Bleacher Bums Forum

It's not my money but I'm afraid of franchise crippling contracts too.

A guy like Heyward seems much riskier than a guy like Soto even with the extra $$ and years.

As bad as some here don't want to believe it we're not smarter than Jed Hoyer and if sponsorship would more than cover a 600 million dollar contract then the Pirates and Marlins would have been after Ohtani and Soto.

Craig, I don't think Yamamoto's contract has anything to do with Soto.  I feel something similar to the Japanese-Dodger contracts could be done with Sasaki.

Common error: nobody's saying Hoyer isn't smart.  Just not very good.

If the claim is that signing a star would more than pay for itself, then Hoyer isn't smart to not sign one.  Or perhaps the premise is wrong. 

As I understand it, a Sasaki contract is limited to the amount of IFA money a team has available, and teams are not allowed to add to it in any way, and are not allowed to make "off contract" promises.  The amount of money the Cubs will have starting January 15, will be a little over 6 million, not much more or less than other teams.  The Cubs (or any team) can trade for up to 60% more IFA money, so 10 million or wo is going to be the max that sasaki can get up front.  It will be interesting to see what choice he makes, or how he makes that choice.

Most of the IFA money has already been committed by teams for the upcoming year.  Cancelling contracts can be done, but it will make signing players in the future harder.  The Dodgers have $2 million remaining in this year IFA pool if he is posted soon enough.  The Padres have at least $4 million in next years pool due to a prospect being older.   

The Dodgers picked up sponsorship's 10 of Japanese companies.  This is just like the Cubs with Wintrust, Toyato, Budweiser.

https://www.sportspromedia.com/insights/analysis/shohei-ohtani-los-angeles-dodgers-mlb-tv-ratings-sponsorship-attendances-social-media/

Regarding Ohtani bringing sponsorship $$$ with him, this isn't some weird after-the-fact theory I've concocted.

This was discussed extensively during his most recent FA cycle.

Here's a recent article on the Dodgers' windfall, which pegs the Ohtani effect at $120M, currently:

https://dodgersway.com/dodgers-rumors-absurd-profit-off-shohei-ohtani-after-year-1

I agree that any club would have been crazy not to pay Ohtani whatever he wanted, because you’d make money on that deal anyway. But I also think there was zero chance he went anywhere but to the Dodgers.

Regarding the apparent flaw in logic behind Soto

Curt and tico, I recall reading that post earlier, and I admit I don't fully understand the logical coherence. 
1. Claim 1:  Ohtani makes financial profit many times the cost of his contract.  Soto, "the effect will be similar to whatever team signs him."
2. Claim 2:  Cubs won't "sign Soto because winning is not Ricketts' primary goal." 


Claim 2 states that winning is not Ricketts' primary goal, presumably implying that primary goal is financial gain.  But claim 1 suggests that after signing a star player, a "new team stood to reap enormous financial benefit from sponsorships, ticket sales, and global fan engagement", and the Soto effect will be similar. 


If financial gain is Ricketts' primary goal, and if signing a star makes financial profit many times the cost of contract, or in Soto's case at least "the effect will be similar", it seems that financial-gain-prioritized Ricketts should be pursuing for financial reasons, regardless of whether "winning is not Ricketts' primary goal".  If signing a star more than pays for itself financially, it is logically incoherent to deduce that an owner prioritized on profits would refuse to sign the star for financial reasons. 


I see two possible explanations:
1.  Ricketts and Hoyer are dumb.  Signing stars would more than pay for themselves, but they are too dumb to realize.  Profit is dangling fruit, but Ricketts is too dumb to pick it. 
2.  The financial Soto-effect is not projected to be that similar to Ohtani's, and may not reap enormous financial benefit? 

When I say that Ricketts isn't serious about winning, what I mean is he does not prioritize championships. His behavior tells us that. He owns a marquee franchise in all of global sports with an extraordinary revenue base and lets smaller market teams outspend and outcompete against us year after year. As far as I can tell, "winning" means something like, given a 10 year sample, what's the aggregate win/loss record, and how many playoff appearances do they have? Hit a certain target on both accounts, and that's "winning." It's the risk-mitigation approach, managing the team like an index fund, attempting to match a performance benchmark while keeping costs relatively low. It's a good way to run a conventional business, and one that aligns with Ricketts' history in the markets, etc.

But no fan thinks of "winning" as a certain number of regular season victories over a large sample size. Fans want pennants, trophies, and parades. Pennants, trophies, and parades are the result of volatility, which is anathema to Ricketts and Hoyer, whose risk tolerance is completely mismatched to the Cubs. Instead of lean into volatility, they seek to minimize it. This is a sound approach for a small market team, whose competitive windows close more quickly, and who do not have the budget headroom of a larger team to absorb the downside risk of volatility. But that's not the Cubs. Instead, when you take a team like the Cubs and run it like a small market team, working for nearly a decade to engineer extraordinary budget flexibility, and then decline to go after an all-time talent that fits team weaknesses like a keystone handed down from heaven by the baseball gods, you don't care about winning championships. No, this is the kind of flagrant mismanagement that sets on fire extraordinary opportunity cost year over year while sitting back as franchise valuation and revenue streams grow, prioritizing not the long right tail of outcomes, but instead that spot on the bell curve just to the right of center.