OT: Raise the Jolly Roger: Offseason at the Crossroads

[DJ Spinoza]

Would PNC be a factor in Machado's decision? If his plan is to take a higher AAV and then try again when he's 29, I'd think that having big numbers would be pretty important for him. PNC's obviously not great for RH batters. Would GMs/agents/stats be smart enough to factor that in when it would come to his next contract? Would playing SS instead of 3B offset it?

This is a good question, but I think he's good enough that it probably wouldn't matter too much. I can't find it at the moment, but I saw his spray chart laid onto PNC Park and it didn't dramatically affect his power. If anything, maybe he dips a bit in HRs but gets some more doubles, but I don't think PNC is so extreme that he'd go from a consistent 35 HRs to 22 or something.

I think it would just come down to projecting the market and whatever other offers he could get. It might also come down to whether the Pirates would be willing to do a longer contract that gave him the power to have an opt-out and test the market if he wanted. Honestly, from the perspective of him making a decision, that seems a lot more plausible to me than simply a three year deal, which is why I think we still need to be pretty skeptical. There are reports that he's drifting away from the White Sox, but I find it hard to believe that the Phillies wouldn't be willing to step in and give him 7/225 or so, which still makes him a free agent at 33.

If this actually did happen, it happening on just a three year deal, even for 33M AAV, would maybe be the most surprising thing of all.

 

[Winger for Hire]

He's not great at getting on base. Has a lack of effort problem.

Not worth 20+mil per. Very very overrated.

Let's also look at WAR among 3B, historically:

I think he'll be fine and well worth a $25m/yr price tag.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I don't follow MLB that closely, but I could see the concern of him becoming a fat cat with a long term deal. For a 3 yer deal, though, I'd think he'd be kind of pissed off playing for that next contract. That could be a very good thing for the Pirates.

Just looking at his numbers, his OBP is perfectly fine for the amount of power and above average glove he brings at SS.

Machado is a top-25 OBP guy with very good defense and elite power. This guy is basing his opinion off a flippant comment Machado made and a longstanding racist opinion that non-white players don't try as hard.

Machado is an elite talent who is barely starting the prime years of his career and can play a premium position fairly well, and 3B with one of the best gloves in the league. Billionaire owners should be at each others' throats to sign him but the league is broken.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Heyman bringing the hammer down:

 

[Winger for Hire]

Heyman is just pissed that he can't reuse the same Gray tweet for the next 3 days

 

[PensandCaps]

I don't follow MLB that closely, but I could see the concern of him becoming a fat cat with a long term deal. For a 3 yer deal, though, I'd think he'd be kind of pissed off playing for that next contract. That could be a very good thing for the Pirates.

Just looking at his numbers, his OBP is perfectly fine for the amount of power and above average glove he brings at SS.

I'd want my 25 million guys clearing 900. OPS and 370 OBP.



I also don't want to invest money into a guy who doesn't care.

He'll show up out of shape once he gets his money. The team to give him a big deal will regret it.

 

[ChaosAgent]

I do too, but the conjunction of Gomez's report and Mystery Team being the highest bidder do seem to lend themselves to the idea that we'd be willing to have a payroll at 100 million for at least a couple of years. They could be entirely unrelated, but our speculation re: a shorter deal makes a lot more sense than the Pirates offering 200+ million.

Honestly, I think that cost certainty is the major factor in Nutting's decision-making, not simply cheapness. Right now, he's seemingly imposing more austerity because attendance numbers went down last year, but that could be a reinforcing cycle. We've been willing to get the payroll up to 90-100 million, and so just from the question of whether it's realistic if we'd sign him, I think the question to ask is if he'd be convinced that this move would turn around fan sentiment enough to get the attendance numbers back to what they briefly were or better. If so, then to me it's totally plausible that we'd do it, and the question becomes whether another team will actually step up with a big long-term offer, or if Machado would settle for less term an an extremely high AAV.

