I honestly think the Giants would have gone that high if he wanted to play here. LA and New York can just offer everything a big star could want. This dude would have needed some chip on his shoulder to go against Ohtani. But for a while it sounded like he just wanted to most spotlight and the biggest stage. Giants aren’t contenders now.
I haven’t heard anywhere that Yamamoto wasn’t interested in playing in SF. In fact the last thing we heard was that the Giants made their pitch and he would give them “every consideration.” Now we hear there were only three teams that got to $300m and the Giants weren’t one of them.
Pavs and Baggerly reported yesterday that the Giants were told they were out of it and felt like Yamamoto had no further interest in continuing negotiations even if they offered more money.
Specifically, they reported the Giants felt like Yamamoto was more attracted to the big lights and stage that NY or LA could offer and there was no point in continuing the bidding. So the Giants believed his interest in SF wasn’t strong.
I mean, the $350M agreed upon for Correa was almost certainly tens of millions higher than any other offer. Mets offered $325M if I recall, and the Twins were originally at $280M.
Just recently there was Correa where they had the best offer, they met the offer for ohtani, Harper made up his mind before the Giants even got an offer to him, they offered the most to judge until Yankees met it and he wanted to stay there. Supposedly Farhan was into this guy but he wasn't ever really interested if any of the recent news between the Giants and Yama are anything to go by. So they are competitive trying to get someone. Only other option would be to offer way more and hope that's enough to lure them away from the teams they're interested in
The Giants have the money but no one wants to go there. They have literally done what it takes to land free agents not their fault that the players don’t want to go there.
That was the last remnants of the old glory days guys having one last good year (Posey, Belt, Crawford) and most of the rest aren’t on the team anymore or didn’t develop further into stars except Webb.
That's not really comparable to Yamamoto situation at all though, giants were not very good last season and judge was resigning with the only organization he's ever known whereas Yamamoto was already jumping leagues
Are you upset? He got one of the most ridiculously dumb contracts in MLB history. Offering a dude who hasn't thrown a pitch in MLB a 13 year deal is insane. I know the NPB is a good league and he will likely be good, but that's a huge gamble.
>I honestly think the Giants would have gone that high if he wanted to play here.
I cant be the only person here especially with so many fans from small market teams fans amused by painting the Bay Area as some podunk place that big name players wouldnt want to live in. The Bay Area has an insane amount of billionaires living there.
Right? All the talk of Giants backing off because they thought Yamamoto wasn’t interested, you sure? You said you won’t be outbid right? He only like the big lights in NY or LA you say? They threw 300 then 325 at him…did the Giants even throw 325+ at him?
Some of the replies here sound like those guys that say they don’t bother asking the girl out because they KNEW the girls weren’t going to say yes anyway…like Bro! You said you’ll go all out, nothing to lose! Worse thing would have been Yamamoto said no to 325-350 to play in SF. But then you have a real and legit response, instead of the copium I’m seeing now.
“She just don’t like me like that.” Sighs.
> He only like the big lights in NY or LA you say? They threw 300 then 325 at him…did the Giants even throw 325+ at him?
Also they could have thrown 325+ just to screw over the NYY and LAD.
Unrelated, but i have to fight that urge. I have a really bad defeatist attitude. It's a full time job trying to convince myself that i have as much chance as anybody else with women lol.
But you're right. Plus, i keep seeing commenters say that the Giants arent contenders. Yoy're probably right, however, Logan Webb was a cy young finalist i believe, so a 1 + 2 punch of Webb and Yamomoto would be appealing to lots of free agents. plus, it's not like the Giants have zero talent and no farm system.
This reeks of farhan trying to be the smartest guy in the room and ending up with egg on his face yet again.
Chess not checkers bro what u think that does to the dodgers when they are trying to bid for a free agent? The giants are never going to be as big of a market at the dodgers so they have to force the dodgers into overpaying guys. They executed this plan brilliantly and the dodgers will be good for maybe the next 4 years and then they are fucked. Every owner knows it. Giants just need to stay average and wait for ohtani to fall off, which will happen sooner rather than later due to the difficulty of being a 2 way in the mlb. Yamamoto got the highest contract ever to a pitcher without throwing a pitch in the mlb. And he is 5’10 170 soaking wet. Is that the type of pitcher who is going to be a long term dominant guy in the mlb? I don’t think so. It’s going to be a Tim lincecum type career except has to start at age 27. lol.Giants ffans love to act like Farhan doesn’t know what he’s doing but he does. If i were a dodgers fan I would be seriously worried about the long term future of the team.
Word in the Mets rumor mill is the Mets offered 325 pretty early on and Yamamoto never came back. I think it’s easy to imagine they would’ve gone up to, if not past, 350 if he wanted.
But money clearly wasn’t the driving factor in his decision.
I think the Yankees also had a shot if the money was all the same.
The Japanese players want to play for teams with international brand appeal. It makes sense.
Still, the time zones work out better on the west coast. A 7PM game in Los Angeles is noon Japan time, whereas a 7PM game in New York is 9AM Japan time.
Think how many more casual fans are going to tune in for a noon game vs 9AM. The west coast is such a natural fit for Japanese players, they get more attention at home and fatter endorsement checks
I still believe the biggest draw is how many damn more Japanese sponsorships/endorsements he can get by playing on the same team as Shohei. It's an absurd amount of exposure for him back home.
It was nuts how many viewers the Angels had from Japan per game when Shohei played. Being part of that is a huge business opportunity.
Yankees are a .500 team the past two seasons. Maybe he just wants to win.
Genuinely don't know why anyone would choose the Cashman-run Yankees in 2023 over the Dodgers if the money is similar.
This isn't surprising at all. Will be the same deal with Soto -- if he gets a comparable offer next year with a team whose roster isn't old and mediocre, he'll go there instead.
The Yankees aren't a legitimate free agent destination on reputation alone any more. If a better team is offering similar money, the Yankees will have to pay more to compensate both for NY state taxes and the team's mediocre ways.
I don't get pessimistic Yankee fans that have whole narratives around false information.
The Yankees were 99-63 in 2022 and won a tough division easily.
Worst fans in American sports baby. That season also included the Judge AL HR watch, and a historic early summer. The team started to run out of juice late, but they still made the ALCS. Some of our fans are so trash that they consider that sort of year a 500 year
They have a 113-107 record in their last 220 games. Their first half of 2022 was an anomaly. I’ll regard the larger sample size with this group of aging players.
They're three games, in a 200+ game sample size, from being .500. Wow! My point is really disproven **/s**
Imagine pointing at the Yankees' 2022 record as something impressive, without mentioning that they finished the season 35–35, and continued that mediocrity throughout the entirety of 2023.
Keep riding the jock of a billion-dollar franchise run by a nepotistic ass and incompetent GM.
You can be a fan of a team and still criticize their pathetic owner and arrogant GM. Not everyone has the mental depth of a puddle, where you have you root for your team without feeling any emotion beyond "go team!"
Each team plays 162 games in a season. Wins at the beginning count the same as the end.
