If nobody signs Hosmer he pretty much HAS to go back to the Royals at a cheap price, doesn't he? :rockon:

Could be Boras is pricing Hosmer out of a great deal ?

At which point we still have horrible pitching, horrible relievers, nobody in the outfield worth a damn, and possibly the worst farm system in baseball. No thanks.

I take this is kcchiefsus dumb ass mult.

RedSox are off the table, but aren't the Padres the front runner anyway?

I have no clue what you're talking about. What's wrong with wanting to do a rebuild? We are a bad team even with these guys on the roster.

I mean, he wants 200M apparently. Hosmer is great, but is he 200M great?

Sure as shit not getting it now. You'd have to have 2 teams bidding like crazy, and 1 suitor just dropped out. Now the Padres get to sit and wait.

It's also possible the Red Sox know what the Padres have offered and decided to move on to Plan B. I wouldn't be surprised if Hosmer signs something with the Padres soon. He has to understand the market shrinks the longer he waits...

Yeah but now Boras can't use the Red Sox to drive a higher price for Hosmer.

Good I hope this stays true!!

Hosmer is my all time favorite baseball player I about love him as much if not more than Derrick Thomas actually.

I'm sure Boras was pushing the 200m number with the Red Sox and they just weren't having it. Hos just isn't good enough for that number, and I'm sure the Red Sox realized they weren't getting him unless they overpaid.

JD is a better fit for their needs any way.

@JonHeyman: trade market now appears to be holding up free agent market. lots of big names being mentioned in trades, though no certainty many of them will move: machado, mccutchen, abreu, cole, duffy, archer, longoria, avisail, colome, herrera, harrison, kipnis, hernandez, merrifield, etc.

@jcrasnick: Mike Moustakas hasn't generated much buzz on the FA market and the #Redsox appear to have moved on from Eric Hosmer. You have to think the #Royals are a little more upbeat about their chances of bringing back Hosmer and/or Moose than they were a few weeks ago.

@rustindodd: If the Royals re-signed Eric Hosmer, it likely wouldn't change their overall rebuilding plans. But they've long been interested at the right price. He potentially fits the long-term timeline better than Moustakas or Cain.

@Buster_ESPN: It could be that Eric Hosmer's choices are down to this:
1. Heir to George Brett-type legacy in K.C., retired number, rebuilding situation, a healthy payday
2. Mentor for the Padres, rebuilding situation, more money (presumably).

*** Official 2018 Royals Offseason Repository ***
 

If Hosmer moves on to the Padres for a really big deal ($150 million plus), I'm still OK with that.

But if he settles in around 5:100, I think KC can still find a way to play in Thah territory if he lets them backload a bit. They have a lot of bad money coming off the books after 2018.

They'd almost certainly have to move Herrera and Soria to make that workable, but it's do-able.

He's a complete jackass if he sells out to go rebuild with the freaking Padres.

I could understand leaving for the Red Sox or Yankees, but that just ain't acceptable. A real human being would see that there is/was something special here that you don't often find, not to mention all his close friends, and that isn't worth leaving behind for a few extra million in your pocket.

He'll have close friends if he stays in KC, but the question is how many?

Salvy is the only near-guarantee for hanging around longterm. Well, and I guess Gordon as well only because of his awful contract. Esky, Cain, and Moose are all free agents. The only remainders from the pitching staff that took them to the WS are Duffy and Herrera, both of whom are getting talked about as trade. And even a solid dependable young and cheap player that any team could win a WS with as a starter in Whit Merrifield is getting put through the rumor mill.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Speculation and nothing more, at this point: One evaluator suggests that if Mike Moustakas&#39;s slow-moving market doesn&#39;t develop, he&#39;d be a great one-year fit with the NYY. Play for a year in Yankee Stadium, feast on RF porch in a deep lineup, go back into market next fall.</p>&mdash; Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) <a href="https://twitter.com/Buster_ESPN/status/942900510218248192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 18, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I think the Padres get Hosmer with a decent offer. His current asking price is too much but I don't see the Royals matching what the Padres will likely put up. Once signed to a big contract in SD, his career will die like the rest of the big contracts given to players to play for the Padres. God rest his soul.

I am shocked with the limited buzz on Moustakas. Literally almost nothing big mentioned. Teams scared of that knee?

