Oz27

Ewww stats are icky poo-poo!

This thinking always intrigues me. 
Teams give players deals like this only because they are expecting to save money. 
And the club option year is about the most team friendly thing imaginable.
Not to say Calhoun is getting screwed by getting $26M, but the Angels didn't do it to do him a favor. 

Law always values ceiling more than floor, which is an approach I like. Because of that approach, I've been wondering if Jones makes his top 100. It would be hard to imagine us being 27th without having a single guy in his top 100 and I doubt Thaiss makes it for him.

C.J. Cron is Mark Trumbo with a higher batting average/more contact, less power, and a better glove.  If the Angels can get what they got when they traded Trumbo, I'd snap do it. 

I refuse to vote until R. Munkee weighs in with his opinion.

Shit, those poor kids. That is beyond awful.

Shit, those poor kids. That is beyond awful.

Calhoun was going to get about $6.9 million through arbitration this year, so as long as he wasn't bad enough to get non-tendered he was going to get at least $23 million through the arb process and, if his career didn't fall off a cliff, a lot more ($30 million+ I'd have thought). So he has probably cost himself money in both his arb years and when he hits free agency and potentially quite a lot of it. I could see this reducing his career earnings by $20 million to $30 million. It's his choice, obviously, but it feels like a minimal gain for the sacrifice given there wasn't huge uncertainty surrounding his short-term earnings. Whatever his reason, though, the team has done extremely well out of this.

Shit, those poor kids. That is beyond awful.

I'm a big believer that these pre-FA extensions typically end up working out much better for the signing club than the player. Kole may have got marginally more from his arb years than he otherwise would have, but he now hits the market a year later. He won't be a free agent until he is 33 now and that is late to hit the market. I know it's only one year later than he was previously going to but convincing teams to pay him at 33 is probably going to be a lot harder than it would have been at 32.
The Angels did very well out of this though. For minimal cost/risk, they acquired a cheap extra year of control for Calhoun. If we got to a point of wanting to trade him in the next few years, that has increased his value a lot. But if we are winning by then, we have an affordable player for another year who still should be above average at that point.

Calhoun was going to get about $6.9 million through arbitration this year, so as long as he wasn't bad enough to get non-tendered he was going to get at least $23 million through the arb process and, if his career didn't fall off a cliff, a lot more ($30 million+ I'd have thought). So he has probably cost himself money in both his arb years and when he hits free agency and potentially quite a lot of it. I could see this reducing his career earnings by $20 million to $30 million. It's his choice, obviously, but it feels like a minimal gain for the sacrifice given there wasn't huge uncertainty surrounding his short-term earnings. Whatever his reason, though, the team has done extremely well out of this.

Escobar is about 6 runs below average on the bases so there is some merit to the idea that he isn't as good of a run scorer as we might like to think.

The dude threw 88 MPH fastballs during his showcase in November, which is 8 MPH below his peak. I can't imagine he is spoiled for choice at the moment, nor can I imagine why we would be particularly interested if he can't throw hard anymore.

Even if it only gets Trout an extra 15-20 PAs over the course of a season, the gap between Trout and anyone else on our team is huge. Him taking 15-20 PAs off anyone else is a noticeable boost.
What the f**k does this even mean? It's roughly as insightful as your "coming to spring training ready to compete" gem from the other day.

You said something stupid and inaccurate so why get upset when you get called out for it?  

This thread got really stupid. Good job guys.

Its just not even funny.

I never understood posts like this.  
One team out of around 32 gets to hoist a championship trophy a year.
The dodgers and clips are chokers?  Really?  Seems to me they have successful regular seasons, then lose in the post season.  Like all but one team.

it's not impulsive in this case.  It's purposeful short-sightedness.  They are not built to win 5 years from now.  The best shot they have in that time is over the next 2-3 years.  

Not to be too critical of ettin's analysis here, but I see this issue exactly the opposite. On the surface, the fact that Bautista is not finding decent offers implies that this is a great opportunity to bring in a great hitter at a very reasonable price. In fact that was my initial reaction. But once we go through the steps of looking at all the details, all the requirements, and come up with the end result, its pretty clear that adding Bautista makes us marginally better, definitely older, significantly more expensive, and adds a higher risk of failure. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

This doesn't fit the narrative here, but...
"Drew Smyly isn’t an ace, and the Mariners added two more high-risk players to a team that already had a lot of risk, but this team now looks like their playoff hopes are more than just hope-a-bunch-of-things-go-right. With another quality starter and a potential quality reliever, plus a solid group of position players, the Mariners look like contenders now."
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/okay-now-the-2017-mariners-are-interesting/
It's both reasonable and responsible for the Mariners to go for it now. Their team was never set up to win in three years, it was set up to win soon, due to moves made before Dipoto's arrival and since then too. In their circumstances, they needed to make their best effort to win now and this is a pretty reasonable attempt to do that. I still like the Astros' 2017 chances more than I do the Mariners' but Seattle is good too.

I'd like to congratulate you in correctly using "you're" for the first time 

What? That is bullshit. A huge chunk of the players he played against were doing exactly the same thing.

Uhh Weaver was just about 30 when he started losing velocity and declining, and he had a whole hell of a lot less miles on his arm. Felix will probably still be alright for a year or two, but the decline is obvious and there is definite reason to be concerned he could drop off steeply in a hurry.

TD pulls the battery out of the carbon monoxide detector because it keeps beeping.