metafour

He's not. The guy barely speaks English. The past two seasons he was generally loathed by fans as an underachiever, and now he is apparently so valuable that they will be forced to hand him a blank cheque? Its just fans being hyperbolic as usual.

I highly doubt that Rogers is jumping with excitement to pay ANY player $300M+ (who's name isn't Ohtani). Shapiro will just tell them that its stupid and they will land another "franchise player". He also isn't some green exec who is going to be steamrolled by ownership. Teams have learned that fans are idiots and they will change their tune on a dime. Therefore its not worth gutting your payroll to keep fans happy for a few seasons. They will grow tired of Guerrero like every other player before him. George Springer was "marketable" as well for about 1-2 seasons before he started regressing. Funny, I don't think that Rogers is making too much money on Springer's "marketability" anymore. Fans also grossly overstate the "franchise player" rhetoric. Before Guerrero they had Donaldson, and before that there was Bautista. Even Vernon Wells was seen as a franchise player for a minute. Before that they had Halladay, and before that came Delgado. History has shown that when one "franchise player" leaves, the next isn't that far away. There is no scenario where Rogers is left with nobody to market in Uncrustables PB&J commercials if Guerrero leaves.

Fans don't decide who gets paid like a Superstar. Talk about a useless post.

This is an analytically driven organization. They will not do something stupid like over-value his "off field value", whatever that is. You are actually seeing more and more "franchise players" around the league either completely left to go elsewhere through free agency, or traded away...because the home team does not believe in the value of extending them. Mookie Betts (Boston). Carlos Correa and George Springer (Houston). Corey Seager (Dodgers). Bryce Harper, Juan Soto, and Trea Turner (Washington). None of these are examples of "cheap" organizations who just couldn't afford to keep these players. Even the Mets let deGrom leave. Again, teams are becoming less and less driven by emotional decisions ("zOMG nobody will buy tickets if we lose this ONE player!"). Mark Shapiro is not the type of exec who is going to overpay a 1B/DH because he is the "franchise player". Those execs barely exist anymore period.

Teams are not stupid. If he wants term (ie: YEARS), they will reduce the AAV. This is how it works. The Jays would likely be happy to pay him $30M AAV...over ~7-8 years. If he says that he wants 10 or 12 years, they will reduce the AAV. He will not get BOTH at the same time. 1B/DH-only players do NOT have the power to negotiate around that. That power hasn't existed for 10+ years now. Again, in order for Matt Olson to get 8 years, he had to take a significant haircut on the AAV. He could have received a higher AAV from the Braves, but it would have come with a reduction in the total years.

You miss the point: the market has changed dramatically since 2011/2012. Teams are smarter in how they value players now. You need to realize that Pujols, Votto, and Fielder all got 9-10 year contracts as 1B within 1-2 years of each other. Since then, there have been ZERO 1B to land anything over 8 years. ZERO. And that is over a decade. Matt Olson got 8 years two seasons ago, but he had to take a loss on his AAV in order to do so. He is paid only ~$21M per year, which is well below market value for a player of his output. Nobody is giving a 1B/DH type both market-value AAV and term (years) at the same time; it is one or the other. The only players who are getting both yearly AAV and term (ie: the $300+M examples) are players who play premium positions (SS, 3B, CF). As Passan correctly mentioned; Harper was not signed as a 1B - the fact that he is playing 1B 3-4 seasons into his deal does not make him comparable to Vlad. And yes, even a "bad" defensive RF is going to be valued much higher than any 1B.

Jeff Passan is 100% correct. Jays fans don't understand markets or how they work:

The Orioles finna f*** around and win nothing before Mike Elias leaves for a bigger job opening lol.

Nimmala just hit another HR to go along with a 2B in tonight's game. The power is peaking hard lately.

17th round HS SS Gavin Smith has indeed signed. I think the max they had for him was ~$250K, so thats likely around what he signed for.

Will Wagner in his Buffalo debut: 2 for 3, 2B, BB

Kiley McDaniel's ranking of prospects traded: #2: Jake Bloss (50 FV) #7: Joey Loperfido (45+ FV) #21: Charles McAdoo (40+ FV) #26: Jonatan Clase (40+ FV) Honorable Mention: Cutter Coffey (40 FV)

Womp womp. Kiley McDaniel just released his ranking of all of the prospects traded at the deadline. #2: Jake Bloss #7: Joey Loperfido Guess he didn't get the memo that they were just overrated prospects from a s***** system. By the way; he has Bloss over Klassen, Agustin Ramirez, Lesko, Liranzo, etc. He has Loperfido over all 3 of the notable prospects the Padres traded for Jason Adam (Snelling, Mazur, Pauley).

He is elite, but there is a long way to go. He has 15.7 career WAR at age 24. Francisco Lindor by comparison had 22.8 career WAR at the end of his age 24 season.

