2023 Official MLB Season Thread

onewearz said:
Feels weird seeing a circus that ain't in NY :lol:

I'll be 56 when this contract is up :wow::rofl:
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43 aint that much better
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finallyfamous said:
Not sure if Hanley will even make roster but don’t mind it. Minus well bring Adam Jones in too.

Outfield looks horrid.
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Fam, we've got the worst OF in all of professional baseball. We really can't be serious trotting out Allen, Martin and Naquin on Opening Day.

Gonna keep it funky, Minny winning the weak division if Lindor's calf doesn't heal in a timely manner and if we trade Kluber.
 
Retroballer said:
In other news, Forrest Whitley is going to be a STAR
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You right, shades of Baby "Thor." Predicting Josh James or Luzardo for AL ROY. Got Keston Hiura, Toussaint or Robles for NL ROY. Still narrowing that side down.

Curious how Puk, Honeywell, Kopech, Soroka and Reyes rebound from injuries.
 
Josh James has a quad strain which will force him to come out of the pen when he comes back. All but takes him out of the ROY race imo.
 
stick said:
I'm trying to hit the Majestic shop at the stadium after work for a shirsey, hopefully they're not sold out :lol:.
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when i seen this come up yesterday for the jerseys i couldn't believe it, i gotta stop being lazy and get myself over there as well
 
xxpizzo said:
https://theathletic.com/849683/2019...de-the-winding-path-that-led-to-bryce-harper/

can someone please post this full article in a spoiler if anyone is subscribed. Thanks
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CLEARWATER, Fla. — It was less than six hours before the Phillies agreed to the richest deal in American sports history and John Middleton was running late. He had stayed awake as Wednesday bled into Thursday to type notes from his two contentious phone conversations with Scott Boras. The basics of those discussions had already been relayed to the club’s top executives. That is why Matt Klentak, the general manager, went to sleep thinking that Bryce Harper would never wear red pinstripes.

Now it was Thursday morning and Middleton was driving to Spectrum Field while Pete Buck, another of the team’s owners, was on the phone. There was an unbridgeable gap, Middleton told Buck through his car’s speaker. The deal was dead. Then, Middleton’s phone rang.

“Oh my god,” Middleton said to Buck. “It’s Scott Boras.”

The timing was odd. It was a few minutes before 6 a.m. in Las Vegas, where Boras had established a regular presence this winter. Buck asked if Middleton would answer it. Middleton waited. The Wednesday conversations between the billionaire owner and powerful agent were tedious. The phone rang again.

Middleton did not answer.

If Boras was calling this early, it wasn’t to share the news that he had accepted a deal with the Giants or Dodgers. Middleton, instead, continued his talk with Buck. Then his phone dinged. It was a brief text message from Boras.

Middleton took the elevator to the third-floor offices at Spectrum Field and summoned a meeting with the brain trust. They gathered in the office of team president Andy MacPhail. Assistant general manager Ned Rice was there. But Klentak was not. No one had seen him. Klentak thought the deal was so dead that he decided to work from his Clearwater Beach condo. So Middleton dialed him and put him on speakerphone.

The Phillies debated their response. Each side had been pushed to the brink. This was a chance to alter the dynamic, to break the stalemate between Middleton and Boras. Klentak should make the call.

The group dispersed. An hour later, Klentak called Middleton. Get everyone together, he said. They returned to MacPhail’s office. Klentak’s voice clattered from an iPhone speaker.

“Well,” Klentak told them, “we have the makings of a deal.”

It took four months to get to Thursday. Four months of mind games. Four months of protracted negotiations and inaccurate tweets and tracking private jets. Four months of piecing together a stupid puzzle with stupid money. Four months that formed one of the craziest offseasons in Phillies history.

Four months. For four months, the Phillies tried. The team that wins the offseason is not guaranteed October success. But they have not played in a postseason game since Oct. 7, 2011, and ever since, they have tried to sell a city on other things. They were selling youth. They were selling progress. They were selling hope.