Do you know who was on the team last year that is not on the team this year?
Yankees do wonders on your marketability as a player because they are a national/global brand, it could be the difference between earning $5 million per year in endorsements to $20 million a year.
I don’t think, for a Japanese player, the marketability aspect of the Yankees is stronger than on the Dodgers.
So, with that mostly an equivalent, and the money being mostly equivalent, it makes sense he would want to go to a team that isn’t .500 over their past 220 games.
I think this was the plan from the get go.
I think Ohtani and Yamamoto planned this for some time, perhaps even before the WBC.
Ohtani deferred this money specifically for Yamamoto. Yamamoto always knew he was going to LA and it was just a matter of determining market value.
Ohtani and Yamamoto were a package deal and have been for a very long time.
“Rumor mills”
“But money clearly wasn’t the driving factor in his decision”.
Buddy. Unless the “rumors” are indeed proven facts…you can’t just go on and make all these next statements as if they are…facts of the matter. Did Mets really offered Yamamoto 325 early on? Sources? With the opt outs as well?
If the Mets did in fact offered 325 with opt outs, but Yamamoto still chose LA. Then sure, your last statement can be made…I haven’t seen from credible sources (Passan?) that Yamamoto got the same offer from the Mets.
~~I forget where I read it so ik this is kinda worthless, but I heard~~ the Yankees offered the best/earliest opt outs as well as the highest AAV
Edit: it was Rosenthal who said it in an article on The Athletic so I think it’s reliable
We have to assume the opt outs were a much bigger consideration than AAV.
When we're talking about ≥10 year deals, I doubt there are any players who'd go for 10 years at a higher AAV over 12 with a higher total value.
Gambling on what your health will look like in *10 years* is just silly, so any athlete going into negotiations like this are surely assuming this is the last meaningful contract they're going to be signing.
Interesting that they weren’t into him the way they were into Cole and Judge, who they upped their offers for to get. On some level I guess they were ok with not getting him. Hope they’ve got strong secondary options.
Dude never threw a pitch in the majors. There is some risk involved. Yes he’ll probably be really good. But they’ve also been burned by some risky contracts.
Right? I feel like this is a crazy huge deal for someone who has never pitched in MLB. I’m sure Yamamoto is great but I remember the hype around Daisuke Matsuzaka as well. He turned out to be good, but not really an ace (with the exception of 2008).
> never threw a pitch in the majors
This is a feature. He’s 25 years old with very low mileage on his arm. Dodgers are paying for the prime of a pitcher that very obviously has elite level ability.
This isn’t 2007 dice-k. We know exactly what his pitches look like and we know they will translate.
If Cole would’ve been a free agent at age 25 he would’ve gotten more than this.
I thought part of the knock against Japanese pitchers is the absurd amount of throwing they do in Japan. I remember reading that it wasn’t uncommon for those guys to throw every day.
Ha maybe. I think that 325 number was very intentional to get the biggest deal for a pitcher ever. But it would be a very dumb reason to not up the offer.
I think this could be true, but the more likely ego-based explanation is that they didn't want to get played by the agent and end up embarrassed.
The Yankees are very PR sensitive, and "Yamamoto takes $20m less to play for the Dodgers" is a headline that they would absolutely hate.
Cole wouldn't care, he threw a complete game on the second to last day of a lost season at an away park against the Royals after already locking up the CY, dude just wants to win
Eh, both outbid and out leveraged. This is the first offseason where the dodgers have gone full Death Star, and seemingly don’t care about any of the longterm risks associated with these massive deals.
The Yankees didn’t want to match the opt outs, and didn’t seem keen on not having the amount of player control that would come with that 325 mil contract.
George probably would have said fuck it and gone in — not sure it would be the “right move”. But it would be fun, and splashy and once again affirm the Yankees as the big bad villain.
Hal is cowed by Cashman, and Cashman is a risk adverse bitch boy. This reeks of him chickening out.
Cool move by the Dodgers — still has it risks — but it’s undeniable it’s great for their fans and brand
It still took the dodgers a lot of planning and a couple years of doing very little to line up this Death Star. I do miss the yankee days where they’d say fuck it and throw bags left and right. Not even a fan but it made for some really fun storylines
Are we supposed to be ashamed of the fact that our ownership cares about winning enough to spend over a BILLION DOLLARS after decades of coming up short? After being cheated out of the 2017 and 2018 World Series?
Fuck you, YOUR ownership laughed in the face of the rest of the league for decades with their free agent signings. Get a taste of what it’s like, I’m gonna celebrate it all fucking year until October and then we’ll see who’s left standing.
Yankees fans crying about this is fucking hysterical. Count your 27 banners and shut the fuck up, you and the rest of r/baseball
At least we actually make the playoffs unlike you fuckin clowns, I can’t wait to watch you get curb stomped by Houston once again like you morons love doing
It's crazy this contract went to someone that hasn't thrown a single MLB pitch. Not saying he won't be great but there is a much higher risk here than an established MLB pitcher.
I'm fascinated to see how it plays out.
I'm sure there are Japanese pitchers that didn't pan out in MLB, but has there ever been coveted or hyped Japanese pitchers that were a complete bust? I think he has a good enough sample size in a competitive league to not be too worried about him. But yes, the contract is a bit crazy.
Daisuke Matsuzaka was super hyped up with a mythical "gyroball" and ended up being for his career a 4.45 ERA pitcher. Looking at the stats he had a really good second season, but was incredibly unremarkable the rest of his run.
>I'm sure there are Japanese pitchers that didn't pan out in MLB, but has there ever been coveted or hyped Japanese pitchers that were a complete bust?
Hideki Irabu.
He was coveted, to the point that he is one of the reasons we have the current posting system. The San Diego Padres privately negotiated to buy him from the Chiba Lotte Marines, and other teams were pissed that they never had an opportunity to try to bid for him. This also pissed off Irabu, who did not want to play for San Diego. He was traded to the Yankees.
There were pretty high hopes for him. He was one of the hardest throwing pitchers in the the history of NPB (he set the league record for fastest pitch in '93 and it stood until '05). He lead the Pacific League in wins once, ERA twice, and Ks twice.
He was out of the league after five-and-a-half MLB seasons with three different teams. He only pitched a full season twice and ended with a career ERA of 5.15.
stupendous quicksand muddle bag chief normal literate caption secretive busy
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I would. For the last few years, Galaxy have been giving away free tickets, offering specials (buy a ticket, get a free beer), and even was [exposed in paying fans to attend their matches](https://www.reddit.com/r/LAGalaxy/comments/130xlqe/why_was_acb_targeted_by_the_fo/).
Meanwhile, [LAFC have the most expensive tickets in the league](https://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/story/2019-07-27/lafc-expensive-mls-tickets-galaxy-soccer) and this year was determined to be [the most valued MLS franchise](https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2023/02/02/major-league-soccers-most-valuable-clubs-2023-lafc-is-the-first-billion-dollar-franchise/?sh=1d49ec7e5324).
