Click here to read a transcript of Tuesday’s chat with MLBTR’s Steve Adams.
By Steve Adams | at
Click here to read a transcript of Tuesday’s chat with MLBTR’s Steve Adams.
MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com
hide arrows
scroll to top
Steve Adams
3:27
Most of “us working stiffs” aren’t in a 10-billion dollar entertainment industry that literally couldn’t function without us. I mean, I don’t really see why anyone cares what a professional athlete makes. Do you boycott movies because Leonardo Dicaprio makes like $20-30 million per film?
————————————-
Do expensive players who bust not impede a team’s ability to improve or remain as competitive in the future? A $200-$300 million bust isn’t going to be pushed aside in the middle of their contract for a potentially better player.
Owners are less likely to keep spending and improving their team if large contracts have tended not to work out well for them.. See the Angels with Pujols, Hamilton, Wilson… Now it appears the Angels don’t want to spend because they’ve been burned too much. They have next to nothing to show for those contracts. Despite a strong desire to keep Trout beyond 2020, they still haven’t attempted to put a winning team on the field this off season.
————————-
——–
Steve Adams
3:49
You will never find me saying a 26-year-old with 30 career WAR and an NL MVP Award under his belt is overrated. Sorry.
—————————
Harper came up at age 19 so he’s been around a while to accumulate 30 WAR. WAR per year is a better indicator of a player’s value.
What about an agent who pulls in $100M+ annually?
An agent that makes 100 mil a year met the Giants brass in his private jet.
Scott Boras runs a massive organization that includes a state-of-the-art training facility; he employs hundreds of people. It’s naive to think, somehow, all of the money he made from negotiating contracts went directly to him – I mean, he has to pay these people and pay for the fhe overhead (and the plane).
CursedRangers….I’m no Boras fan or apologist but his $108.3M in 2017 came from $1.9 BILLION in contracts. Do the math. That is not the 10% you keep spouting. He charges slightly more than some agents but then again others don’t have the facilities he has.
The MLBPA certifies agents, MLB has no say whatsoever over agents other than the ability to ban from the ballparks etc as they did with Juan Nunez, a former employee with ACES
5.7%
Jimcarlo—— he!!yeah!!!
NICE COMMENT!
“Do expensive players who bust not impede a team’s ability to improve or remain as competitive in the future?”
That’s not really addressing the point that Steve was making. There are good contracts and bad ones and the actual size of them needs to be looked at relatively. It would be no different if the owners had gotten a better deal in the last CBA with the players getting a smaller slice of the revenue pie. In that instance, some people would be saying the same thing about $200M contracts that they’re saying about $300M ones. As long as the owners are getting rich, there should be no complaints about the actual talent, what people pay to see, getting rich as well.
But the system is unfair, so it’s silly to talk about player’s salaries. While small market teams aren’t going to sign expensive FAs, big market teams can, and even if the contract is bad, still succeed. The Heyward contract did not keep the Cubs from winning the WS, Neither did the Zito contract hamper the Giants. And then you have Scherzer’s contract which has paid off exceptionally well. It’s up to the clubs to decide who is worth giving a big contract to. But it’s missing so much to say all big contracts are bad,
As to Harper and his WAR, you’ve noted that he’s been in the league 6 years in order to compile a 30 WAR, but ignore that that was his formative years and that he is also just entering his prime.
Also, not that a 5-win player is elite – that’s a perennial all-star and MVP candidate.
Jimcarlo, the other part that Steve seems to be missing is Harper’s inconsistency.
During his career he’s had an OPS under .850 as much as he’s had one 1.000 or over.
Yes, he put up a fantastic MVP season, but based on the other 6 years he’s been on the field, IMHO it’s entirely reasonable to question whether the MVP year was an outlier.
The fact is that no owner knows which Bryce Harper he’s going to get – the MVP or the guy with an OPS under .850 who can’t stay on the field.
There us A LOT more risk to an owner with the contract Harper wants vs. one that Trout could get in today’s market, even if Trout got 10/450.
Trout does it every year. Harper has not.
Frankly, it’s an insult to Trout to compare them.
Shirtless Bartolo on a Darkhorse
4:15
A-Rod was using steriods
Steve Adams
4:15
Probably came in handy when facing all those pitchers who were also taking steroids.
