Trent Steele wrote:I wish we had a league average 1B

Trent Steele wrote:By the way, two guys that Rube had just as much of a chance to sign as anyone else: Yoenis Cespedes (4/$36) and Yasiel Puig (7/$42).

I understand that other teams missed too, but it's like that part of the world doesn't even exist to this organization. Imagine how different this team would look right now with those guys.

Trent Steele wrote:By the way, two guys that Rube had just as much of a chance to sign as anyone else: Yoenis Cespedes (4/$36) and Yasiel Puig (7/$42).

I understand that other teams missed too, but it's like that part of the world doesn't even exist to this organization. Imagine how different this team would look right now with those guys.

Grotewold wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:It doesn't look good given their WARP/$ or whatever bang-for-your-buck metric you wanna use, but they did cut payroll this year. I think given the free agent market last year and the team's needs, that was a smart move going forward. They can afford to lose attendance because they're not spending as much money as they did the past few years. It's almost like they're hedging against the sure suckitude of a team pumping 25 million into a league-average first baseman.

I said slash (ie, what "blowing it up" would entail, unless you turn right around and go hog wild in free agency) not cut.

Not sure what you mean with that last line. Howard's deal looks awful, but lots of teams have won with albatross type contracts on their roster, most recently San Fran (twice)

Grotewold wrote:I mean, it's not like Amaro laid $1M on us in Vegas or something -- what should he have done differently this winter?

Barry Jive wrote:Howard's deal is awful. Teams can win with those deals but it's very difficult to do so. Most teams don't have a deal that bad, and the ones that do have to be great everywhere else to win. The Phillies aren't right now, so it makes sense to hedge for a couple years and reload when you can maybe dump some of Howard's money (or at least dump him without incurring too much of a sunk cost).

Grotewold wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:Howard's deal is awful. Teams can win with those deals but it's very difficult to do so. Most teams don't have a deal that bad, and the ones that do have to be great everywhere else to win. The Phillies aren't right now, so it makes sense to hedge for a couple years and reload when you can maybe dump some of Howard's money (or at least dump him without incurring too much of a sunk cost).

I hear you but think that's going too far. The Giants won twice with Zito earning $18M (of their $96M) and $19M (of $136M). I know he got hot to help them with the second one -- but hopefully that's not completely out of the realm of possibility for Howard moving forward, and/or Ruf or Utley or whoever replacing him productively at a reasonable cost

If $25M of $189M is sunk, that blows, but it doesn't prohibit contending by any means. My suggested trades (assuming we fall out of contention this year) would free up around $36M. Letting Hallday walk, another $20M. The Utley decision could swing it another $15M. Lee, $27M per. Retooling means keeping some of those guys, of course, but there are options

Again, if they slash payroll, all bets are off. But I don't foresee that. I can't even fathom the shit storm over them signing a $4 billion (with a b) TV deal after slashing payroll

Trent Steele wrote:You can't compare ZIto to Howard because you can't compare Giants payroll to Phillies. The Phillies have no deals on their team. They are paying market value or far above market value for basically every single player on the team except Brown. Last year was arguably even worse.

The Giants can have Zito eat up a ton of payroll because they are paying well below market value for Posey, Sandoval, Bumgarner, Romo, Cain (pre-extension), Belt, Vogelsong, etc.

Grotewold wrote:

Trent Steele wrote:You can't compare ZIto to Howard because you can't compare Giants payroll to Phillies. The Phillies have no deals on their team. They are paying market value or far above market value for basically every single player on the team except Brown. Last year was arguably even worse.

The Giants can have Zito eat up a ton of payroll because they are paying well below market value for Posey, Sandoval, Bumgarner, Romo, Cain (pre-extension), Belt, Vogelsong, etc.

I was responding to Barry's point about it being very difficult to contend, in general, with an albatross type contract. Recent history refutes that.

I understand the differences between the Giants and us -- and our need to get cheaper production moving forward -- but by the same token our payroll has been $40-80M higher the past few years. So it's a fine comparison imo.

You can contend on $164M

Trent Steele wrote:Recent history shows you can win with an albatross contract if you have below-market contracts to cancel out the albatross contract. That was the Giants' situation.

The Phillies have an albatross contract with a bunch of above-market contracts.

Barry Jive wrote:I never said Howard's contract prohibited them from contending

Grotewold wrote:

Barry Jive wrote:I never said Howard's contract prohibited them from contending

If I read too much into the thing about hedging for a couple years, my bad, but I think we're on the same page.

Hard to say what it will take to contend the next few years with the variables I mentioned upthread, but obviously we'll need some smart moves and some breaks. Priority is an elite bat, hopefully not at the expense of Lee

Barry Jive wrote:just realized a decent amount of space they have is because of Arb guys. look at this list:

Kendrick Arb 4
Lannan Arb 3
Bastardo Arb 2
Frandsen Arb 2
Mayberry Arb 1
Revere Arb 1
Valdes Arb 1
Stutes Arb 1

can't imagine any of those guys will be too expensive. might consider non-tendering Lannan, Frandsen, Mayberry, Valdes and Stutes depending on who's out there.