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Meg Rowley FanGraphs Chat - 11/6/18
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Build me a Bullpen
2:49
Is it preferable to pay cash for a free agent before the season begins or part with prospects at the trade deadline?
Meg Rowley
2:49
Depends how much cash I guess, but cash. Cash is a lot easier to make than good major leaguers.
John
2:49
When will teams stop pretending they can’t spend a lot more money than they do....I know Tampa can’t go out and sign everyone LA can, but the tv deals and BAMtech rights alone should not excuse many ownership groups of being so cheap
Meg Rowley
2:51
I think it is good to acknowledge a range of spending levels (as you do) and that not every free agent is going to be appealing, but yes, generally I agree. I think fans are pretty well conditioned to accept ownership interests as team interests and as long as that is true, this perception issue will be allowed to persist.
Cashman
2:52
How important is getting rid of bad contracts for a team like the mariners?  Yanks offer to take on all of cano’s salary and Paxton for ... nothing great. Who says no?
Meg Rowley
2:52
Probably the Mariners.
If you're conceding that you aren't going to be competitive for a while, freeing up payroll for no prospects is sort silly to my mind.
2:53
Felix is off the books next year. Cruz is gone this year.
2:54
In 2020, with just those two deals gone, they're down to like $91 million.
Seager's gone after 2021.
Not to say that they wouldn't like to clear money from the books, but I don't think you move one of your best trade assets to do it.
Terence
2:55
If we demand that teams start spending more and more to reduce their profit margins, won't that just disincentivze people to buy MLB teams at all?  They'll move their capital to other enterprises where they can still reap the return on their investment that they expect, as opposed to essentially being bullied into reducing their margins by fan and media demands.
Meg Rowley
2:56
The NBA has a negotiated rev split with the players, requiring around 50% of league revenues to go to players.
Ballmer paid $2 billion for the Clippers.
2:57
I think we can count on sports teams remaining an appealing and profitable vanity project for billionaires, especially when you consider the way they appreciate.
Eminor3rd
2:58
I don't think Cleveland selling is bad at all -- they're better than every team in the division by so many orders of magnitude that they could easily lose a couple significant contributors and still be the divisional favorites. If selling Kluber for a King's ransom a year or so before he declines helps them avoid a scorched-Earth rebuild down the road, I think it could very easily turn out to be the best course of action.

I might it MIGHT not, but it could.
Meg Rowley
2:58
You have this core for a while now, and while I certainly encourage fans to delight in all the many wonderful things that aren't winning a World Series, the point isn't to win the division.
joe
2:58
why not make veterans day and election day one in the same!
Meg Rowley
2:59
Just make it a national holiday. Make it a two-day national holiday. Do extensive voting by mail. Offer same day registration. Re-enfranchise felons who have served time.
3:00
Voting should be one of the easiest things we do. That's how important it is.
Ben
3:01
Which current player would make the best politician and why is the answer Curtis Granderson
Meg Rowley
3:01
God I would love to see Joey Votto on a campaign trail. (I know he's Canadian, everyone relax).
Hobbes
3:02
Voting counter-proposal: repeal the 17th Amendment and restore at least a touch of sanity to some of American politics.
Meg Rowley
3:02
Galaxy brain: get rid of the Senate entirely, go full proportional representation.
3:03
Hi yes, it's me Meg, I am a political theorist by training. Also Hobbes would have hated the US Senate, no matter who elected Senators.
Dan
3:03
The search bar on this site always pushes you to a player page. Sometimes I want to read articles mentioning a player or a team and not get directly sent to the players stat page. Please pass this along.
Meg Rowley
3:04
This is good feedback that I'll pass along. One trick you can use is to type in the name but not hit enter. Then you should see blog posts, and a more blog posts option. Imperfect but effective.
Bearry
3:05
Rays offer Franco and Shane Baz for Paxton and Haniger. Who says no?
Meg Rowley
3:05
Mariners probably
Andy
3:05
Proportional representation is dumb.  that's why it's a bicameral legislature.  it was designed to have an upper house.  Otherwise, you minimize the opinions of smaller states.  it was designed this way for a reason, please don't belittle my country.
Meg Rowley
3:06
First, our country, friend. And I know what the rationale was. What I'm suggesting is, that rationale doesn't work very well now that there are 300+ million of us, and people aren't property anymore.
Ben
3:06
Reverse question: what political philosopher would be the best baseball player?
Meg Rowley
3:07
I don't know the answer to this, but damn if I won't be thinking about it for the rest of the day.
Rusty
3:08
It probably wouldn't actually work, but if we continue to see slow free agent markets and tanking teams at the bottom, how long before a franchise just slaps together an entire .500-ish, hope-we-get-lucky team of decent veterans on short term deals?
Meg Rowley
3:08
I think it depends a lot on the who of the decent veterans and how decent they are but this is a strategy a lot of teams are that far away from now, just with existing, aging players.
Baseballonlyplease
3:09
Can we stop talking about voting and politics?  I get that everywhere else and all the time. Would really really love to hear your thoughts on the biggest names to be traded!
Meg Rowley
3:10
There will be big names to be traded, but voting is pretty important.
[extreme kid who bends spoon with mind  in the matrix voice]: everything is political
3:11
Speaking of, I have to go drop off my ballot, so that will about wrap things up.
Thanks for the questions and sorry for what I didn't get to. Until next week!
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