There is more logic than ever in baseball and logic is hard to sell. Bryce Harper’s contract will not end well. The Phillies know this. The rest of baseball knows this. The deal will be bad at the end. It is why more and more general managers do not want that kind of deal on their conscience. It is why more and more owners have deferred the decisions to their baseball people, who are prudent. They are careful. They remove emotions.

Throughout the offseason, more than a dozen sources involved in the negotiations spoke to The Athletic to detail the process. This is a story about the four months when a team mixed its logic with emotion.

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(Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports)
The setting — a 21st-floor suite at the Aria casino in Las Vegas — was designed to remove emotion. Everyone would have to come here if they wanted to meet Bryce Harper. There is a certain psychology to it. A team invests a certain amount of time and resources for this trip. They want to emerge with the prize. The location was designed to protect Harper, who could not become irrational through a small detail that might have emerged during an on-site visit to a ballpark.

How, then, could the Phillies separate from the pack?

Up to this point, Jan. 12, the Phillies had focused on Manny Machado. They were headed in that direction. It’s not that they weren’t interested in Harper. But they knew Boras would delay the process. The meeting was Harper’s show. Boras sat in a corner and took notes. The Phillies made their pitch; it was Middleton and manager Gabe Kapler who spoke the most.

Harper had questions. First, for Middleton: Are you the type of owner who will make a commitment to this team and continue to do it for a long period of time? Yes, Middleton said. He asked Klentak if he was the type of general manager who would be aggressive to make this team competitive. Klentak explained his balancing act. But, yes, his mandate was to win now and win later. Harper left the meeting impressed by the presentation about the entire organization; he later made a specific mention about minor-league operation. This is a theme the Phillies leaned on during the weeks and weeks of talks. They would offer the money, the years and the commitment to winning.

Then, Harper began talking about the future. He told the Phillies contingent that he did not want an opt-out in his contract. He said he wanted to go to one place and stay there. He wanted to know what hat he’d wear to Cooperstown. A lifetime deal. The Phillies were confused. They were not sure if it was real or a negotiating ploy. But they stared Harper in the eyes and there was something legitimate here. Some within the front office began to wonder if Middleton had made his decision right then and there.

The group of five Phillies officials boarded Middleton’s jet for the flight home. The debate commenced. Someone raised a question about Harper’s impassioned statement.

Did everyone have the same positive reaction?

“Yeah,” they all said.

The story was posted online at 7 a.m. on a Friday in November, and it began to circulate the offices at Citizens Bank Park. Within the Phillies’ inner circle, it generated a consistent reaction.

Oh no.

The two sides, even now, still disagree about the details. Bob Nightengale, a USA TODAY columnist, remembered Middleton alone in the lobby, seated near a fireplace when he approached him at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta during the Major League Baseball owners’ meetings. Middleton recalled walking through the lobby with two MLB officials flanking him — he had offered to give them a ride north on his jet — when Nightengale stopped him.

They agreed to an interview. That much is clear. Nightengale asked Middleton if he could envision a successful offseason without signing either Harper or Machado. Middleton deflected. Nightengale pushed.

“We’re going into this expecting to spend money,” Middleton was quoted as saying. “And maybe even be a little bit stupid about it.”

Nightengale, a well-connected writer who has covered the sport for more than 30 years, knew he had a compelling story. “It just went viral,” Nightengale said last week. Middleton believed his words had been taken out of context.

The cautious baseball operations group digested it all. They arrived at one conclusion: This is not going to be good. Both MacPhail and Klentak had spent the last two months trying to manage public expectations. They planned to overhaul the roster. But they were not sure how it would all unfold. This set a certain bar.

The Phillies began to notice something. After the USA TODAY story appeared, every time the Phillies would meet or talk to an agent, it became public through a leaked report. This happens, but it was happening more than usual. The agents wanted the Phillies connection out there to drive up the prices on their clients.

All of a sudden, the Phillies had everyone’s attention. If a team was trying to unload a contract, their first call was often to the Phillies. Agents who had sights on a huge payday engaged the Phillies earlier in the process. The Phillies became the gatekeepers of the winter. Teams and agents always circled back before deals were completed just to see whether the Phillies could offer something sweeter.

