A bit slow on this - 15/765, signing bonuses, opt outs
My general thinking is
1) This stinks for me. I wanted him on the Yankees. I do view their offer as a reasonable effort and imagine Cohen was true to his word on not being outbid. I wouldn't be surprised if the bidding began in the low 600s and escalated to the point it ended at. The Red Sox bowing out at 700 mill and the Yankees at their number.
Ok so now use that money for a bunch of other things. The bottom of the lineup can't be Oswaldo, DJ, and Trent Grisham
2) This stinks for Nats fans. Soto signing anywhere else would be bad but signing for another NL East team where you see them more times a year than any other player? And they are competing directly against you for titles? Ugh.
What's worse on some level is not that the Nats didn't get Soto, as we talked about before. The Nats aren't a 15/765 team and that's fine! Like 2-4 teams are and guess what? More than 2-4 teams make the playoffs and they can also win the Series. But what's worse is that the Nats never looked in it. They should be a 15/600 team and just hearing their name early on, even if it wasn't going to happen would have shown a level of seriousness in this window we haven't seen yet.
3) Not sure what this means for Soto. Cohen has completely committed to spending money but also that hasn't quite resulted in a new dynasty forming. The Mets over the past 4 years have been underwhelming and face quite of level of competition with the young controlled Braves, the star driven Phillies, and yes, the potential up and coming Nats.
He'll be great. He'll get paid. If he wants to win... I think there were better places (and I'm not necessarily saying the Yankees). But you know what? Winning isn't guaranteed. Getting paid is. So get paid.
OK Nats. Let's move forward now. Onward and upward. The bar has been raised for the NL East. Rizzo has some work to do/
@harper. I see no point in a meaningless gesture of "seriousness" at 15/600 when it would never be the top bid. It also would be very unlike Rizzo, who over the last 5 years has given ample evidence that he pays no attention to fans views on roster construction.
ReplyDeleteAs you counseled in a prior column, it is very, very early. Too early for sure to judge the team's seriousness.
I don't think it's ok he, and by extension the team, pays no attention to fans. Winning cures all but if you don't win, vibes matter and the Nats are putting out some bad vibes.
Delete@Harper. We can argue whether the Nats pay enough attention to fans. But that's not what I said. I said they don't pay attention to fan's views on roster construction.
DeleteThe immediate question is whether they should have put in a 15/600 bid just to signal to fans that they are serious. You say yes; I say no. Regardless, it would be very un-Rizzo like to put in a pro-forma bid just to say you did it.
Ah I missed that - yes. Fans opinions on roster construction isn't important.
DeleteAnd also yes, I think making a kick the tires offer isn't bad for many reasons. Not only fan signaling, but other FA signaling and hey maybe Soto just really wants to come back, Strasburg did. There isn't harm in it
While I would have liked to hear the Nats mentioned in all the Soto gossip the last few weeks, I think it's important to recognize what we've seen from Rizzo these last 15 years. This is exactly what it would have looked like if the Nats had been in on Soto at 610/15 or whatever. For better and worse, the team doesn't often leak process stuff like this to the press, and I don't think we can infer anything either way from the silence.
ReplyDeleteBut I am willing ot infer something if we miss out on all the top bats. I get that the Nats weren't going to go to $800M, even for Soto, but we need Walker or Alonso or Santander or somebody, even if it means paying $20M more than we'd like.
We usually here after though so I'd expect some news if they did make an offer. I'm sure the beats will ask
DeleteNot sure the addition of Soto is going to get the Mets to the level of LA, the Yankees, the Phillies or even Atlanta. Scherzer and Verlander did not pan out. Their farm team prospects are not top 10. I like Juan and wish him the best --- but after 15 years there's a very real chance that the only World Series ring he wears is the one he won with the Nats.
ReplyDeleteThat'd be true even if he went to the Dodgers. Winning is hard!
DeleteI'm fine not getting Soto at anywhere near this price, but the big problem is that the Soto losers now have lots of money to spend on needs similar to those of the Nats, which will drive prices up. I sure hope the Nats will play at the inflated prices; I am very nervous they won't.
ReplyDeleteyes, but the market usually bears out what it will. I don't think the Soto losers are going to radically drive up prices.
DeleteI am with Mainelaker in thinking the market has generally reset at a higher level, but it is TBD. A District on Deck article this morning wondered what the Lerner commitment was to building a winner because Sportrac projects Walker at $17m AAV x 3 years and it wasn't clear the Nats were prepared to pay that. (I think any team would grab him at those prices).
