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By Mark Polishuk | at
Click right here to read the transcript of today’s live baseball chat
MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com
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If I were Juan Soto, I’d ask for shares of a team, in lieu of the highest contract offer. Walk away with a minority stake in a team, which he could benefit from greater in the long run, if he has aspirations for that. It could also benefit more of a small to mid market squad that most likely won’t have the winning bid.
Not saying this is not a risky move, but it would be interesting for the right fit and see an athlete have a stake in a club that he could be the face of the franchise for the significant future.
It’s not allowed.
I’m not sure that is allowed as there is no way to assess the value of the ownership shares, especially if the CBT remains in the next CBA.
who does that clause even benefit?
The owners probably. They need rules to keep themselves from doing
“out of the box” things.
Also, another rule they can wave at agents and say
“sorry, not allowed.”
i mean, shouldnt the owner in question know best what the shares are worth? i don’t see how not offering shares is of benefit to them.
It would decrease the current owner/s percentage of ownership of the team which would figure to be a substantial amount of profit on an annual basis, given indefinitely to a player for 7-10 years of home runs. Not to mention the potential conflict of interest for the guy playing right field who is now his teammates’ boss. It doesn’t benefit owners at all really especially with how many other options they have at their disposal to make the enormous commitment to mega deals that a player like Soto will require such as opt outs, player option years, deferred payments, etc. I definitely would take that deal as a player if it were on the table, if I were an owner and the player’s agent suggested it then I might end negotiations immediately and start working on plan b.
Asking for shares of the team reminds me of when the Milwaukee Bucks drafted Glenn Robinson. Robinson was asking for so much it caused owner Herb Kohl to say “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take your contract and you can have my franchise,”
I dunno why any owner would ever agree to that deal. And if they did they instantly be hated by every other owner as the precedent would be set. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
Sounds like something that could interfere with some sort of “conflict of interests” thing.
I have participated in over a 100 of these chats and the most questions I’ve ever had answered was 3. Today, Mark answered 10 of my questions…it’s a Christmas miracle!!! (Well he actually answered 9 and then included my Merry Christmas comment at the end). Thanks Mark for a great Chat, I really enjoyed it. Can’t wait for this lockout to end and we can start talking about actual deals/rumors once again.
Proud of you Dorothy!
Sorry, that did come across quite boastful and douchey. I was just so surprised after being shutout so many times.
Merry Christmas to All!
Nah, it was all right DM.
I understand.
Merry Christmas!
1
It’s almost as if people were doing something else today…
Jk, and Merry Christmas!
Maybe the Rockies thought it would have been disrespectful to QO Gray given his tenure with the team… LOL!
It seems like they were afraid he’d accept it, which is crazy! Gray was one the few SPs who figured out how to pitch successfully in Coors Field. I’m shocked they didn’t extend him, let alone allow him to walk away for no compensation. That front office is becoming the laughing stock of the league.
@Dorothy
Only just “becoming”? There are 29 teams watching the Rockies FO and doing the opposite.
The Rox should have QO’d Gray even if he did accept it. Does anyone think his replacement is going to pitch better there? They need to build that team based off Colorado familiar pitchers. They tried that once and made their only World Series appearance. The White Sox should have QO’d Rodon too if Boras is being honest about him declining it. Maybe either way. Kershaw I’m not so sure about because the Dodgers know more about his health than anyone. I think Conforto should have considered accepting. If he’s good next year he should have accepted. If he sucks next year the team that signed him made a mistake. Bad situation all around.
Am I the only one who thinks the guy who asked about the airport was maybe saying they should buy the airport and build it in its place instead of trying to build the Blue Jays stadium around the airport? I think he said only one airline used that airport so it probably wouldn’t be a big deal to get rid of it. Not that the airline would be easy to work around. I don’t think anyone believes an MLB stadium should be on the same site as a functional airport.
Of course Colorado should have QO’d Jon Gray. That was a slam dunk decision by anyone except for the Rockies’ front office!
I have a theory about Rodon though. Rodon agreed to come back to Chicago on a very cheap deal last year ($3M). I’m guessing that he had an agreement with ownership that he would only come back at that reduced rate in 2021 if they agreed to not tag him with a QO at the end of the year if he performed well.
I know Rodon got banged up at the end of the year but he was still healthy enough to pitch in the playoffs and was well worth an $18M QO gamble for 2022. Even with the shoulder fatigue, chances were still strong that another team would value Rodon enough to sign him as a FA and forfeit a draft pick (also giving ChiSox a comp pick for him) so that leads me to believe that they had this agreement in place prior to him signing his below market $3M deal for 2021.
