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From what I can gather for the Angels to move Ohtani they would have needed to break a bunch of marketing related contracts which greatly complicated the situation.

If there's any truth in that rumor the club should just move on from Vlad. It appears as though he's been asking for the moon throughout his time with the Blue Jays without ever really earning the type of money he's been asking for.

I think you misread what was written. Laika never said that the Blue Jays lower threshold was $241 million, he stated that their CBT payroll at present was sitting around $228 million at present.

Um did you somehow miss that Teoscar won a world series as a member of the Dodgers last season?

I'm at the point where I don't care if it's 3 years or 4 or even 5 for Santander. The team is going to lose a second round pick if they sign him up which is the only real negative I can see. The team is rapidly approaching the point where a rebuild is potentially going to need to happen barring unexpected breakouts in the minors, and an extra year or two for Santander's services isn't going to a huge deal on a team that's likely going to be awful anyway.

I believe that payroll is 10 to 12 million shy of where the team ended last season, not where they started. I do think there was extra payroll available as the team took a shot at signing Matt Chapman late in the offseason as spring training was approaching. It feels increasingly unlikely anyone of note will be added as the best targets are rapidly dropping off of the board.

I think we need some sort of tar and feather option when there is a disagreement.

Yeah that would have potentially been a great combination. Perhaps they wouldn't have worked very well together as I think AA was a riverboat gambler and Shapiro seemed to be much more risky averse. One of the things that set AA apart was his willingness to attempt bold, potentially franchise altering moves. THis was also arguably a massive weakness at times as he was willing to make risky moves that failed miserably. It's possible that Shapiro could have prevented some of the real head scratchers from occurring (the Dickey trade is top of mind here), but at the same time it's possible Shapiro's more conservative nature would have constrained AA excessively. Ultimately we'll never know.

AA sold the farm in the way out the door and chose to abandon ship. He was offered an extension and turned it down. He absolutely could have seen things through as you suggest but chose not to.

If I recall correctly they were reportedly not willing to move past the $700 million mark or thereabouts for Soto. This has appeared to happen repeatedly throughout the team's competitive window in that the team has a self imposed limit and typically isn't willing to go beyond to exceed the other team's offers.

They've faced their own internal restrictions on the overall amount they are allowed to offer to each free agent. I think that's largely held them back in their efforts to attract top talent in free agency and even signing their own players to extensions.

That was a Cathal Kelly article. The Rosie Dimanno version would largely feature the same bull**** fake narratives except with flowery prose sprinkled throughout.

AA could have signed his own free agents. He largely just faced restrictions in the overall term he was allowed to offer. AA potentially wouldn't have been able to sign Ryu and Kikuch due to Beeston's stupid beef with Boras but that's not a certainty. Springer likely would have required offering more money over a max 5 year term vs offering a 6th year. Bassitt, Semien and Gausman wouldn't have offered any extra challenges.

I was referring the team in general during the recent window of contention. Obviously 2024 was a massive disaster but the previous 4 years did see the team enjoy an extended period of regular season success.

When did the current front office blame AA for anything let alone everything? All we have to go off of is a rumor of a meeting where Shapiro supposedly "chastised" AA for selling the farm at the trade deadline. This is a one sided accounting that for all we know could have simply been Shapiro expressing concern over going all in at the trade deadline and emptying the upper levels of the minors of most of the quality prospects right before he was due to take over. This would be far from the first time that a salacious rumor was spread while being worded in such a fashion to frame it as much bigger of a story than it actually was. The teams as constructed were plenty good to win games or even series if they simply performed up to their talent level in 2022/2023. Unfortunately this didn't happen, likely due to some combination of poor coaching/preparation, bad managerial moves in some instances, or simply players choking under pressure when under the big lights of the playoffs. The team was not perfect by any means and certainly had it's flaws, but the MLB playoffs during the wild card era have shown over and over again that even the worst teams heading into the playoffs can get hot at the right time and win games and even win series against teams with vastly superior regular season records.

That would be a nice problem to have if Wagner is actually good enough to warrant an extension.

Yeah the depth was a definite issue that season. I recall that the rotation depth looked decent heading into the season, but all of the depth options either got hurt or sucked. That was at least better than the actual rotation suffering a bunch of injuries for sure but far from ideal.

It's not impressive by any means but if payroll matters to this degree in the equation it's not unreasonable to say the team was a top 10 team in MLB in the regular season that choked in the playoffs in the short wild card series.

The alternative was running a bunch of bullpen games or plucking a pitcher off of the scrap heap so it was a pick your poison type of scenario.

That's my biggest issue with articles like this in that they tend to be long on emotion and short on actual facts. This author is nothing more than a rage peddler and has been holding a grudge against the current front office from day 1 so it's no surprise that he would attempt to twist the facts into a bunch of fan fiction level narratives instead of objectively utilizing the truth to create a balanced article.

Yeah that's a key point here. Each of them could afford to demand a franchise level player extension or simply wait until free agency. Neither of them were likely to sign any kind of team friendly extension

Yeah it's a bit of a fake narrative that the team had massive payrolls throughout this recent stretch. They didn't reach the luxury tax level for the first time in team history until 2023 so it's not fair to act like they have a Mets/Dodgers level payroll.

Yeah totally, like how he turned a premium catching prospect into Esmil Rogers, or sent a bunch of prospect capital out in the botched Marlins trade for guys on free agent contracts, or how he sent a bunch of prospects out in return for J.A. Happ before he was actually good, and sent out a starter quality catching and number 1 starter quality prospect for a 40 year old knuckleball pitcher, or how he sent out premium prospects for a rental pitcher, and sent out more prospects for a soon to be broken down short stop and so on and so on. The guy treated prospects like they were candy and if anything didn't attain anywhere close to the type of value he should have.

For all of the Dodgers regular season dominance in the regular season it hasn't turned into an automatic world series title every season. The biggest issue with this premise of blowing things up is that tanking really isn't a viable strategy anymore. Baltimore basically ruined that for everyone else moving forward.

Lol I can't read.