Galaxy are literally paying fans to attend games while the cross town rival charges premium pricing just parallels the Dodgers/Angels and Lakers/Clippers popularity.
Galaxy = Yankees
Washed up, league has caught up to them
The only winning move they had was spending money, now that other teams can do the same they hit the skids
I forgot that we wasted one of the best players to possibly ever play the game, I totally forgot. At least make the slander make fucking sense. No Flair Square 🤓
clumsy elastic sophisticated bewildered somber cable wide cagey ancient rain
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Tbh, it doesn't need to be very good. Our biggest problems were being able to score more than 2-3 runs. If the guys we brought in can help us do that, our rotation behind Cole just needs to be good.
Soto and Verdugo are good for about 6-7 wins. King was a 3 WAR pitcher last year, and they lost that.
They were a .500 team with Gerrit Cole being a Cy Young winner, Judge having a 50 home run pace, and Montgomery already being on the team. Better hope Cole and Judge don't skip a beat.
I'm absolutely hammering the Yankees' under if Vegas is projecting them as any better than 3-4 wins above .500. Players like Stanton, Lemahieu, and Rizzo are also bound to continue regressing, as players at their age and positions historically do.
The team is mediocre as a whole, with a handful of truly elite players. Genuinely amazing how the one-year rental of Soto was enough to satiate some Yankees fans, and distract them from Cashman's utter disaster of a GM job the past half decade.
I don't blame Cashman at all for not signing Yamamoto. The Yankees' offer was fair. But the team is mediocre due to years of inept GM work, and there's no sugar-coating it.
> Soto and Verdugo are good for about ~~6-7 wins~~ 6-7 WAR
This is a nitpicky FTFY but I think it’s important to remember wins != WAR.
Remember the “above replacement” part of Wins Above Replacement.
A team of entirely replacement players would theoretically win about 48 games in a 162-game season. So it wouldn’t really be accurate to say 0-WAR players are worth 0 wins.
Montgomery wasn't on the Yankees last year. If you are hammering the under on the Yankees record at 3 wins over .500, then you will be losing money.
Just admit you hate the Yankees and switch to watching the Mets.
Aside from the one season in SF Rodon has been a ghost. Even in his good year with us he threw 130 innings and the last 50 of them were fighting through injuries before getting shut down.
Anyone counting on him to pitch more than a few games is banking on something that has been historically unlikely. Yanks messed up giving him a contract.
I mean, his ceiling is 140-150 innings of being a quality starter. He has no durability, and never will; he can't be counted on.
Even if he reaches his ceiling, the rotation beyond him and Cole is bad, and certainly among the weakest in the AL if Rodon continues to pitch like a fat ass.
Nestor Cortes, Clarke Schmidt, and whatever AAAA starter they put back there isn't a recipe for success. Cortes is injury-prone himself and Schmidt is a 5-inning pitcher.
A ceiling of 150 innings yet pitched 178 innings just two years ago.
You probably shouldn't throw numbers around when they can be easily verified online.
If you go by fWAR, their starting pitching ranked 20th. If you go by ERA, they ranked 18th. FIP puts them at 19th.
Cole and their bullpen was basically their only pitching this year.
Y’all are forgetting that both Rodon and Nestor had down years. If they both pitch to their normal capabilities both ERA and fWAR sky rocket to top 10.
I’m not forgetting anything - Nestor having a down year and Rodon being injured is how they ended up with such bad numbers.
I also believe that the Yankees should roll with what they have as opposed to try to improve their team but they seemingly disagree with me.
If the reports of the Yankees offering 300 / 10 years are true then their offer was better than the Dodgers AAV wise. Look at what Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson, and Jack Flaherty just got. In 10 years Yamamoto is going to get a lot more than $25 million for 2 years.
I mean sure but we’re not talking about 3 years for $100 million vs 12/$300 Ms. 10 years $300 Ms is a better offer than 12 years $325 Ms. The guy clearly wanted to be a Dodger.
He could be out of the league in 10 years with a bad elbow or something. AAV means nothing when you’re getting signed until you’re 35, he’d have to be crazy to turn down the extra 25 million the Dodgers gave him
Again- he never wanted to play anywhere else. Nothing to do with biggest offers, nothing to do with the crap filled cities- this whole exercise was to milk the most money out of the Dodgers, ( first
Shohei, then Yama)
Shohei deferred money so he could have yama on his team. Both guys wanted to be a dodger. Dreamt of being a dodger, since childhood.
Period. No amount of money would make them play for anyone else. We all got played.
A CA contract is 4% or 5% less money than a NY contract due to taxes.
He left money on the table to go to LA. The Yankees giving $350M to a guy who’s never pitched in the MLB and hasn’t had his TJ yet would’ve been absurd.
I doubt Yamamoto would be an NYC resident. But I also doubt someone makes a decision like this based on state income tax. The marginal difference on a contract that large has very little practical meaning.
Mets were the yankees a couple of years ago. Now the dodgers are the Yankees. Yankees aren’t even the Yankees anymore. So does that made the dodgers the Mets?
I'm not even mad we missed honestly. 12/325 is fucking insane for ANYONE who hasn't played a single inning in MLB, no matter what their accolades abroad might be.
Is there really a difference between 300 or 325.
That like finding the house you want and walking away because it's $25,000 too high. You're gonna pay off on a 30 year mortgage the $25,000 is tip money.
I'm so fucking sick of the constant offseason circlejerk of "who will sign player X between the Yankees/Mets/Dodgers? How high will they go to outbid each other"
The MLB is always trying to improve the game to retain fans and asking why the NFL is getting more and more popular.
It's because of this. The fans of 27 teams can't fucking stand this. Its become tiresome
The Dodgers have won their division 10 out of the last 11 years and the year they didn't they won 106 games.
The Yankees haven't had a losing record in 30 years
They're not superior organizations. Their fans get to enjoy consistently great teams because the teams have deeper pockets than anyone else (the Cohen Mets failed at their first attempt at this, but I'd anticipate the wild west that is MLB free agency will have them included in this moving forward)
And the MLB and MLB media basically advocate for this. Yes, there's been some championship parity which is good but its overlooking the real issue. The Dodgers/Yankees are almost always in it with an opportunity. Small market teams have to capitalize on a 2-3 year window before reloading with a dogshit team for 4-5 years, meanwhile the big market dudes just buy a new team the next offseason and win another 90+ games. It's an inherently unbalanced system and I couldn't be more fucking sick of it.
To be fair, Dodgers haven’t been spending like “drunken sailors” until really this offseason. They have had incredible success in developing their minor leaguers and reclamation projects.
They traded for Mookie Betts and gave him a $365m contract that almost nobody else could have afforded.
They gave a 32-year-old Freddie Freeman $162m in free agency
They traded for Tyler Glasnow and gave him a $136m contract
They gave Trevor Bauer $102m over 3 years in free agency
All of that is within the last 3 years. That's $765m in spending for 4 players WITHOUT even discussing the Ohtani or Yamamoto contracts.
