The takes are hot and so is the stove: Hot Stove 24-25

Free agency begins five days after the last out of the World Series. Notable free agents:

- Blake Snell (again)
- Max Fried
- Corbin Burnes
- some other guy, John Sewtoe? Idk, maybe he plays for the Brewers or something

Interesting to see how Boras approaches this winter given he got fired by Monty last year.

Athletic has an off-season timeline:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5884166/2024/10/31/mlb-offseason-schedule-key-dates-deadlines/?source=user_shared_article MLB’s offseason schedule

i put this on the white sox thread but their new manager is will venable

Juan Soto anyone?

Ok

And so the offseason begins: The Atlanta Braves are trading outfielder Jorge Soler to the Los Angeles Angels, a source tells ESPN.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 31, 2024

the battle for baseball supremacy in LA is renewed

White Sox opening at 500-1 to win next World Series seems kinda optimistic.

If the NYM sign Soto away from the NYY, Yankees' fans are going to lose it.

#HaloNation

If there are no lingering health issues, I assume the Yankees will cough up the extra year/$36M (especially if Soto leaves).

https://www.mlb.com/news/gerrit-cole-opts-out-of-contract-with-yankees-after-2024-season

Cole to LAD would be *chefs kiss*

yanks only have until tomorrow night to decide on cole. i would be stunned if they let him walk (and i'll bet he would be too)

Cole to LAD would be *chefs kiss*

― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Saturday, November 2, 2024 12:58 PM (thirty-four minutes ago)

Roberts would have him doing endless "always cover first" drills lol

Yeah I’m sure the opt out was just in case he turned out to be dogshit but the Yanks will surely be invoking their option.

i wouldn’t read too much into the opt-out i think cole is just covering his bases

No pun intended!

Jays want in on the Soto sweepstakes? Can it be?

I read on Twitter that he's on a plane right now, headed this way.

KC resigns Wacha for $51M/3y

That feels, excessive for him?!

Actually, I take that back. He’s been very reliable the last three years. 3.30 ERA and averaged 3.1 WAR.

wacha flocka paid

Ok

Right-hander Gerrit Cole is remaining with the New York Yankees on the four-year, $144 million deal that he had opted out of, sources told ESPN. Discussions on a potential contract extension will continue. Essentially, it’s the same as if Cole did not opt out.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) November 4, 2024

he was completely dominant against the best lineup in baseball for 2 games in the world series, pay the man his money!

huh. maybe i'm wrong and they'll extend him, but it sure seems like cole didn't actually want to leave and that the yankees knew this and made him blink

You know about the +1/35M thing that the yankees can activate to negate the opt out rite?

yes

oh i see what's happening. weird

is cole likely to be worth $36m in his age-38 season? he has a better chance than almost anyone, but i'm not sure it's a *good* chance. and in this new era of relative restraint (lol) i guess the yankees may 'need' that money to spend on soto

It feels like a gamble right? But I guess they view - or viewed at the time he signed this - him as the kind of pitcher who ages well and is still giving you something in his late thirties like Verlander. Wasn’t this year his first real injury?

huh. maybe i'm wrong and they'll extend him, but it sure seems like cole didn't actually want to leave and that the yankees knew this and made him blink

My first thought as well.

we got QO's

Juan Soto, New York Yankees
Corbin Burnes, Baltimore
Alex Bregman, Houston
Max Fried, Atlanta
Willy Adames, Milwaukee
Pete Alonso, New York Mets
Anthony Santander, Baltimore
Teoscar Hernández, Los Angeles Dodgers
Nick Pivetta, Boston
Christian Walker, Arizona
Sean Manaea, New York Mets
Luis Severino, New York Mets
Nick Martinez, Cincinnati

feel like pete alonso is in for severe disappointment this winter

turns 30 in a month, stats already trending down, bad fielder, prototypical guy who doesn't age well, agent scott boras. worried he's gonna hold out for a big deal that simply isn't forthcoming

Sort of like Conforto, who turned down a megadeal at the beginning of this walk year and ended up out of the game for a year.

