2024 Season | Series #11 | Angels @ Guardians | May 3-5, 2024

[CATS44]

First game I haven't gotten to see much of. Guess it was a good one to miss.

Anyway, how much is everyone willing to pay to have Manzardo playing here in May? The numbers are quite scary, esp if he plays as everybody hopes.

(These are made up numbers, probably underestimated.)

If Manzardo is called up after Super Two and plays well, he will play three years at minimum. He could get $5 mil in his first arby. $10 mil in his second. $15 mil in his third. In total we pay him $33 mil over six years.

If he is a Super Two, those numbers move up, and his fourth arby is $20 mil, a total of $52 mil. We could be paying $19 mil to watch Manzardo play in May.

I dont think those numbers are too far off.

Nails got $3.35 mil in his first arby based upon...

1100 PA
104 wRC+
36 HR
2.1 fWAR
One season in which he got over 279 PAs.

When Nails got a second full season and produced, he got $6.5 mil.

**********

A scary thought:

Because of his performance last year, Bibee will hit arby a year early.

Cal Quantrill got $5.550 mil this year for 572 innings and 6.3 fWAR. Bibee has 3.5 fWAR already. Winning early arby could cost us around $20 mil. If he performs well, it could be a whole lot more.

Because of our financial situation, early arby has a virtual effect of losing a year of control, because we can't afford to pay for the fourth arby. Instead of having a good player for six years, we can only have him five.

Thats what manipulating a players time clock means.

 

[CBBI]

First game I haven't gotten to see much of. Guess it was a good one to miss.

Anyway, how much is everyone willing to pay to have Manzardo playing here in May? The numbers are quite scary, esp if he plays as everybody hopes.

(These are made up numbers, probably underestimated.)

If Manzardo is called up after Super Two and plays well, he will play three years at minimum. He could get $5 mil in his first arby. $10 mil in his second. $15 mil in his third. In total we pay him $33 mil over six years.

If he is a Super Two, those numbers move up, and his fourth arby is $20 mil, a total of $52 mil. We could be paying $19 mil to watch Manzardo play in May.

I dont think those numbers are too far off.

Nails got $3.35 mil in his first arby based upon...

1100 PA
104 wRC+
36 HR
2.1 fWAR
One season in which he got over 279 PAs.

When Nails got a second full season and produced, he got $6.5 mil.

**********

A scary thought:

Because of his performance last year, Bibee will hit arby a year early.

Cal Quantrill got $5.550 mil this year for 572 innings and 6.3 fWAR. Bibee has 3.5 fWAR already. Winning early arby could cost us around $20 mil. If he performs well, it could be a whole lot more.

Because of our financial situation, early arby has a virtual effect of losing a year of control, because we can't afford to pay for the fourth arby. Instead of having a good player for six years, we can only have him five.

Thats what manipulating a players time clock means.

I’m not saying you’re wrong about this, but the fact that any fan thinks about it like this is so fucking pathetic.

It’s crying shame that we’ve been conditioned as fans to accept that that a player that could absolutely help the MLB team win games in April and May won’t be in the majors helping the team win those games until June or July because four or five years down the road the owners would have to pay him more money.

It’s a pathetic, broken system that has brainwashed us into siding with the billionaires over the millionaires.

 

[CATS44]

I’m not saying you’re wrong about this, but the fact that any fan thinks about it like this is so fucking pathetic.

It’s crying shame that we’ve been conditioned as fans to accept that that a player that could absolutely help the MLB team win games in April and May won’t be in the majors helping the team win those games until June or July because four or five years down the road the owners would have to pay him more money.

It’s a pathetic, broken system that has brainwashed us into siding with the billionaires over the millionaires.

I'm not siding with anybody.

I merely explained the situation and asked a question.

How much are you willing to pay to see Manzardo play 20 games in May?

And how much of a dent in the payrolls in 2026, 2027, and 2028?

And how long do you want to see Manzardo play in Cleveland?

Are you willing to trade an entire season of Manzardo down the road for one month now?

 

[CATS44]

If those questions are of no concern to you, you need to follow a team with a $220 mil payroll.

 

[CBBI]

Are you willing to trade an entire season of Manzardo down the road for one month now?

Yes. Of course I am willing to do that and you should too frankly.

Because “trading an entire season of Manzardo down the road” implies that the Guardians will automatically lose Manzardo to free agency when his contract is up.

When the reality of the situation is that the Guardians obviously *could* resign Manzardo (or any other player on their roster) if they absolutely wanted to.

There’s no hard salary cap in this sport. There’s nothing actually stopping the Guardians from increasing their payroll to whatever level they want.

 

[CBBI]

And just to be clear, I fully understand the way the Guardians do business and the fact that isn’t going to change.

I’m simply pointing out how pathetic it is that collectively as fans we have been conditioned so aggressively to automatically think about the financial element of every single player transaction, especially in a sport that doesn’t have and has never had a hard salary cap.

 

[sportscoach]

And just to be clear, I fully understand the way the Guardians do business and the fact that isn’t going to change.

I’m simply pointing out how pathetic it is that collectively as fans we have been conditioned so aggressively to automatically think about the financial element of every single player transaction, especially in a sport that doesn’t have and has never had a hard salary cap.