I despise Nutting, but I think he's right to be concerned about the attendance thing. At the same time, fans recognize that the last 3 years including last year have been the team hanging onto the last vestiges of 2015, but definitely worse. Plus the novelty of "20 losing seasons" has now completely worn off. And really, Pittsburgh is not that great of a sports town unless its teams are surefire winners (ducks). Wait till the Penguins miss the playoffs for a year or two and we'll see it with this team too.

So maybe NH + the Marketing People can sort of collectively come together and say, "hey look, we need some shiny new toys to sell tickets and drive interest. Machado is the ultimate shiny toy, and we can preserve payroll by simply dropping Nova, Cervelli, Dickerson after 2019 and...okay, Bob, I guess Marte too but you gotta understand he's really good and we'll need something substantive for him."

Contract-wise, I still say 3/$100. On the other side of it, tack an opt-out and 7/$150. Brings the total value to $250M so it saves face for Lozano. The expectation is that he will NOT opt-in to that, because he will have a more favorable CBA.

Also, DJ I called Gray at 3/$30...so I'm awaiting my twitter checkmark!

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Well, obviously I want the rumor to have legs because it gives us something to speculate about all week, but it is somewhat strange to see him come out so forcefully against a rumor like this. It seems like by definition, it is hard to falsify a rumor (i.e., how can Heyman's sources refute every possible rumor), unless Heyman is going off the fact that the Mystery Team is a team that Dan Lonzano told him to tweet about (i.e., it's the same Mystery Team that always shows up to drive up a player's value).

Gomez's initial tweet was a bit vague, but he's a definite insider with Dominican players, and clearly in this case linked directly to the family.

The Pirates are definitely not a team whose rumored involvement would do a lot to drive the bargaining, so who really knows? Gomez doesn't seem to just be saying that he's reading several people are speculating the Pirates are involved, but what could "several reports" mean? We're better off erring back on the depressing side of waiting for Galvis' price to drop, until the next cycle of rumors emerges. Will be curious if Gomez responds, though.

 

[Winger for Hire]

Another Twitter slap fight would be a nice distraction from the cold stove

 

[pistolpete11]

Machado is a top-25 OBP guy with very good defense and elite power. This guy is basing his opinion off a flippant comment Machado made and a longstanding racist opinion that non-white players don't try as hard.

Machado is an elite talent who is barely starting the prime years of his career and can play a premium position fairly well, and 3B with one of the best gloves in the league. Billionaire owners should be at each others' throats to sign him but the league is broken.

Last year he was a top 25 OBP guy, but that was also his career best. His career average would have put him around 70th last year. Like I said, it's perfectly fine with his power and his glove, though.

I know the comment he's referring to and I do think it is a red flag. It's not enough that I don't want the Pirates to sign him, even to a long term deal, but it's enough that I'd prefer a shorter term deal where I'd be more confident that he'd stay motivated.

I'd want my 25 million guys clearing 900. OPS and 370 OBP.



I also don't want to invest money into a guy who doesn't care.

He'll show up out of shape once he gets his money. The team to give him a big deal will regret it.

If he was a corner OF or 1B, sure. But he's also an above average defensive SS.

As I said above, I don't disagree with your concerns of him losing motivation. But on a short term deal, I think that mitigates the concern quite a bit.

 

[Empoleon8771]

Gomez telling Heyman to go pound sand.

 

[Jaded-Fan]

Last year he was a top 25 OBP guy, but that was also his career best. His career average would have put him around 70th last year. Like I said, it's perfectly fine with his power and his glove, though.

I know the comment he's referring to and I do think it is a red flag. It's not enough that I don't want the Pirates to sign him, even to a long term deal, but it's enough that I'd prefer a shorter term deal where I'd be more confident that he'd stay motivated.


If he was a corner OF or 1B, sure. But he's also an above average defensive SS.

