Tuber Times 2061.52: Tater Skins Special - Interview with GM Teague
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2024 12:34 pm
Tuber Times
11 July 2061
Boise, Idaho
**********************************
by Stubby Bardenwerper
Ed: Our beat writer Stubby Bardenwerper was invited to sit down with GM Ben Teague and discuss the large trade with Sacramento involving CF Lou Bayou. A summary of the trade can be found here: TATER BREAK!! - Bayou in Blockbuster!
Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me, Mr. Teague. I know you have a lot of media requests piled up right now. Getting right to the point, I think we can agree that Bayou is one of the best players in the game today yet you've been shopping him for quite a while. Can you explain the logic behind dealing a player like Bayou?
When you have a player of Bayou's caliber he's a key piece to competing for titles. Period. You don't deal him away to increase your odds of winning. More likely, every transaction revolves around complementing players like him with pieces that let you win, and win a lot, now. That said, the player is young and on minimum salary, more established with a higher cost via arbitration or contract extension, or maxed out relative to the players in the league that are near his level. A young Bayou you can make all kinds of mistakes in your other moves around him but he'll still be there selling tickets and providing the numbers that he does. As he becomes more established, of course, the cost of the rare opportunity he provides rises. There's a point where you've made all the mistakes, or even all the right moves, that a GM can make but you step back and realize the ceiling on what the team can reasonably achieve is lower than a world championship, league championship, or even wild card. There is a risk that, at some point, your team could become the supporting act for fans who just want to come see Lou Bayou play and his cost is tied more and more to the entertainment he provides than how many wins the team reaches.
So you're implying that the team is at a point where all the mistakes and/or right moves around him have been made?
Yes. And I know because I made both. The levers to pull, and the room to pull them, are not infinite. At some point you've signed all the veteran free agents you can, maxed out the salary cap, even traded other players you wouldn't normally consider just to get that extra turn or space to extend the window of competition. It just inevitably winds up being that it makes more sense for the franchise, and perhaps long-term competitiveness, to get the return for him that the market will bear. Hopefully for the GM that's before the Boise Spuds have become the Lou Bayou Spuds. You can still net a good enough return to build back up to having the talent, and all the levers and space, to make real runs at championships again.
I know in this case the Spuds received a lot of quantity in return, 12 players in total came over from Sacramento, but critics have said the deal may have been too much quality and not enough quality. They point out that probably the best prospect Boise received was P Felip Ledesma who is rated to potentially be a 50-level talent with Bayou being an 80 on that scale. Do you think you settled for too little?
I may have. Maybe not. Time is the only thing that tells, not the +/- numbers from scouts, as useful as they might be. But let's say Ledesma becomes a 50 starting pitcher. Is the team in a worse position because he's a 50 and the guy that left was an 80? It's impossible to say. You can only look at what the team is capable of and if a team full of 30s to 50s is setup to meet the goals of the organization, that's the real point. In this case, CF Bob Hills will be playing Bayou's vacated spot in center field. He's a "50." So our centerfielder is now 30 worse than our previous one? Ok. What does that mean? As of today, Bayou is being paid $9.4M more than Hills - as he should be. That $9.4m is roughly 9% of the new $110M cap coming in 2062. I don't expect Hills to provide 9% of the teams' output or competitiveness. In that sense, Bayou vs. Hills is irrelevant. But let's turn to the corners next to CF since that has more impact on how successful the team can be because it's more than one position and one lineup spot. We've tried pretty much every combination of, and I don't want to disparage anyone, Nino Fradesso, Holloway, Cosmo Pan, Mikkelsson, and we even went to the FA market for veteran RF Martin Hemming. None maxed out the production we know was possible with Bayou in the middle and so our competitiveness was limited to whatever extent. After this trade, we have Hills in the middle with Hemming and added 25yo Tsutomu Yamauchi. Is our outfield now better off than we were with Bayou? Probably not, but it's not unreasonable to consider. At the same time, 35yo 2B Ryan Geauxinue is an upgrade from Lou Tinter and 25yo Jabiri will slot right into our rotation. At first base, 30yo Pedro Hozven has been busy this year seemingly confirming last year was a fluke. Now 25yo José Montoya lets us be more easily convinced by Hozven because we can move on. So take all that and more into account and see if the squad is setup to reach higher levels of success - now or later.
So, there's still a trade block out there so it's safe to assume more trades are coming?
Not just trades. We are still projected to be around $1M over the new cap next season. We have $25.5 million in team options to deal with before 2062 and then there's arbitration. Like I said, there are a lot of levers to pull and solutions to try.
So how do you assess the Spuds' ceiling on what they can achieve?
Heh. You sprung the trap didn't you. It's not as high as we want it to be which is good enough to win a Brewster. We're not there. We'll take our new pieces and upcoming opportunities then we'll narrow down the answer to that question. And keep it to ourselves.
