Quote:
Originally Posted by jd1020
One big move the Cubs could make would be to trade Bryant in a couple seasons.
It all depends on how Bote develops, but they already bumped Bryant to the OF to get Bote into the lineup. He's going to have to show some adjustments at the plate because he didn't end the year as well as it started, but he had one of the best hard hit rates in baseball. If you can get 850ish OPS out of Bote I think you pretty much have to trade Bryant because there's an obvious elephant in the room with him. He's going to be 30 years old when he is eligible to become a FA and his agent is Scott Boras and there has been no progress on extension talks.
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This season made retaining him a possibility.
Prior to this year, given his $12 million Arb1 salary, there was a real chance that he could see $30 million in year 4 (given the generally accepted 40/60/80 projection model that would've led to a 'market' year 4). By cratering this year, it probably suppresses his potential figures across the board. He could've seen 12/16/24/30 and is probably looking more like 12/14/19/24. Obviously still not cheap by any stretch and if he struggles with the should again those figures all drop even further.
But if his 4th year arbitration salary is $30 million, Boras pegs the contract demand at $30 million/season and either won't accept less than that or he'll slow-play the shit out of it and drag it into February. Few teams that hope to immediately contend can deal with that kind of shit or sit on that kind of hole in their budget structure.
At that point I would expect the Cubs to take whatever they'd have allocated for him and moved along.
But if his 4th year arb figure is at $24 million and that's the anchor point, there might be a way that the Cubs and Boras come together on a 6/$150 sort of deal.
Boras's goddamn pride has blown apart so many deals. Worse still is the fact that he's usually right and there's at least one clearly idiotic team out there that will blink. I'm still just pissed at the Padres for giving that ****ing guy something remotely resembling what he wanted for a POS like Hosmer. It's going to do nothing but encourage him to pull this stunt again. And again and again and again. All he needs to do is 'win' 1 of every 3 and he won't change his model.