Offseason baseball Thread

Teams are a hell of a lot smarter than they used to be. They All have analytical departments, there are very few dummies that hold onto the old ways of doing things anymore.

 

And it works both ways. They're less willing to give out awful contracts to free agents, and they sign up their truly valuable players as early as possible.

Sox fan here. $20M a year for Martinez's age 30 to 35 years seems somewhat reasonable to me. He basically should only be played at DH, so the justification among fans will likely be, "Hey, David Ortiz was a regular for us until 40, and Martinez got a late career start like him!" Which is fine and all, but Ortiz is a huge outlier in a ton of ways, and I think it's unlikely that Martinez is still an all-star level player at 35. Still, his value to the Sox - a playoff level team - is immense, so I think it's a reasonable outlay.

re: What to do with Hanley, I imagine they just put him back at 1B. Or dump him on another team, or release Mitch Moreland, or something else. He had a good 2016, but 2017 wasn't so hot and he's 34.

 

Based on the growth in Martinez's game and the monster year he had in 2017, it's a bit low, but the entire market is low right now.

 

Last year, Cespedes got $27.5M/year... from the Mets, but still, it counts. So, I guess I'd agree with you, $20M does seem a bit low for Martinez, but I think the market has been cooling on 1B/DH-only types for a couple years now.

 

Martinez is primarily an outfielder. In fact, he has only played 38 career games as a DH. I know the Red Sox may end up using him there if they get him, but Martinez isn't limited to a DH role. I get that having a guy who can only DH limits a team's flexibility and that type of player also has a smaller market because he can't play in the National League. Neither of those are an issue for Martinez.

 

This was my thought as well. Maybe the front offices are finally smarter than the agents.

 

Has anyone posted Jeff Passan's piece yet on the slow market? It's really good.

https://sports.yahoo.com/heres-baseballs-economic-system-might-broken-224638354.html

 

Sneak posted it three or four pages back, but yes, it is.

 

How can he drive a car when he's lying in bed?

 

That is a great, fun show. It was called "Top Gear" in England, but one of the stars -- James May -- got into a fight with the producer and the show was canceled. Returned last year to U.S. TV as "Grand Tour" on the Amazon Prime network. Each new show is released on Fridays. Another of the stars -- Richard Hammond -- crashed in the first episode this season and suffered a broken leg. Reportedly, his wife wants him to quit the show. They are joking about it in some of the recent episodes. The third star is Jeremy Clarkson.
These guys test drive super cars and other types of cars and do crazy things. Last episode, they drove down the ski run at Telluride.
One segment of each show is called "Celebrity Brain Crash" where they have two celebs do a timed lap in a Jaguar. Brian Wilson was on with a British celebrity. Kiefer Sutherland was on this week's episode and he set the celebrity lap record.