As I said above, I don't disagree with your concerns of him losing motivation. But on a short term deal, I think that mitigates the concern quite a bit.

 

[Winger for Hire]

Gomez telling Heyman to go pound sand.

With nothing else going on in the Pittsburgh offseason, I'm extremely here for this.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Honestly I do not put much stock into what Heyman says relative to the Pirates. He doesn't seem to have the best of sources - I can't remember the last thing he broke, and as many are pointing out, he was not in on the Archer trade at all last year. It was Bowden IIRC. He obviously has sources, but the nature of the game is always some kind of guesswork, and I don't think he has sources who would really know about the Pirates.

With that said, the Gomez report is still kind of threaded with vagueness to me. I'm likely overanalyzing, but it's really unclear to me if he is just inferring that it could be the Pirates based on some reports he has gotten and the fact that he was told directly by Machado's dad that you should look at a team most don't expect, or if he's actually saying he has reports that the team is the Pirates. It does seem clear enough that Machado's dad isn't directly telling him the Pirates have made any kind of offer.

Maybe more will come of it, as it's only Monday, and you have to assume Machado and Harper will be signed before the end of the month. Gomez does seem uniquely connected to the Machado family and also has plenty of sources in the Dominican baseball world, so he's not just a random twitter shitposter. As I was saying earlier today, it's at least a little bit curious that the Pirates have some level of payroll flexibility in the form of it being tens of millions lower than they've carried. The Nova deal in the abstract makes sense, and listening/shopping guys like Cervelli and Marte is par for the course with a small market team, but between the circumstantial factors and Gomez, I think it's reasonable to conclude that the Pirates are in some way in on him.

If you buy into him, BuccoMike puts some very slim odds on the Pirates and Machado (10-15%), and claims the talks with the Dodgers have picked up steam, listing top Dodgers prospects Verdugo, Lux, and May. Could be rumor-peddling, but he is right that he had things on Archer as well as the Gausman interest, and so to the extent that one believes random unverifiable rumors on twitter, I think he does have some Pirates sources. Here's his feed: Login on Twitter

The bottom line for me on Machado at this point is the following: the Pirates would have to be willing to pay an AAV of 30M or a bit above in the first couple of years. Maybe there's a straight up 3 year offer that was made that gives him a bunch of money now, but I think the kind of deal that would sway him would be something like 10 years, 275 million, with 90-100 in the first three years. Maybe you give him an opt-out, which gives the deal a chance to be the short three year deal we have speculated, and maybe you also assume you can still make a reasonably decent trade of a 29 year old in a few years. I think that's where the possibilities of a deal stop: Huntington is so risk adverse and Nutting so obsessed with cost certainty that a 10 year deal is just a non-starter. It makes some sense given this window, but there would be a lot of ifs down the road. I do think Machado is a safe enough bet that you'd be able to move the contract entirely in 3 years or so, because there's no way a new CBA would make his AAV some kind of burden, but I can't see the Pirates taking that kind of risk, and I think that kind of risk is what it would take to persuade Machado financially.

tldr; if we're involved, it's gotta be on a short-term, high AAV guaranteed offer, and I don't think there's any chance he signs it unless the other offers are all worse than the rumored White Sox offer.

and PS, it would be pretty funny if now that the Gray trade went down, the Yankees turned around and signed Machado.

 

[Winger for Hire]

I remember someone, of decent industry prestige, one time this offseason mentioned that Heyman "worked PR for Boras" and insinuated that Heyman wasn't shooting straight as it pertained to the top end of the FA market.

 

[ChaosAgent]

DJ, I don't think the Gomez guy knows anything specific about the Pirates and Machado. I do think he's hearing that the Mystery Team thing may be real, and he's connecting the dots that the Pirates have a very low payroll and recently were at closer to $100M.