11 July 2061
Boise, Idaho
**********************************
by Stubby Bardenwerper
Ed: Our beat writer Stubby Bardenwerper was invited to sit down with GM Ben Teague and discuss the large trade with Sacramento involving CF Lou Bayou. A summary of the trade can be found here: TATER BREAK!! - Bayou in Blockbuster!Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me, Mr. Teague. I know you have a lot of media requests piled up right now. Getting right to the point, I think we can agree that Bayou is one of the best players in the game today yet you've been shopping him for quite a while. Can you explain the logic behind dealing a player like Bayou?
When you have a player of Bayou's caliber he's a key piece to competing for titles. Period. You don't deal him away to increase your odds of winning. More likely, every transaction revolves around complementing players like him with pieces that let you win, and win a lot, now. That said, the player is young and on minimum salary, more established with a higher cost via arbitration or contract extension, or maxed out relative to the players in the league that are near his level. A young Bayou you can make all kinds of mistakes in your other moves around him but he'll still be there selling tickets and providing the numbers that he does. As he becomes more established, of course, the cost of the rare opportunity he provides rises. There's a point where you've made all the mistakes, or even all the right moves, that a GM can make but you step back and realize the ceiling on what the team can reasonably achieve is lower than a world championship, league championship, or even wild card. There is a risk that, at some point, your team could become the supporting act for fans who just want to come see Lou Bayou play and his cost is tied more and more to the entertainment he provides than how many wins the team reaches.
So you're implying that the team is at a point where all the mistakes and/or right moves around him have been made?
Yes. And I know because I made both. The levers to pull, and the room to pull them, are not infinite. At some point you've signed all the veteran free agents you can, maxed out the salary cap, even traded other players you wouldn't normally consider just to get that extra turn or space to extend the window of competition. It just inevitably winds up being that it makes more sense for the franchise, and perhaps long-term competitiveness, to get the return for him that the market will bear. Hopefully for the GM that's before the Boise Spuds have become the Lou Bayou Spuds. You can still net a good enough return to build back up to having the talent, and all the levers and space, to make real runs at championships again.
I know in this case the Spuds received a lot of quantity in return, 12 players in total came over from Sacramento, but critics have said the deal may have been too much quality and not enough quality. They point out that probably the best prospect Boise received was P Felip Ledesma who is rated to potentially be a 50-level talent with Bayou being an 80 on that scale. Do you think you settled for too little?
I may have. Maybe not. Time is the only thing that tells, not the +/- numbers from scouts, as useful as they might be. But let's say Ledesma becomes a 50 starting pitcher. Is the team in a worse position because he's a 50 and the guy that left was an 80? It's impossible to say. You can only look at what the team is capable of and if a team full of 30s to 50s is setup to meet the goals of the organization, that's the real point. In this case, CF Bob Hills will be playing Bayou's vacated spot in center field. He's a "50." So our centerfielder is now 30 worse than our previous one? Ok. What does that mean? As of today, Bayou is being paid $9.4M more than Hills - as he should be. That $9.4m is roughly 9% of the new $110M cap coming in 2062. I don't expect Hills to provide 9% of the teams' output or competitiveness. In that sense, Bayou vs. Hills is irrelevant. But let's turn to the corners next to CF since that has more impact on how successful the team can be because it's more than one position and one lineup spot. We've tried pretty much every combination of, and I don't want to disparage anyone, Nino Fradesso, Holloway, Cosmo Pan, Mikkelsson, and we even went to the FA market for veteran RF Martin Hemming. None maxed out the production we know was possible with Bayou in the middle and so our competitiveness was limited to whatever extent. After this trade, we have Hills in the middle with Hemming and added 25yo Tsutomu Yamauchi. Is our outfield now better off than we were with Bayou? Probably not, but it's not unreasonable to consider. At the same time, 35yo 2B Ryan Geauxinue is an upgrade from Lou Tinter and 25yo Jabiri will slot right into our rotation. At first base, 30yo Pedro Hozven has been busy this year seemingly confirming last year was a fluke. Now 25yo José Montoya lets us be more easily convinced by Hozven because we can move on. So take all that and more into account and see if the squad is setup to reach higher levels of success - now or later.
So, there's still a trade block out there so it's safe to assume more trades are coming?
Not just trades. We are still projected to be around $1M over the new cap next season. We have $25.5 million in team options to deal with before 2062 and then there's arbitration. Like I said, there are a lot of levers to pull and solutions to try.
So how do you assess the Spuds' ceiling on what they can achieve?
Heh. You sprung the trap didn't you. It's not as high as we want it to be which is good enough to win a Brewster. We're not there. We'll take our new pieces and upcoming opportunities then we'll narrow down the answer to that question. And keep it to ourselves.