In these conversations, it's often hard to differentiate between describing the reality of the situation and what should happen given those constraints. I don't disagree that Nutting has mostly operated this team on a shoestring budget, but I do think that Milwaukee's success shows that there isn't simply one path towards contending as a "small market" team. Over the long-run, I think MLB teams who are running sub-100M rosters every year should basically be contracted. Yes, it's not as simple as money going directly into the payroll and there are obviously disparities between revenue streams of different teams based on population, local TV contracts, etc., but MLB teams print money and we know of a huge amount of annual revenue that's generated for all teams before we even get into team-specific revenue.
It's a whole can of worms to open up that conversation, and not something that I fully want to do, since in the end I ultimately agree that we have to go with the evidence we have in terms of how Nutting runs the team. He has briefly spent to try and win, but we don't know if he'll a) get back to that if young talent improves or b) even if that happens, spend in a sustainable way. There are overtures that Cherington will have the resources to compete, but until we have evidence, these are just platitudes.
I think a key question ultimately comes down to timing, and when it's time to fully choose a direction. Cherington hasn't really been successful in finding MLB talent, and even though some of his trades have looked good, the jury is very much out. I don't want to be a doomer, but there's a world where the Taillon trade mostly nets you some injury-plagued pitchers and the Marte and Musgrove trades amount to busts outside of a backend reliever who will also soon be traded. It's too early to actually conclude that about anybody like Head, Peguero, Rodriguez, etc., and part of the point (if not the main point) of having a deep farm system is so that somebody is popping up even when other prospects falter, but there's still no guarantee that much of the minor league talent will amount to anything.
Tampa has had success, but they are also now in the situation of having an elite cornerstone talent who they spent $182 million to sign, though whether they might eventually explore trading Franco is another question. They were just willing to try and spend $150 to get Freeman. These are contracts which dwarf anything Nutting has actually done, so raising them is perhaps even more evidence to temper expectations.
At the end of the day, though, it's not about vague platitudes about what the right strategy is, but rather what is done with the concrete talent that we have. It's not going to break the bank to commit to Reynolds and Hayes, and you can even mount an argument that extending Reynolds on a good contract gives you better chances of trading him for a good return in the future if that's the decision you want to make, since instead of having to worry about his value declining since he'll be a free agent, you'll have a productive player who still has some prime years left.
Concretely, it's also possible to just drag your feet on extending Reynolds or not, potentially moving him at next year's deadline or something like that (or extending him). I think that's probably where we're headed, though to be honest, given the entire circumstances, I think we should just pick a direction and fully commit to it. If you aren't going to commit to building a winning team, then maximize his value and get the best package right now. The ugly reality is probably that nobody is giving up that package right now, which means you keep a cheap, prime year for a last place team and then get a worse package next year or after. The uglier reality lurking behind that is if you then play the same game with Hayes in another few years, and the same game with Cruz or others just after that.
At some point, you can't just keep churning everybody and expect to win. Winning is hard no matter what, as one glance at the Yankees or especially Dodgers can prove -- the latter has basically been running out all star game rosters for several years and still only won once.
Just to touch on a couple of points you made:
1. I don't want to see MLB contract teams simply because they aren't spending a zillion greenbacks. That's not in the spirit of the game and frankly just punts the entire sport into "screw smaller markets, it'll only be the haves who get to field an MLB team". You can theoretically argue that is the current state of MLB and I'll listen but easily counter that smaller market teams (sub 100M payrolls) have competed and won in this sport. Factually. In a super duper fair world, yeah, it'd be nice if everyone was on roughly the same playing field in terms of monies. They/we aren't, and I don't subscribe to the throw in the towel and go home ideology.
2. "Cherington hasn't really been successful in finding MLB talent".
-I have a fairly sizable objection to this comment. Cherington has been on the job a few years. Most of that time frame has seen covid ravage the world and impact the sport in the negative, giving already ultra cheap owners like Nutting an excuse NOT to spend. Plus, and this is the most glaring reason he hasn't really found MLB talent, Cherington has been focused on rebuilding the org. from the ground up. Tearing everything down, accumulating young talent, and installing people who will advance the current day analytics which drive the game. Again, you can't be half in and half out in a market like Pittsburgh.
People lament the "lack of clarity" and it's quite clear what he's trying to do. We do not have the money to spend on anyone. Period. We're not even capable of signing Cutch for 8M for one year, a move which make sense for numerous reasons. That's NOT Cherington's problem. He doesn't control the purse strings.
So, in the last 2 years, he's traded away people who A, won't be part of a realistic winning window, and/or B, traded away people who are going to command significant raises through arbitration or become FA's before a realistic winning window, of which is going to occur with a very, very small payroll.
Consequently, he's added significant potential MLB talent, in part because we set the team up to fail in the short term, which sucks, but I completely agree with, as it affords you premium draft picks, which, for a team like us (in addition to the international market) is how you find the talent that can help you for the longest duration of time. I don't want to see a 95/100 loss team like anyone else but to get a Henry Davis or Nick Gonzales, you need to lose that much. And the fact is winning 75-80 games, while better than 60-65, doesn't get you into the postseason. It only leaves you with the state/feeling of constant mediocrity and that doesn't net you elite draft prospects.
Now, to be clear, I won't accept 2-3 more years of that kind of output. Eventually the talent you acquire needs to develop and produce results at the MLB level and we're going to start seeing that (hopefully) in 2022 and even more so in 2023.
3. Reynolds on a good contract is a nice sentiment but you have to understand that it's not based in reality. We know for a fact that the Pirates went to him before 2021 and he turned them down. I'm guessing a lowball offer, that was meant to capitlize on his awful 2020, and lock him in for 5-6 years at say 30-40M. I'm sure the Pirates have models that showed how advantageous that kind of signing would be, knowing that even conservative projections had Reynolds making decent gains across the board. Not hard to envision when you look back at how bad 2020 was.
Reynolds is easily worth 140-150M over 7 years at his current output. His bat alone gets you close to that, even before factoring in borderline gold glove defense. Look at what Olsen just got at 27, and he's a 1B (vs a top 5 defensive CF), with a less rounded offensive profile. We're not capable of extending Reynolds and that's NOT on Cherington.
