Soto & Ohtani Might Be Available, interested?

[Sports Guy]

2 minutes ago, GoldGlove21 said:

Right and if there is no contract in place upon executing the trade then he is a rental. The Orioles are in a position where they just graduated a top 5 prospect into the majors and still have two more in the minors. I think Soto wants to be a Yankee.

He would be here for 2.5 years.  That’s not a rental

[GoldGlove21]

1 minute ago, Tryptamine said:

You guys are severely underestimating the package it would take for Soto. Remember that in the Miguel Cabrera trade the Tigers traded both Andrew Miller and Cameron Maybin. Andrew Miller was the #7 prospect in baseball and Cameron Maybin was the #8. Badenhop was kind of a nothing and Rabelo/De La Cruz were just middling prospects. Even ignoring the the last 3, that was two top 10 prospects in the game. Also, as of now, Soto has been the better player. He currently sports a 152 wRC+ which is 9th in baseball. He's doing that with a .244 babip which is nearly .100 points below his usual babip.  You would honestly be talking about something like Grayson+Gunnar and then another good, not great prospect.

So we need to give up Gunnar Henderson and DL Hall, plus a solid third prospect and then give Soto a $450M+ deal? Too many factors working against the O's to believe this could ever become a reality. I have heard Soto in multiple interviews say that playing for the Yankees would be a dream come true.  Teams that are not in contention are only going to give up so much to land Soto.  Who are the teams that are contending now, have the prospects to acquire Soto now and also have the fiscal flexibility to give Soto almost half a billion dollars?

[GoldGlove21]

4 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

He would be here for 2.5 years.  That’s not a rental

Are we winning in the next 2.5  years? Is he going to sign here long term or test the market? If he is not taking the Nats deal, why would he take ours? He may be a 2.5year rental, but if you give up a ton and he walks, that is a rental.

[Sports Guy]

Just now, GoldGlove21 said:

Are we winning in the next 2.5  years? Is he going to sign here long term or test the market? If he is not taking the Nats deal, why would he take ours? He may be a 2.5year rental, but if you give up a ton and he walks, that is a rental.

We absolutely could win a title in the next few years, especially if you have Soto.

 

[GoldGlove21]

Just now, Sports Guy said:

We absolutely could win a title in the next few years, especially if you have Soto.

 

I don't  see it, but I guess anything is possible.  Maybe Elias opens up the wallet seeing how the O's have performed this year. I love Soto as a player, but I think he walks for New York. What is your trade offer and contract offer for him?

[Hallas]

6 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Do you acquire Soto and not worry about an extension and just try to win a title with him sometime in the next 3 (realistically 2) seasons?

I think you're artificially cutting your window of competitiveness by trying to trade for Soto and then letting him walk.  That's really risky considering we're not competitive yet.  I'd feel differently if it were 2023 and Adley and Gunnar were on their way to 6 win seasons and we had the inside track on a playoff spot.  Of course Soto won't be there next year, so it puts us in a tough spot here.

[Hallas]

7 hours ago, DrungoHazewood said:

I think you have to treat him as a 6+ win player, just with some unique risk because of his skills.  Somewhat mitigated by the fact that even if he is injured in a way that precludes him from pitching he can still hit.

He's in that category that you can't expect to get huge value back in a trade and he probably won't get paid $50-60M a year.  Both history and logic tell us that no big star gets a long-term deal that's just $9M x WAR x years because of risk.  Age and injuries mean you have to discount the value. The shorter the deal the less that comes into play.  Look at Manny.  He was very young for a free agent and he's only being paid for about three wins a year despite averaging almost twice that so far in his career (per 162 games).

Anyway, I think Ohtani's weird contractual situation is that he's arb eligible for next season, so this year is $5M, next will probably be close to $20M, then he's a free agent at 29.  So there's some surplus value there, but it's probably like 5 wins for 1.4 years.  What would you trade for five wins?  Then in 2024 he probably signs a 8/240 deal or something like that. With the Dodgers or Yanks.

OK so you're treating him as a ~6 win pitcher, and then reducing his risk profile somewhat because he can still provide value as a hitter if he blows his arm out?

 

The numbers I threw out there were discounted rates based on typical contract lengths given to similar high-performing players.  Obviously a 6 win pitcher is worth more than 30 million, but he typically gets around 25-35 million for up to 5 years.  But you still run into uncharted territory with regard to contract amount if you add up typical contract terms for a 4 win DH and a 6 win pitcher.

[Can_of_corn]

31 minutes ago, GoldGlove21 said:

Right and if there is no contract in place upon executing the trade then he is a rental. The Orioles are in a position where they just graduated a top 5 prospect into the majors and still have two more in the minors. I think Soto wants to be a Yankee.

Why?

Have you heard anything that makes you think that?

He could have signed with the Yankees back in the day if he wanted to.  What's changed?

[Sports Guy]

I mean, at what point do you guys think this team is in position to truly contend?  If they aren’t over there next 2 years, Elias has completed failed and the players we have aren’t that good.