*his

I find Alonso has made his fair share of excellent plays at first base, even if the stats don’t bear that out

feel like pete alonso is in for severe disappointment this winter

turns 30 in a month, stats already trending down, bad fielder, prototypical guy who doesn't age well, agent scott boras. worried he's gonna hold out for a big deal that simply isn't forthcoming

*his

I find Alonso has made his fair share of excellent plays at first base, even if the stats don’t bear that out

Brian Cashman says there are no contract extension talks going on with Gerrit Cole, per @martinonyc

Cashman says the Yankees were not comfortable adding another year to Cole’s contract, and he agreed to remain on his current deal with four years, $144 million remaining pic.twitter.com/Iqvh4Q4eQh

— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) November 5, 2024

yeah that's a blink! nice try tho

in a sense it's still a W for cole because the yankees are basically admitting that his deal is an overpay at 4/144 bcuz they don't need to use the opt out cancellation as leverage to get him to return. confirmation for gerrit that he has an above market contract

that said, the opt out is an effective cancellation of the contract so the yankees could have in theory not offered him the same deal, which means they must have talked all this out beforehand and cole knew the yankees would still put the same offer back on the table, so it's not clear to me why both sides went thru the process just to remain back in the same place. there must be some contractual fine print or luxury tax loopholing or something going on

I feel like Alonso is perfect for the Yankees

they must have talked all this out beforehand and cole knew the yankees would still put the same offer back on the table, so it's not clear to me why both sides went thru the process just to remain back in the same place

oh, i doubt it! i think cole, recognizing the yankees desperately need him for them compete over the next four years, tried to pressure the yankees, who recognized that cole already had an overvalued contract and was famously a 12yo kid holding up a GO YANKEES sign and didn't actually want to go elsewhere. and that the yankees mostly won that standoff

almost counts as the incredibly rare instance of a mutual option being accepted by both sides

i think it was a "standoff" insofar as cole didn't get the option year added, but i think it was clearly all prearranged. because if they were playing hardball w/ each other, and cole was genuinely trying to leverage the yankees, then it follows that the yankees wouldn't come back to the table and say "hey, no harm no foul on that opt out, here's the same exact deal you just threw in the trash"

you have to assume boras knew long before today that there wasn't a better deal than 4/144 out there for him, and so i find it extremely hard to believe that cole would have opted out w/o knowing that the 4/144 offer would still be on the table, which leads me to believe this was all hashed out ahead of time, and also that there is some explanation be it luxury tax or whatever for why this whole charade went down just for him to end up on the same deal

i remain skeptical but am looking forward to jack curry blasting cole for being greedy and disloyal!

idk, if this was all prearranged why leak it to the media?

occam's razor - mookie's theory is the more convincing one to me. i'm betting cole didn't get any whispers from other teams after the opt out went public, hence his willingness to basically mutually cancel the opt out.

don't think the yankees could have offered a lower contract than 4/144 even if it was within their prerogative because of all the press that would have generated and the psychic damage it would have caused cole.

This wasn't one of those deals where the player opts out and becomes a free agent, the Yankees had veto power. There's always the risk of opting out and sitting at home without getting any good offers, that wasn't what happened here. The Yankees said "nah, we'd rather not pay the extra $36M if you don't mind" and Cole said, "OK, I'm not dumb enough to walk away from $144M guaranteed" and that was that.

I'm not sure why Cole tried pulling this stunt after a year where he was injured. Maybe he thought he could get a deal like deGrom's?

Accurate

Free agent hitters tier list pic.twitter.com/udcB9Y4Ds8

— jack (@Jolly_Olive) November 5, 2024

beloved but washed 35yo RHP kyle hendricks (trio) to the angels for one year/$2.5m

dodgers poised to sign roki sasaki??

Based on what? Him being posted? It hasn’t even happened yet. Jeff Passan wrote about it when he said they’d have an advantage but Sasaki would also not enjoy the extreme coverage that follows Ohtani and Yamamoto, also flagged up Sasaki’s closeness to Darvish.

Wow, Teoscar left tens of millions on the table. He's 31, but has been consistently very good for years. He couldn't have gotten a 5-6 year deal somewhere?

Corbin Burnes to Arizona!