DeleteUnfortunately, for the Nats, there are a half-dozen teams interested in Walker. He is far more likely to get 4/100 than the Sportrak 3/50. He is a solid player at a position of widespread need, in a year in which teams have money to spend and the free agent class is meh. That's my view of how the market works. Everybody is going to pay inflated prices and we have to hope Rizzo and the Lerners are prepared for that.
We'll see. I think it could be inflated but from 3/50 to 4/67 or 3/60. Not 4/100.
DeleteI don't know, Harper. The Fried and Eovaldi deals from yesterday, and the earlier Adames deal (7/182, albeit for an SS) certainly suggest that spending is up across the board. Eovaldi's 3/75 for an age-35 #2-3 starter certainly suggests that's the kind of deal Walker can get. He's a vastly better defender than Alonso (the only real non-trade competition at 1B) and during the last two years their offense has been basically equal. The only real edge Alonso has on him is age, and that's going to affect years, not AAV.
DeletePersonally, I don’t want the Nats to get locked into these 15 year deals that you regret less than halfway through. I’d rather you massively overpay for someone through his age 35 season. Soto compares to Pujols early years pretty well. Pujols was by better but it’s close. If that comp continues, then you have at best 5 years of high level play. Followed by 2 years of alright play, followed by 8 years of a mixed bag ranging from a below average OPS to average. It’s gonna be hard to watch a guy get an OPS of .657 while making $51M.
ReplyDeleteThis is all potentially true (I do think Pujols faded a little quicker than expected but also getting 5 straight years of Pujols 26-30 with no down and no injuries would be lucky) but the thing is 5 years of Pujols like high play is going to be worth like $400 million. They'd get more than half back in less than a third of the time. And you want that concentrated good because you want the highest chances to win so I think there's value here (also not factoring in attendance, merch, etc.)
DeleteThat’s my point. I don’t care about overpaying, I’d just rather they overpay for shorter deals. I’d rather have paid 550 for 10 years. That way the money falls off the books sooner and you can restart from there with a new overpaid contract to a someone else for ages 29-35. Basically, I’d rather make those deals that the traditional 7 year covering ages 30-35. But since he’s so young I would be fine with a little longer. But still ending at 35. Pay a bunch for that, I don’t care, it’s not my money. I just don’t like watching a 39 year old hit .212 and pay him more than my young guys. I don’t like to see it. So I want a higher AAV, but ending when they are younger than 40.
DeleteSoto does have an opt-out after 5 years. They could walk away if he does opt out. Of course that's gambling on him doing that.
DeleteI'm happy for Soto; it's been fun watching him play baseball. I think that the Yankees figured out that Cohen wasn't going to be outbid but went a couple more rounds of offers just to drive Cohen's price up before they tapped out. Hey, spite is a thing!
ReplyDeleteAs for the Nats, my feeling is that these events should FINALLY quiet the savaging that the team has been taking for years for trading Soto. The critics assumed that the team had it in their power to keep Soto if they really wanted to. But it's clear that Soto was going to free agency, period. The Nats and the Yankees both tried to ink him to an extension. but he (through Boras) didn't even engage. If the Nats had hung onto Soto to try to get him to come around they'd now be facing 2025 not only without Soto, but without James Wood, MacKenzie Gore, CJ Abrams, Jarlin Susana, and RHIII. And while having Soto would not have remotely made the Nats a contender, he might have been able to win enough games to cost the team the chance to draft Dylan Crews and Brady House. It would be like the Angels when they tried to hang onto Ohtani, but turned up to 11. Yikes.
I'm just growing convinced that the Lerners are doing their "our way or the highway" thing. "We have an idea of what this is worth, and if you can't meet the price, we'll just do without." And there will be nothing better than a couple Joey Gallo types within the Lerners' budget, and the Nats will win 73 games.
ReplyDeleteMacKenzie Gore is a Boras Client and he'll be a free agent in 3 years -- might as well get rid of him now.
@Kevin Rusch: this is my concern as well. And if that's the case, then we've very quickly become the (formerly) Oakland A's with the outlook of cultivating prospects and losing them to FA or dealing them for more prospects prior to hitting FA. First Bryce, Turner, and now Soto... its hard to view this any other way: the Nats have quickly gone from a WS title to becoming a feeder program to its division rivals.
ReplyDeleteAlso, pure speculation here: but are we convinced that the Lerners want to hold on to this team and not sell? Because their actions (or lack thereof) the past few years and into this offseason so far indicate a lack of investment. Looking at it that way, it makes much more sense. Why invest in a product that you don't want anymore? At the same time, they turned down Leonsis' $2 billion offer because it was too low. Shortly thereafter, Rubenstein bought the Orioles for $1.75 billion. See the problem here? This gets back to exactly what Kevin brought up above. Is our ownership out of touch with reality?