Declining defense and power being in such high supply has to be really hurting Moose at this point.

Is he a jackass if the Padres offer means an additional $50 million or more?

What KC has to sell Hosmer is being the local legend. If he signs this deal with KC, he has a chance to make a ton of money while cementing his status as a KC hero.

I think it's a thing he values. We will see how it plays out.

It's also an even year and there are 2 things we know about even years.

1) The Giants will be amazing
2) Hosmer wont be good

I was referring to Moose, but yeah, similar logic applies to Hos. I don't think he anticipated that his big contract could come down to a bidding war between the Royals and Padres.

What's interesting is I haven't seen a single Padres fan who wants him.

if the Padres sign Hosmer what do they do with Myers, move him back to the OF where he will get hurt?

That's complete bullshit. We don't get a 1st round sandwich pick in that scenario.

They will move him back to RF Jorge Soler style.

I think Myers as already said he would play outfield.

Uh, I'm sure Kendrys Morales would have played outfield in the World Series.

But those are two men who should not go anywhere near RF.

Not saying it's the best idea. Just saying what I heard. Don't shoot the messenger lol

Oh yeah, I wasn't meaning to be a **** to you. I'm just a little less than impressed with the Padres if that's their plan.

Ah well, it's called Padresing for a reason.

Who wouldn't take 50 more to live in San Diego over shitty KC?

They do have nice weather.

Hosmer-Moose combo deal.
Dayton and Boras...make it happen.

"Speculation and nothing more..."
Sounds about right. Seems like he'd be crazy to do that.

If I'm not mistaken, California taxes really stick it to pro athletes who make millions of dollars. Maybe one of the accounts on this board can figure out the difference in taxes if the Royals and Padres offered Hosmer the same deal. He might actually be better off by taking less money to play in Missouri.

I am pretty sure you get taxed based on where you played your game, so it would be very hard to figure that number out

Yep, it'd be different per team\schedule. Good on the person that wants to tackle that shitache. But to keep it simple, could just compare the 81 home games difference.

Never argue with a man named titty meat

It'd be pretty easy to do the home portion of the split, though. Plus, any bonus money would be considered home state (his team). So you could just say, hypothetically, that roughly 66% of his contract earnings are home state earnings

Cali - 12.3%

Missouri - 5.9% (2018, dropping to 5.5% by 2022)

Let's just say his taxable income is $20,000,000/yr.

CA tax: $1,640,000/yr (20mil x 2/3 x 12.3%)

MO tax: $786,667/yr

I mean it's some significant tax savings, but only roughly $850K per year over the life of that contract. It's not like we're comparing playing in CA vs FL/TX (no tax)

Edinson Volq released by Miami the other day. Hilarious, after giving us 23 wins& 400IP of 4 fWAR ball over two seasons (on a 2/22 deal), he gets another 2/22 from Miami and farts out 92 IP before blowing out his elbow


Lesson: let Cain go, so he can do that to SF or Wash

Cain/Esky are the 2 no brainers. 1 sucks and 1 looks like the wheels might come off at any moment.

Hosmer too

Probably fair to do it over about 100 games.

Because the Royals have zero divisional opponents in California. The Padres have the Giants and Dodgers as well as a few 'rivalry' games in California via Interleague play.

The Padres probably play about 100 more games in California than the Royals do when all is said and done.

But I don't think money is going to ultimately drive this. It might have if Boras could've gotten the bidding war off the ground he was trying to get going but it appears that nobody bought into his bullshit. So instead he's trying to find a 'mystery team' to push a price that I think everyone knows has gone stagnant.

The question is how badly Hosmer wants to go back to Southern California. Given the high odds of most of his teammates going elsewhere, I'm not sure how much appeal the Royals would still hold as 'family', but there will be some inertia there.

The Royals can probably hang with what the Padres will ultimately draw the line at, but if he wants to go back to SoCal, there's just not a lot that KC can do about it.

Back to SoCal?

You know Hos is from Florida, right?

Moose is the one from SoCal.

Well I'll be damned. Why all the scuttle about him being such a perfect fit for the Padres, then? My Royals fan buddy was telling me it's because he's from there.

Well yeah, just ignore all that shit then.

That would be Boras trying to drive the price up.