—————————————-
We know Arod was a roider..How about all the pitchers he teed off against who didn’t use?
As far as you can go back, players have always cheated. Even when it comes to the steroids era, there were still players that were flirting with trouble, because they would find new supplements that weren’t on the MLB ban list…
Regardless what any baseball purist wants to believe, cheating is just as much of a tradition as boo’ing umpires..Players and ESPECIALLY PITCHERS have always looked for and often found new and different ways to cheat. From spitting on baseballs, to actually manipulating the seams, scuffing baseballs, applying foreign substances to your fingers and fingertips, supplements, steroids, uppers, and it even goes so far as medication that helps a pitcher stay up, focus better, and helps them study film and scouting reports…Any “advantage” they can get they’re going to use, and often times MLB hasn’t caught up to the new cheating techniques, and often times, unless it’s highly publicized, they don’t care to interfere..
Also, there have been quite a few pitchers that have demonstrated the differences between a doctored baseball and the baseball they’re supposed to throw. The difference is NIGHT AND DAY, and it significantly improves their performance, but that doesn’t matter right, only hitters cheat, everyone knows that!! lol
During the nutritional enhancement and steroid years, its been speculated that as high as 65-70% of baseball players were using some type of supplements to gain an advantage..Well, really during that time, they weren’t gaining an advantage so much as they were trying to get an even playing field with their peers..Right or wrong, it was what it was..
In terms of hitters, steroids, PEDs, moose pee, whatever the supplement banned or not, it was clearly obvious which players were just better than their peers…Alex Rodriguez was always a superior talent to his peers, and his pure skills were never questioned.
Still though, I wonder how much better he would have fared if the pitchers he faced weren’t manipulating the baseballs they threw him, or if each and every single pitcher he faced had their fingers, hands, and hats examined thoroughly before they entered the game..Every single pitcher manipulates each and every ball they pitch before they throw a single pitch..And they are not doing it just for fun, they are altering the seams to gain a competitive advantage…Yet, are they cheating?? Are they questioned about how they are unfairly unevening the playing field?!?…It is stupid, it is just part of the game. That’s why MLB has rules put into place, and those rules will continue to change as medicine and technology grows, because it is only going to open up more doors for players to try and get more advantages over their peers..And as long as there is a winner and a loser, and as long as players that put up better numbers get paid higher, there will ALWAYS be players that find ways to cheat..Whether it is legal or not, it doesn’t make a difference, cheating is cheating..
A 0 WAR team should theoretically win 48 games.
I see no way that the Orioles who finished 9 games worse than the next worst team with Manny Machado at the top of his game on their roster for 60% of the season don’t have the worst record in MLB in 2019.
I still think the Braves are a dark horse for Harper.
Why are so many idiots so obsessed with deciding what kind of players are and what they are ever going to be before they are 32 years old? That’s kinda the cutoff date and even then there are some older examples. But seriously, what is wrong with your brain if you seriously think 26 year olds Harper and Machado aren’t studs? Both are still learning the game and have already performed at an elite level, that’s a fact. But why do idiot fans expect players to be year in and year out amazing? Baseball is very hard and I will never respect any commenter who acts like it is and that any elite player can be elite every single season of their careers. You are all pathetic losers who need to stfu in my opinion
“But why do idiot fans expect players to be year in and year out amazing?’
lol
And here we have it……..
These guys are supposed to be SUPERSTARS – and by all that is holy – deserve to be paid like ones…..setting the record for the highest paid players in MLB history.
But wait……
We “idiot fans” are simply unrealistic to expect these SUPERSTARS with their record setting salaries “to be year in and year out amazing”. Yeah, and hustling every game is too much of a demand from them as well…..even in The World Series.
Let me tell you kid – Lou Gerhig, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Al Kaline, Frank Robinson, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Rod Carew, Miguel Cabara and others were REAL SUPERSTARS. They showed up ready to play and WERE “year in and year out amazing”, – unless they had major injuries or were breaking down heading for retirement. For heavens sake, Mickey Mantle played on one leg most of his career, putting up numbers that Harper and Machado will NEVER come close to matching…..before all the expansion which has watered down opposing pitchers and teams.
They and others are the ones that built MLB.
Machado and Harper are All Stars….some years. Mike Trout is the only true position player SUPERSTAR in MLB today.
