I couldn't agree more. Bauer definitely has that fire
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Besides the obvious money he will receive, which I totally get, you have to make it while you're in your prime playing years, he might actually like the guys here, the chemistry, and where this team is headed in the future.
I would say SD may be a favorite. He's from there. His best friend Clevinger is there. It's a pitcher's park and the guys on the team seem to like to have fun and not care about all those unwritten rules. Their GM is aggressive and they probably have a lot of payroll tax room.
I've seen this reasoning mentioned a lot over the years. I've yet to see it play out that way.
Reds should offer him the moon in a one year deal. You don't get many, if any, chances to sign someone who's tops in his position to a one year deal and the Reds need to try and take advantage of that situation. The Reds will tear it all down soon anyway when the payroll gets too high, so with all the years saving money since 2013, they need to go all in on Bauer for one more season. Might not work as Bauer might be swayed to sign a multi-year mega deal somewhere else, but the Reds need to try hard and in earnest.
I think in this covid world you wouldn’t have to offer $30m as league revenues don’t justify that at this moment.
I think the deal would be something like:
1 year $25m
1 year Player option $10m
Gives him $35m guaranteed, and some extra flexibility of something goes wrong badly (injury or weird underperformance) but only earns the extra $10m if he’s forced to resign.
I think Reds would be able to insure his contract, so the extra $10m in the option isn’t a normal guarantee since it’s likely only under injury where he would accept it. Feels like a logical deal for both parties.
I think Reds need to sell him on a willingness to start him sometimes every 4th game, continued focus on maintaining payroll and competitive focus, and the current commitment to pitching analytics and development infrastructure is already respected.
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He and Gray appear to be close, so maybe Sonny can convince him to accept the QO and give it one more shot as a Red with likely even higher expectations next year.
All good points. One thing that might keep him from signing with a major market is that he seems to be the kind of guy who likes to challenge the Powers That Be, so to speak. Kind of playing off flying under the radar and sniping at targets like Manfred and other national writers. He goes to a major market like LA, NY and to a certain extent, CHI and BOS, the things he does - along with some of his less than savory personal characteristics - may get him more negative attention than he desires. He stays here or goes to a market like SD or MIA or even Colorado or even back to CLE, what he says and does won't get the attention that it may in a large market.
Wait, wait, wait...are we going to let this just pass on by?
The notorious Milwaukee series in 1999 was potentially sunk by a "cocaine party" involving famed team leader Greg Vaughn?
And this was said by a current Reds announcer? Grain of salt and all...but that's...interesting.
Actually I’d have to disagree with you on the unwritten rules thing.
When Tatis Jr hit that grand slam on a 3-0 count, his own teammate Hosmer went to the Rangers dugout and said “don’t worry guys, we’ll talk to him...” and if I recall correctly his manager didn’t have his back either.
Check out the Jomboy breakdown of when that happened:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=...&v=SaW5B2SEnXg
I'd invite the GM or manager of one team, doesn't matter if the team is good or bad, come out before a season and say "no disrespect to anyone, but our team is going to try to score as many runs as possible this year, regardless of the score, and we welcome all others to do the same."
Actually, I remember that day as if it was yesterday. Final game of the season, had tickets with a group of Brewer fans. It rained, and rained, and rained, and rained. I got there at about 10:30am. Stayed until about 2:00pm. Came home freezing and soaking wet, showered, watched football, went out to eat. came back home and by 9:00pm, the game started. Reds kicked their butts, thanks to a 3-run Vaughn homer to get into one game playoff kind of against Mets. It was a long day, thank the lord for cocaine.