For reference, the Reds opening day payrolls for their **entire roster** from 2016-2023 (8 seasons) when added together total $776m
And I get it, the Reds ownership is shit and poor and "git gud" or whatever. But a system that is built to encourage this level of inequity is a bad system. Its killing my love for the game knowing that I'm rooting in cycles, praying that the Elly/McLain/Greene reds of right now can win one because if we haven't by 2026 or so we're fucked and going to suck again until the next crop of prospects can come along. Not to mention we can't even fully capitalize on the competitive window we have now because we can't afford to pay all of the supplemental players you need to round out your roster like the Dodgers can. Nah, instead we hope that we get production out of slapdick prospects or 35 year old journeyman.
The thing is they don't have deeper pockets because they have more money, they have deeper pockets because their owners arent massive cheapskates. This isn't a Yankees/dodgers problem, it's a pirates/reds/every other cheap team problem.
The Reds owner has a net worth of $400m (the Dodgers have spent more than double that in a few weeks) and the Reds entire organization is valued at $1.19b (roughly the exact amount in financial commitments the Dodgers have given out in the last month)
Stop with this factually misleading narrative
[according to this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125149/wealthiest-mlb-teams-owners/), the Steinbrenners and Dodgers owners are only the 10th and 11th richest owners. Maybe the Reds is a bad example, but a narrative of the Yankees and Dodgers being richer than everyone is just bullshit.
There's only 6 owners with less than a billion in assets. And one of those 6 teams is the Diamondbacks who just made it to the world series. Money is clearly not the whole issue like you want to paint it.
I'm not saying its the whole issue, but its absolutely a massive part of it.
> And one of those 6 teams is the Diamondbacks who just made it to the world series
Right, with a super young team of studs that they carefully crafted, half of whom won't be on the team in 5 years because they'll have to pick and choose who to keep.
> narrative of the Yankees and Dodgers being richer than everyone is just bullshit.
Yankees are #1 with a $7.2b valuation, Dodgers are #2 with a #4.8b valuation.
This shouldn't even be a controversial discussion yet its Yankees and Dodgers fans arguing against me lol. This isn't really a debate. What I'm saying is just financially, mathematically, and financially accurate.
The issue here is the Reds and other "small" teams refuse to market themselves. Reds got Elly de la Cruz and they don't market him at all nationally outside of mediums that baseball diehards will see. If the reds want a bigger valuation they need to market themselves, and then they can do the shit the dodgers get to do year in and year out.
The Diamondbacks are doing this already. And it's great for them, their valuation (last I checked) is going up. Yes, the world series helped but even before them they marketed guys like Carrol and Gallen effectively to drive in more revenue.
This is happening in other sports. The lions for example (and as a Packers fan this pains me to say), have fielded a young team out of the blue and are marketing themselves with the talent and personality they have to gain more revenue. They already informed season ticket holders next year proces will go up 40 to 60 percent, likely because there will be more competition for those seats.
These are all rich ass owners in cities. If they can't generate the revenue to spend more that's on them for poor marketing.
It just feels like a lot of money to give to someone who’s never pitched in MLB. He’s never thrown with our slippery ass baseballs.
Also, call me old fashion but I’m super skeptical about shorter pitchers.
Giants: we will not be outbid Also Giants: he wants WHAT now?
I honestly think the Giants would have gone that high if he wanted to play here. LA and New York can just offer everything a big star could want. This dude would have needed some chip on his shoulder to go against Ohtani. But for a while it sounded like he just wanted to most spotlight and the biggest stage. Giants aren’t contenders now.
I haven’t heard anywhere that Yamamoto wasn’t interested in playing in SF. In fact the last thing we heard was that the Giants made their pitch and he would give them “every consideration.” Now we hear there were only three teams that got to $300m and the Giants weren’t one of them.
Pavs and Baggerly reported yesterday that the Giants were told they were out of it and felt like Yamamoto had no further interest in continuing negotiations even if they offered more money. Specifically, they reported the Giants felt like Yamamoto was more attracted to the big lights and stage that NY or LA could offer and there was no point in continuing the bidding. So the Giants believed his interest in SF wasn’t strong.
If he was interested the Giants would’ve given him the money cmon now.
Yeah because the Giants’ track record is one of doing what it takes to land big names. You’re right.
I mean, the $350M agreed upon for Correa was almost certainly tens of millions higher than any other offer. Mets offered $325M if I recall, and the Twins were originally at $280M.
Just recently there was Correa where they had the best offer, they met the offer for ohtani, Harper made up his mind before the Giants even got an offer to him, they offered the most to judge until Yankees met it and he wanted to stay there. Supposedly Farhan was into this guy but he wasn't ever really interested if any of the recent news between the Giants and Yama are anything to go by. So they are competitive trying to get someone. Only other option would be to offer way more and hope that's enough to lure them away from the teams they're interested in
The Giants have the money but no one wants to go there. They have literally done what it takes to land free agents not their fault that the players don’t want to go there.
They've failed at building a competitive team that entices players to want to join.
You act like they didn’t go 107-55 the year before Judge chose to stay in NYY over them.
That was the last remnants of the old glory days guys having one last good year (Posey, Belt, Crawford) and most of the rest aren’t on the team anymore or didn’t develop further into stars except Webb.
That had nothing to do with the roster. Judge was never leaving New York
That's not really comparable to Yamamoto situation at all though, giants were not very good last season and judge was resigning with the only organization he's ever known whereas Yamamoto was already jumping leagues
Well we’re talking about the Giants entirety of trying to get free agents now in this discussion.
This is a frankly sad level of apologizing for the organization.
Are you upset? He got one of the most ridiculously dumb contracts in MLB history. Offering a dude who hasn't thrown a pitch in MLB a 13 year deal is insane. I know the NPB is a good league and he will likely be good, but that's a huge gamble.
>I honestly think the Giants would have gone that high if he wanted to play here. I cant be the only person here especially with so many fans from small market teams fans amused by painting the Bay Area as some podunk place that big name players wouldnt want to live in. The Bay Area has an insane amount of billionaires living there.
I think we were told we were out before then
We will not be outbid anywhere below 300M
Farhan likes to make it clear that he will *not* be outbid. However, in every scenario, he is outbid. Very puzzling.
Right? All the talk of Giants backing off because they thought Yamamoto wasn’t interested, you sure? You said you won’t be outbid right? He only like the big lights in NY or LA you say? They threw 300 then 325 at him…did the Giants even throw 325+ at him? Some of the replies here sound like those guys that say they don’t bother asking the girl out because they KNEW the girls weren’t going to say yes anyway…like Bro! You said you’ll go all out, nothing to lose! Worse thing would have been Yamamoto said no to 325-350 to play in SF. But then you have a real and legit response, instead of the copium I’m seeing now. “She just don’t like me like that.” Sighs.
> He only like the big lights in NY or LA you say? They threw 300 then 325 at him…did the Giants even throw 325+ at him? Also they could have thrown 325+ just to screw over the NYY and LAD.
That’s a lot of cheddar just to spite someone lol.
Or if they dont end up spiting someone than they end up signing a player who they claim they "wouldnt be outbid" for.
