Bleacher Bums Forum

Williams also gets a $6 million signing bonus.

$15M is deferred. So, present day value is about $43 M.   3/$43.

Ponce to the Jays, 3 years per Rosenthal.

Nuts.  The Jay's are spending their WS money.   Wonder if they would trade a pitcher.

Maybe with Cease and Ponce added, along with Gausman, Yesavich, Bieber already in hand, and Berrios expecting to be fully healthy, that kinda takes Jays out on Imay and King, etc..  May also be that if they spend for Bichette, they maybe won't also stretch max for Tucker? 

Sharma said, in effect, "the Cubs were in on Dylan Cease but dropped out when the bidding reached what everyone predicted it would reach".

Well, NO.

Actually, none of the major sites projected the Cease deal to reach $200 M—the point where Sharma says Cubs dropped out.

The Cease projections:

ESPN  $145

MLBTR  $189

Fangraphs  $155

BA  $160

Athletic  $174

There’s an interesting discussion at The Athletic podcast “Roundtable” on why the heck Cease got as much as he did, which is puzzling to the commentators in that discussion and, as noted above, well above the Cease projections.

FWIW, Buster said on his Podcast today that he’s been asking around MLB….and what he heard is that, generally speaking, teams won’t be spending on free agents and that this Winter will be focused on trades. Said a handful of guys will get their money but “not good conditions” for free agents this Winter.

Ponce would definitely be in Hoyer's strike zone, as like his once a winter stretch target. But once a competitive teams gets interested he's pretty much priced out.

FWIW, Buster said on his Podcast today that he’s been asking around MLB….and what he heard is that, generally speaking, teams won’t be spending on free agents and that this Winter will be focused on trades. Said a handful of guys will get their money but “not good conditions” for free agents this Winter.

Not sure what that really means or what relevance it has? 

Obviously there isn't a Soto or Ohtani this year.  It's not going to be like Tucker-Correa-Bogaerts-DeGrom winter.  And yeah, Ranger Suarez isn't really on planet with Fried or Yamamoto or DeGrom.  So yeah, won't be the record-setting dollars or lengths as the last 3 winters.  So, maybe when cats like Tucker and Framber are the best FA's available, that seems boring to media. 

But, not sure that's really what he's meaning?  I's not like Buster needed to ask around to know that Tucker isn't Ohtani or Soto. 

But the guys who are FA's will not go unemployed.  The baseball question of where Tucker, Alonzo, Bichette, Schwarber goes is still really baseball interesting. 

Maybe he's saying that Dodgers, Yankees, Mets aren't planning to raise their payrolls a lot?  If so, that might be good news in Cubs pursuit of Tucker, Bellinger, and Imai, beats me. 

Buster is saying that a lot of free agents (aside from the very top guys) are not going to get the money they expect to get.

Of course, they will end up signing somewhere. But, at more modest dollars.

And that many clubs less interested in spending for free agents will fill needs via trade route.

If true (and beat writers Alden Gonzalez and Jorge Castillo agreed with Buster in their podcast discussion), that seems pretty significant.

The exception—they said— are the Jays who are going to spend. (Buster said Tucker’s agent should not let the Jays get off the phone).

That seems like a big opportunity for a team with a lot of money (and only one guaranteed contract on the books after 2026) to take advantage. It could be a game-changing offseason for that team.

Unfortunately...