I don’t think anyone expected Teo to get 5-6 years. He was very good last year, average the year before, and good-but-that-glove-is-awful before that.
He was a free agent last year too and could only manage a 1 year deal.

Maybe it's not just Shapiro and Atkins who keep people away.

https://www.si.com/mlb/why-corbin-burnes-signed-diamondbacks-contract-less-money

Yeah it was the taxes and the fact he lives there and just had two babies. AL talent train is wild btw

gleyber had his issues but the yankees are absolutely going to miss him. he got on base as there lead off hit in something like 90% of playoff games and is two years removed from a 3.5 win season at an up the middle position.

it seems like they’re gonna shift jazz to second and then put (…) at 3rd

*their leadoff hitter, really need to double check my phone posts

I don’t think anyone expected Teo to get 5-6 years. He was very good last year, average the year before, and good-but-that-glove-is-awful before that.

Christian Walker is two years older and got more money from the Astros. Offensively they are similar, although Walker is the better defender (from what I read about the deal -- I haven't seen him play enough).

The FA market for hitters is weak this offseason, I think there was more money to be made.

Teams don’t want to sign older guys to longer term deals. There’s plenty of statistical info backing up that performance can fall off a cliff after 30. Teo, Justin Turner, Christian Walker, Freddie Freeman - they are the obvious exceptions, but age still comes for any player and I would guess that teams are terrified of being left with an expensive player they can’t move if they show up to spring training and their bat speed has fallen off a cliff.

A lot of players have signed long terms deals at 30-31 recently. Bregman is 30 and is looking for a long term deal now. I'm not saying that Walker or Teoscar are superstars but there aren't a lot of premium offensive players available in FA. That's why when a great player does hit the market (Ohtani, Soto), the market goes nuts. But it seems like teams just don't want to shell out serious coin unless it's a superstar level player ... but then again, how many so-so pitchers have gotten multi-year deals this offseason. IDGI, really.

if the only real tool is the hit tool, that’s a problem for guys over 30. pitchers are so good now that just the tiniest falloff in bat speed, reaction time etc is the difference between genuinely great and mediocre. now, if you can walk, steal, field… all those things can mitigate somewhat

>Christian Walker is two years older and got more money from the Astros.

Teo got more money. $66MM vs $60MM... tho a chuck is deferred, there was another large amount up front.
in terms of value – Walker was worth an avg of 0.7 wins per season more over the last 3 years; the difference coming from defence, as Teo is a slightly better hitter. if that holds steady, the Astros will have gotten two extra wins for a few million less!

You're right Thermo, thanks for the fact check.

I get what you guys are saying about aging patterns and multi-tool players ... still though, last year at this time, no team wanted to sign Matt Chapman and none of those arguments seemed to apply. The risk factors for these 30-year old 30 HR, low-BA, poor fielding hitters are real, but so are the risks of signing 30-year old starting pitchers, but the market for them is exploding. It's weird. Let's see what Santander and Alonso end up signing for.

Matt Chapman was coming off a down year offensively and signed a pilot contract, it helps that his floor is high due to his glove. If he hadn’t extended this year he’d be getting some very lucrative offers right now.

Pitching is always at a premium. It’s a completely different market.

Pillow not pilot

The pitching market is different ... except when it's not, such as last year when nobody wanted to sign Snell (reigning Cy Young winner), Montgomery, Stroman, etc. I just don't see any real pattern to it. Maybe there isn't a pattern (i.e. logical market forces at work), sometimes it's as simple as one team making a point of closing a deal early in the offseason, and that tips over the dominoes, sets the market, and forces other teams into making moves they might not have otherwise made.

Ok

looks like alonso/boras are at $200M but the mets are at $90m?

and now the giants might be interested since they missed out on burnes?