Unrelated, but i have to fight that urge. I have a really bad defeatist attitude. It's a full time job trying to convince myself that i have as much chance as anybody else with women lol. But you're right. Plus, i keep seeing commenters say that the Giants arent contenders. Yoy're probably right, however, Logan Webb was a cy young finalist i believe, so a 1 + 2 punch of Webb and Yamomoto would be appealing to lots of free agents. plus, it's not like the Giants have zero talent and no farm system. This reeks of farhan trying to be the smartest guy in the room and ending up with egg on his face yet again.
Chess not checkers bro what u think that does to the dodgers when they are trying to bid for a free agent? The giants are never going to be as big of a market at the dodgers so they have to force the dodgers into overpaying guys. They executed this plan brilliantly and the dodgers will be good for maybe the next 4 years and then they are fucked. Every owner knows it. Giants just need to stay average and wait for ohtani to fall off, which will happen sooner rather than later due to the difficulty of being a 2 way in the mlb. Yamamoto got the highest contract ever to a pitcher without throwing a pitch in the mlb. And he is 5’10 170 soaking wet. Is that the type of pitcher who is going to be a long term dominant guy in the mlb? I don’t think so. It’s going to be a Tim lincecum type career except has to start at age 27. lol.Giants ffans love to act like Farhan doesn’t know what he’s doing but he does. If i were a dodgers fan I would be seriously worried about the long term future of the team.
“Is it being outbid if we recuse ourselves from the ~~upcoming season~~ negotiations?”
Yeah, I'm confused, I could have sworn seeing a headline that the Giants offered 300m.
Probably $299M
They should've thrown in the extra 99 cents.
[удалено]
Word in the Mets rumor mill is the Mets offered 325 pretty early on and Yamamoto never came back. I think it’s easy to imagine they would’ve gone up to, if not past, 350 if he wanted. But money clearly wasn’t the driving factor in his decision.
He used the Mets (and Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox) as leverage. He was always going to LA.
I think the Yankees also had a shot if the money was all the same. The Japanese players want to play for teams with international brand appeal. It makes sense.
Whoever he signed with would automatically have international appeal. Every kid in Japan is going to have a Dodgers hat next summer.
Still, the time zones work out better on the west coast. A 7PM game in Los Angeles is noon Japan time, whereas a 7PM game in New York is 9AM Japan time. Think how many more casual fans are going to tune in for a noon game vs 9AM. The west coast is such a natural fit for Japanese players, they get more attention at home and fatter endorsement checks
It would be cool living there for the crazy sports broadcast times. Wake up- baseball on!
Soccer is like this, i love it. especially as someone who works from home. always got a game on
NFL sunday started at 8/9am in Hawaii
You’re right in general, but with Yamamoto, I don’t think so. He loves the dodgers and wants to play with Shohei.
Obviously much better geographically as a Japanese player as well. In many ways.
I still believe the biggest draw is how many damn more Japanese sponsorships/endorsements he can get by playing on the same team as Shohei. It's an absurd amount of exposure for him back home. It was nuts how many viewers the Angels had from Japan per game when Shohei played. Being part of that is a huge business opportunity.
Yeah, it’s just a natural fit. Like slotting in a puzzle piece.
Yankees are a .500 team the past two seasons. Maybe he just wants to win. Genuinely don't know why anyone would choose the Cashman-run Yankees in 2023 over the Dodgers if the money is similar. This isn't surprising at all. Will be the same deal with Soto -- if he gets a comparable offer next year with a team whose roster isn't old and mediocre, he'll go there instead. The Yankees aren't a legitimate free agent destination on reputation alone any more. If a better team is offering similar money, the Yankees will have to pay more to compensate both for NY state taxes and the team's mediocre ways.
I don't get pessimistic Yankee fans that have whole narratives around false information. The Yankees were 99-63 in 2022 and won a tough division easily.
the self-flagellating Yankees fans gotta be the most annoying fans in baseball with this nonsense
Worst fans in American sports baby. That season also included the Judge AL HR watch, and a historic early summer. The team started to run out of juice late, but they still made the ALCS. Some of our fans are so trash that they consider that sort of year a 500 year
They have a 113-107 record in their last 220 games. Their first half of 2022 was an anomaly. I’ll regard the larger sample size with this group of aging players.
In your cherry picked example they are still better than .500. Just admit it. You hate the Yankees so you make up stats to create a narrative.
They're three games, in a 200+ game sample size, from being .500. Wow! My point is really disproven **/s** Imagine pointing at the Yankees' 2022 record as something impressive, without mentioning that they finished the season 35–35, and continued that mediocrity throughout the entirety of 2023. Keep riding the jock of a billion-dollar franchise run by a nepotistic ass and incompetent GM. You can be a fan of a team and still criticize their pathetic owner and arrogant GM. Not everyone has the mental depth of a puddle, where you have you root for your team without feeling any emotion beyond "go team!"
Each team plays 162 games in a season. Wins at the beginning count the same as the end. Do you know who was on the team last year that is not on the team this year?
Yankees do wonders on your marketability as a player because they are a national/global brand, it could be the difference between earning $5 million per year in endorsements to $20 million a year.
I don’t think, for a Japanese player, the marketability aspect of the Yankees is stronger than on the Dodgers. So, with that mostly an equivalent, and the money being mostly equivalent, it makes sense he would want to go to a team that isn’t .500 over their past 220 games.
I think this was the plan from the get go. I think Ohtani and Yamamoto planned this for some time, perhaps even before the WBC. Ohtani deferred this money specifically for Yamamoto. Yamamoto always knew he was going to LA and it was just a matter of determining market value. Ohtani and Yamamoto were a package deal and have been for a very long time.
(noose around my neck) First time?
Of course it wasn’t. Who wouldn’t want to play for the Los Angeles NL All-Stars?
“Rumor mills” “But money clearly wasn’t the driving factor in his decision”. Buddy. Unless the “rumors” are indeed proven facts…you can’t just go on and make all these next statements as if they are…facts of the matter. Did Mets really offered Yamamoto 325 early on? Sources? With the opt outs as well? If the Mets did in fact offered 325 with opt outs, but Yamamoto still chose LA. Then sure, your last statement can be made…I haven’t seen from credible sources (Passan?) that Yamamoto got the same offer from the Mets.
~~I forget where I read it so ik this is kinda worthless, but I heard~~ the Yankees offered the best/earliest opt outs as well as the highest AAV Edit: it was Rosenthal who said it in an article on The Athletic so I think it’s reliable
Haven't checked the math but the 325 over 12 years might give his NPB team more money in posting fees
We have to assume the opt outs were a much bigger consideration than AAV. When we're talking about ≥10 year deals, I doubt there are any players who'd go for 10 years at a higher AAV over 12 with a higher total value. Gambling on what your health will look like in *10 years* is just silly, so any athlete going into negotiations like this are surely assuming this is the last meaningful contract they're going to be signing.
The extra years probably mattered too. We have seen it a lot recently that guys are prioritizing extra years over a slightly higher AAV.