Speaking of payroll, for years I was a Front Office/ownership apologist when it came to payroll. Free Agency was stupid. Silly money. Franchise-crippling for a small market. However, now the market has corrected (even overcorrected) and really good, impactful players are signing bargain deals. Players that would make this team definitively better. Our payroll is at $65M. If we had it at $90M, where it belongs at an absolute baseline...there have been so many players already that could have helped us: Lowrie, Pearce, Happ, Garrett Richards, Lemahieu, Eduardo Escobar. It goes on and on.

I hope Nutting & Frank Coonnelly are getting this message: you are losing the fans who supported your actions during the late-2000s rebuild when everyone else hated you. Bring in players. Now. Or I really hope the MLBPA calls you out again, with more teeth this time.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Yeah, I can totally buy that. My head is sort of spinning from the conflicting reports, but I think Heyman is the source of the rumor that the mystery team is the highest bidder. It would be pretty hilarious and generally par for the course if Heyman's "mystery team" is entirely fabricated, hence why he can say with certainty that it's not the Pirates.

The offseason is still f***ed up enough that I'm not sure who the mystery team could potentially be. The Phillies and the White Sox seem like the most obvious suitors, and so if the Phillies are indeed more focused on Harper, then Machado's market might be as bad as that outburst from Lonzano seemed to indicate. The Brewers could really work, and Braun's salary eventually comes off the books, but it would be a really serious payroll for them in the meantime. Maybe the Twins or something?

 

[Empoleon8771]

My guess is that there is no mystery team, and Heyman is just a shill for agents to try and get free agents more money.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I think that's a reasonable guess, but Gomez doesn't seem to be just peddling BS, whether he's just being coy about the Pirates actually being the team or reporting a genuine rumor. I trust what's coming from him more than I do Heyman, and he's very clearly saying that there is a non-reported team who Machado's father says has a very good chance.

Now, we could just be one step removed here, and this is Machado's father trying to drum up more intrigue and excitement, but who really knows.

I think there's enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that we're actually involved to some extent, but I can't push myself past the relatively modest three year deal, which I'd be surprised to see him sign. What it would take is the willingness to sign the big contract, maybe not record-breaking but still pretty hefty, 8-10 years, and give him the out clause which effectively makes it a three year deal, and that's where I don't see the Pirates being a serious suitor. What I can buy is that we're involved in a way not dissimilar to how the Brewers scooped up Grandal.

 

[Winger for Hire]

The one thing that gives me hope is that there's is nothing coming out stateside or from the Pirates, which is usually what happens when they're working on something "big" until either just before (Archer trade broke minutes before) or when the team announces it. Nearly every player you hear the Pirates "in on" weeks before anything moves, they never get/pass on. The guys they get kind of come out of nowhere (Russ Martin, AJ, Archer, Liriano, Nova trade, Snider). There was very little to no rumblings on the news wire about any of these moves.

So the fact the Heyman "quashed" the rumor(s), to me, says he has indeed heard nothing, which is a very good sign from where I'm sitting. Not that I'm ordering my Machado jersey (it's just in the shopping cart with the buy later option) just yet, but I'm slightly hopeful. The fact that the rumor came from a fairly reputable source in the Dominican who has legit ties to the family allows me to give the report credence that it's a possibility and not at total "bargain through the media" type thing.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

I agree to the letter, with the addition/exception that I keep turning over exactly how to parse Gomez's tweets. I think I'm settling on the first one as him reporting that the Pirates are the time, and the one dunking on Heyman as... dunking on Heyman. It's certainly true that no/very little news is good news on this front.

I guess I've shifted my pessimism away from the prima facie absurdity of it and to the fact that I expect he'd need to settle for a deal with much less term. I'd love to be wrong, and there's no reason not to do the longer deal with an opt out, or just figure out a trade in 2021 or 2022 as part of a larger rebuild, but that's where there's the least amount of plausibility to me.

