Rosenthal: Jays players ready to alter deals to get Santana

[Lateral Quicks]

As an aside, I agree with one thing Beeston said: a quality, sustainable organization should always be replenishing itself from within. Trading away all of your cheap, cost-controlled talent isn't conducive to sustainable winning even for teams with the highest budgets. You should aim for a mix of cheaper, average to above-average young talent, and more expensive stable veterans. The Rays always have oodles of young, cheap players in their lineup and they have success year in, year out.

I find it hard to believe AA wasn't aware of these rigid payroll parameters last year. If so, his actions are all the more inexcusable. Why on Earth would you trade two guys almost ready to contribute in Syndergaard and d'Arnaud in order to take on more salary? Why on Earth would you trade more young talent for the privilege of taking on the mammoth contracts of Buehrle and Reyes? To me this speaks to gross incompetence. If AA knew the parameters at the time these deals went down, he needs to be fired.

[Wo1verine]

Rogers is such a joke.

You spend all that money one year and than the following year when it's obvious we still have a couple holes - They cut back the spending even in the short term?

[Randle McMurphy]

As an aside, I agree with one thing Beeston said: a quality, sustainable organization should always be replenishing itself from within. Trading away all of your cheap, cost-controlled talent isn't conducive to sustainable winning even for teams with the highest budgets. You should aim for a mix of cheaper, average to above-average young talent, and more expensive stable veterans. The Rays always have oodles of young, cheap players in their lineup and they have success year in, year out.

I find it hard to believe AA wasn't aware of these rigid payroll parameters last year. If so, his actions are all the more inexcusable. Why on Earth would you trade two guys almost ready to contribute in Syndergaard and d'Arnaud in order to take on more salary? Why on Earth would you trade more young talent for the privilege of taking on the mammoth contracts of Buehrle and Reyes? To me this speaks to gross incompetence. If AA knew the parameters at the time these deals went down, he needs to be fired.

The moves he made in winter 2012 were likely predicated on the idea that the spending would continue to increase as necessary and that the commitment to winning would be maintained going forward (otherwise, why do it?). That apparently hasn't been the case.

[Michael Bradley]

As an aside, I agree with one thing Beeston said: a quality, sustainable organization should always be replenishing itself from within. Trading away all of your cheap, cost-controlled talent isn't conducive to sustainable winning even for teams with the highest budgets. You should aim for a mix of cheaper, average to above-average young talent, and more expensive stable veterans. The Rays always have oodles of young, cheap players in their lineup and they have success year in, year out.

I find it hard to believe AA wasn't aware of these rigid payroll parameters last year. If so, his actions are all the more inexcusable. Why on Earth would you trade two guys almost ready to contribute in Syndergaard and d'Arnaud in order to take on more salary? Why on Earth would you trade more young talent for the privilege of taking on the mammoth contracts of Buehrle and Reyes? To me this speaks to gross incompetence. If AA knew the parameters at the time these deals went down, he needs to be fired.

Those moves would have made sense if payroll increased to accomodate upgrades year-to-year like everyone expected (i.e. $120M in 2013, $150M in 2014, $175M in 2015, etc). It's possible, if not probable, that AA was told that payroll would increase on a yearly basis, otherwise he had no incentive to make those moves. Now the caveat here was team performance, as the team was terrible due to injuries last season and that was likely going to impact revenue for 2014, but for a company as big as Rogers that seems like a copout.

Again, we will never know what actually happened here unless AA and Beeston confirm it someday. All I know is whoever the next GM is, assuming AA is let go, will not be taking a risk the level of 2012. At least if he values his job security.

[Santoki]

We really shouldn't be shocked. This ownership group did the same thing a few years earlier. Fool me twice...

[Lateral Quicks]

Yes fair enough. I do not know whether AA knew about the 2014 budget parameters when the trades went down, and I can certainly appreciate him taking a risk to make the team competitive, despite disagreeing with some of them. If he did know, however, his moves become near indefensible in my view.

[Santoki]

We may never know the truth about that offseason, but all I know is that this organization as a whole is flawed. An organization with a solid culture would never operate in this fashion at either the ownership or executive level. Things will continue to go this way until there is a significant change up top. I'm not holding my breath in the meantime.

[Hoopstarr]

Wow. Has anyone ever heard of baseball players willing to cut their pay to land a FA? Let alone for **** Ervin Santana?

[Hoopstarr]

As an aside, I agree with one thing Beeston said: a quality, sustainable organization should always be replenishing itself from within. Trading away all of your cheap, cost-controlled talent isn't conducive to sustainable winning even for teams with the highest budgets. You should aim for a mix of cheaper, average to above-average young talent, and more expensive stable veterans. The Rays always have oodles of young, cheap players in their lineup and they have success year in, year out.