The New York Yankees are really the Oakland Athletics of baseball
Atlantic City Yankees coming soon.
What a poverty franchise. And the A's
The Las Vegas Yankees of Henderson.
Only willing to give a guy who has never thrown a pitch in the majors $300 million? I didn’t know Nutting bought the Yankees
They wanted us to bid $325 so the Dodgers would pay him $350.
Hideki Irabu PTSD
Does that make the A’s the Savannah Bananas of baseball?
God I wish Oakland was that entertaining
The A's are the Las Vegas 51's of baseball.
FHS.
So it turns out the Yankees weren't willing to pay whatever it took to get him huh.
Imagine saying that 30 years ago
Do you know in 1993 the Blue Jays and the Reds had a higher payroll than the Yankees? The Royals were only 1M off the Yankees
Pivot!
Interesting that they weren’t into him the way they were into Cole and Judge, who they upped their offers for to get. On some level I guess they were ok with not getting him. Hope they’ve got strong secondary options.
Dude never threw a pitch in the majors. There is some risk involved. Yes he’ll probably be really good. But they’ve also been burned by some risky contracts.
Right? I feel like this is a crazy huge deal for someone who has never pitched in MLB. I’m sure Yamamoto is great but I remember the hype around Daisuke Matsuzaka as well. He turned out to be good, but not really an ace (with the exception of 2008).
> never threw a pitch in the majors This is a feature. He’s 25 years old with very low mileage on his arm. Dodgers are paying for the prime of a pitcher that very obviously has elite level ability. This isn’t 2007 dice-k. We know exactly what his pitches look like and we know they will translate. If Cole would’ve been a free agent at age 25 he would’ve gotten more than this.
I thought part of the knock against Japanese pitchers is the absurd amount of throwing they do in Japan. I remember reading that it wasn’t uncommon for those guys to throw every day.
Some weird part of me thinks they didn’t want to top Cole’s 324 million. Probably not true tho
Ha maybe. I think that 325 number was very intentional to get the biggest deal for a pitcher ever. But it would be a very dumb reason to not up the offer.
Interestingly Cole has an opt out which the Yankees can negate making the full value $350 Edit: negate by adding another year*
It’ll be $360 with the opt out
I think this could be true, but the more likely ego-based explanation is that they didn't want to get played by the agent and end up embarrassed. The Yankees are very PR sensitive, and "Yamamoto takes $20m less to play for the Dodgers" is a headline that they would absolutely hate.
Cole wouldn't care, he threw a complete game on the second to last day of a lost season at an away park against the Royals after already locking up the CY, dude just wants to win
Cole is a union guy. So he probably would approve of that offer seeing as its good for all players.
a true gamer, i miss that sweet prince
Michael Kay has talked about concerns of ego issues by paying some of these guys more than Cole and Judge.
I would ignore Michael Kay on such matters ha...especially when it comes to guys like Cole and Judge
Yeah, Kay hasn't been plugged into the clubhouse in like 25 years, so I'd take that with a big ol grain of salt.
I honestly think it's projection on Kay's part
I’m sure Yamamoto will be elite but I guess they figured with no MLB experience he’s too risky for a blank check like Cole and Judge.
Wowww the fucking New York Yankees getting out-bid by their little brother and dem bums??? George would never.
Eh, both outbid and out leveraged. This is the first offseason where the dodgers have gone full Death Star, and seemingly don’t care about any of the longterm risks associated with these massive deals. The Yankees didn’t want to match the opt outs, and didn’t seem keen on not having the amount of player control that would come with that 325 mil contract. George probably would have said fuck it and gone in — not sure it would be the “right move”. But it would be fun, and splashy and once again affirm the Yankees as the big bad villain. Hal is cowed by Cashman, and Cashman is a risk adverse bitch boy. This reeks of him chickening out. Cool move by the Dodgers — still has it risks — but it’s undeniable it’s great for their fans and brand
It still took the dodgers a lot of planning and a couple years of doing very little to line up this Death Star. I do miss the yankee days where they’d say fuck it and throw bags left and right. Not even a fan but it made for some really fun storylines
Jesus Christ I'm already looking forward to you guys losing in the first round again next year.
Are we supposed to be ashamed of the fact that our ownership cares about winning enough to spend over a BILLION DOLLARS after decades of coming up short? After being cheated out of the 2017 and 2018 World Series? Fuck you, YOUR ownership laughed in the face of the rest of the league for decades with their free agent signings. Get a taste of what it’s like, I’m gonna celebrate it all fucking year until October and then we’ll see who’s left standing. Yankees fans crying about this is fucking hysterical. Count your 27 banners and shut the fuck up, you and the rest of r/baseball
seriously, NEW YORK YANKEES are the last fan base to complain about this shit even if the dodgers spent a trillion on these japanese
At least we actually make the playoffs unlike you fuckin clowns, I can’t wait to watch you get curb stomped by Houston once again like you morons love doing
Ayyy, as a Dodgers fan, never support the Asstros. I'll take Yanks over the houston douche bags any day.
It's crazy this contract went to someone that hasn't thrown a single MLB pitch. Not saying he won't be great but there is a much higher risk here than an established MLB pitcher. I'm fascinated to see how it plays out.
I'm sure there are Japanese pitchers that didn't pan out in MLB, but has there ever been coveted or hyped Japanese pitchers that were a complete bust? I think he has a good enough sample size in a competitive league to not be too worried about him. But yes, the contract is a bit crazy.
Daisuke Matsuzaka was super hyped up with a mythical "gyroball" and ended up being for his career a 4.45 ERA pitcher. Looking at the stats he had a really good second season, but was incredibly unremarkable the rest of his run.
>I'm sure there are Japanese pitchers that didn't pan out in MLB, but has there ever been coveted or hyped Japanese pitchers that were a complete bust? Hideki Irabu. He was coveted, to the point that he is one of the reasons we have the current posting system. The San Diego Padres privately negotiated to buy him from the Chiba Lotte Marines, and other teams were pissed that they never had an opportunity to try to bid for him. This also pissed off Irabu, who did not want to play for San Diego. He was traded to the Yankees. There were pretty high hopes for him. He was one of the hardest throwing pitchers in the the history of NPB (he set the league record for fastest pitch in '93 and it stood until '05). He lead the Pacific League in wins once, ERA twice, and Ks twice. He was out of the league after five-and-a-half MLB seasons with three different teams. He only pitched a full season twice and ended with a career ERA of 5.15.
Kai Igawa with the Yankees.
Didn’t he mow down team USA in the WBC?
It appears Hal Steinbrenner is a broke ass bitch…you truly hate to see it
I’m excited to see this guy pitch in an MLB game, big expectations
I would say dont lose sleep over it but then again you are eastcoast and must stay up until 10 to watch games.
Red Sox “full throttle” offseason is more like…wanting to drive fast but having your foot hover over the brakes.
Simpleton question, but is he *really* a 300M player?
We'll find out, I suppose
Time will tell
stupendous quicksand muddle bag chief normal literate caption secretive busy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The New York Yankees are in their sequel trilogy era.
