[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Rams Fan

I want Mozeliak held accountable as much as the next guy, but he’s done some good things with regards to acquiring talent.

Mikolas’ first contract had insane value. Neshek was an all star on a minor league deal. Goldschmidt, Arenado, and Ozuna were acquired in below market trades. The corpse of Craig was dumped for Lackey making below a million.

If your argument is Mozeliak is bad at signing expensive FAs that he didn’t first acquire, I won’t disagree. But he’s done well trading wise(for the most part).

Mikolas first contract had excellent value that he immediately torched with an extension a year too early.

And I'll say the same thing about the Goldschmidt deal I said then - it WASN'T below market. It WAS the market. If anyone was offering more, Arizona takes it. And it wasn't until the last 4 months of this season that Goldschmidt played to his salary, let alone the prospect capital we traded to get him.

And the funny thing about the Arenado deal - when the rumors first started I crunched the numbers and here's what I said at the time (this was before it picked up steam, mind you - just seemed like more Mozeliak bloviating):

Spoiler!

Regarding his value...hmm....

Let's say he hit his peak season last year and try to scrub a bit for the shoulder injury. He's been such a steady player that a healthy Arenado is unlikely to be much different than the guy he was for the 5 years prior. So set his baseline at 6 wins to be fair and assuming his shoulder comes back.

Good rule of thumb is -.5 per year at 30 and beyond. I think you want to add another 1/2 win lost at 34 and 36 as those are typically pretty big dropoff seasons for most. WAR should also adjust for Coors factors fairly well because it is supposed to be ballpark adjusted.

So starting at 5.5 wins in 2021 and moving forward 6 years, that gives you 24.5 wins over the full deal by bWAR. But here's the problem - Arenado get a lot of WAR value from his defense and I've never thought bWAR does a very good job of weighing a defensive win share - it inflates them, IMO. I think fangraphs does a better job there. By fWAR his baseline for 2021 is really a 5 win player rather than 5.5. So that nets you an fWAR of 21.5 over the 6 years when re-scaled.

So assuming a return to health, no inordinately large 'non-coors' adjustment and a basic aging curve, you're looking at a 21-25 win player over the next 6 years. Placing him as being 'worth' $170-200 million if you accept $8 million/win. Bear in mind that I hate this figure, I think it's incredibly easy to dissect and if you're building a team around $8 million win shares, your team will suck.

A $6 million/win return is actually getting you on a path towards building a winning ballclub. That say's he'd be worth $125-150 million over those 6 years. He's due to make $199 million.

So here's the thing. The only way I can get to a point where Arenado is 'worth' what he'll be paid is to A) Accept full health in his injured shoulder B)Give roughly equal weight to a defensive win share as an offensive one and C) accept $8 million/WAR as a 'winning' move, which is to say that last year's Harrison Bader is actually a $24 million/season player if he plays at that level going forward.

Um....yeah....he ain't.

I'd go the low side of every single one of those choices and say that he's worth roughly $125 million over the rest of the deal which means the Rockies are upside down by $75 million.

They'd have to take Carpenter, Fowler AND Mikolas off our hands to start earning any prospect capital in return. They won't. So we should probably pivot.

My takeaway in there was that the Rockies would need to absorb almost $50 million to get to break even on a salary dump (I suggested they take on that much in bad contracts) and they would never do that so it wouldn't get done. Low and behold that's EXACTLY what they absorbed. They didn't take on bad contracts, they just paid cash. But I pegged the market for the guy. When everyone else was sucking off Mozeliak, it was because too many of these old talking heads still have no concept of surplus value.

The Cardinals didn't get Arenado for below market value either.

And in the end they didn't get Ozuna for below market value because evidently the rest of baseball knew what we, the fans, didn't know at the time - his shoulder was wrecked. Oh by the way, Sandy Alcantara and Zac Gallen, the guys we moved in that deal, might just have as much trade value as Jack Flaherty has right now. Alcantara almost certainly does at least (Gallen probably did but that elbow issue will scare teams off).

Man, if you're reaching for Neshek, you're really scraping bottom. Name a team that doesn't stumble-ass backwards into a reliever every year or two. That's the nature of reliever volatility and exactly why you shouldn't do dumb shit like pay retail at $36 million for Andrew Miller or give Brett Cecil 4 guaranteed years.