I can't be sure .... But, I played sports into my early 40s until it hurt to walk the next morning. I can tell you that I want to play and always did! I would much rather play on a team where I can start as opposed to watching others play. Since NFL players do it for a living and there is value to guys like RG3 to be an expensive paid spectator as opposed to doing some other kind of work. So I'd imagine it is palatable if Joe can find an interested party. I am just not sure how many interested parties there will be. I wonder out loud if Pittsburgh might have an interest as they probably have no choice but to move on from Ben R. I suspect that he's still better than Mason Rudolph and the Duck!
I could see Stewart around there though I could also see his average stay lower. I agree on the floor because I'm a little concerned over the fact he didn't hit at all outside of that 9-game Barry Bonds-like streak.
Stewart though is one of the guys I'm going to see what I got in 2021. There is a chance he's a .340 WOBA/.800 OPS guy and like you said, while he's cheap, there's value in that at DH.
Baseball is an unusual situation where long-term guaranteed contracts are an option. Davis is a worst-case scenario in this unusual situation. The owners can't complain. They're the ones who offered the contract. Angelos could have insisted the O's operate differently, he could have refused to sign anyone to a long-term deal. Actually, for years we heard rumors that Angelos wouldn't sign a pitcher to long-term contract because he didn't believe anyone who pitched every five days was worth it. But in this case he didn't, in fact we're pretty sure the owner intervened and insisted on a contract the GM and others thought was risky and unwise.
Note that the Rays never are screaming about having to eat the last three years of a long, expensive contract.
I'm guessing that if my employer offered me a seven-year guaranteed contract for me to do a job that everyone knew I probably wouldn't be able to do well at some point in the deal, I wouldn't be rushing to give back the money.
In all of this I think baseball would be better off with a contract structure more like soccer. Where at any point in time anyone can come in a offer up a transfer fee for any player, the teams work out a deal for rights, the player and the new team work out a contract, and that's that. Because there's no six years of pre-free agency and no delaying big money until a player is in decline, you have mostly fair deals. When a guy hits his 30s he's very rarely going to be signed to a monster contract. He already got his money when he was in his early-to-mid 20s, so there's no incentive to sign a 27- or 29-year-old to a stupid contract, and teams allocate money to the valuable, younger players. Not the old, declining players. Baseball has hung itself on free agency rules mostly devised in the 1970s.
Depends on how you frame it. It guarantees at all times a 4 man bench. Limits 13 pitchers.
Occasionally in past you would see teams flip a position player for an arm and go with a 13 man staff.
I personally hope they keep expanded rosters (say 27) in the future with pitching limited to 13. It adds more strategy late in games to the offensive side.