2018 Regular Season Sim 2 Complete - Next Sim Sunday 9/4

[Pat]

Impossible. We don't want any of those it seems.

This might be the year.

[umd]

This might be the year.

Nah, don't see it yet. OF isn't good enough and need another dominant MR. Plus we are already hurt. Hoffman (done for season) McCrory (2 weeks), Marrero (dinged up), and JP Knappe (3 weeks). Lao is starting in CF and Pat Hartzell is getting starts too in my OF.

[Carlos]

It doesn't. I'm not saying it does. I'm not trying to put a financial value on his AAA performance.

All I've said is on the subject is:

1. His AAA performance is incredibly good.
2. umd should call him up.
3. I think he'd probably debut on the BLB Top Pitchers list somewhere.

How much he's worth salary-wise is not something I weighed in on.

If you say, "His performance at AAA doesn't mean he's worth $25 million," that's fine. That makes sense and I agree.

But you and Carlos suggested his AAA performance means nothing at all. I think that's silly. I think his performance is indicative of him being a very good BLB pitcher who may or may not be worth $25 million.

It doesn't mean anything to me because he's being paid to throw BLB innings.

Let him perform at the highest level and I'll respect him. Obviously his AAA numbers are beyond impressive but that's provided 0% value for Death Valley.

[umd]

It doesn't mean anything to me because he's being paid to throw BLB innings.

Let him perform at the highest level and I'll respect him. Obviously his AAA numbers are beyond impressive but that's provided 0% value for Death Valley.

Ah, the luxury of depth.

[Carlos]

Ah, the luxury of depth.

I do like depth though. Couldn't afford him on my team anyway. :(

[Pat]

Nah, don't see it yet. OF isn't good enough and need another dominant MR. Plus we are already hurt. Hoffman (done for season) McCrory (2 weeks), Marrero (dinged up), and JP Knappe (3 weeks). Lao is starting in CF and Pat Hartzell is getting starts too in my OF.

It's early, but I think you take the Bock. After that, with a #1 or #2 seed, anything is possible.

[umd]

It's early, but I think you take the Bock. After that, with a #1 or #2 seed, anything is possible.

We'll see come August.

[Delandis]

2018 Regular Season Sim 2 Complete - Next Sim Sunday 9/4

I don't think I'm better than you at this. Nor is UMD. I understand your perspective but I see it differently.



For example: I see less risk signing Zhang to this deal than the deal you gave Talley. Not to say I wouldn't have re-signed Talley to the exact same deal but with his age/injury risk, it's a gamble. Talley is the better pitcher today but in another year or two?

I just read this.

A 31 year old, 3x finalist and 2x DL
Pale winner at 20MM for 4+1 vs. an unproven 23 year old at 24MM for what I'm guessing is 5+1?

Hell the more I see it, the more I agree with Bdub. It looks like a great move to buy a valuable asset. No way he keeps him on the books longer than a year. Not when someone (probably one of the rebuilders who could've signed him) will pay a king's ransom in significantly cheaper picks and prospects for him. And you guys just driving up the price.

Wish I thought of it. And that's why I think UMD is easily one the best GMs here.

[BDub]

I just read this.

A 31 year old, 3x finalist and 2x DL
Pale winner at 20MM for 4+1 vs. an unproven 23 year old at 24MM for what I'm guessing is 5+1?

Hell the more I see it, the more I agree with Bdub. It looks like a great move to buy a valuable asset. No way he keeps him on the books longer than a year. Not when someone (probably one of the rebuilders who could've signed him) will pay a king's ransom in significantly cheaper picks and prospects for him. And you guys just driving up the price.

Wish I thought of it. And that's why I think UMD is easily one the best GMs here.

Its partly why i was surprised by the signing. UMD doesnt usually throw money out there like that. Not his style. He likes building through trading and not making huge splashes. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Honestly, what does he have to lose by signing the guy? Worse case scenario is if he cant trade him, he keeps him.

For now, Zheng looks like the real deal and that helps DVS on the field and in the front office.

[Pat]

A 31 year old, 3x finalist and 2x DL
Pale winner at 20MM for 4+1 vs. an unproven 23 year old at 24MM for what I'm guessing is 5+1?

Hear me out...

