Governator

Morales was signed to do 1 thing, hit the ball which he should be capable of doing quite well. Smoak was signed because he got hot that one month.

Doesn't matter who signs him, their comp pick will be sandwiched after round 1 in the draft regardless of what round the suitor has to give up. Honestly, I'd be all for Jose @ $17MM with 2 team option years of $17MM per with a buy out. As long as he stays productive he'll still make his $51MM over 3 years and I'm sure the Jays would be quite happy having control over him if they aren't guaranteeing him the money. They won't be able to move him because of 10/5 rights but having the option to make it a 1, 2 or 3 deal based on his performance would be nice.

Still seems very crazy to throw $17-18MM/yr for a max 65 innings of work from 1 pitcher. Don't get me wrong it's not an illogical strategy, I get the point of it and why they value them so high based on the recent success of similarly built teams but it seems like such a high risk to gamble that kind of money on their success for 5 years+. Relievers can be inconsistent (which we know quite well first hand) and when they have stretches of poor results it can impact their season value as much as 3x that of a starter if you consider their limited amount of innings available to them. My opinion might change in a few years, we'll see.

Latest On Market For Jose Bautista http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016/12/latest-on-market-for-jose-bautista.html

I'd gamble on him being better than Bautista defensively.

Is $30MM AAV for a top of the line starting pitcher who nets you 5-6 WAR an overpay when you're getting $6MM / WAR on the deal? It's a 33% discount by some people. You can't really compare starters to relievers here though. Since the beginning of the game team's have relied on starters to eat up innings and they got paid handsomely for it, as they should considering the best starting pitchers are arguably the most valuable in the game. This reliever strategy however, is so new GM's are jumping on it without fully thinking it through. When the Royals won the WS their team was built around the BP but since they were relied on more than their starters it made perfect sense. However, just because it can work, spending a boat load of money on 1-2 WAR players (Maybe 2.5 at their best) on long term deals is still f***ing dumb. They'll realize that strategy is best used for smaller market teams with weak rotations to gamble more moderately on, there's a reason the name BJ Ryan scares people. Of course there is an argument to be made about the Rickey Romero's, Vernon Wells of the world too but relievers are viewed as more inconsistent & fragile year-to-year than most and the bigger factor is they only get limited innings to build their value. A rough 20 inning stretch can ruin the value of a year's contract.

I've been wanting Pompey to have a regular role for a while now, the fact is he'd provide more value than Smoak. Bench/DFA Smoak and have Pearce or Bautista man first base with Pompey in a corner spot. For an internal option without giving up an asset or adding additional payroll we have a filled a hole and improved the team. A better fielder than Bautista, switch hitting bat with speed at the bottom of the line up (maybe at some even point the top) and predicts a full win better than Smoak. Why the f*** do we even have Smoak again?

I feel like the trend for team's overpaying for top relievers is going to see a sharp drop off at some point soon. Once one of the big arms blow out or don't provide the predicted return on investment even by the midway point of their contracts, GMs might realize the high cost per WAR on relievers isn't worth the gamble. History might not suggest that as a few teams will always overpay for needs like a power bat in their mid 30s but it still makes me question if the value on high-end relievers and closers might soon peak between now and the next couple of years and if you can predict that it might be a good time to reap the rewards and sell sooner than later.

The way things are going, Jose Bautista might be available as a DH/bench bat for the dream team

I mean if people don't mind paying $1000/month for cable internet, we could try.

I think a team giving up their #1 unprotected pick to sign Bautista is worth significantly more to them. The Blue Jays gaining a 33rd/34th pick in the draft (or losing a 2nd round pick if you look at it that way) just isn't the same as the Astros giving up their highest overall 16th pick.

I don't think he'd give up half a year of salary when he only has like 3 or 4 years left in his career. That seems like a significant loss of $ for a player of his age where he might not be able to make it up. If he settles and signs a 1 year $17MM deal, he'd have no draft pick attached next off season and would probably ink a similar deal that he's looking for now without losing +/- $8MM signing mid season.

Yea I mean that all seems quite logical in my books. There is obviously a very high value on them based on the market alone for free agents with comp picks attached. If teams felt they were worth $500K no one would give a s***.

Has there actually been a study to show the average value of a comp pick to be $10MM? That seems like a very aggressive evaluation. I can understand using the extra slot money to sign players in later rounds thus giving you a better chance at signing your top picks, not sure if you can put a value on that though. Also, does the 2017 draft have the comp picks still sandwiched between 1st & 2nd or do the rules from the new CBA kick in which would seemingly make them them worth much less?

Not sure if posted? According to industry sources, Toronto has remained unwilling to offer Bautista more than the $17.2 million qualifying offer that he declined last month. The slugger continues to search for a multiyear deal, but he won't be getting it from the Blue Jays. http://m.mlb.com/news/article/210987338/jose-bautista-unlikely-to-return-to-blue-jays/

Probably because you have a new account...

You could watch televised poker almost all hours of the day 6 years ago, there were commercials during every sports break, ads in every magazine. I don't think you realize how much that encouraged people to play at home. If UFC didn't hype their fights by spending millions of dollars in advertising they wouldn't be getting million dollar PPV buys either.

They aren't really comparable. Poker lost all it's steam because the American Government cracked down on online poker 5+ years ago by adding some BS to an unrelated security bill for ports that was going to be passed (Look up Black Friday). It basically made deposits to online gambling sites illegal for Americans. This created a massive ripple effect, Poker on TV was always just a paid advertisement for the online sites, it was never about the ratings but about the advertising for the event sponsor. Since they can't target Americans anymore the shows quickly died (outside of the WSOP). Sites shut down everywhere, advertising came a halt as the main sites like PokerStars shifted all their focus to European market. I worked for an online site at the time, we were at the peak of our success when s*** hit the fan.

Alright stop quoting this essay or I'm going to start banning people.

It's 50/50

tldr?

The credibility you gain after winning Best Poster awards amaze me.

hook, line, and sinker

There's some second level trolling going on in here.

That's pretty extreme.