:/

Maybe they could compromise at $158M?

from calcaterra on the burnes signing:

As were tax rates, though that's often a lot more complicated than the non-accountants among us try to make it out to be given that players pay taxes in every state in which they appear. As an NL West player Burnes will still be spending a lot of time in California ballparks, after all.

i had no idea! also this is insane and i wonder how it gets tabulated! game days? can't be actual game appearances, right??

the yankees open at home vs milwaukee this year with the standard thursday-saturday-sunday series; does everyone get charged state taxes for three days or four? iirc players aren't paid for spring training; does that mean they pay no state taxes in the grapefruit/cactus leagues? (tbf florida and arizona may not actually have state income taxes -- not sure)

does this also hold true for minor leaguers? because hiring an accountant to figure this stuff out would hit a little harder on a minor-league salary

I believe it would be true for minor leaguers as well. This is based on state tax rules involving the employees' nexus to each state, not anything to do with MLB. For instance, I believe touring musicians have to pay taxes to each state in which they hold a concert. Not sure of the trigger for players; I would presume it is being on the roster for the game rather than an actual appearance, but I have no direct knowledge.

I'm not going to say it is cheap or not complicated, but any reasonably experienced accounting firm can figure this out for maybe a couple of thousand dollars. I would assume the clubs have an obligation to provide the players with the tax reporting documents that the players need showing their income by state.

yeah i work in various places in the tri-state area and get tax info for each state i work in

ballplayers out there having to buy access to a dozen extra states in turbotax

whither sarahell?

if you’re an amateur tax nerd like me i think this is interesting: https://www.jacksonhewitt.com/tax-help/jh-tax-talk/do-baseball-players-pay-state-taxes/

trivia, what is the longest streak of 1-year contracts since the modern era of baseball?

answer, i don't know, but joc pederson just signed his fifth straight one-year deal, to remain with the rangers

17 states, d.c. and toronto…

81 games played at home…

https://arizonasports.com/story/3568822/corbin-burnes-contract-details/

The deal includes a $10 million signing bonus, has significant deferred money and an opt-out after the first two years, according to Arizona Sports’ John Gambadoro.

Gambadoro reported Burnes will make $20 million per year over the first two seasons of the deal before the opt-out.

so, arizona has a flat state income tax rate of 2.5% while california, like the federal code, has a progressive state tax income rate. every dollar above $721,315 is taxed at 12.3% per nerdwallet... let's not get into what the blended tax rate on the first $721,315 is, i'm just gonna assume it's also taxed at 12.3%.

right off the bat burnes is saving $980,000 in taxes on the $10M signing bonus over signing with the giants because of the difference in tax rates (again, ignoring how the first $721,315 would be taxed in california)

how much will he save on the season?

according to baseball tax experts jackson hewitt:

While a baseball player has an annual or multi-year contract, his salary is actually calculated by each game he plays. This helps in tracking his income by state.

and also:

The jock tax
A baseball player pays income taxes not only in the state where he lives but in every state where he plays. But, since he doesn’t pay taxes twice on the same money, he’ll file a non-resident return for all those states and claim a credit from each state, to reduce the amount he owes to the state where he lives. This so-called “jock tax” has been around since the 1960s and, as you might guess, has never been very popular with players.

so that means 81 games on the road, 81 games at home. if burnes is making $20M per year for his first two years, then that means $10M on the road, $10M on home. that $10M at home, he's saving $980,000 a year on per our calculation above. so over two years he's saving a little under $2 million.

what i want to know more about is (i) what happens when a player hits the IL, (ii) what happens when a player is sent to the minors and (iii) how this works out for pitchers, who play in every 5th or 6th game, not every game.

sooo... if a player only plays in 100 games a season, then is his annual salary calculated on a 100 game basis? or still 162 games? and how does time spent in the minors count against that? and are pitchers annual salaries divided by the number of games actually pitched, or are they also taxed on a 162 game basis? if the former, could a pitcher strategically organize his pitching schedule to avoid pitching in states with high tax rates like california or new york?

this is also very interesting:

No credits
If a player lives in one of the nine states without income taxes (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming), they won’t get a credit for taxes paid to another state because there aren’t any income taxes in his home state.

if arizona allows unlimited credits for taxes paid to other states, then it could be the case that the amount of taxes he pays in the other 16 states + DC + toronto is more than what he needs to pay under arizona and he gets credited for that in his arizona state tax return. if so, credit burnes another $250k a year for being an arizona resident...

look at that paystub:

https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/1263616356002227236.jpg

his salary is actually calculated by each game he plays

this *does* mean 'on the roster' right? like, they're not dividing up burnes's 32 starts by location?

