Episode #9 - GM's Corner Podcast: 2034 Vancouver

[RonCo]

About 30 minutes of unadulterated fun (or is that just unadult fun?) regardin the Brewster and the Vancouver Mounties. Join me and Brett Schroeder as we talk about the vast spaces in Northwoods Outpost (the club's ballaprk), the team's reputation as a pitching and defense kinda outfit, and Vancouver's future...and that's all before we get Brett into the notorious lightning round. Certainly a Can't Miss feature, eh?

You can get it here!

[bcslouck]

Nice job, guys.

[felipe]

Interesting listen

Ron, You may want to change your team name to ‘Green Springs’

The Louisville envy is dripping from your every word

[Fat Nige]

Excellent job Ron, first time I’ve heard your voice I think, you don’t sound at all like I imagined you did during our various interactions in the PEBA.
For someone like me who has no grounding in baseball, all I know really comes from just watching baseball on tv, these sorts of discussions introduce me to the world of actually analysing baseball behind the scenes. Most of you Americans were brought up with all of the inside stuff of what makes a good baseball team as second nature. You know instinctively what is right or wrong, what ballpark is suited and what batting lineup profile you need. I lack all of that and lap up things like this, after all even books on this are hard to get over here in England and I can research it on the net I suppose but I struggle to maintain my attention reading large articles which take some wading through to grasp the concepts behind the words sometimes. So once again thanks for this

[felipe]

Don’t encourage him, citeh boy

[RonCo]

Folks in Yellow Springs realize Slugger Oblivion for the sad illness it is. A group of them once did a community GoFundMe to help out, but after a point they discovered that it's incurable.

[usnspecialist]

interesting discussion on when to bring guys up (and why). I tend to lean towards aggressive promotion, with the idea being that even if they struggle for a year or two before figuring it out, that will keep their arby estimates lower (or extension demands).

[RonCo]

Always fun to hear different wrinkles on these kinds of topics.

[Ted]

This was good. Sorry for the late comments. I'm working backwards through the podcasts. Your talk about promotion got me thinking. Does the trend of holding a guy back for money purposes fit here as well as the model we're stealing it from? With all the player rating volatility, aren't you just taking a chance of just losing a year of a good player? (Regarding our earlier discussion Ron, I don't think applies to the players we were talking about who aren't quite ready.) I personally don't have a lot of faith in wanting to extend any players once their entry level plus arb years run out. I'd say right now I'm about fifty-fifty on them even being worth it when they get there. Now, the truly elite prospects are a different breed. Especially as maybe they can weather a tiny lump and still be quite good.

[RonCo]

I'll be interested in what others think.

My first reaction to your thought is to wonder how well it works for the MLB model we're stealing it from. Young kids are volatile in real life, too. That said, I don't think there's a definitive "right" or "wrong" answer on when the right time to call young players up is. I think you weigh several factors and come up with the right call for the player and moment at hand as far as your franchise is concerned.

One of the more intriguing things to watch in the MLB was how the Phillies locked up Scott Kingery in a cheap, but long-term deal before he ever played a game. We have the "3-year-rule" in place to protect our young guys from signing deals like that--which I assume is because they don't happen in real life...but now they do. The effect of that signing was to completely remove the conversation about service time and fiddling with call-up dates from the table.

[RonCo]

As it is, there are really two decision points on when to call up a name player.

First: opening day or wait a month. The main point here is that if you wait three weeks or so after opening day, the franchise gets an "extra year" of arbitration/control. This is the Kris Bryant/Ronald Acuna scenario. (Or the Bobby Lynch scenario in Edmonton). If a guy is totally ready, and you can afford to keep him in the minors for three sims, there's value there because even though the guy will be super-two, he'll be yours for a bit cheaper.

Second: Wait until later in the summer (maybe July). The point here is that at some point you can bring a player up and they will not be super-two eligible, AND they will not use a service year. The franchise "pays" by not having the guy on their roster for three months (ow whatever), but they get an extra min-sal year. This is a huge value to a building team in the rise--especially if their team is going nowhere that year. I strongly suggest that this is the case Edmonton should have used with Bobby Lynch. His arrival was scintillating, but (1) at the time he still had one rating notch to fill in, so the baseball reason to keep him down was at least justifiable, and (2) by giving him 25 starts rather than, say, 12, they've cost their franchise many millions of dollars in years when they could really use those millions to buy players they will need to win in those years. Note: I wrote a whole profile on how calling LaLoosh up when we did cost us a lot in this exact fashion.

