Can_of_corn

I was actually asking a question. I was so focused on what the O's were doing that I didn't pay a huge amount of attention to what the DBacks did. The problem with waiting until the deadline is you might not have a good match. There is no guarantee of availability.

I can't think of any examples in other sports before they instituted caps.

How many impact guys were available this season?

I don't see other pro sports working that way, I don't see other baseball teams working that way.

Once again I'll mention the trade deadline moves. If your hypothesis is correct wouldn't that have been a "right time to push the budget"? How was that not a "full on go time" situation?

1- They didn't "need it" at the trade deadline? If that isn't a need situation what is? 2- I've never known it to work like that in the real world. In the real world you undercut your budget and they cut your budget for next year since you obviously don't need the extra funding.

I don't disagree. If only they had signed him long term before he hired Boras.

After a quick search I see that Boras has ~175 clients. 99% of them are not going for free agent deals. Your perspective may be influenced by a small number of clients that very viably do seek large free agent deals.

A guy that looks like he doesn't have a spot on the team for a guy that struck out 12/9 with a WHIP under 1 last season is a horrendous trade? Horrendous?

Sure Boras prefers it. So what? Boras is the employee. Over the years a number of people Boras works for have signed extensions. Now maybe Gunnar isn't interested at any reasonable price. That is certainly possible. But if he is interested, Boras will, in the end, do what his employer wants him to do.

He doesn't like change.

Why would any GM keep payroll lower than what ownership is willing to set? I mean I understand why you want to leave a buffer so you can add during the season and not trade draft picks when you want to cut someone (Hi Dan!) but beyond that? If Elias had significant headroom to add salary why didn't he do more at the trade deadline? You basic premise just kinda breaks my brain. The boss sets the budget and the manager makes it work. What manager in any field just voluntary leaves budget money unspent? Frankly Wildcard's theory makes more sense to me.

Of course we don't have proof. What we do have is ownership publicly crying poor on a pretty regular basis. If you look at the numbers we do have, it's pretty clear that prices won't have to be raised significantly in order to extend the young talent. Not unless ownership is unwilling to reduce their profits.

You are good at being slow.

Honestly I thought he'd already left the organization.

As someone who loved to talk about how they worked in that very office and was very happy to explain to the rest of us how the majority of total tickets sold are season tickets I would expect you to know what I was talking about. That was you back before you got kicked off last time right?

It's alphabetical.

O's high for attendance under the Angelos family was over 3.7M. They are not going to get season ticket sales to that level again.

I don't think most folks that write on the Internet for a living were English majors in college.

I'm not even smart enough to figure out why you provided the list to begin with. I asked what constituted a high hit rate. I'll readily agree that giving a kid 4M doesn't guarantee he'll succeed. But if the O's manage to get in tight with a high dollar, highly regarded guy at some point, I'm not going dismiss the idea out of hand. Sometimes spending 5M on one guy is the better move over spreading 5M over a bunch of guys.

Any stat that discredits an opinion of yours is BS. I'm not about to go search the records but I'm guessing at least a couple of those saves could have easily been blown saves. That's the way baseball works, sometimes you pitch well and blow the save anyway, sometimes you crap the bed but get the save.

I think folks put way too much into the father angle. What did Trout's dad do for a living? Arod's pops? Soto's father? I'm sure it helps to some degree but it's mostly about talent, not bloodline. We've seen plenty of guys with famous dads not turn into good ML players.

I didn't mention WAR, I just said five wins, which was your number. I think that's high and players are not nearly as mentally weak as folks on this board suggest. Felix had a great year but he was also hurt for a decent portion and blew six saves.

Wow, one bullpen arm was worth five wins. And that is with him being hurt part of the season and blowing six saves.