I find it hard to believe AA wasn't aware of these rigid payroll parameters last year. If so, his actions are all the more inexcusable. Why on Earth would you trade two guys almost ready to contribute in Syndergaard and d'Arnaud in order to take on more salary? Why on Earth would you trade more young talent for the privilege of taking on the mammoth contracts of Buehrle and Reyes? To me this speaks to gross incompetence. If AA knew the parameters at the time these deals went down, he needs to be fired.

I'm not willing to believe AA is that stupid, especially having witnessed the same thing happen with JPR when he was given money to spend. Rogers going back on their word is the most likely conclusion.

[Santoki]

Wow. Has anyone ever heard of baseball players willing to cut their pay to land a FA? Let alone for **** Ervin Santana?

I believe it was a deferral of salary, not a paycut. Either way it's ridiculous and probably mostly untrue.

[Duffman100]

Rogers is such a joke.

You spend all that money one year and than the following year when it's obvious we still have a couple holes - They cut back the spending even in the short term?

You have to wonder though. You spend all that money and we're terrible. Really hard to convince them that spending another 20-30 million would push us over the top.

I mean, I'd prefer they try, but I can understand a bit of why they didn't. Still angry, but I understand.

[Randle McMurphy]

We really shouldn't be shocked. This ownership group did the same thing a few years earlier. Fool me twice...

Shouldn't be surprising to anybody that's actually paid attention to the last 13+ years of ownership. Reinforces how important the failure of last season was, though.

Another fire sale should be coming our way soon.

[Hoopstarr]

Wow. Has anyone ever heard of baseball players willing to cut their pay to land a FA? Let alone for **** Ervin Santana?

I believe it was a deferral of salary, not a paycut. Either way it's ridiculous and probably mostly untrue.

That's what I meant. I've heard of players deferring their pay for personal gain, like how Bobby Bonilla still gets paychecks from the Mets, and of course there are hometown discounts like Halladay gave twice, but not to allow the team to sign a specific player(s). I've only heard of that in the NBA where the Big 3 took much less so the team could re-sign Haslem.

[Ado05]

Pretty pathetic that AA has to try and do that to sign players.

[Back2back2back]

Wow. Has anyone ever heard of baseball players willing to cut their pay to land a FA? Let alone for **** Ervin Santana?

I believe it was a deferral of salary, not a paycut. Either way it's ridiculous and probably mostly untrue.

I agree.

[Back2back2back]

We really shouldn't be shocked. This ownership group did the same thing a few years earlier. Fool me twice...

Shouldn't be surprising to anybody that's actually paid attention to the last 13+ years of ownership. Reinforces how important the failure of last season was, though.

Another fire sale should be coming our way soon.

Can we include AA, Beeston, and Gibbons with that fire sale as well?

[Dan2087]

Rogers is such a joke.

You spend all that money one year and than the following year when it's obvious we still have a couple holes - They cut back the spending even in the short term?

You have to wonder though. You spend all that money and we're terrible. Really hard to convince them that spending another 20-30 million would push us over the top.

I mean, I'd prefer they try, but I can understand a bit of why they didn't. Still angry, but I understand.

I tend to agree. And some of those contacts we traded for went up in value this year compared to last year. Isn't our payroll this year higher than it was last?

[brwnman]

Pretty pathetic that AA has to try and do that to sign players.

He didn't.

By all accounts, it was the players who went up to AA (unprovoked) and offered to defer/alter their salaries to sign Santana. AA had nothing to do with it; also management wouldn't be stupid enough to ask something like this (huge **** would come from the MLBPA).

There are two important things that I take away from this. Either a), the payroll parameters are very real (which I don't believe to be the case). or b) Jays players don't have faith in their starting pitching (rightfully so). Both ideas are equally terrifying.

The reason I don't believe the Jays have any trouble ponying up that cash, is because they made the offer. From what I read, it seemed that AA truly believed he had Santana (he made a comment on how until that dotted line is signed, nothing's final) . I think it was a case of Santana making the correct decision for his sake. Pitching against a NL lineup in a huge ballpark as opposed to pitching in a flyball park for a flyball pitcher. In the end, it may have been the agent putting into perspective that Atlanta was the better decision for him (it was/is).

[Brew666]

AA is on PTS right now. Typical answers, not really saying anything.

One thing I found interesting is he said that the union doesn't allow pay cuts. If a player wanted to take a pay cut they have to be compensated some other way. Would not confirm if players approached him regarding this. Sticking to the script, just saying they have a health payroll and the money was there for Santana.

[Michael Bradley]

@Wilnerness590: Gibbons, asked if he would have contributed some of his salary to help land Ervin Santana: "I didn't want him THAT bad." #Bluejays #Jays

This whole situation is going to be a punchline for a while. At least Gibby has a sense of humor about it.