That's what makes the run Cleveland has had since Antonetti took over, a very good one. They are at a huge disadvantage yet, they are at the top in wins over that stretch of time...

 

[CBBI]

If those questions are of no concern to you, you need to follow a team with a $220 mil payroll.

Every major league team could have a $220M payroll if they wanted to have one is the point.

Obviously few do, but there’s nothing actually stopping any of them from being there other than a lack of desire to spend at that level.

 

[sportscoach]

Every major league team could have a $220M payroll if they wanted to have one is the point.

Obviously few do, but there’s nothing actually stopping any of them from being there other than a lack of desire to spend at that level.

Eh... Not all teams actually get that amount of money per season to run at that level... But IF we said 150... That's feasible!

 

[Tondo]

For me it's less about Manzardo in a vacuum, it's also about the runway for other young players.

Are we really giving up on Florial after 60ish PA? What about Fry, Arias PA? Manzardo call up would cut into a lot of player's playing time, while forcing vets to play on defense every game without a DH rest day.

That's the main part for me, but also the inexperience of Manzardo. He has less than 1000 pro PAs under his belt. Half of them in AAA where he's a 260 hitter.

 

[CDAV45]

That's what makes the run Cleveland has had since Antonetti took over, a very good one. They are at a huge disadvantage yet, they are at the top in wins over that stretch of time...

I hate it when this is uses as some sort of measuring stick. Anyone dwelling in the universe of reality understands exactly why their record over that time span became so and it had nothing to do with "how well the organization was ran". That's not a knock because they don't control what division they play in, but lets not ignore the obvious either.

I'm a big fan/believer in Antonetti and Chernoff because they have assembled a damn fine organization with limited means.

 

[sportscoach]

I hate it when this is uses as some sort of measuring stick. Anyone dwelling in the universe of reality understands exactly why their record over that time span became so and it had nothing to do with "how well the organization was ran". That's not a knock because they don't control what division they play in, but lets not ignore the obvious either.

I'm a big fan/believer in Antonetti and Chernoff because they have assembled a damn fine organization with limited means.

I mean the Shapiro/Antonetti tree is in like at least 20%+ of the front offices of baseball...

 

[Wham with the Right Hand]

My understanding is that ownership is not willing to lose money. Expenditures can't exceed revenues. Yes, they could have a $220 million payroll if they wanted to donate tens of millions of their personal weath to win a couple more games. They don't.

So every dollar has to be maximized. I would not give up a year of Manzardo in 2028 or whenever to see him play an extra month or two this year. Stay the course, keep giving Rocchio, Florial, and Freeman every day at-bats. We need to find out which, if any, are major league starters. In the meantime we give ourselves an extra year of Manzardo, who hopefully is a really productive hitter by the time he gets to his arbitration years.

 

[CBBI]

My understanding is that ownership is not willing to lose money. Expenditures can't exceed revenues. Yes, they could have a $220 million payroll if they wanted to donate tens of millions of their personal weath to win a couple more games. They don't.

So every dollar has to be maximized. I would not give up a year of Manzardo in 2028 or whenever to see him play an extra month or two this year. Stay the course, keep giving Rocchio, Florial, and Freeman every day at-bats. We need to find out which, if any, are major league starters. In the meantime we give ourselves an extra year of Manzardo, who hopefully is a really productive hitter by the time he gets to his arbitration years.

Again, I’m not suggesting that this is inaccurate. I understand that’s how they treat it.

I’m simply saying it’s sad that we have been collectively trained as fans to just blindly accept “welp, there’s no money, sorry!” when there the reality is actually “yes, we could do this and we choose not to, sorry.”

This country has a whole has a bizarre fealty towards billionaires, and more specifically the “financial plight” of billionaires, and I think sports team ownership and how we’ve been conditioned to think about literally every transaction through a “oh man what is this going to cost?” lens is a big factor in that.

 

[CBBI]

My understanding is that ownership is not willing to lose money. Expenditures can't exceed revenues. Yes, they could have a $220 million payroll if they wanted to donate tens of millions of their personal weath to win a couple more games. They don't.

So every dollar has to be maximized. I would not give up a year of Manzardo in 2028 or whenever to see him play an extra month or two this year. Stay the course, keep giving Rocchio, Florial, and Freeman every day at-bats. We need to find out which, if any, are major league starters. In the meantime we give ourselves an extra year of Manzardo, who hopefully is a really productive hitter by the time he gets to his arbitration years.

Also to be clear, it’s the concept of “losing” Manzardo a year early is further away than 2028.

Even if Manzardo came up this year from Opening Day and absolutely crushed it, the absolute earliest he could get into unrestricted free agency would still not be until after the 2030 season ended.

“We are choosing to keep a good hitter in the minors for half of 2024 because we would like to retain him through 2031 instead of losing him in 2030” is just such defeatist loser bullshit and I truly despise that we’ve been trained to think about it like that.

Do you know what else could happen?

That player could actually help the team win games in 2024 and then the team could either give him a contract extension before he ever reaches free agency or they could just sign him into a new contract after the 2030 season.

It’s just garbage and it makes me hate baseball in a lot of ways.