If they had an agreement one of them should step up and say it. I lean towards no because I don’t think that’s how the business works. But if what you are saying is true Rodon should admit it because the White Sox would become a better player destination as a result. He should at least vocally pay it back since they financially paid it forward. The White Sox should be saying it for the exact same reason. Like I said… I don’t buy that though. I think the Dodgers loosely tried to insinuate playing that game but I honestly don’t believe they were certain at the time that Kershaw would be worth QO money next season. Not that they would turn him down if he gets healthy but more like, “You need several months to get in better shape. If you do come back around and we will talk. I’m still not betting $18 million on that forearm if I have to do it right now though.”
Rodon is more believable but I still find it unlikely. What would the White Sox have to lose by announcing that to the world right now? They would probably just get more players wanting to come over by admitting it. Considering Rodon was going to decline anyway I think it was most likely just another poor front office decision by the pale hose. Just like trading for Kimbrel and then paying him another $16 million on top of that. The White Sox have been making questionable moves, too.
Any team that makes a handshake agreement or a decision “out of respect” only betters themselves by announcing it. More players will want to go there. I don’t believe any team would do that and then cover it up.
@Dorothy_Mantooth No QO clauses are not allowed in MLB. And no they didn’t have a handshake agreement. A handshake agreement plus a quarter is worth 25 cents.
@Please, Hammer. Don’t hurt ’em. They would never announce it. That would be admitting to deliberately circumventing the rules.
You’re probably right. I just hear thing like that all the time. Some team might not QO a player “out of respect” or something. Every offseason I read several people say that. Someone said a couple weeks ago that he believed Freddie Freeman was refusing to sign back with the Braves because he “felt disrespected by the QO.” I think some players may not want to be QO’d but I don’t think they ever take it as a sign of “disrespect” or whatever. They know it’s part of the business and they accept it. If they are good and healthy they expect to be QO’d when the team has the ability. It can only happen once. It’s not like the NFL where they play on unguaranteed contracts and can then get franchised 3 years in a row.
I’m thinking the White Sox just don’t trust Rodon will be worth that after his injury combined with all the bad years he already had for them. I think they only kept him because it was $3 million last year and they decided to quit while they were ahead. I would have offered the QO but that’s only because it can’t hurt for more than one year. It really only looks bad because they declined Rodon but still tendered Kimbrel. The Kimbrel thing had to be more about trading Madrigal than it did believing in Kimbrel though. I don’t know what the White Sox are doing in the front office but it seems like some knee jerk decisions that aren’t very well thought through. Imagine if they still had Rodon but there payroll was still about the same because they never traded for Kimbrel in the first place. Their payroll would only go up 2 or 3 million even if Rodon accepted and they would have Madrigal playing 2nd for the next half decade. The team would be so much better. Screwing all that up for a right handed relief pitcher who had only been good again for 4 months is crazy. Before last season started the Cubs couldn’t give Kimbrel away. Now the contract looks like a steal since they were able to flip him for Madrigal. Good hitting 2nd baseman are really hard to find. Righty relievers coming off a few great months are all over the place.
I don’t know if the issue with the White Sox is Reinsdorf and La Russa just being old guys who drank too much bourbon and started making rash decisions… or if it’s Kenny Williams doing strange stuff behind the scenes if he’s still involved. Maybe it’s just Hahn. Whatever it is someone with heavy influence is making poorly thought out decisions on the south side of Chicago. It’s pretty sad too because they finally just got back to a place where they have serious powerhouse potential. It’s one thing to help ruin a team that’s already bad. Starting to do it with a team that’s really good is just a damn shame. I don’t think they really had that much of a shot last year but they still looked only one or 2 stud players away from being able to win it all. Hurting the team while also giving up long term control over someone like Madrigal is 2 really bad decisions at the same time.
@Please, Hammer. Don’t hurt ’em…
“You’re probably right.”
Not “probably.”
“I just hear thing like that all the time.”
Never from someone who isn’t a casual fan with no idea what they are talking about.
“Some team might not QO a player ‘out of respect’ or something.”
Only time I’ve ever heard of that actually happening is with the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw and I suspect that that was just creative spin as surely Andrew Friedman isn’t dumb enough to actually do that, right?
“Every offseason I read several people say that.”
I, admittedly, have posted that as a joke in the past. I said it about Mookie Betts and JT Realmuto last offseason and Madison Bumgarner the year before that. The difference is I was joking. I was being ironic. I was playing Devil’s Advocate. No GM that wants to keep their job would ever actually do that.
“Someone said a couple weeks ago that he believed Freddie Freeman was refusing to sign back with the Braves because he ‘felt disrespected by the QO.'”
I posted that as a joke and some others said it too. I’m not sure if they were serious or not. The real reason Freeman hasn’t signed yet is because the Braves want him to take a significant discount and he isn’t doing that.