Let’s face it, the 2022 roster isn’t that good.  We have holes everywhere..journeyman guys having career years, etc..imagine this team but we actual real talent on it.  
 

 

[yark14]

On 7/18/2022 at 1:38 PM, DrungoHazewood said:

The last pitcher to really play like Ohtani in the majors was probably Blonde Guy Hecker. In 1886 he made 48 starts on the mound (136 game schedule), went 26-23 with a 2.87 ERA, played 39 games between the OF and 1B, and won the batting title hitting .341.  But this was almost 140 years ago in a league that was probably the equivalent of a mid-tier college league today.

The dude pitched 670 innings one year.  That is insane.

[Tryptamine]

 

[Just Regular]

Its pretty crazy Soto's choice and the ripple effects are all going to happen in a window of like 14 days.    AJ Preller could use that desired financial flexibility even more.

BP this morning guessed the Tier1 list as LAD-MIL-NYM-NYY-SD-STL, and also had this point on the Nationals tastes:

It’s worth discussing here what Washington’s prospect acquisition tendencies are. The Nats are extremely heavy on what you might describe as traditional eye scouting. They lean very heavily on tools over skills and upside over safety. In the draft, they routinely take huge gambles with their first-round pick, almost exclusively selecting superstar potential up-the-middle position players like Elijah Green, Brady House, and Carter Kieboom with severe hit tool risk, and pitchers with eye-popping traditional stuff, but injury/command risk like Cade Cavalli, Jackson Rutledge, and going back a bit in time, Lucas Giolito. Frequently, neither their hitters nor their pitchers rate well analytically, as they often acquire the tools-laden players who have significant analytic flaws. 

Young Miggy deal was a while ago, the young Chris Sale for #1 overall prospect Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech a little more recent, though Soto pairs better with Miggy than Sale.

[Hallas]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

I mean, at what point do you guys think this team is in position to truly contend?  If they aren’t over there next 2 years, Elias has completed failed and the players we have aren’t that good.

Let’s face it, the 2022 roster isn’t that good.  We have holes everywhere..journeyman guys having career years, etc..imagine this team but we actual real talent on it.  
 

 

 

Before the year I would have said 2024.  But the performance of the current pieces on the roster, combined with the emergence of multiple prospects in the minors (Henderson, Cowser, Westburg) tells me we could start competing for a wild card next year.  I think the bullpen performance is repeatable, if only because a good GM can reliably find bullpen arms off the scrap heap.  A lot of the problematic positions will be filled by rising prospects.  We need Grayson and DL Hall to step up in the majors, or we will have holes in our rotation, but it's certainly plausible that they will both succeed and give us the pitching stability we need.  A lot needs to go right for us but it's possible.

 

The issue I have with Soto is that most of the core that would be competing on the next good Orioles team would be starting their arb clock this year or next.  If we trade for Soto, we'd be 1: trading a large percentage of the players that could help us over the next 6 years, and 2: acquiring a player that is unlikely to stay with us past 2 years.  If Juan Soto's .950 OPS younger brother were on the market in 2025 after everyone graduates, it's a lot easier to justify a trade for Soto, especially if we are in contention and we find a hole in our outfield.  The core of our team has ~3 years of control left, and we know what they can and can't do, and Soto's years of team control lines up with the rest of our team.

Looking at it from this perspective, we're almost better off trying to get into a bidding war with the Yankees for Soto in 2025, assuming we're a contending team by that point.  Signing him for 10/450 with an opt out after 2 and 4 years is much more likely to pay off for us.  If he decides he wants to be in NYC or LA, he can take the opt out and we're probably better off for it.  But most importantly we keep our prospect pipeline intact.

[jamalshw]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

I mean, at what point do you guys think this team is in position to truly contend?  If they aren’t over there next 2 years, Elias has completed failed and the players we have aren’t that good.

Let’s face it, the 2022 roster isn’t that good.  We have holes everywhere..journeyman guys having career years, etc..imagine this team but we actual real talent on it.  
 

 

I think next year we are in the window to truly compete (I know we are a couple games out of the wildcard right now, but expect we finish the year in the mid to upper 70s win range). That said, I would not trade for Soto unless the package is vastly smaller than I expect. 

While he would help the 2023 team and 2024 team, I don't see how you could extend him and thus you would be trading away a significant portion of your system to do it so you go more-or-less all in for 2023 and 2024 when the goal should be to be competitive for a long time with a good pipeline to maintain it. Acquiring Soto surely would make the next 2 years more fun, but I'm afraid what it does after that. 

[yark14]

2 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

Let’s face it, the 2022 roster isn’t that good.  We have holes everywhere..journeyman guys having career years, etc..imagine this team but we actual real talent on it.  
 

 

To quote the late, great Townes Van Zandt: "We've all got holes to fill, and those holes are all that's real".  You East Coasters wouldn't know about him.

We have a hell of a young nucleus, not sure why you are being such a Debbie Downer.  We just need to plug some holes, and most of the plugs are in AA/AAA right now.  If we sign a couple free agents we are the #2 team in our division.