First I want to speak to Corbin.
It is true that Corbin's salary is a sunk cost. What that means is that the Nats are paying it regardless and they need to judge whether and how much Corbin should play based solely on what is best for the team. It is NOT a measure of evaluation.You can still look at Corbin's salary and his performance and say it is bad and it hurts the Nats that they have put that many dollars in and gotten that little out of it.
I certainly am not mad at Corbin (get your $$$), nor suggesting he shouldn't pitch. Maybe prior to the year it was a question but right now it is not. He's throwing like a 3-4 which is more than good enough to keep starting.
I can be angry... well that's a strong word... annoyed at those that suggest that we should change our evaluation of Corbin based on the new low expectations he set.
You're paying him like an ace. He's pitching like a mid rotation guy at best. That is bad. But he's pitching like a mid rotation guy at best so he stays in the rotation because the Nats (and arguably most teams) don't have 5 guys better up to this point in 2023. It is good that he is here now in comparison to where he was, which was pitching so bad it was a question if the Nats, a team with no depth, should keep using him. But it is not good in general.
Let us speak now of better things- like Josiah Gray!
Yesterday was a fun game because for the past 6 starts after his first terrible one, he's been keeping the ball in the park BUT he hadn't been keeping the other team from hitting fly balls. In other words he was sort of just getting lucky. But yesterday for the first time all year, he did produce more ground balls than fly balls.
For the most part it looks like his games are tracking in a way where hen he tries to strike out guys he tends to give up more fly balls. He hasn't been touched for the homers like in previous years, but that might be a function of like I said, luck. His hard hit % isn't down much. Though kind of a reverse Soto - he's not giving up "barrels". Guys are hitting it hard but not as square. That's not surprising given the change away from being so FB heavy. Still that's a tightrope walk.
Yesterday, and in the other days with low K totals, we see much closer GB/FB numbers. It's not necessarily so that you have to be a GB pitcher to succeed, but looking at his fancy stats the HR/FB rate and the LOB% rate stand out as likely unsustainable. IOW, if he keeps giving up those FBs he'll start giving up HRs and probably with some mean on base. So I think it's best if he focuses on keeping the ball in the park even if it means fewer Ks.
For the Nats it's a day off and you can take the day off too. What to watch if you don't want to? The marquee game is the Yankees - who as of right now somehow have the 8th best record in baseball but the 5th best record in the AL East - versus the Rays early season juggernaut. But for the Nats there might be more interest in the solid Padres at Twins finisher. Not only because Soto who in the past two weeks has hit .400 / .547 / .700 to raise his season numbers from .178 / .339 / .344 to .246 / .406 / .454 but because of the Twins starter today. Bailey Ober is sort of the guy Gray might want to become if not going with more ground balls*. Ober is unapologetically a flyball pitcher. 55% this year up from 51% last year and 46% in 2021 but he gives up almost no homers because he's giving up fewer and fewer hard hit balls. He generally has excellent control as well which makes up for not being a K pitcher.* It's this sort of ideal - lazy flyballs and no one to score on sac flies that works.
Of course I say this and he'll give up 5 homers today.
*Basically if your history shows you can do something unusual I'll believe you can. Ober has that. Gray doesn't. So for now I'd by regression back to some homers and runs for Gray if he doesn't lean into GBs. BUT he can prove me wrong and Ober is an example of it working in that direction
**He could be a K pitcher though - some people think he has that stuff and he should minor league promise.
14 comments:
OT: A thought about Soto, Harper, and Boras. Harper laughed at the Nats' offer, HATED free agency, and took less to stop the fiasco. Soto laughed at the Nats' offer and has turned into a pumpkin in San Diego. (last week notwithstanding).
I know these guys deserve $ and to hell with the owners, I get it. BUT I think someone needs to understand that "I am only here for 6 years then I am definitely out for the highest bidder" isn't as easy on a 23-year-old whose life we're talking about as it is for a guy like Boras who is making a few percent of dozens of fat deals.
Why aren't more people telling Boras "get me the most you can, but I'll take a discount to stay here."? I know Strasburg did (which worked out great for him). Do you think Soto could have said to the Nats' offer "15/440 isn't not enough, but 15/500 will do." and gotten the deal done?