Tired of the entitlement mentality, thinking MLB history started “back in the day” – 2004 – and the total lack of perspective.
So you think “superstar = highly paid = must compete in the hardest league in the world year in and year out even though basically no one has ever done that before” – talk about ridiculous demands.
” record setting salaries ” – what records are you talking about? Record salary for someone who has a skill you don’t have that creates literally billions of dollars?
I swear, if I see one more post that is owner-bootlicking “Im soooo glad they dodged a bullet not signing that contract!” – hey genius, these owners pull these player salary numbers out of thin air and only adjust them extremely slightly annually compared to the amount of money the players make the league every year, which is going up at a far greater rate.
Stop caring about billionaires money, that is a truly idiotic thing to do. Stop acting like because you were good in high school, that you can ever, even for 0.1 seconds, that you could last a day in MLB, and then you hate player salaries because you think you are as skillful and your industry makes as much as theirs does. I’m also guessing you did not graduate high school.
Also Lou Gerhig, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Al Kaline, Frank Robinson, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Rod Carew would not even make AAA in 2019. The modern game has absolutely absurd level-gameplay compared to the 60s-90s. All your points are invalid.
Kid;
You lead the league in demagoguery.
I go to AAA games. Most of the players stink. Including the “Top 100”.
I watch at least parts of over 350 MLB games a year. There are very few complete players in MLB – which is why rosters change 3-6 times a week. It is stunning how bad the majority of ML players are today.
My HS baseball team won the state championship. Really. We were good. So were other HS teams in our area. One of our pitchers went into pro ball. He won a Cy Young award. Really. I watch ML players do multiple things each game that our HS manager would bench a 16-17 year-old player down for doing.
You have a radically inflated opinion of today’s players. The level of competition stinks.
As for the “billionaire owners” – please re-read my post above. I didn’t write a thing about them. I do know that the majority are not worth anything like that amount. Please take your naive, childish, demagogic rants elsewhere.
Well said Samuel, both times.
Sam, maybe StrikeFour works for an agent. 😉
He’s absolutely the example if someone who’s been uneducated, and as you point out, lacks perspective.
The one statement you made I would modify is that in a couple more years Mookie Betts may belong in the same conversation with Trout.
Harper and Machado do not.
Pete Rose had a great career, then hung around forever after he wasn’t any good in order to break a record. He was a terrible baseball player for the last 6-7 years he was playing. Mickey Mantle never showed up “ready to play”: he was drunk on the field all the time; he missed 20 or so games a year because he was too drunk to take the field. It’s amazing to think about how much better he might have been had he taken even the slightest care of himself. Baseball wasn’t as competitive in Mantle’s day; simply because athletes weren’t what they are today, but he was an amazing player. Ted Williams didn’t much care for baseball but was easily the best hitter of all time, relative to his competition. But talk about guys who didn’t hustle…..Ted was sort of the template for that. And as soon as the season ended, he went off to do the thing he was actually passionate about – hunting and fishing. He never once attended any kind of off-season fan event – baseball was his job, and he was good at it (the hitting part; he was an indifferent fielder and baserunner) Later in life – much later – Ted began to embrace baseball, but when he was playing he didn’t care much for the game, and he was downright nasty to fans.
Lou Gehrig played in the segregation era; he was terrific of course, but it’s hard to take his stats seriously when 2/3rds of the best players in the world were excluded from the game. Joe Morgan is one of the greatest players of all-time; his post-career shtick is annoying but it doesn’t detract from how good he was. WAR – a metric that Joe Morgan constantly derides – places Morgan fourth all-time among second basemen, but the three guys ahead of him (Lajoie, Collins, Hornsby) played in the segregation era and it’s pretty obvious Morgan was better than them.
Rod Carew was a tremendous hitter; besides Gwynn, I think he’s the best pure hitter I’ve ever seen in person. Carew was a bad second baseman, even after years of work, and his career ended on a sour note after he was colluded against by owners; when the collusion lawsuits were finally decided in the players’ favor, Carew received the highest payout of all the affected class.
Miguel Cabrera was a great hitter; an indifferent fielder and has some gross off-field issues that I’d prefer not to discuss here.