“I think some players may not want to be QO’d but I don’t think they ever take it as a sign of ‘disrespect’ or whatever.”
If players had it their way they wouldn’t be QO’d but they are aware of the business side of the game and know that it is simply a procedural move agreed upon by both the league and the player’s union. Ain’t nothing disrespectful about it.
“It’s not like the NFL where they play on unguaranteed contracts and can then get franchised 3 years in a row.”
Don’t really follow NFL but if my understanding is correct guaranteed contracts basically don’t exist in that league. Like, Patrick Mahomes reportedly signed the biggest contract in North American sports history but less than $100m of it was guaranteed if he had, say, suffered a career ending injury in his first game after signing it.
As for the White Sox comments, I’ve always had negative feelings about their FO ever since Rick Hahn threw a very public temper tantrum about Manny Machado not signing with them even though they adamantly and jacknuggetly refused to give Machado what he and his agent were asking for at the beginning of the offseason while the Padres did give him what he wanted. On Rodon, I probably would have QO’d him too but it wasn’t an obvious decision for me. On Kimbrel, BTV says he has at least trade value.so by that logic, accepting his option was the right move. But if they didn’t think they would be able to trade him then yes, the smart move would have been to decline the option, admit that trading Nick Madrigal for him was a huge mistake and then either try to bring him back for less money or just move on.
BTV says he has at least some* trade value.
Good point on Kimbrel and the need to exercise his option because of the optics of trading Madrigal. I don’t see any team (NL or AL) trading for Kimbrel at his full $16M salary this offseason. The Cubs are so lucky they found a taker for him in the first place. He did have an incredible season for them but he was starting to leak oil right before the trade deadline. To net Madrigal for Kimbrel was an absolute steal by the Cubs, (as was picking up Wade Miley on waivers and signing Stroman to a very reasonable deal).
If the ChiSox want to trade Kimbrel, they are going to have to eat at least $6M of his salary or take back a player who makes $8-$10M+. Kimbrel proved last year that he can’t be a setup guy and was probably best suited as a closer in the NL as well. There’s no need for Chicago to keep both Kimbrel and Hendriks. If the White Sox can get an established second baseman for Kimbrel, they should jump all over it, but it still hurts to think they gave up a potential gold glove, .300+ hitting 2nd baseman in Madrigal for his services in the first place.
@Dorothy_Mantooth…
“Good point on Kimbrel and the need to exercise his option because of the optics of trading Madrigal.”
Again. In order to be a good GM, you have to completely tune out things like “optics.” If they didn’t think Kimbrel was worth $15m (because of the buyout the option was a $15m decision) then they needed to decline the option, admit that trading Madrigal for Kimbrel was a mistake and move the eff on.
“If the ChiSox want to trade Kimbrel, they are going to have to eat at least $6M of his salary or take back a player who makes $8-$10M+.”
Well they are most certainly not going to do that after literally just exercising his option. If you want to talk about bad optics, that right there would do it.
You should look up the payments on that Mahomes contract. I haven’t looked over it in awhile but I think it’s a little worse for the team than you might believe. I thi k I remember close to half of it is guaranteed in the form of signing bonus and guaranteed salary. So in the worst case if he had a major injury game one and never played again the Chiefs would still have to pay him over $200 million. That’s not the crazy part though.
The craziest thing I remember reading about the Mahomes contract breakdown is the half of the contract that isn’t guaranteed is the first half. Something like the last 3-5 years of the deal are almost fully guaranteed. Considering they are most likely to keep him for the first 5-7 years than the last 3-5 it’s almost fully guaranteed. I think year 10 he has a guaranteed salary of about $44 million and if he actually plays he only gets another $6 million. So if Mahomes is only good for 5-7 more years and then gets cut he will be making pretty close to $100 million a year. There isn’t really much incentive to cut Mahomes early unless he just gets really bad really soon. Even then it would totally screw the Chiefs. They might save some money for a short period of time but by years 8, 9 and 10 they are still going to be paying Mahomes $40-50 million a year whether he’s on the team or not. The craziest thing about that setup is those are the years he is least likely to be good. Maybe he can play it out. I’ve just never seen a contract where a player would make well over $400 million by only playing 7 years and would still make well over $200 million if he doesn’t play at all. I don’t remember there being a clause where the Chiefs can back out of the whole deal if he gets hurt. Maybe the first 5-7 years but the last 3-5 years, when Mahomes should in theory be at his worst, he is getting $40-50 million a year no matter what. It looks like the. Chiefs are banking their entire team on the hope that Mahomes will still be an MVP caliber QB in years 8, 9 and 10.