The talk of Hosmer coming back will die down after the end of December when the push for season ticket sales and 18 game packages dwindles. They've been doing alot of advertising for them the past month.

Somebody hasn't been paying attention in the last day it seems.

Wow. Never mind. Just saw that.

The talk from who? The team? If anything, they've done the opposite. Story last week was how every player on the team is available...Duffy was sending out tweets about how he didn't want to be traded.
WTF are you talking about?

Billy just needs to be banned from Royals threads.

Since Boston moved away from Hos and now the Padres are the only suitor, there's a lot of talk about this. Twitter, sports radio, etc.

Pay attention.

His post more than implied the talk of Hosmer coming back was coming from the team--he tied it to the push for season ticket sales. Are you telling me that you've heard the team saying things that make it sound like he's coming back?
Sports radio is not the team. Pay attention.

Actually I was the most accurate poster last year regarding predictions.

Right. In November Moore even made it sound like if there wasn't alot of competition for Hosmer he could be re-signed. I believe he even specifically mentioned Boston during the conversation.

In November?
So, when you said "the talk of Hosmer coming back will die down after the end of December when the push for season ticket sales dwindles" you meant an alleged one-time comment made back sometime in November will die down...ok, you're an idiot. :drool:

Yeah they weren't trying to sell ticket packages in November were they? ROFL dude stick to the DC section you are way out of your element here.

Provide the examples please.

Because you're a butt****ing moron who said the season was over in May.

Go **** yourself.

Moose is severely undervalued, if these reports are true. Steamer has him at 2.7war and at 8M/war he's worth 20M+. He plays a premium position, just turned 29, has insane power, can really field (his metrics were bad this year but that's an aberration IMO). He can't run but so what?

He loves to play, has some great postseason experience, proved he's fully healed. I don't get that.

Not a lot of teams looking for 3B help, plus Machado and Donaldson trade markets still hot.

Angels went another route after signing Upton (going for more D at 3B with Cozart). Giants may still be in the mix and decide he's a cheaper alternative to JD Martinez signing.

Philadelphia, Baltimore also may be landing spots based on trade market.

I don't share private messages but you apologized to me in private when I said St.Louis would sweep them.

Oh wow I was so off their season was over in June.

You claim to not even like baseball.

Are you going to shut the **** up already?

I think people aren't quite overpaying for power like they used to. Big time HR numbers don't guarantee a huge deal. Look at Mark Trumbo last year. Granted Moose plays a more premium position.

That said, Moose's overall WAR wasn't amazing, and I think you could argue he lost a step on defense. He's not quite as lean as he used to be, and it could just be the leg injury, but the eye test would tell you he let a few balls through that he used to get to. I could see a lot of teams being reluctant to hand him a 6 or 7 year deal. I thought all along he might have some issues, but I'd be shocked if he had to sign a short "prove it" deal too.

Stay on topic please. Do you really think the Royals are going to sign Hosmer?

Not directly Royals related, but interesting baseball news:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAKING: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Rays?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Rays</a> have traded Longoria to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Giants?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Giants</a></p>&mdash; Marc Topkin (@TBTimes_Rays) <a href="https://twitter.com/TBTimes_Rays/status/943521948419723265?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 20, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAKING: Orioles closer Zach Britton ruptured his Achilles yesterday working out in California. Expected to be out at least six months.</p>&mdash; Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href="https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/943505257014980609?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 20, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

That was a potential spot for Moose to land that's now dried up.

The Rays just raped the Giants.

Surprised by Moose's market. Did they not watch him play?

I disagree.

The Giants dumped Denard Span's salary in that deal. That's 11 million plus a 4 million buyout.

They take on 17 million in AAV for Longoria, but all he needs to provide to break even there is 2 WAR.

Even if 2017 was a new normal for Longoria, that's a pretty easy mark for him to reach.

In total, the Giants added 71 million in commitments over a five year span. I imagine they'll get at least 12-13 wins out of Longoria, so they come out way ahead, IMO.

Yes, but does it open a spot for Moose to go to Tampa?

Tampa's not known for offering 50m contracts unless the player is fresh from the minors.

Not sure I see a fit for him there. Turf would be awful on his knees. Rebuilding team in a stacked division. About as far away from Cali as you can get. Might as well just stay in KC at that point.