They did not relish the label. More than one meeting with an agent began like this: “Oh, here’s the stupid money guys.” Klentak walked through the Mandalay Bay lobby during the winter meetings and a reporter teased him. “Matt,” he said, “there’s money falling out of your pocket.” Fans, all winter, deployed stupid money as a heckle.

It just became something unavoidable. During conversations with his trusted baseball people, Middleton referenced it. “A little bit stupid” translated into every discussion the Phillies entertained when it was time to suspend logic. The Phillies liked Andrew McCutchen as they debated A.J. Pollock and Michael Brantley. They wanted to shave some dollars off the proposed three-year, $50 million deal to McCutchen. But what was $6 million? Sixto Sanchez was the club’s most cherished pitching prospect. How about flipping him for J.T. Realmuto, one of the best catchers in the game? Maybe it’s a little stupid. Maybe not.

Last Thursday, hours after the Phillies secured Harper for $330 million, Nightengale’s phone buzzed. It was a text message from Middleton.

“Was that stupid money?” he asked.

The Phillies had planned a senior executive meeting for the first Tuesday in December, a meeting in which baseball people would convene with ownership to discuss various topics. An hour before the meeting, Middleton walked into MacPhail’s office and saw Klentak there. Klentak was on the phone with John Courtright, the agent for coveted left-handed starter Patrick Corbin. Courtright told the Phillies he needed their best offer now. The Phillies pushed back, asking for more time because the rest of the ownership group was due at the ballpark in less than an hour.

This was the challenge of the offseason puzzle. The Phillies had money. They had trade capital. They had a foundation, albeit flawed, for a team. It is why they pursued everything. They wanted to make moves, but they wanted to feel like they were making significant gains. Corbin, the best pitcher on the market, was just that.

Had the Phillies signed Corbin, it would have led them down a different path. They did not know whether Harper or Machado would come to them. They had no idea Realmuto would linger on the market, and a trade could grow from a random Saturday night text message, with the framework for a deal in place four days later. If the Phillies did not sign Harper or Machado, club executives discussed the need for a Plan C. There could not be a letdown. But the timing required the Phillies to explore those other plans before the highest-ticket items found homes.

So they viewed it as a puzzle. Start on the edges but leave the middle — right field and third base — open. Keep as much leverage as possible for as long as possible. It was a strategy that required a certain amount of luck.

At the onset, the Mariners indicated their desire to sell. Klentak and Seattle general manager Jerry Dipoto, who have a close relationship from their years together with the Angels, met in California at the GM meetings. Dipoto was shopping lefty James Paxton and shortstop Jean Segura. That spurred iterations of Phillies-Mariners trade talks that included both of those players, one of those players and one of those players plus high-powered closer Edwin Diaz.

It is rare that good players are available in trades. That was something the Phillies came to appreciate more this winter. If a team like Seattle dangled Segura or a team like Miami pushed Realmuto, the Phillies had to be involved. Once the Mariners engineered their massive trade of Diaz and Robinson Cano to the Mets, Dipoto pivoted to Segura and the trade with the Phillies was done in two days. The Phillies upgraded at shortstop, moved Rhys Hoskins back to first and freed a spot in left field. There is a certain level of trust between Klentak and Dipoto. Dipoto, a trade machine, was unmoved by the inclusion of Carlos Santana in the deal. He was confident he could flip Santana in a separate trade. And he did.

The deal was announced Dec. 3. It was a trade that, in retrospect, Phillies officials consider the most significant transaction because it solved so many problems at once. But, now, it was Dec. 4 and Courtright called back. He had a huge Corbin offer from another team and that team’s owner wanted an answer or else he’d pull it. The Phillies were willing to extend five years with an average annual value above $20 million. The other offer — later revealed as Washington’s — was better. The Phillies had reached another intersection of logic and emotion. They passed.

All paths led to either Harper or Machado.

The upside of keeping both doors open at the same time was beneficial. But it generated a dilemma that consumed some corners of the Phillies’ front office. Most rated Machado as the better all-around player — an elite hitter and defender with a body type that should age well.

Machado was a more consistent performer, but Harper’s variance created the potential for ultra-productive seasons. Harper was more marketable. That mattered.