They'd still have to tear everything else down, but if there were 13 more years on his deal, that might have been enough to keep the guy around. As it stands now, his value is plummeting with every popup, and I think teams are going to maybe think twice about committing to 12 years when he's hitting like this.
Kevin: Over the course of several decades, I have been amazed at the relative rarity of home town discounts and the seemingly-enthusiastic willingness of players to change teams for relatively little more than they were being offered to stay with a team where they appeared to be happy. I marvel at the power of "I got the most" and "I did it for future generations of players."
From where I sit (which is obvioulsly not where baseball players sit), generational money is generational money--your life really won't be changed much by whether your deal is guaranteed $80 million or $85 million. It's the first $80 million that matters, no? And the sooner the contract, the more certainty of pay-out without regard to injury, mental breakdown, skill regression, or other things that can diminish a player's value.
I wish Soto success, but failing to counter-offer to $440 million and strking a deal with the Nats might wind up costing him several hundred million dollars. Certainly he has incurred a substantial risk by not having worked out a deal.
In response to Steven and Kevin: I think that a number of the players hold out for the biggest number out of loyalty to the union. Or at least they say they do. Or at least Max Scherzer says he did. They think (or say) that by holding out for max cash, they are supporting the "going rate" for other players.
I think this reasoning is only true for the stars and superstars. But Max Scherzer is a good union man, and knows more about this business than I do. (He is also a superstar, so I can't dismiss a conflict of interest here.)
It is interesting and I don't think it only applies to generational money either. Reducing it to a scale that more of us may be able to relate to: if you're a successful lawyer or engineer or whatever, is a $350k job with worse externalities really better than a $250K job with better ones?
I think the wise answer is often no, but it's empirically yes for a lot of people, especially when you're young enough and inexperienced with the world enough to not really understand how to value those externalities. It's just pretty easy to prioritize concrete measurable differences in a decision like this.
And with those huge deals for megastars, they've all made $50M+ under their rookie deals anyway, so I'd say they're actually in a great place to just pursue maximum EV and let variance fall where it may (assuming they really don't care at all about a particular geography or team culture or whatever). To me, that's the frame that's interesting -- why do so many athletes not seem to care where they live? Maybe they've just ordered their lives around sport for so long that it doesn't feel as restrictive as it would to any other rich person to have to live in a city you didn't love.
I made relentless fun of Bryce Harper for spurning a great American city (SF) to spend 13 years in a fourth-tier American city for like an extra $15M. Having been to both places many times, it is inconceivable that such a small amount of money (in percentage terms; and yes, California has high state income tax but the difference nevertheless isn't that big in percentage terms) would cause one to choose to live in the worse place. I don't have a good model for why this happens but here goes: (1) a lot of athletes live only part time where they play, and baseball players are on the road all the time, so who cares (but this is not true of Bryce, who makes a shithole his year-round home); (2) athletes are competitive and want "the most" and "the best" and this causes them to maximize dollars rather than utility; (3) they pay attention to their agents, who all live in Southern California but earn more money when their clients sign for juuuuuust a bit extra to go to a team that plays in a shithole like Philly. None of these is particularly satisfying to me, so it's a mystery.
After seeing the other players go, watching Soto—a generational talent, recruited and developed through the Nat's system—leave was heartbreaking. But it meant this organization wouldn't be on the hook for 440mm. We don't have to worry about his ebbs and flows, possible injuries, etc.
Instead, we got back some talent that's already producing, who we'll have for years. The likes of Gore, Abrams, and the folks in the minors seem to be worth so much more than a currently surging after a prolonged slump-Soto.
I expected this season to be worse that last year, when turning on any game was an exercise in misery (heaped upon the heartache of losing so many great players, following the glorious 2019 campaign). Soto chased the dollar, rightfully, in terms of what it means to the other players around the league to have a guy at the top of the game shoot for his greatest value (whether that turns out to be a misjudgment on his part or not).
It was coldblooded calculus to send a guy like Soto off, but the trade has infused this team with future promise. I couldn't see it clearly at the time of the trade, but Rizzo seems to have worked wonders with a situation that spoke so poorly of the Lerners' unwillingness to retain talent.
