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if you could choose, would you rather have:

Darvish signed as a free agent
Dickey picked up via trade and extended

Factors to think about:

-Dickey's Cy Young award and his experience
-Dickey's age
-potential decline of Dickey
-potential learning curve for Darvish
-trading prospects for Dickey
-putting down around $50 million just to negotiate for Darvish's rights

my main factor to consider; syndegard and d'arnaud still in the system. as players they both have their strengths and question marks

Another factor (possibly).
If we acquired Darvish and spent all that money, would Rogers have even considered taking on the Miami trade (salaries) this off-season? What about Melky Cabrera ? The point is it is hard to tell what positives and negatives, for arguments sake, would have come attached to such a signing.

Dickey, no question.

Darvish.

He's younger & didn't take any tangible assets to acquire.

I still really like Dickey though.

Darvish. He's younger and so we'd have him for longer than Dickey. He also wouldn't have cost us 2 of our best prospects. I'm happy with Dickey, but definitely would take Darvish over him while keeping TDA and Syndergaard.

Darvish. Better pitcher. No prospects given up.

Both

Dickey moving forward. The prospects issue is purely a hypothetical, we don't know if we would have inherited the situation we have now if we got Darvish. Thus, this should be based on which player we would rather have moving forward. The answer is Dickey, quite easily. He's the player that every fan wants to see right now from an entertainment perspective.

Darvish also seemed to figure something out in August. After having control problems the whole year he didn't give up more than 2 walks in his last 7 starts.

Since we're speaking hypothetically;

The 50 million it would have cost us just to negotiate with Darvish, ontop of another 10 million a season for 6 years of the guy, would have cost us $110 million over 6 seasons.

We make that signing, then we likely not only don't get Dickey. But we also don't get Johnson, Buherle, Reyes, Bonifacio.

So really the question is;

Dickey, Johnson, Buherle, Reyes, Bonifacio

or

Yu Darvish?

Id like Darvish long term better but I voted for Dickey. At the price we got him for its a steal. If you spend as much as it would cost to get Darvish you dont have enough free agent money to do the Miami deal.

baulderdash77 wrote:Darvish.

He's younger & didn't take any tangible assets to acquire.

I still really like Dickey though.

$$$$$$ is most definitely a "tangible asset" to the execs with Rogers and Bell. Do you think we could have pulled off the Marlins trade, taking on all that salary, after spending $100+ million on Darvish? I don't think so.

RapsFanInVA wrote:

baulderdash77 wrote:Darvish.

He's younger & didn't take any tangible assets to acquire.

I still really like Dickey though.

$$$$$$ is most definitely a "tangible asset" to the execs with Rogers and Bell. Do you think we could have pulled off the Marlins trade, taking on all that salary, after spending $100+ million on Darvish? I don't think so.

IMO you can even skip the value to Rogers. If you consider that Dickey and Darvish's straight contracts are fairly similar (4/42 vs. 5/50.5 as of today) and they both had very hard career trajectories to project for guys looking at 8 figure deals, you can compare D'Arnaud and Syndergaard to 51.7 million. If D'Arnaud and Syndergaard were IFA's today (and the IFA rules were what they were for Darvish instead of now) would it cost 51.7 million to sign them? It might, but I don't think there's any reasonable way to say that 51.7 doesn't count as tangible and is in fact quite easily comparable.

That being said, I'd probably rather have Darvish from a franchise perspective because there's the possibility of re-signing for a long period after the current deal if he performs during the contract and there are now restrictions on how much one can spend in IFA, so it's harder to turn cash into assets (this is not all doom and gloom for the Jays, as you still can do it, it's just a little trickier than it used to be and likely takes more time).

For next season though, I think you take Dickey over Darvish. Simiar FIPS with an ERA almost 2 lower last year and like 2bb/9 less as well. Darvish is tantalizing and was inconsistent last year and Dickey's performance obviously crosses the threshold between good enough to win and does everything a SP can to help his team win almost every start out.

There are a lot of arguments about the practicalities of signing Darvish a year ago and the MIA trade this year on top as well in relation to Rogers' purse strings, but that's fine, we're in fantasy land, so I don't think it bears its own 'graphs on top of all this. The straight up either/or consideration is actually more interesting than I thought (thread title seemed almost trollish at first glance if I'm being honest), because of the atypical career path, the offer sheet v.s. prospect cost, and the age vs. current performance adjustments, which I find to all be fairly close to have no obviously definitively right answer.

I do think AA made the right decision to pass on bidding 55m on Darvish last summer and I think he made the right decision pulling the trigger on Dickey now, but that doesn't negate the fact I think I'd be happier as a fan in the long run with Yu instead, although even that's closer than I might've thought (although that's likely 'cause the fan in me wants it to be hard. My blue-tinted glasses appear to have been firmly affixed and sealed in place for the time being.)

Now that I know what Darvish is, I'd probably say Darvish (although that was still a massive risk for the Rangers to take at the time). Although let's see him do it for longer than a year as batters get more familiar with him.

I still think it was a mistake to not go harder for Darvish, but it's a valid point that fronting that much cash for one player probably hinders Alex's ability to do what he did this offseason with the 4 Marlins and Melky. Or it could have expedited it last off-season (not necessarily a good thing).

If we're talking in a vacuum, d'Arnaud, Syndergaard, and Darvish for 6 years and $112M or Dickey for 3 years and $30M (+ option)... it's a tough decision. Really hard to quantify the value of prospects. Lets say Dickey and Darvish are equally valuable talent and salary-wise for the first three seasons, then you have 3 more years and $82M for Darvish, which is probably not a whole lot different than what his market value would be. Conservatively he's worth $20M a season, though it'd probably be closer to 25. You then narrow it down to $22M vs d'Arnaud, Syndergaard and Beccera. Or $7M if we go with the $25m/yr figure. The latter of which, I'd definitely rather have the prospects. For $22M... I'd also probably rather have the prospects. But we didn't know for sure at the time that Darvish would translate as well as he has. I'll just say that I really don't have an issue with the situation we're in right now, and if we had spent all that money on Darvish last year we may not have been able to be in this situation at all.

spykelee wrote:Since we're speaking hypothetically;

The 50 million it would have cost us just to negotiate with Darvish, ontop of another 10 million a season for 6 years of the guy, would have cost us $110 million over 6 seasons.

We make that signing, then we likely not only don't get Dickey. But we also don't get Johnson, Buherle, Reyes, Bonifacio.

So really the question is;

Dickey, Johnson, Buherle, Reyes, Bonifacio

or

Yu Darvish?

Which was the point I was making above, thanks spykelee

If you ask me today, after the signing of Melky and the Miami trade, which of the two - Dickey or Darvish - I'd add as the cherry on the cake - I'd take Dickey. Dickey is more likely to be the more impactful for the next 2-3 years. In another context, I might well say Darvish, but this is the hand we were dealt prior to the Dickey trade becoming an option.

This is a tough question when you think of everything that happened this offseason and you add Dickey to it i like having him more than Darvish right now, but if it was last offseason or even this offseason and the miami trade didn't happen id said Darvish for sure. Either way you can't go wrong with either

I don't think we can assume that the Darvish signing would have prevented the Marlins deal. The plan was always once you're in, you're ALL IN.

We're talking about one of the richest companies in North America. Rogers is basically the most powerful entity in Canada (yes, more powerful than the Government).