So the two players were close. Team officials entertained exercises in game theory. If one of the players was ready to sign in the middle of the offseason at terms that were comfortable to the Phillies, but the club thought the other player was a slightly better fit, do they take the deal? Pass on the first one and hold out hopes of signing the second one later?

There was a consensus: No. If a deal is there to be made, the deal is the deal.

That meant Machado. Executives across the industry were convinced he would sign first. But the personal conflict between Lozano and Boras and the quest to beat one another hovered over the entire offseason. It created misdirection and public denouncements of reporters and tainted information. Both camps stalled.

Lozano asked for offers between Christmas and New Year’s Day. He told clubs he would evaluate those offers and counter sometime in early January. The Phillies believed Machado could make a decision by the middle of the month, if not sooner.

Instead, the mind games intensified. Lozano was underwhelmed by the offers. Communication between the two sides became nonexistent. The Phillies expected a response to a counter offer in days. A week passed. It was a shrewd negotiating tactic by Lozano, albeit a frustrating one. This was gamesmanship. Lozano tested the Phillies — and others — to see how desperate they were for Machado. Wait, wait, wait and maybe someone blinks. The Phillies didn’t want to play the game, but they risked losing a player they liked. Padres general manager A.J. Preller visited Machado in Miami in mid-February. By then, the Phillies and Lozano had spoken. It was going to take at least 10 years and at least $300 million to be in the picture. The Phillies did not know if Lozano was bluffing. They had started around eight years and $225 million. They bumped it a few times but never made a final offer. There was a wide gap between the Phillies’ offer and Machado’s demand.

The Phillies feared a negative public reaction to a Machado deal. They also wondered whether Machado wanted to play in Philadelphia. But, to them, this equation was much clearer than the Harper/Boras one: Machado would go where the most money was. This was indisputable. They presumed that was the case for Harper. They could not be certain.

Boras was candid. Early in the process, he told Phillies officials they would feel like they were negotiating against themselves. That was how he did business. They accepted that reality. Much of the details were mysteries. The Phillies relied on their own intelligence.

They heard early in January that some teams wanted to go the short-term route with a record annual salary. They didn’t know how short the conceptual offers were, but they heard enough to believe this was a viable outcome for Harper.

They worried about Boras outwitting them.

Much of the Phillies’ time wasn’t spent investigating whether they were bidding alone or identifying the competing suitors. They tried to evaluate Boras’ options. What was the preference? A long-term, record-breaking deal. But what was the next-best option? And the next-best option after that? The Phillies knew Boras could pivot and they sought to be proactive. It was never linear with Boras. He is a master at creating options and he is willing to take massive risks with those options.

The day after Machado agreed for $300 million with San Diego, Boras engaged the Phillies. The bar was established. The Phillies had met with Boras and his lieutenant, Mike Fiore, a week earlier on Feb. 12 when Boras was in Florida for an arbitration hearing. They had breakfast at the Sandpearl Resort for about two hours. It finally nudged the process along because both sides had a better understanding of what it would require to strike a deal. The Phillies knew they’d have to offer a record amount in some fashion.

Now, with Machado off the board, Middleton intended to make that offer. He authorized Klentak to do so. On Feb. 20, Middleton called Boras to respond to his text message. But they never discussed an offer.

Boras wanted Middleton to come to Las Vegas — on his own. No one else. The Phillies did not want that to happen. They needed someone else there with Middleton. The group decided his wife, Leigh, should accompany him for the Feb. 22 dinner meeting at Carbone inside the Aria. They made it personal; business talk did not dominate the night. It became a turning point in the narrative.

But the next day, Saturday, was just as important. Middleton and Boras met for four hours over breakfast in the ground floor of the Aria. Middleton asked if he could spend more time with Harper. He wanted to be clearer on some items. They met upstairs in Boras’ suite for lunch.

The conversations were engrossing. What do you really want? What matters to you? Are you sure? Do you realize some of your goals work in opposition to each other?

Lunch was delivered on a cart. It was never eaten.

