The international signing period opened up on Monday and the Angels signed the number 37 prospect, Joswa Lugo. He is a shortstop at the moment, but could end up at third base. The Mets managed to land Vladi Miguel Guerrero, a son of former Angel Vlad Guerrero Sr.
Anthony Rendon only made number nine on this list of the worst MLB free agent signings of the last ten years. True to form, though, the Angels as a whole scored number one on this list of the teams who have improved the least this off season.
Carlos Perez got a minor league deal with the Athletics.
Hunter Greene hosted the DREAM Series participants at his home Sunday night. Among the major leaguers on hand for the panel discussion was the Angels own Jo Adell.
The Toronto Blue Jays are supposedly monitoring Blake Snell’s market, whatever that means.
Former Mets shortstop Buddy Harrelson died last Wednesday at the age of 79 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
Photo credit: Rex Fregosi
It is middle of January and the 11 Diamond teams have combined to shed salary and add nobody of note.
Meanwhile the 3 big market clubs with no Diamond connections have added nearly $2 billion worth of salaries.
And the only remaining major free agents are all Scott Borass clients.
Man this is like watching paint dry
And it could get worse depending on the Diamond hearing later this week. It could effectively take the Angels, Rangers, Brewers, and a host of others out of the market.
Boras slow playing the market could really blow up in his face then.
I know this might be jumping too far, but could this be the beginning of a collapse in baseball?
If the TV rights stuff collapses, and because of less people getting cable, and streaming being messed up, that would be a huge hit to a lot of team revenues.
And if team revenues drop, you have a big drop in the number of teams paying top dollar.
And if you have that, you either have enough super rich teams to buy the best players and be extremely uncompetitive, or you don’t have enough super rich teams, and player salaries as a whole do a drop.
And that can lead to drop in interest of youth going into baseball (vs basketball etc) and spiraling from there…
To me, the beginning of baseball’s collapse happened in the mid 90s. Football has taken over followed by NBA (which adopted AND1 philosophies into their game thus appealing more to ‘entertainment’ than advancement of gameplay). MLB is desperate to get the Doyers & MFY back into the mainstream and unless we have a Brewers/Rays approach we will never see continued success. Unfortunately, we are the swap meet version of any of the aforementioned teams. I’d love for the Angels to be relevant but even the we are a wasting MNT best years articles are a thing of the past. Oh well.
And here I thought it was the Black Sox scandal of 1919
I wonder if there may be some horse trading that picks up in lieu of bigger spending.
Also I wouldn’t hate if Ballys/Diamond forced Arte into a real rebuild he didn’t want to do. Start the rebuild, sell the team. At least choose SOME sort of direction.
Very Interesting!
I saw a “report” that Stroman rejected bigger offers from both the Angels and Giants and took the Yankees instead for less money.
Anyone going to Monster Jam in the coming weeks at the Big A?
Cellar baby. Ron’s pixie dust ain’t getting it done. What a waste. They exist to disappoint. That is all. And yes I root for them. Lol.
Win or lose, we booze
When it looks Bleak, we Drink!
So you’re saying the franchise is returning to its normal state. It has existed to disappoint during most of my 40 years of fandom and I too will continue to root for them
A. B. D.
A. Always
B. Be
D. Dooming
Always Be Dooming.
Looking forward to 2024!
2024: Nothing is Everything
15 WAR. Bank on it.
I get the strong feeling that last year’s budget was all for Ohtani and this year Arte will dial it back. This $60 million, then, will be more like $30 million. That’s enough to sign more guys at least.
I also wonder if the Angels, seeing what the Dodgers have done, are offering deferred contracts.
Everyone here acts like the Dodgers just invented deferrals. Remember, in the Ohtani case, his team offered the massive deferral to at least the Giants and likely the Angels as well. the list of players is long. Manny, Scherzer, Pedroia, Griffey Jr., blh blah blah. It was and has been always available to any MLB team.