Landing spots for Moustakas keep dwindling.

If I'm the O's GM, that's someone I'd be thinking about heavily. Move Manny Machado now, sign Moustakas in FA for a fraction of Machado's cost, and try to move forward and win.


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The problem is that the Giants....suck. And they're going to suck for a long time. They have no chance of running down the Dodgers or D-Backs in the next year or two and I don't see any reason they should even get within a sniff of Colorado. They probably can't even hang with SD if the Padres ever get their shit together.

They appear to have no plan at all right now. Their system is absolutely barren. They are a collection of aging players and bad contracts. I know you've mentioned that you think they're not in as dire straights as I do, but one draft isn't going to save them and a deal like this, even if it makes them a game or two 'better', just takes them from a 'true talent' 75 win to maybe a 78 win team that still sucks terribly and now can't bank up draft capital.

The Giants are going to be wandering the wastelands for the remainder of Posey/Longoria's contract. Worse still, they've used up most of the insane value on the Bumgarner contract to boot. Only 2 more years before he's gone.

They shouldn't be targeting guys like Longoria - they should be moving guys like MadBum and ever so quietly gauging whether or not Posey would like to get moved to a contender.

This tells me they're a team that has no understanding of where they truly are. They look a lot like the 2012 Phillies right now. They're tottering on the brink of routinely losing 90 and don't seem to have come to grips with that fact.

Sounds like the Royals.

Are you telling me you dont buy into #beliEVEN?

Completely disagree the Giants are done.

They still have the makings of a very good starting rotation with Bumgarner, Cueto, Samardzija, and Stratton (who was impressive a year ago, IMO). I know you think Cueto is finished, but I'm not convinced. I don't know that he'll be Cy Young candidate good again, like he was in 16, but I like the bounce back odds.

A healthy Melancon and healthy Will Smith paired with Hunter Strickland and perhaps Sam Dyson could form a very good bullpen again (even if Smith is slow to come back, Melancon, Strickland, and Dyson should be very good trio).

Offensively, they still have questions in the OF to work around, but they are now about 13-14 million under the luxury threshold and could add a defensive minded CF like Jarrod Dyson on a 3-year deal that's backloaded, and find a platoon situation they like for LF fairly easily.

An offensive core of:

Pence
Belt
Posey
Longoria
Crawford

Is a pretty nice 2-6.

Going to be very tough in that division though.

... end of day, if the Giants make a few good complementary moves, I think they can get back into WC discussion pretty easily, and no one wants to see them in an elimination series.

Something like a Jarrod Dyson, Austin Jackson pairing, with Chris Shaw also in the mix in LF, could fill in that OF capably and inexpensively.


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Is it really?

Pence has had 3 straight years of declining production/injury concerns. He plays a style of game that is unlikely to age well and he's 35 next year. I see little reason to expect much in the way of a bounce back offensively. Crawford was never projected to be much of an offensive asset anyway and hit his peak season at age 28. He's been in offensive decline for a couple years as well and is now leaving his prime. Longoria...well I've said my piece on him; waning power and OBP skills just don't bode well. I do like Belt but he's probably the 2nd best offensive player on that team and he's more of a Dexter Fowler; fine complementary type. Posey is Posey but with the power on the decline he's not really a premier run-producer either.

Even if you expect a bounceback from those guys, I think you're looking at an average at best offense. And I wouldn't count on that many guys bouncing back.

As for the pitching, Cueto is a smallish, slider heavy righty who doesn't miss bats anymore. If you get a 4th starter out of him at this point you'd have to be pleased. Stratton is a smoke and mirrors righthander; a probable 5th starter. I actually like Samardzija to have a nice season and Madbum is a horse. That's okay but it's not enough to drive a good team. Melancon has a sore elbow that dates all the way back to 2015; absent a reconstruction I just don't see any way he's ever truly healthy again. Strickland has failed every time someone has asked anything important from him.

If you squint and the Giants get 8 guys that break right, I guess they can win 86-88 games. But hell, you can't say that about just about every team in baseball. The odds are not in their favor.

I'd say they're more likely to lose 90 than they are to win 90 and they're probably looking at a 76-78 win team when all is said and done. Maybe Bochy has a miracle up his sleeve - he's their greatest advantage. I just don't see the horses at all.