Mariners Now Interested in Zito?

[Jim Potable]

That was(and still is) my reaction to those rumors as well. Complete and utter bs.

That's what I thought, Goose. Note that I had also quoted your big "IF."

Was Seibu obligated to accept the top offer, or could they have accepted a bid amount of 25 to 30 million, figuring that the team that won the bid would stand a better chance of signing DM.

Why wouldn't a team that had no interest in DM (say a Baltimore or Toronto), but wanted to remain competitive with NY and Boston, bid 100 million just to keep him from coming to the States?

On the first point, Seibu was not required to accept the top offer. They were informed of the amount, and decided to accept. If an NPB team feels the top bid is not adequate for the loss of the player, they can turn the bid down.

On the second point, theoretically a team could block opponents from acquiring a player by posting an outrageous bid with no intention to sign him. Also, there were suggestions that that's what Boston was trying to do. A team could -- but there might be a point where it looks too obvious. Not sure where that would be, but $100M is a good start ($51M ain't bad either; but this market for pitchers is baffling).

MLB and NPB are in need of a better player movement system. Any ideas?


PS: thanks for the NYT link, Goose. I hadn't seen that article.

[Chris]

Eh, not like any of this matters to us. If he's not a Red Sock, he's a Yankee.

Yep, that's how boring this league is and will be until they put some kind of salary cap. Think George cares about a luxury tax? Not me.

[Chris]

Honestly, the Yankees and Red Sox ARE ruining baseball.

Something needs to be done. How in the world would the MLBPA and the owners go about putting a cap in place?

I bet we all know what George and Theo are in favor of (in terms of whether or not to have a cap).

NHL - Salary Cap
NBA - Salary Cap
NFL - Salary Cap
MLB - Yankees and Red Sox, Mets, the 80-90 million range teams, and the teams hovering around 50 million.

Damn idiots.

[The Iceman Cometh]

It's hard to evaluate how these increasing salaries are going to affect the sport. As long as I've been a fan, salaries have increased, but there's gotta be a breaking point.

I'd prefer, in theory, a salary cap.

[Barnstormer7]

For the billion odd dollars the Yankees have spent over the last half decade, the world series ring collection doesn't seem to be growing very quickly.

With baseball, at least there is a villain out there that makes the game interesting. While the world series winner is usually in the upper half spending wise, teams like Minnesota, Oakland and last year Detroit, have been able to break through and compete and in many cases beat teams with much higher payrolls.

[The Iceman Cometh]

True, although the Yankees are perennial competitors, whereas Detroit just had one great year so far.

The main point that I consider is that these guys just don't really deserve the massive amounts of money they're getting this year.

Mediocrity should warrant mediocre financial compensation.

[bedir than average]

Detroit spent 84M$, if that isn't a large budget team, what is?

[sidewinder1717]

Unfortunately, right now it would be tough to make a case to go for a salary cap. We have had 7 different world series winners in the past 7 years. Salary and Winning have not proved to have a significant correlation to each other over the past several years. There is a couple of teams that make the playoffs every year but until the small market teams consistantly show an uttler lack of ability to compete, no strong case will be able to be made for a salary cap.

[Barnstormer7]

Originally Posted by bedir than average

Detroit spent 84M$, if that isn't a large budget team, what is?

According to the USA Today, they finished 14th in total payroll. Minnesota was 19th with roughly $64 million and Oakland was 21st with a payroll of $62 million.

I would say that validates the point that the lack of a salary cap, doesn't mean that you can buy success. It helps, no doubt, but it doesn't guarantee it.

I'm sure the Red Sox, Angels and White Sox, who were all over $100 million can attest to that.

[bedir than average]

I don't mean in a DocDetecto kind of way, but in a "if the team is going to compete or not" kind of way.

Looking at his likely 3 Wins Added and cost of 16-18 M$ per year for 5-7 years, it only makes sense if the team acquiring him has already added enough that they will be in the 85+ Win range.

Are we there? I doubt it.


And Barnstormer, I wouldn't trust any site on payrolls that doesn't use the CBA definition of payroll. Plenty of teams have guys not on the 25Man roster who cost significant money. I would use Hardball Dollars for last year.

And my quest on how to duplicate their data here continues, although with our software we are now much closer.

[Lamda]

hehe.. i'd argue that he'll give us more than 3+ wins over what we had last year in his spot. you can run numbers all you want but at some point they tend to contradict each other. sure he could just add 3 wins in the win column to his own numbers as compared to the last guy but i'd argue he'd keep us in a lot more games than his predecessor, etc. He nets us better than just 3 wins.

[bedir than average]

Well, that's because we had a few guys that performed at negative to replacement level.