Talley is only 31 but he has thrown 1,569 BLB innings, 97 post-season BLB innings, 278 collegiate innings and 258 minor league innings. That's 2,200+ innings. He's fragile. OSA is starting to show a decline on his slider. He can dial it up to 101 MPH and is trying to strikeout every batter he faces. OSA has him 8-6-6 vs. RHs (majority of batters). Also, Talley's 4+1 deal doesn't actually start until 2019, when he will be 32.

Zhang is 23, durable and has thrown ZERO innings. I'm not sure how the game handles international free-agents, as they don't come from a feeder league and are basically "created" when Free-Agency starts. He's a control pitcher who doesn't project to have high strikeout totals. OSA has him 6-6-7 vs. RHs.

At the mid-way point of Talley's deal, he will be 34, with probably an additional 400+ innings on his arm, maybe more if Baltimore has deep post-season runs. At that same time, Zhang will be 26 and probably just reaching his full potential. Any deal with this much $$$ involved has risks. Banking 4+1 at $100M on a 32yo fragile arm with a ton of innings is risky. Banking 5+1 at $140M on a 23yo completely unproven pitcher is risky, too.

Who knows. Talley could follow the trend of veteran Baltimore SP pitching well into their late 30s and Zhang could prove to be a ratings darling who ends up the most expensive #3 pitcher in the league.

[Delandis]

I can see that.

[umd]

Its partly why i was surprised by the signing. UMD doesnt usually throw money out there like that. Not his style. He likes building through trading and not making huge splashes. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Honestly, what does he have to lose by signing the guy? Worse case scenario is if he cant trade him, he keeps him.

For now, Zheng looks like the real deal and that helps DVS on the field and in the front office.

There is not a single player on the top 20 highest paid player list outside of Zack Reeves one year deal I would trade Zhang's contract for. You could put Zhang's salary by year on any of those players and I wouldn't do it.

I can afford him and so could others. They chose to invest in other players.

I took a calculated risk on Zhang. Maybe he rises into the Top 10 on the Top Prospects by August. Maybe he debuts July 1st as I usually do with my rookies and cracks the Top 20 Player list. Maybe he does neither and just becomes another mid rotation starter for 6 years.

He was my big ticket item for the next few years. Kind of like buying a new boat or putting a pool in the backyard. Maybe you don't need it, it'll probably cost you a bunch of money every year, but it's nice to have all the same.

His money was going to Pat Yahn. I was prepared to pay Yahn $33m a year for 3 years. Jimmy kept him. Zhang showed up from Taiwan. Zhang got paid.

Unfortunately for me, my other big FA acquisitions look like busts so far. Carlson looks terrible and Gault can't hit his way out of a paper bag.

Zurita and Gibson have been just ok. Heartfield looks like an early steal. Steve Squires is sporting a 7+ ERA in Reno...

[PaulC]

I'm pretty sure they do. Would you rather have a 31 year old closer at $15m for 4 years or spend $25m on a 23 year old potential ace?

Ouch... Only 15 million this year...

I offered, but it's hard to throw 25 million at one player with a 55 million dollar payroll. Having never signed an international free agent tomorrow, committing almost 50% of our payroll to one player could have turned out to be a seven year disaster. I decision I don't remotely regret.

[PaulC]

This. He's not a minor leaguer - I think we all know/knew that. Sure I had a lot of extra payroll space. Carrying $10m cash profit is a difference maker for every budget (big or small) but as I laid out in that long post to Paul about increasing revenue streams there's nothing really "stopping" the lower budget teams in our league from being competitive money wise overall.

Matt and I were both "have nots" for a very long time in an age where the person in charge was not only an insufferable cheating douche, but the teams were never on equal footing to begin with financially or in the settings.

Now they are much more balanced. Brad, Matt and Andrew spent an endless amount of time tweaking settings to give every market equality outside performance on the field.

Let's take your California budget as an example:

Current Budget: $93m
Salary Report: $54m
Cash Available: $0 - You put $10m into your stadium.

Current Expenses: $47m
*This is personnel ($4.2m) and player payroll ($600k) paid so far
+
scouting and PD is (mostly) what is left over ($42m)

Let's take a look at FA:

12/18 RP Shinji Yamashita (37) $3m $3m
12/18 RP Kazu Shimada (30) $5m $5.5m
12/30 Manny Reyes (36) $5.5m $5.5m

12/31 DVS signs Zhang to Contract at ~$24m a year.