I might be reading it backwards though. I can never remember if it’s base salary that’s guaranteed not roster bonus that’s guaranteed. I just looked somewhere else that says only the first 3 years are really guaranteed so I think I might be confusing which one counts as signing bonus and what exactly bthe difference between roster bonus and base salary is. He did get a $60 million signing bonus though and his salary is also locked in for the first 3 years so no matter what he’s getting over $100 million. You’re right though. That doesn’t really sound like a “record breaking contract” if they can cut him with no real penalty after year 3. If I were him I would have demanded something fully guaranteed like Kirk Cousins got. Mahomes stock was high enough to do it so I don’t see the point in landing a contract that big if he doesn’t actually have to get paid it. I know Tom Brady only accepts fully guaranteed deals with full no trade clauses now. He also gets contractual guarantees that he won’t ever be hit with the franchise tag.
I see people doubting Boras all the time in these comment sections. But as a Tigers fan, I was sure to never doubt him again after the contract he pulled off for Prince Fielder so late in the offseason. 9/$254. Thank goodness Texas felt like spending money & took the vast majority of that contract off our hands and gave us Kinsler, too! Who wound up being a fixture on some of our better teams while Fielder was hurt the whole time after we dumped him. I guess Avi Garcia (now with Marlins) ended up sleeping with Fielder’s wife so it was best for all involved probably, lol.
What I find amazing is that Boras, Tony La Russa & Pete Rose all seem to use the same hair products. Do they have the same barber? Only Mark knows and chose not to reveal the answer.
With regard to Mrs Fielder I can’t confirm or deny that rumour – suffice to say that Mr Fielder gets antsy when he finds you in the broom cupboard.
As a Tigers fan do you ever see Bill Freehan or Mickey Lolich in the HOF….That late 60s/70s Tigers team seems underrepresented.
Mark I love your sass and sarcasm in answers
I missed the first ‘s’ in ‘sass’ the first time I read your comment…I was shocked that comment went through until I read it again!
Well that too 😉
Love that question about 10 winning seasons and no title vs 9 losing with a title.
I was a background extra in Sugar. Parts filmed at John O’Donnell stadium, now called Modern Woodman Park, in Davenport, IA, home of the River Bandits. Annually considered one of, if not the nicest milb park in the country. The picture on the cover of the video is one of the coolest scenes I’ve ever experienced in a baseball stadium, with the beautiful Centennial Bridge in the background.
How did you land that? Were you in the right place at the right time or did to have to apply for it? Just curious…I still haven’t seen the movie but it’s on my watchlist now seeing how much love it’s getting from the members on this site.
public advertisement. pretty much just about a thousand extras to fill the stadium so the scenes looked real.
Never heard of it, but instantly googled when I saw it in the chat and gonna watch it.
Let’s be real though; there’s only one answer to the baseball movie question: Wendy Peffercorn.
Sandlot! Wendy got hot as well over the years since making that film.
Which mid-market team won the 2021 World Series?
The Braves are generally considered mid-market, even though they have the tenth largest one.
As a Padres fan, I’ll take one World Series win for 50 years of losing seasons
The Cubs fans are getting ready to test that theory now!
Good point Dorothy—-the Cubs are currently at ONE losing season and counting.
Does anyone know if the CBA will include any kind of discussion on expansion teams??? I hear that talked about from time-to-time, but I’m not sure if it is a legitimate issue for this round of negotiating or if it is just general banter about which cities deserve a team. Thanks, and Merry Christmas everyone!
Crazy how the 2016 draft had no real all stars the 1st round yet names like Corbin Burnes, Shane Bieber, Pete Alonso, Bo Bichette all came out of that draft at later rounds.
Merry Christmas
MLBTR Staff!
Just wanted to swing through & wish a Merry Christmas to the staff & my fellow posters. Thanks for being part of what makes being a baseball fan fun. Have a great day, fellas.
Mark the Red Sox wouldn’t trade Casas for Olson straight up. What planet are you on?
one where Olson is a proven All-Star 1B and Casas just a prospect?
You mean the one time all star who hit .195 the year before, that guy? The lifetime .252 hitter? Ok…
you do know that picking his most pedestrian career stat as well as quoting the lowest such example of said stat on a yearly basis isnt going to convince anyone? honestly, I’m not as big a Olson fan as most, but all indications are he’s a great all around player good 1B glove, can hit for power but hardly sells out for it, etc. fwiw, his career OPS is .859, which is excellent.
Butch I think it would be about a straight up trade I think Mark is wrong in this one.
Olson is a stud no question but Casas has 6 years control and has a chance to be a special hitter. I’m not saying he is going to be better then Olson but 6 years of control of Casas is probably worth about as much as what Olson is worth with two years of control. I was wondering if anyone was going to call him out on that one.
Edman is a lesser McNeil? I think there’s a much better than 50% shot Edman is the better player going forward. ZiPS over at FG is even quite high on Edman.