Bottom line to me: if you really need a player, you call him up even if he's not quite ready (like I've done with several players during our run). If you don't absolutely need a player, you wait until he's both ready and you can optimize the value to the franchise (like we did with Lucas McNeill).

[RonCo]

As it is, Lynch will hit super-two this coming year, and start getting paid in 2036. If Edmonton had waited even one more month, he would not have hit super-two at all and would have hit arbitration in 2037.

[RonCo]

My personal belief on development is that as long as you're not just burying a guy in the minors for a year or two, that development risk is the least of your concerns.

[RonCo]

Last post on this, I think...

Another way of looking at this is--from my viewpoint--the very worst time to call a guy up as far as value to the franchise is concerned is that span between a month after Opening Day and the time the player will no longer qualify for Super-Two (as both Lynch and LaLoosh were), but in a year when you aren't going anywhere (as Lynch was, but LaLoosh was not).

LaLoosh's call-up arguably put the Nine into a playoff appearance in 2026 that we would not have been in without him. (Full disclosure, Matt was sheparding my team during this period, so I didn't make that call).

Lynch's appearance date cost him the 5 starts he would have made had he been called up in late April, still made him eligible for super-two, and was done in a year that Edmonton was in no way ever going to make the playoffs. This timing cost the organization in every direction.

[Ted]

Those thoughts are fair. One other thing I think about though is do we really need to worry about salaries as much? With the cap where it is, I've had little to no problem extending all my players. Brett mentioned that the suppression of hitter numbers may be helping him resign guys. I need to look into that more. Perhaps I shouldn't change my park so much if other people are having problems. But one of the reasons I threw 20 mil at Fernando Moreno was that I literally didn't know what else to do with the money. I essentially have the space to extend everyone of note, plus 20-30 million in cap space (which is now wasted on Moreno and Basaglia). I was a 90 win team without those guys, so what about the argument that if you have revenue issues, you're better off just playing the young guys to help with getting fan attendance up? The bumps you can get from buying out arb years can be huge. Not sure this is the most efficient way, just throwing out ideas.

[RonCo]

All those are good issues to keep in mind. I think every team needs to juggle all those things and make the decision that's right for them.

There is no cookie cutter answer.

I'll note that for us, who are in year 6-8 of our cycle, we're constantly dealing with salary cap issues--and sometimes that even results in us bringing prospects up a little early to use their minsal qualities to allow the core to stay together. That's why we dealt Earl Jackson and replaced him with Rob Thomas, and why we dealt Jose Gonzalez and replaced him with Laqui and Brake (after, I note, being fairly sure Laqui would not qualify for super-two). Perhaps the YS9 front office is just not as adroit at managing their salary cap as California's is.

[Ted]

All those are good issues to keep in mind. I think every team needs to juggle all those things and make the decision that's right for them.

There is no cookie cutter answer.

I'll note that for us, who are in year 6-8 of our cycle, we're constantly dealing with salary cap issues--and sometimes that even results in us bringing prospects up a little early to use their minsal qualities to allow the core to stay together. That's why we dealt Earl Jackson and replaced him with Rob Thomas, and why we dealt Jose Gonzalez and replaced him with Laqui and Brake (after, I note, being fairly sure Laqui would not qualify for super-two). Perhaps the YS9 front office is just not as adroit at managing their salary cap as California's is.

Nope. You just have better players. I think when you get around the 95-100 win range it becomes an issue. I really do think though that in many cases cap issues are just an accumulation of "This is just a little more than I wanted to pay." OR maybe I'm just getting a ton of mileage out of my park effect as Brett mentioned.

[RonCo]

Another issue to consider is that a lot of building teams do not have finances that allow them to use the whole cap.i think it took us 3 or 4 season s to get out budget up over the cap

[Ted]

Another issue to consider is that a lot of building teams do not have finances that allow them to use the whole cap.i think it took us 3 or 4 season s to get out budget up over the cap

But that's kind of what I was asking. Would playing those guys help them get to the cap faster? Better players, win more games, more fans, sooner arb, buy out arb years for FI increase -> more revenue. Versus keep guys in minors, continue to suck, have bad revenue, suddenly play all players at once, still dont have good revenue -> can only either pay arbs or FA -> have to make tough choices -> and so on.

I think we're beating this to death. Everyone else is probably like, "Yes you morons, it all depends on the team's circumstances and needs."

[RonCo]

There are other viable ways to win a few games and bring fans in during a build.