Yes, but unlike the Dodgers, most teams don’t know who’s going to own them in another 5-7 years like the Blew Crew. Remember, whoever buys the team is on the hook for that salary. Lastly, no one had or has ever deferred that amount of money before in MLB.
Actually no they aren’t, if the team is financially smart they buy an annuity with a payout equal to the deferred money. My understanding is that the salary has to be funded no later than the next season, so this is not an evil Dodger exclusive. Sorry.
Anuities are for suckers. Hell many of these teams like the Doyers, Rays & Mets have their own hedge funds to put their assets in.
Dodgers are owned by Guggenheim, who owns an investment firm.
Don’t forget Bobby Bonilla, a million per for 25 years, nice retirement. 😎
My rant for the day..
This lack of business acumen is what really gets to me. Yes the Angels might have had the opportunity but Arte and his chronies were too short sighted to see the big picture. Shohei was a pure business opportunity to grow and take the Angels, the stadium and marketing to a new level.
Now it’s more like, “nothing to see here, move along”. Nice work Arte and John. It goes deeper than that. You used to treat employees and former players so well.
Now the complete opposite. Your actions show either a lack of interest or just plain giving up. You want to see giving up? Wait until you see the attendance this year. I’ve been on board since 1970 and plan to support the attendance boycott even if i get free tickets..
I will watch from afar and root for you to sell more than i care about winning right now..
And I used to support you.
I once said Gene would be proud of you and you shook my hand in joy. That’s all past tense now.
The allowance for all that deferred stuff is going to collapse soon. The (Used to be) Great state of California and MLB see what a travesty that is.
At his tender age at the time, Trout could’ve deferred 20 years of the salary of his extension contract ($10.84M a year)-Even as a Halo fan I’d say that would’ve been BS.
Why is it B.S. when two consenting parties agree to this financial arrangement for services?
Great State Of California? I’ll assume you’re being sarcastic and this is easily one of the most grossly incompetently run states in the nation. Which is saying something in a nation filled the brim with incompetent leadership.
I do think if ownership here was different and Ohtani signed the same deal in Anaheim, it would be flogged here as “genius” and thoughtful.
So true. I’m good with Ohtani’s plan as we watch it implode.
Bingo.
People complaining about deferments kind of coming off like sore losers. I don’t think this will force any rule changes.
I hate them but the Dodgers executed a well thought out business plan.
Arte & Co not capable of that!
So why didn’t MLB stop deferrals a long time ago? Scherzer is getting something like 105MM deferred from Washington (who’s ownership is in flux).
Neither MLB or MLBPA is going to stop the deferments. Owners like it because they can hold onto the money. The Players like it because it artificially raises the contract amounts. The Owners wont whine much until resale values of the teams are affected by these long term obligations.
What MLB should do is stop discounting the amount being applied to the CBT calculations so much . This is where the potential problem lies IMO .
Why? They are calculating the luxury tax hit based on generally accepted methods for determining the present value of the contract. If there were no deferrals, the Dodgers wouldn’t be paying Ohtani 10/700, they’d be paying 10/465, so the luxury tax hit is the same. The difference is the reduced hit to the actual budget and Ohtani’s potential ability to avoid CA tax on the deferred payments.
Oh, and California isn’t going to put a stop to it either, because they can’t. Federal law stops California from taxing retirement income if Ohtani moves out of California, so the state can’t just legislate around this. They can lobby the US gov to change that law, but I doubt the federal government is going to put California’s interest in taxing professional athletes over the interests of all other retirees that benefit from the federal law.
So then if a 10 year contract is backloaded ( Hello Pujols and many others) why isn’t it adjusted under GAP’s for the CBT calculations?
Money is Money it’s all about the money games the Owners want to play.
Relative to the income tax implications thats a whole different ballgame and subject to different rules.
Again, a fully funded annuity obliges the next owner to nothing.
if $465 million is next to nothing than yeah I guess so. but I suspect that depending upon cash flow all teams do that now to a certain degree with backloaded contracts
From what I’ve read a substantial portion of the deferred money is placed into an escrow account each year.