1/9 2B Hector Torres (35) $750k
2/9 CL Travis Gerlach (31) $15m $11m $9m $8m $7m
2/24 1B Xavier Hernadez (36) $2.6m

Alright, so let's take a look at some things here. I'm not approaching this reply as an attack at all. More of an under the financial hood post.

Let's get a few things out of the way.

Yes, I and others have massive overall budgets.

Yes, I had a ton of FA money this season. An abnormally large amount - more than I have ever had before.

Yes, Zhang has moved up the top prospects list and looks pretty solid so far but with signing international players it's possibly the highest talent to cost to production risk we have in this league. All GMs - contender or rebuilder are taking a significant risk shelling out $144m to a guy with no stats and one scouting report.

Back to math and decisions. Budgets are all about decisions. So let's take a look at some of the choices we both made this offseason:

1. Cash - you invested all $10m into your stadium. $5m for seats to build your future revenue stream and $5m into dimensions to shape your stadium to your future team. Perfectly reasonable move. I did the same investing in seats and holding $5m extra for FA.

2. Scouting and PD - you have approximately 45-50% of your budget (I can't see that info so it's hard for me to be sure) invested in these key rebuilding categories. They are important and it would be hard to argue with anyone spending around $42m on them. I have only about 12% of budget in them.

These were decisions we both made and neither were "right" or "wrong". I will say that Zhang was available to you and almost every other rebuilding GM. That includes a contender in Batavia who added Reeves at $30m and Anguiano at $8m.

After being convinced in that thread that Zhang might be good as advertised, I swooped in and landed him for $24m a year and $144m total.

Now there is no guarantee he would've signed with you for the same amount or TOR or another rebuilding team because as Pat mentioned some FA just won't be interested in your franchise. It kind of sucks, but winning games can change that from your side or straight up greed on the player's side.

For example sake let's say you could get him at $24m a year $144m total. Let's look:

Before he signed you invested:

$10m cash (in stadium upgrades)
$13.5m in FA (Yamashita, Shimada, Reyes)

That alone is $23.5m just for this current season of Zhang's contract.

Add in the remaining FA money you chose to spend:

$18m (Gerlach, Torres, Hernandez)

That's $42m without even touching your scouting and PD budget of $42m

Let's say you took 15% of your scouting and PD. Think of it as a gratuity and a front loaded investment in a 23 year old SP that you don't have to scout and is already almost fully developed according to OSA. That's an addition $6m to spend.

Could you have signed Zhang? I think so. This really wasn't a case of the big market team throwing a boatload of money at a FA. I didn't severely overpay. I chose not to offer him $30m a year over 4-5 years because I made budget decisions figuring that would be a bad idea. $25m though? Sure, I chose Zhang over Reeves ($30m), Gerlach ($15m), Santana ($15m) and plenty of other targets who would help me win my division.

You probably (if my math is right in this post) could have decided something similar:

You had $48m (give or take) to play with if you chose to get him as laid out above.

$25m for Zhang
$10m for Stadium
$13m before he signed would have still landed you Shimada, Yamashita and Reyes.

That's $48m. I'd bet most other rebuilding teams are similar. Add in the advantage of low future payrolls for rebuilding teams which we didn't discuss here and that $25m a year could have been spread over even more years considering a seven year deal only brings the kid to 30 years old.

Hopefully this was a little helpful.

Good grief... I'm a shitty GM!

Perhaps once the learning curve starts to level out... I'll understand how to better allocate my resources.

For now, most of those signings were to please an angry owner who's giving me my budget or to sign fans to increase my lousy fan interest.

Using your earlier posts about how to build wealth I chose to use your earlier ideas of spending money and getting a fans!!

#somuchtolearn

[umd]

Good grief... I'm a shitty GM!

Perhaps once the learning curve starts to level out... I'll understand how to better allocate my resources.

For now, most of those signings were to please an angry owner who's giving me my budget or to sign fans to increase my lousy fan interest.

Using your earlier posts about how to build wealth I chose to use your earlier ideas of spending money and getting a fans!!

#somuchtolearn

My point wasn't to call you a shitty GM, it was to point out that my higher payroll and budget didn't stop you (or anyone else) from signing Zhang like you mentioned in your response to Matt. You chose to do the other things with your money.