glory

This will dampen the excitement of when the Jays signing Robbie Ross Jr in a few weeks, won't it? Seriously though, good for baseball. Home runs are marketable, and Stanton/Judge both in NY will be good for the sport. I want MLB to grow, not as much as I want the Jays to win, but I wasn't expecting the Jays to win in 2018 anyway, so whatever. The best thing to happen now is for more of the 2nd wild card competition to improve. The Angels already did. The more the Jays chances look s***, maybe it might force the team to trade JD. It would look almost delusional to hold on to him now when the absolute best case is the 2nd wild card and even that is far from certain.

If the Yankees include Ellsbury, they save about $68m while taking on $295m. It would probably be Ellsbury and prospects (not their best ones). I hope the Yankees do it only because Stanton will be a monster for a few more years but seems like the type who could fall off hard towards the middle/back end of that contract. Let the Yankees deal with that s***. The Jays won't be contenders for the rest of Stanton's elite seasons anyway, but might be when he starts to fall off.

Didn't know Eppler was in the Yankees organization. Makes sense. Cashman has been putting in work the last few years, and Eppler has been very good as well.

Yeah I don't see where he gets playing time consistently in the field, unless there is some agreement where he will split time between OF and DH. They can probably displace Cron pretty easily, and either play Pujols' corpse at 1b or move Calhoun to 1b when Ohtani plays the outfield. I'm sure they have something figured out. Honestly, considering the amount of surplus they will be getting from Ohtani, and the fact that his contract only runs for 4 more years, I'd be tempted to just release Pujols. Cut your losses. That's sunk cost anyway, and you're getting a $100-200m talent for peanuts over the next six seasons. No need to complicate things by accommodating a player who hasn't been good in years.

And all their starters were hurt last year. Same with the Mariners who were also apparently one of the front runners for him. Player development and medical acumen couldn’t have been all that important to him. Though as mentioned I think the Angels have been run pretty well since the GM change.

Seems like a lot of injury risk in that rotation, but yes, if healthy that's not bad.

Other than Ohtani, what do they have in the rotation? I can't even name one other starter on that team off the top of my head.

Pujols is glued to DH for a while, so not sure where he will get his AB's from. Regardless, the Angels have been run a lot better since Eppler took over. They have been making a lot of smart moves recently.

Ohtani going to the Angels according to Joel Sherman.

If Ohtani is DH, then the M's might run an outfield with Gordon and Cruz in it. A second baseman and an old DH. That will be fun to watch.

Stanton's contract is horrendous. I don't know how he was able to get that. 13/325, opt out after six years, full no trade clause, $10m buyout at the end of his deal (team option). I mean, getting 13 years on a contract alone is enough, but he got all those other things on top of that. Crazy. Now the Marlins will be screwed because the only teams he will accept a trade to likely don't want him. It's their own fault for giving him a Ntc. I wonder if the Cardinals missing out on Stanton makes them more desperate to overpay for Donaldson in a trade. They seem really eager to make a deal.

Fiers for 1/6 is a good deal. Surprised a team did not trade some C level prospect with options for him. I'm sure the Astros would have taken that over non tendering him. Atkins seems confident they will add a starter, but the market is so bad, Fiers might have been one of the better short term options.

That was my first thought. Could have just re-signed Dyson for much cheaper and shorter term.

They can probably sell hope as long as they have JD. But if they have a 2018 similar to 2017, then I would expect a sizable dip in attendance regardless of what direction they go for 2019.

3/38 for Chatwood is pretty high. I guess they are paying for potential, which might pay off if he stays healthy. The SP market aside from Ohtani and Darvish really is awful. No idea who the Jays are going to get, but chances are it will be a non difference maker if it comes from the FA class.

If he went full LeBron James and made a Decision out of this, then it would have definitely been more entertaining.

Brownie's been triggered.

Considering Rosenthal just made an article about it, seemed pretty relevant to bring it up. It is a f***ing annoying process. It deserves to be called out. Ohtani needs to make up his mind and we can all move on.

Well, that's the thing. I agree that I would have done the presentation anyway, it would have been foolish not to, but some teams may have thought they actually had a chance since he never specified that he had a particular preference. It only became known that he preferred location after he started eliminating teams from contention. So in that sense, I could see why teams would be annoyed and feel like they wasted their time. It isn't about Ohtani being wrong about how he is doing anything. He has every right to play this process whichever way he feels comfortable with. My point was simply that if I was someone like Brian Cashman who had everything Ohtani apparently wanted based on what his agent was asking for, and then found out Ohtani wouldn't have considered New York regardless of the presentation, then I would have felt a little cheated (apparently Ohtani's reps were trying to get him to consider NY but he refused, at least I remember reading that). Now you can say any GM who felt annoyed is a baby, and that's fine too. But that's a pretty logical reaction to this process looking at it from a front office perspective.

If Ohtani only had 7 teams in mind from the beginning (the ones located on the west coast + spring training location in Arizona), then why would the other 23 teams care about the surplus value he would provide? They wouldn't be able to benefit from it. If they were asked to spend time/money/resources on building a presentation for him, only to find out that he never had any intention of signing with them, then of course they will be annoyed by it. Why would they care if he's taking a huge pay cut by coming over two years earlier than he could have? Now he has narrowed it down to 7 teams and still playing the Bachelor. I don't know why it's difficult to understand why teams would be annoyed by this. What Ohtani is doing makes sense FOR HIM. It doesn't mean everyone else will just be happy for him. Front office people are human.

"Rosenthal: The Ohtani sweepstakes has frustrated many teams in baseball, even before a winner is picked." "Calling Shohei Ohtani’s rapid-fire schedule eyewash would be premature since no one knows what the Japanese star actually is thinking. But predictably, some people in baseball are suspicious of the recruitment process, fearing Ohtani, 23, already had made up his mind." Damn, Rosenthal is going to get roasted on this forum for saying that.

Yeah, I have a bad feeling about this, but I hope I'm wrong. As long as the new ownership group keeps Shapiro and lets him do his thing, I'll be fine. Don't really care what the payroll is. The Jays need to focus on getting younger and cheaper anyway, so cutting payroll and forcing them to be more careful with how they spend is probably a good thing until they are ready to be players in free agency.

He will be a very good to great pitcher, but the hitting experiment will end within two years. That's my guess.

Yeah I have always said Rogers, for as annoying as they can be, gets ragged on too much by the fanbase. Non corporate ownership could be a great thing or it could be a rich meddler who wants to interfere in player decisions. You really don't know what you're going to get. At least now we know payroll will be relatively stable and ownership won't mess with Shapiro's decision making. That may not be the case with someone else. I guess we just have to wait and see who they end up selling to.

The Yankees have a ton of international money. They might go nuts on the Atlanta prospects.