season meal money: $870

cutch, i'm no athletic trainer, but you need more carbs

you need at least $1500 worth of carbs

Hyeseong Kim fucking signing with the fucking Dodgers

LA's got the biggest korean expat community in the US

reds acquire gavin lux

(charlie morton to baltimore)

Bye Gav <3 another one of my favourite players for aesthetic reasons: his swing looks like it will give you a 0wrc+, the follow through makes it look like he gave up before the bat was even at the ball but then it produces a home run. He had a very unfortunate injury at a terrible time for him, really hope he does well with the reds,

i am sadly ageing out of these takes but he was on a truly legendary heater with triple-a OKC in 2019: .392/.478/.719 in 49 games. felt like every night he was doing something crazy

Reds infield panic in spite of their deep logjam is v intrsting 2 me...

probably better than a reds infield panik

Buster Posey literally signing Verlander who had three years service time before Posey was even drafted 🆗

Buster Posey vs. Justin Verlander
Regular Season: 3 PA , .500/.333/1.000, 0 HR, 0 K
Playoffs: 2 PA , .500/.500/.500, 0 HR, 1 K

As the guy who was on here as recently as a year ago saying I thought he was still a decent longshot for 300 wins--as long as he was still pitching well, which he was--well, he disabused me of that notion last season. This seems like a very iffy signing, although I assume he'll cost next to nothing (and maybe other teams are mostly footing the bill).

I had forgotten he was a FA, I don't think I heard his name once this offseason. Looks like a can't lose deal for the Giants both on the field and at the box office, there aren't many bad one year deals, he's a HOFer, he'll be playing in a pitcher's park, he hasn't played for an NL team except for that cup of coffee with the Mets.

I was also down on the Sale signing last year, so my track record on aging starters isn't great.

As I've said many times, I have no idea how to gauge these deals:

https://www.sportsnet.ca/mlb/article/blue-jays-vladimir-guerrero-jr-avoid-arbitration-with-one-year-28-5m-deal/

So it drags out for another year. I've been all over the place, so anything I say will contradict some other thing I said three or six or 15 months ago. Right now, I guess I hope a) he has a phenomenal year, and then b) says "Fuck you, you could have signed me three years ago" and then some other team pays him four or five hundred million. I'd be okay with that.

I have idea how to gauge it either, because in these situations any normal team would either trade him or sign him to extension. I guess the Jays feel good about themselves that they're hedging their bets and keeping their options open. At the same time they might think they're doing great things for players by avoiding arbitration and paying out record high one year deals.

None of this masks the fact that they have no real strategy for winning next year or in the long term. I haven't the slightest clue what their plan is.

What are the ripple effects of this (Bo, etc.)? Are they still trying to add Arenado or Alonso or somebody?

It was reported the Jays are going to offer Vlad a new extension offer much closer to his asking price after the arb number was reached

i think it's understood Bo wants to test free agency, so Vlad is their only hope. their "plan" for next year feel a lot how they approached things when they took the team over and it was obvious Bautista was gassed and their rotation was not up to the job... pretend they still have a competitive team and then fire sale any asset that has any value when the fans get fed up. tho they did do a solid job getting some promising young guys with last season' mini sell off.
that said, i think they still could have a shot at a wild card spot, they just need a bat to give Vlad some support. as nice a pick-up as Gimenez was, they've been overly focused on defence/run-prevention. a bat, hope someone like Clase, Loperfido, Barger, Orelvis or Roden step up and pray the bullpen can keep their shit together. i'm not entirely gloomy about their '25 season.

xpost: after last off seasons debacle, i am not going to put much faith in any reporting (i honestly really came away fucking hating most baseball journos who aren't Jeff Passan)

With regards to Verlander vs Sale as a signing, I certainly did not think the latter would do what he did in 2024 but while his stats in 2023 were superficially less than completely impressive, he put together a lot of really dominant performances with a ton of Ks, and I think his overall line was a bit corrupted by his really rough early season struggles. Verlander this past season simply was a disaster down the stretch and unlike Sale it seemed pretty clear from his statistical line that his skill set has abandoned him.