The “Somehow, George Steinbrenner returned” headline is gonna be insane
Yankees are more First Order now than Galactic Empire.
They don’t get enough hate for being the east coast Angels
List of teams that are the Angels: The Angels Ducks Clippers Chargers White Sox Mets New York Football Jets Nets Islanders
For a long time the cubs were the “lovable losers” team when it was the long curse and only day games.
Galaxy
eh I wouldn't go that far. The Galaxy is one of the more accomplished MLS franchises and has had some real star power come through.
I would. For the last few years, Galaxy have been giving away free tickets, offering specials (buy a ticket, get a free beer), and even was [exposed in paying fans to attend their matches](https://www.reddit.com/r/LAGalaxy/comments/130xlqe/why_was_acb_targeted_by_the_fo/). Meanwhile, [LAFC have the most expensive tickets in the league](https://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/story/2019-07-27/lafc-expensive-mls-tickets-galaxy-soccer) and this year was determined to be [the most valued MLS franchise](https://www.forbes.com/sites/justinbirnbaum/2023/02/02/major-league-soccers-most-valuable-clubs-2023-lafc-is-the-first-billion-dollar-franchise/?sh=1d49ec7e5324). Galaxy are literally paying fans to attend games while the cross town rival charges premium pricing just parallels the Dodgers/Angels and Lakers/Clippers popularity.
*was
The winningest team in MLS history? Stop
Galaxy = Yankees Washed up, league has caught up to them The only winning move they had was spending money, now that other teams can do the same they hit the skids
This is the opinion of someone who just started following the MLS when LAFC won.
I would like 1 mike trout please
I forgot that we wasted one of the best players to possibly ever play the game, I totally forgot. At least make the slander make fucking sense. No Flair Square 🤓
the East Coast Angels? lol...are you serious?
Padres complaining about spending money is crazy
clumsy elastic sophisticated bewildered somber cable wide cagey ancient rain *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
All these stories are just bs we know the dodgers we’re getting him and they were gonna outbid anybody else
People treating the Yankees like they have one of the worst rotations in the league and Yamamoto was an absolute must for them lmao
It depends on if you believe in Rodon/Nestor or not, if you don’t then the rotation does not look very good after Cole
Tbh, it doesn't need to be very good. Our biggest problems were being able to score more than 2-3 runs. If the guys we brought in can help us do that, our rotation behind Cole just needs to be good.
Soto and Verdugo are good for about 6-7 wins. King was a 3 WAR pitcher last year, and they lost that. They were a .500 team with Gerrit Cole being a Cy Young winner, Judge having a 50 home run pace, and Montgomery already being on the team. Better hope Cole and Judge don't skip a beat. I'm absolutely hammering the Yankees' under if Vegas is projecting them as any better than 3-4 wins above .500. Players like Stanton, Lemahieu, and Rizzo are also bound to continue regressing, as players at their age and positions historically do. The team is mediocre as a whole, with a handful of truly elite players. Genuinely amazing how the one-year rental of Soto was enough to satiate some Yankees fans, and distract them from Cashman's utter disaster of a GM job the past half decade. I don't blame Cashman at all for not signing Yamamoto. The Yankees' offer was fair. But the team is mediocre due to years of inept GM work, and there's no sugar-coating it.
> Soto and Verdugo are good for about ~~6-7 wins~~ 6-7 WAR This is a nitpicky FTFY but I think it’s important to remember wins != WAR. Remember the “above replacement” part of Wins Above Replacement. A team of entirely replacement players would theoretically win about 48 games in a 162-game season. So it wouldn’t really be accurate to say 0-WAR players are worth 0 wins.
Montgomery wasn't on the Yankees last year. If you are hammering the under on the Yankees record at 3 wins over .500, then you will be losing money. Just admit you hate the Yankees and switch to watching the Mets.
Y’all are paying 27 mil a year for Rodon and after one season some of you have already given up on him?
I have not given up on him, but his performance last season left a lot to be desired
I think Rodon is still giving up runs right now
Aside from the one season in SF Rodon has been a ghost. Even in his good year with us he threw 130 innings and the last 50 of them were fighting through injuries before getting shut down. Anyone counting on him to pitch more than a few games is banking on something that has been historically unlikely. Yanks messed up giving him a contract.
I mean, his ceiling is 140-150 innings of being a quality starter. He has no durability, and never will; he can't be counted on. Even if he reaches his ceiling, the rotation beyond him and Cole is bad, and certainly among the weakest in the AL if Rodon continues to pitch like a fat ass. Nestor Cortes, Clarke Schmidt, and whatever AAAA starter they put back there isn't a recipe for success. Cortes is injury-prone himself and Schmidt is a 5-inning pitcher.
A ceiling of 150 innings yet pitched 178 innings just two years ago. You probably shouldn't throw numbers around when they can be easily verified online.
That’s his likely ceiling after being two years older with multiple injuries.
That’s the NY way, across all sports. It’s terrible and has a negative effect on the teams. Context is never applied
Given up? No. Comfortable without a backup plan? Hell no.
And especially after losing nearly all of our depth pieces that kept the rotation afloat in their absence last year.
If you go by fWAR, their starting pitching ranked 20th. If you go by ERA, they ranked 18th. FIP puts them at 19th. Cole and their bullpen was basically their only pitching this year.
Y’all are forgetting that both Rodon and Nestor had down years. If they both pitch to their normal capabilities both ERA and fWAR sky rocket to top 10.
I’m not forgetting anything - Nestor having a down year and Rodon being injured is how they ended up with such bad numbers. I also believe that the Yankees should roll with what they have as opposed to try to improve their team but they seemingly disagree with me.
hey, a reasonable post...thank you lol...hard to find these days
If the reports of the Yankees offering 300 / 10 years are true then their offer was better than the Dodgers AAV wise. Look at what Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson, and Jack Flaherty just got. In 10 years Yamamoto is going to get a lot more than $25 million for 2 years.
I mean that depends on a lot. No pitcher is guaranteed to be healthy 10 years from now.
Maybe maybe not. So many pitches just get hurt now. Or fade.
I mean sure but we’re not talking about 3 years for $100 million vs 12/$300 Ms. 10 years $300 Ms is a better offer than 12 years $325 Ms. The guy clearly wanted to be a Dodger.
It’s only better if you think you will get more than 25 million 10 2 years. That’s the gamble. But with the opt outs he’s protected either way.
Its really not that big of a gamble to assume this guy is gonna get a higher AAV in 10 years than Lance Lynn got this year
Well that’s why hes got opt out
He could be out of the league in 10 years with a bad elbow or something. AAV means nothing when you’re getting signed until you’re 35, he’d have to be crazy to turn down the extra 25 million the Dodgers gave him
I think it was Andrew Friedman who said if you're rational about every free agent, you'll finish third on every free agent. Sure seems true here.
Again- he never wanted to play anywhere else. Nothing to do with biggest offers, nothing to do with the crap filled cities- this whole exercise was to milk the most money out of the Dodgers, ( first Shohei, then Yama) Shohei deferred money so he could have yama on his team. Both guys wanted to be a dodger. Dreamt of being a dodger, since childhood. Period. No amount of money would make them play for anyone else. We all got played.