The pairing with the Dodgers is pretty interesting, and while I do think Huntington has been willing to get DiPoto-like in his wheelings and dealings before, if we were going to sign Machado to basically any contract, I don't think it would make any sense at all to trade Marte for prospects, even elite ones like Urias and to an extent Verdugo. I think it would mean basically tightening down on what we have, sucking it up for a year with a payroll of an astronomical 105 million, and paying for any arbitration raises by the 25 million or so that's cleared once Dickerson, Cervelli, Kang, Chisenhall etc are off the books. Then you just hope the farm can produce enough depth and if you are lucky some impact from Hayes, Tucker, or Keller for the final year or two of the current window, and you figure out a real blueprint for a rebuild when it's actually time.

But if we were set on bringing Machado into the fold as the SS, I think you'd want to keep your next best bat in the lineup with him. Even Taylor, who has maybe more valuable position flexibility and is way cheaper, would be a step down, and it wouldn't make sense to trade him. If Marte's really in play, it would be for a bundle of unproven prospects, and it would be a pretty big pivot from the recent retooling narrative (it could still be sold as such and it's plausible that we'd be as good or better if the new pieces worked out, but I'd just as soon think we'd want to start maximizing the current window from day 1 of next season).

 

[DJ Spinoza]

In any case, the really important thing we need to discuss is whether, if we all agree that the Gomez/Machado rumor has some legs despite what Boras' lackey says, then do we pivot to making jokes about the 12th dimensional chess of trading Marte for a treasure trove of prospects and then signing both Machado and Harper? Rest of the billionaires be damned, Bob is springing into action!

 

[Winger for Hire]

The whole ownership was a long con for this exact FA period. The checkbook and financial flexibly is going to be unleashed like a Marvel vs Capcon ultra combo.

 

[DJ Spinoza]

Just did a brief bit of reading about Gomez, and it's worth pointing out historically that he had the Cano PED suspension first, and also he was the first reporter to say that the Yankees were basically out on Machado.

I think there's a reasonable chance it could be true. Whatever the offer is, if we had one sitting out there to Machado, we'd probably wait on him to make a decision before doing anything, especially since what we basically would need is Galvis, Iglesias, or an Ahmed trade, and maybe one of the LHP relievers. And it's not like any of them have been reported to be receiving offers. In some cases, they may also need to wait until the top of the market finally settles.

Bracketing the specifics of a deal, assuming the Sox offer is the best out there, then any deal for Machado will probably need to be 30M AAV. The Pirates do not have any expenses left to factor in other than additional free agents, so that would make the payroll 98 million. That's still a distant 5th in the division, but on par with historic spending. The way it's plausible is if Nutting could be convinced that Machado's star power in conjunction with the aggressive trades last year and fringe WC performance would be enough to reverse the attendance trends. Maybe there's more to it than that, but I think it's a pretty simple calculus, because we're talking about the team being where they've claimed they are comfortable before, not something less plausible like them going up to a measly 115 million or so, which is where the Brewers have spent up to. If that were the case, I'd think that being slightly hopeful is a waste of time. But it's not, and so circumstance combined with a credibly linked source like this, and I think there's some actual legs here.

Returning to the specifics of the deal, I do think it's almost unthinkable that the offer would have 30M AAV in the first couple of deals and still a competitive 25ish in the last many deals, simply because that blows the types of things the Pirates do out of the water, and I think there's also the concern about not knowing a player and committing to them for this long. But I do think it's believable that we essentially approached him with an offer that pays a huge amount of money over three years or something, and say you can play SS for a team that always plays with an edge and already has a couple of Dominican star players, and then try for another payday when the new CBA happens. And I think if you are Lozano, that's nowhere near the kind of deal you'd want him to take, but if the option is really between a mediocre seven year deal for the White Sox and a bigger payday now, what do you say?

 

[ChaosAgent]

Tomorrow morning, I'll wake up and see that we signed Miley Wade-chado for 1 year and $4.5M, + a 2nd year team option for $7.5M and a $1M buyout.

It'll be historic.