Yesavage just signed. Slightly overslot so that likely finishes out our class unless Gavin Smith isn't signing for mch more than $150K.

Bo has a lot of leg injuries that are piling up. All to the same leg as well I'm pretty sure. Vlad was just a case of whether he could remember what made him good in the first place.

Connor Norby is just a more hyped version of Davis Schneider. Pedestrian EV data and strikeout concerns with passable at best defense at 2B. Schneider actually hits the ball harder than Norby. Norby is super overrated.

It doesn't work like that, but OK!

Bloss has thrown 10 MLB innings. Zero point trying to pick apart his stuff (which is up since being drafted a year ago) in a sample size that small . Its 6 years of control of a #4-5 starter; potentially #3 if he keeps improving. Loperfido has obvious risk. Could be Derek Fisher, or Teoscar Hernandez. But he can play defense so it's a valuable bench option regardless. Wagner has some elite underlying data. He is basically Spencer Horwitz-lite. You are correct that none of these players are likely to be stars, but it isn't often that you are getting three players who are all a fart away from potentially putting up 1.5-3 WAR in the MLB for a half-season of a non-elite starter.

In the last 5 seasons they have had 5 different players finish in the Top 5 in ROY voting in the AL. So every single season they have brought up a new rookie from their farm system who has made an MLB impact. Regardless of their "MLB farm system ranking" (lol) they are churning out young MLB talent year after year. That is the actual purpose of "drafting" by the way (it isn't to rank high on some arbitrary list). As Carlos mentioned, during this period they were also penalized by losing several top picks, so their yearly allocated bonus pools have been among the lowest in the league. Despite this handicap they continue to find players who are shooting through the minors and onto their MLB team (like Bloss). Many of these players aren't giving them many "prospect list points", either because they are moving too quickly, or because they are being undervalued by writers and by the time its known how good they are they are already playing at the MLB level and no longer eligible to pad their prospect rankings. Jeremy Peña for example has been a ~3 WAR shortstop and he never made a single MLB.com Top 100 ranking (I think he may have made one BA list one year in the ~80-100 range). The other obvious "proof" for their drafting and development is the fact that the vast majority of their team is home-grown.

The Astros are seriously good at drafting/developing. All 3 of the guys we received were underslot college draftees that weren't selected with top picks (Bloss 3rd round, Loperfido 7th round, Wagner 18th round). Loperfido and Wagner were even College Seniors.

Sure, 2023 may in fact have been a 3 WARish season without "bad luck", but a ~3 WAR 1B still isn't worth whatever his asking price is, so it really doesn't change the narrative on whether we should extend him. $300M+ requires him to hit with the current/2021 batted ball/plate discipline metrics. This is the big question mark. If he is going to sign his mega deal and revert back to making poor swing decisions (and thus revert back to ~3 WAR) then it will be a really really bad signing.

You can pretty clearly see obvious differences in his plate discipline and batted ball metrics from 2024 to 2023, so it can't be all "luck". His 2021 metrics look very similar to 2024, so there appears to be a sweet-zone with him that produces the best results. He is swinging less often this year (nearly a 3% drop in overall Swing% from PY) and is being more selective at what he swings at (Called strike % is up by 3.2% and his Z-Swing% is down by a whopping 5.4%). Subsequently his Hard hit% is up by a whopping 6.2%. His Barrel% is up by nearly 3%, and his average EV is up by 2.4%. What this tells me is that he is reverting back to being a "smart hitter" and looking for "his pitch to hit", and subsequently crushing it. Post 2021 it seemed like he got high on his success and he started just swinging at whatever was in the zone (and then he would get in bad counts and start expanding outside the zone as well). Since he is so talented he was still making contact, but it wasn't good contact. His IFFB% was 11.7% in 2023 and 11.2% in 2022; it is at 5.6% this year and was 7.7% in 2021. I think it really is as simple as it sounds: he is making better swing decisions and therefore making better, harder contact (versus swinging more often and making shittier contact, which is where he was trending in 2022 and 2023).

Did he sign a "bad deal", or are you seriously understating the fact that DH/1B contracts are clearly suppressed and have been for 7+ years now? Even if he signed a "bad deal", he didn't leave $200 million on the table. Its not like the Astros were sitting there expecting to have to pay him $300M, and Alvarez turned around and said "how about $115M?" Players in the MLB are paid relative to other similar players. The impasse here is that a totally "fair" offer for Vlad is likely ~$200-225M. But he expects to be paid $300+M. And there is no precedent for that signing, so what makes him the exception?

Yordan Alvarez's extension just two years ago: 6 years, $115 million. He signed it when he was 24 years old, had elite seasons behind him, and was in the midst of an elite season in 2022 when he signed the extension. Again, which team is lining up to pay a 1B/DH $300+ million with no guarantee on his hitting? What makes Guerrero worth nearly 3x as much as Alvarez? These are the questions that any MLB front office is going to need to answer.