Anyone can call the Phillies. The number to the Citizens Bank Park offices is available, and most of the incoming calls are directed to the ticket sales staff. Sometimes, they are not. Bryce Harper was trending on Twitter on Jan. 29 because a social media account for a video game trolled Phillies fans. At least a dozen people called the ballpark offices that day asking if the Phillies had signed Harper. Kids, mostly.

Those conversations end at the reception desk. But, sometimes, a call is too good to not relay upstairs. A few days after the Eagles lost to the Saints in the postseason, a man called the ballpark. He was upset, and said he was a smoking a bong with some friends. “Open the checkbook and sign Bryce!” he told a receptionist.

That anecdote reached the executive level.

The nervous energy that mounted in Philadelphia transferred to Florida when camp began. Had the signing happened before spring training, Phillies officials had grand plans for a press conference that included fans being invited to Citizens Bank Park. Now, they surveyed the Florida complex to find a perfect setting for this hypothetical announcement.

Middleton was a constant presence. The day Machado’s agreement leaked, Middleton emerged from a meeting and spoke to some staff members along the first-base line of one of the back fields at the Carpenter Complex. Then, as batting practice continued, Middleton walked to right field. He sauntered the length of the outfield to the left-field corner, where he grabbed a ball that no one had fetched yet. A few fans asked him questions. The stakes were high, and this was unusual.

There were clandestine meetings in the Spectrum Field parking lot. Middleton and Klentak, for the final week of negotiations, were inseparable. Boras would call one of them, then the other. There was no pattern. They wondered if it was intentional. They took copious notes, shared them with the group and it was time to act.

The first offer was 15 years and $330 million. The Phillies made it Feb. 24. It started, during internal brainstorming, as a 20-year deal. Twenty years! Just an idea, one too insane and probably illegal because Major League Baseball would have viewed it as a circumvention of the competitive balance tax. The Phillies had their number — $330 million — and that was the number. They were flexible on the years.

Then the Dodgers flew to Las Vegas and the Giants followed. The Phillies knew Boras would create options. They countered with their choose-your-own-adventure. They offered a three- or four-year deal with a record $40 million average annual value. Then, they offered a middle-ground solution — a six- or seven-year deal with a $35 million average annual value. Those offers were designed to combat the Giants’ and Dodgers’ strategies.

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Bryce Harper on March 3. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
Harper’s camp wanted the long-term deal, but at a higher figure than $330 million. They wanted a record length, a record overall total and a record average annual value. If you can get that from someone else, the Phillies said, take it. A $22 million average annual value in the 15-year offer was far too low, Boras said. Something had to give. It was almost March and the two sides were just repeating arguments. It was emotional.

On Thursday morning, when Klentak engaged Boras, there was traction. Rather than asking to raise the overall guaranteed total to bump the annual average value, Boras requested a shorter term. The Phillies lowered to 14 years. Still no deal. They went to 13 years. That bumped the average annual value over $25 million. It was a compromise for both sides.

Inside MacPhail’s office, where everyone but Klentak had gathered, they waited. The Grapefruit League game on the field below had started. Klentak called. He described the details. They have a deal, he said, pending their approval.

Everyone in the room paused. They had lived and died with this process for months. Middleton had been committed to this moment for years. Now it was here and it was surreal.

MacPhail spoke first. You know what, he told the room, this is a good deal. They went around the room and everyone agreed. This was a lifetime deal, a marriage between a starved franchise and the game’s most marketable star. For four months, the Phillies assembled the puzzle from the edges to the middle. They had their centerpiece.

“You can’t just say, ‘All that stuff before Bryce didn’t matter’ and all of a sudden it matters with Bryce,” Middleton said soon after Saturday’s press conference atop the first-base dugout ended. “It all matters together, individually and collectively.”

The field cleared Saturday afternoon. At 3:36 p.m., Harper and Middleton and Boras were standing alone on the grass. They had not taken the most direct path, but here they were, together forever.
 
wow so our first offer was 15 years $330Ms sheesh

glad it got settled at 13 and both parties were happy.

i also knew we werent big on Machado 8-$225M with little bump ups but wasn't never serious.

very interesting.. IM HYPE
 
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