So the Dodgers really are on the hook for about $55 million to Ohtani this year in actual cash. With the vast majority of the money already in escrow after 10 years any new owners would be on the hook for relatively little.
The contracts are luxury tax dodges. Nothing more, nothing less.
Exactly.
The Dodgers deferrals are there to save on the CBT which is the one instrument in place to supposedly create some semblance of competitive balance.
I understand that future money will not be worth the same as present money, but this loophole is saving the Dodgers about $75 million in present day tax payments per year. Money they will use to buy more players and tilt the game further in their favor.
I don’t blame the Dodgers for doing this. It isn’t their job to care about baseball as a whole.
But baseball has a huge problem. Kids in Kansas City and Miami have no reason to buy in and become fans. MLB is on the verge of becoming a handful of super teams and a bunch of other guys who get the crap beat out of them by super teams. And that isn’t good.
I see your point, but the counter us that having the big market teams succeed is better for the health of the league?
Ultimately I don’t care enough because…. this is sports and nothing else. The implosion of the West animates me far more.
You are assuming that if deferrals weren’t allowed the Dodgers would have given Ohtani a 10/$700 million contract. That’s almost certainly not true. I’d wager something like 11/$500 million without deferrals would be more likely, which would actually have a lower AAV I believe.
Yeah but its what Arte believes.
it was reported during the Ohtani saga that deferment curtailment came up in the last CBA discussion but the MLBPA would have stayed on strike had the owner continued to pursue it.
So the CBT calculation methodology (including deferments) has to be approved by the MLBPA?
That would explain alot.
or the $60 million is more like $0 million.
Estimates for the amount of overseas partnership money Ohtani brought in range from $10 million to $20 million or more. So, basically Ohtani paid for at least half of his contract.
I’d estimate the Angels have about $40 million to spend IF (and that is a big IF) their TV money is in place this year.
We’ll know more about that Friday.
So Carlos Perez re-signed with the A’s? Not to be confused with his other brother Carlos? https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/01/athletics-re-sign-carlos-perez-to-minor-league-deal.html
And Vlad has another son named Vladi. LOL
Big Daddy got around!!!
You forgot the OMG PERRY SUCKS MISSED VLAD SON!!!!!!! (who didn’t want to sign here)
Theres also Pablo Guerrero who’s in the Texas system. So now Arte & the Angels are 3 time losers. ( these are all of the known Guerrero sons)
Known… LOL
Kind of like the Foreman family!
Boros continues to hold the league hostage — making everyone wait for his players to sign. Can we just get all the off-season stuff done finally? It would be nice to know what teams have going forward.
I don’t know how the author of the worst free agent contracts didn’t mention the Josh Hamilton debacle. The Angels actually paid him to play for another team just so they wouldn’t have to see him in their facilities!
Worse than that steel, the Halos paid him to not play for another team when he finally was waived into oblivion.
….because giving 6 and 7 figure contracts to 16 year-olds always achieves outstanding outcomes
30 teams and we sign the number 37 prospect. Well done guys. Well done indeed. Like well done as in ruining a perfectly good steak. Why even do it? #selltheteam
Those numbers are kind of meaningless. The reality is that the International Draft is a total crapshoot and who knows. It’s only a story at all because of the complete lack of any other baseball news.
You know it’s bad when I’m linking a lot of articles about “The Ten Blankest Blanks of the Last Blank Years.”
I could have linked another minor league deal or two of guys I never heard of, but I am getting pretty tired of that.
Ha! Maybe there is some Soap Opera news?!
Bold & The Beautiful Rocks!!
“Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives”
Wife has followed B&B since original in the late 80’s.
The Young “dumb” and The Restless…current team
General Hospital…oblique and broken hip center
All my Children….the Vladimir Guerrero years
Curse you Arte. Your feckless shock and stagnation over being rejected by the UNICORN has forced this site to devolve into a SOAP OPERA lovefest.
Ugh
Bold and the Beautiful
Scioscia & 2002 team!!
The only problem is hoping that Minasian is smarter than the GM’s of the other teams, making his guesses better than theirs.