I think there’s always been this narrative : “baseball was better in my era” – but you can find that narrative stretching back to the early 1900s. There are literally quotes from players who played in the 1890s who thought Babe Ruth couldn’t have cut it in 1890. The players from the 20’s thought the 1950s players were no good…etc. The quality of baseball has increased, like all other athletic endeavors, by leaps and bounds over the last 150 years. We can embrace all the eras of the sport for what they were.
” 2/3rds of the best players in the world “?
Ummm, a lot, yes, but TWO THIRDS?
I don’t think so. You’ll need to back that up.
I don’t know; look at the roster of a typical MLB team right now and tell me how many players would have been allowed to play before 1947
For fun, I did this for the 2018 Yankees. Here’s the players: Chad green. JA Happ. Tommy Kahnle. Jordan Montgomery. Adam Ottavino. Greg bird. Ellsbury. Gardner. Frazier. I think that’s it.
Robertson.
Here’s another current, and very good, MLB team: The Boston Red Sox. Here are the players who could be on their roster before 1947:
Mitch Moreland. Andrew Benintendi. Brock Holt. Steve Pearce. Porcello. Sale. Eovaldi. Kimbrel, Kelly, Barnes. Hembree. Pomeranz. Swihart. Kinsler.
Notice who’s missing? The MVP, the entire infield minus the part-time first baseman. 2/3rd of the outfield. Two starting pitchers who combined to throw 300 innings with an ERA+ of 120.
I mean, we can pretty much do this with almost every team, if you’d like.
Here’s the Stros: Bergman. Marisnick. Stassi. Reddick. Gattis. McCann. The pitching staff would be intact. But that still leaves out Altuve, COrrea and Springer and Marwin…..
Also, you named a bunch of Hall-of-Famers.. Well, besides Rose, who bet on his team and Cabrera, who isn’t eligible yet. But anyway, the average baseball player isn’t a hall-of-famer. Only around 1% of the players who ever play the game get there. If we’re going to compare all players to the elite among all players, well, yeah, most players aren’t going to measure up. Simply because most players aren’t Hall-of-Famers, and baseball, throughout its history, has been built by the scrubs and the non-HOF players, sprinkled throughout by the occasional Ted Williams or Mike Trout or JOe Morgan, To argue that modern baseball is bad because there isn’t a Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams is absurd. Hall of Famers are outliers.
(And Mantle, with his serious drinking issues, would probably not have a career in 2019; that sounds terrible to say, but he really was a bad drunk who missed lots of games because he couldn’t take the field. Williams – well, if we want to get mad about Machado’s mild comment about hustling, can you imagine how much derision Williams would have gotten for his lack of hustle? Williams was notorious for spitting on fans as well; I wonder how that would go over these days)
Dc74, I’m not sure of your point.
Many writers on this site have stated things about Harchado like “they’re future HOFrs” or they’re “on a HOF trajectory”.
Thus, it seems entirely appropriate for Sam to use past HOF players as a yardstick for comparison.
Yes, baseball has changed over the years, and players train year-round and it’s a full-time job now, but I saw guys like Mays and Aaron play, and they were good athletes that would have adjusted to today’s game. Mantle and Williams too.
It’s really hard to compare eras, but it’s downright silly to assume great athletes would not have adjusted to the times.
Mays and Aaron sure. Mantle would have still been a drunk. Williams would have still been a surly bastard. They were wonderful players, yes, but in this era Mantles drinking wouldn’t be tolerated and Williams spitting on fans would be absolutely frowned upon.
Driveline looked at Babe Ruth’s swing and concluded that he would have been a successful hitter in modern baseball, except for the very obvious thing: he swung a 54-ounce bat (most major leaguers use a 30-32-ounce bat now because pitchers throw so much harder). His swing plane and timing would suggest that, had Ruth played now his swing would have worked well, as long as he was using a lighter bat. But his conditioning, or lack thereof, might have eaten him alive. Ruth also refused to adjust to the shift, because, as he said, “fans don’t come to see me hit a single the other way; they come for the home runs.” That approach would certainly put him at odds with the old-school baseball fans who think hitters should try to beat the shift and deride those who don’t.
MLB Trade Rumors just got a shout out on J.T. Realmuto’s introductory press conference!
not quiet sure why they have these chats only answer questions about manny and bryce get sickening the same ole stuff every chat