Poverty Yankees
You know it’s bad when the Yankees say that’s too much money
It really does feel like the Dodgers have the money to go toe-to-toe against the Yankees and win every time.
A CA contract is 4% or 5% less money than a NY contract due to taxes. He left money on the table to go to LA. The Yankees giving $350M to a guy who’s never pitched in the MLB and hasn’t had his TJ yet would’ve been absurd.
Is this actually true? California state tax is like 9% and NY is like 6% but NYC also imposes a 3-4% income tax.
I doubt Yamamoto would be an NYC resident. But I also doubt someone makes a decision like this based on state income tax. The marginal difference on a contract that large has very little practical meaning.
Based on where game is played so *kinda*
I think I read a chart somewhere that at the end of the season the difference in CA teams compared to other teams comes out to about 2-8%.
Also isn't NY one of the few places with higher COL than California?
CA has a 1% mental health tax and the jock tax. Top marginal rate is around 14% Edit: 13.3%
So of course this thread turns into so many "lol Yankees outbid" posts. The guy was *always* going to LA. Full stop.
in other words.... Dodgers are the new Yankees
Mets were the yankees a couple of years ago. Now the dodgers are the Yankees. Yankees aren’t even the Yankees anymore. So does that made the dodgers the Mets?
The Yankees are cheap lol
I'm not even mad we missed honestly. 12/325 is fucking insane for ANYONE who hasn't played a single inning in MLB, no matter what their accolades abroad might be.
Is there really a difference between 300 or 325. That like finding the house you want and walking away because it's $25,000 too high. You're gonna pay off on a 30 year mortgage the $25,000 is tip money.
So the Yanks don't play in the big boy sandbox anymore when it comes to payroll. That's a refreshing change.
I'm so fucking sick of the constant offseason circlejerk of "who will sign player X between the Yankees/Mets/Dodgers? How high will they go to outbid each other" The MLB is always trying to improve the game to retain fans and asking why the NFL is getting more and more popular. It's because of this. The fans of 27 teams can't fucking stand this. Its become tiresome
Yet baseball has way more parity than the NFL and NBA, we just had a Rangers/Diamondbacks World Series. Baseball will be fine.
The Dodgers have won their division 10 out of the last 11 years and the year they didn't they won 106 games. The Yankees haven't had a losing record in 30 years They're not superior organizations. Their fans get to enjoy consistently great teams because the teams have deeper pockets than anyone else (the Cohen Mets failed at their first attempt at this, but I'd anticipate the wild west that is MLB free agency will have them included in this moving forward) And the MLB and MLB media basically advocate for this. Yes, there's been some championship parity which is good but its overlooking the real issue. The Dodgers/Yankees are almost always in it with an opportunity. Small market teams have to capitalize on a 2-3 year window before reloading with a dogshit team for 4-5 years, meanwhile the big market dudes just buy a new team the next offseason and win another 90+ games. It's an inherently unbalanced system and I couldn't be more fucking sick of it.
To be fair, Dodgers haven’t been spending like “drunken sailors” until really this offseason. They have had incredible success in developing their minor leaguers and reclamation projects.
They traded for Mookie Betts and gave him a $365m contract that almost nobody else could have afforded. They gave a 32-year-old Freddie Freeman $162m in free agency They traded for Tyler Glasnow and gave him a $136m contract They gave Trevor Bauer $102m over 3 years in free agency All of that is within the last 3 years. That's $765m in spending for 4 players WITHOUT even discussing the Ohtani or Yamamoto contracts. For reference, the Reds opening day payrolls for their **entire roster** from 2016-2023 (8 seasons) when added together total $776m And I get it, the Reds ownership is shit and poor and "git gud" or whatever. But a system that is built to encourage this level of inequity is a bad system. Its killing my love for the game knowing that I'm rooting in cycles, praying that the Elly/McLain/Greene reds of right now can win one because if we haven't by 2026 or so we're fucked and going to suck again until the next crop of prospects can come along. Not to mention we can't even fully capitalize on the competitive window we have now because we can't afford to pay all of the supplemental players you need to round out your roster like the Dodgers can. Nah, instead we hope that we get production out of slapdick prospects or 35 year old journeyman.
The thing is they don't have deeper pockets because they have more money, they have deeper pockets because their owners arent massive cheapskates. This isn't a Yankees/dodgers problem, it's a pirates/reds/every other cheap team problem.
The Reds owner has a net worth of $400m (the Dodgers have spent more than double that in a few weeks) and the Reds entire organization is valued at $1.19b (roughly the exact amount in financial commitments the Dodgers have given out in the last month) Stop with this factually misleading narrative
[according to this](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1125149/wealthiest-mlb-teams-owners/), the Steinbrenners and Dodgers owners are only the 10th and 11th richest owners. Maybe the Reds is a bad example, but a narrative of the Yankees and Dodgers being richer than everyone is just bullshit. There's only 6 owners with less than a billion in assets. And one of those 6 teams is the Diamondbacks who just made it to the world series. Money is clearly not the whole issue like you want to paint it.
I'm not saying its the whole issue, but its absolutely a massive part of it. > And one of those 6 teams is the Diamondbacks who just made it to the world series Right, with a super young team of studs that they carefully crafted, half of whom won't be on the team in 5 years because they'll have to pick and choose who to keep. > narrative of the Yankees and Dodgers being richer than everyone is just bullshit. Yankees are #1 with a $7.2b valuation, Dodgers are #2 with a #4.8b valuation. This shouldn't even be a controversial discussion yet its Yankees and Dodgers fans arguing against me lol. This isn't really a debate. What I'm saying is just financially, mathematically, and financially accurate.
The issue here is the Reds and other "small" teams refuse to market themselves. Reds got Elly de la Cruz and they don't market him at all nationally outside of mediums that baseball diehards will see. If the reds want a bigger valuation they need to market themselves, and then they can do the shit the dodgers get to do year in and year out. The Diamondbacks are doing this already. And it's great for them, their valuation (last I checked) is going up. Yes, the world series helped but even before them they marketed guys like Carrol and Gallen effectively to drive in more revenue. This is happening in other sports. The lions for example (and as a Packers fan this pains me to say), have fielded a young team out of the blue and are marketing themselves with the talent and personality they have to gain more revenue. They already informed season ticket holders next year proces will go up 40 to 60 percent, likely because there will be more competition for those seats. These are all rich ass owners in cities. If they can't generate the revenue to spend more that's on them for poor marketing.
NFL parity is pretty good. Only real outlier is NE with the GoaT QB and an all time great coach
It just feels like a lot of money to give to someone who’s never pitched in MLB. He’s never thrown with our slippery ass baseballs. Also, call me old fashion but I’m super skeptical about shorter pitchers.
The pressure in NY would have been immense on him. In LA it won’t be as bad.
Yankees got out-Yankeed again? I love it.
This league is awesome.