Games this year have been good fun. I actually tune in thinking we have a chance on any given night. Were Soto still on the team, I'd happily tune in for his at bats, but there might not be else very much worth watching.
Accepting $440M to wait through a tear down after some other suspect behavior would have been the most mercenary of his options. We don't know why he didn't accept the money, but it is possible he wanted to be on a competitive team through his prime and keep having fun.
To follow up, I know the union needs guys to stick it to the owners -- they've earned every bit of "f--- you" that I can imagine.
However, I do think your own generational wealth matters. I don't think it's a coincidence that Ruiz fired Boras about 20 minutes before signing a long-term deal with the Nats. Also, obviously the Braves have put something in the water there to make their guys sign long-term deals for cheap.
Apparently Trea Turner was also really terrorized by the process, and let's not forget Ian Desmond's refusal of the Nats' deal "because he didn't want to set the precedent." Of course, he ended up having 1 good year and getting paid, but the Rockies sure didn't get their money's worth.
I'm sick and tired of great Nats walking, but the truth is that a lot of the guys who have walked for greener pastures have not delivered for their new employers. If the Nats could have given Harper the same contract he got in Philly, I think they'd both be happy with it.
@BillyHacker - well, Soto got traded to a contending team and he's really not looked comfortable yet. If he were hitting like he did before the trade, that team would be waltzing into October.
Agents convince athletes to go for the best deal. Its their M O. They like the drama and dealing --- and they like the process to be public and slow. Hence Boras/Harper.
Athletes want the best deal, too, obviously. And they want to win. Harper clearly wanted "the biggest" deal ever (and was hoping for a team like the Yankees). But he landed with a team ready to win.
After the Lerners got their WS ring, the who thing lost its lustre. Suddenly the team value tanked and it wasn't fun any more. A MLB franchise is not real estate, and they were unwilling to put in the cash.
Light at the end of the tunnel. In the Soto, Scherzer and Trea trades, Rizzo has recovered value for the team. Instead of having to invest $500M in a star, they have few young studs that are raising the teams performance level, entertainment value and actual cash value.
@anonymous 11:41 a.m. Shrinking the frame to $350k per year versus $250k per year misses the whole point of generational wealth. At $350k there is potential for choices that may not be possible at $250k (e.g. more expensive housing, more frequent and nicer vacation, more financial help to extended family, etc.). House costs can still eat up 30% of income at those income levels; and neither is buying $100,000 cars or a new house for mom using cash. Even in the best year, none of them are putting aside enough to fund 4 years of college for their child.
I am sure that people making $18 million per year have more choices than those making $15 million per year. But it just isn't like trade-offs the rest of us are making--whethere we make $35,000 per year or $200,000 per year.
@SG. I disagree, and in fact think that your focus on generational wealth is what misses the whole point. A $200,000/yr lifestyle is way way more similar to a $15M/yr one than a $35k/yr one.
The tradeoffs you're talking about are a rich person's tradeoffs. The specific ones aren't as uncommon, of course, as the ones made at $15M. But it's selecting among luxuries, and not necessities.
Honestly, I think that the mindset of someone making $300k a year and feeling financial strain to afford even nicer housing, even nicer vacations, nearly veblen good versions of education etc is exactly the mindset that pressures someone choose $18M over $15M. Or, for that matter, to care one iota about their P&L when they already have billions of dollars.
Which is to say that it's a mindset very common in our culture, and yet it's one that I think speaks to a general paucity of imagination in terms of what a human life can and should be.
Speaking of sunk costs, expectations and Patrick Corbin.
Actually, 2023 Corbin has a lower ERA than 2023 Max Scherzer and a virtually identical WHIP (1.41 MS, 1.42 PC). Without making excuses for Patrick, Max's contract is a much more significant disappointment. Would be good to see them face off against each other.
Hey y’all…the Nats tore apart the team and they’re only 3.5 back from the wild card. The Padres acquired EVERYBODY and they’re only 2 games better. I’d say the Nats made out on their deals. We want to see TEAM success over individual player success.
In other news I read that Cole Henry set to make his first rehab start at Fredericksburg on Tuesday. Step one in proving that TOS does NOT mark the end of a pitcher’s career. Let’s go!!
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