I could be on board. Even a 3 year deal with higher than Fangraph's projected AAV I could stomach better, although at that point that's really taking a big chunk out of the budget room to add remaining.

Wagner will be close to retirement age by the time he's a free agent anyway so I think we'll survive on waiting on him to hit the open market lol.

The Cleveland red was holding him back. 6 WAR season incoming.

Meh, Bellinger has the biggest pumpkin risk of the group. He was already worse than both, defense has been declining, exit velos cratering. Shortest commitment helps but the likeliest of the group to just provide negative value straight up. I have more faith in Santander and Teo to be boring 2 WAR guys with big power and bad defense throughout the duration of most of their contracts.

What about Christian Walker as a right handed hitter who mostly pulls his flyballs would make him especially more suited to Yankee Stadium?