Lackey turned down Angel's $72 Million offer!

Don’t think of it as turning down $72 million. Think of it as refusing to leave $38 on the table.

Of course, I was saying the same thing alst offseason about Frankie…

dude was 3-4 in 12 post season starts….with 2 of those wins coming in 2002 (and the third this year against the Yankees). That is the opposite of nails.
I will miss him, but he is not worth the amount of $$ he is asking for. And I will never forget the game 7 start in 2002.

this means nothing. it means you are letting an established player go. and a good one at that for a crap shoot of maybe this guy will be just as good in 3-6 years. not a good trade off in my opinion.

Hello, loneliness.

I think I’m gonna cry.

And I’m done.

I haven’t heard about this. Do you have a link or something? If he did that, what a dick.

Let him get paid $20 mil a year to play in a little league park where he’ll give up 40 HR a year. Then, we’ll see which teammates he yells at.

…in his thirties. I think it’s an accurate comp. It doesn’t make sense to confuse mound presence or bulldog attitude with long-term health or persistence of talent.

I think Lackey is an A- pitcher who will become a B/B+ pitcher over the term of his contract. The market may bear a higher offer, but there’s no way John Lackey is worth $15M a year or more.

And fuck you back.

This no longer about who would be the #1 for the Angels in 2010. With the contract Lackey is expecting, it becomes about his presence in the rotation in 2013 and 2014. Do YOU think he’ll be a #1 pitcher on ANY team in 2013? He’s said to be expecting AJ Burnett money, which overlooks the point that AJ Burnett isn’t worth AJ Burnett money, and Lackey’s numbers are in no way superior to Burnett’s.

What most folks here are failing to understand is that Sabathia, Teixeira and Burnett won’t be earning their money in the final (and maybe penultimate) years of their deals. The Yankees went for a “win now” mode and paid ridiculous money to lock up the players they needed to win in 2009.

However, the Yankees franchise likewise spins off unbelievable amounts of cash (primarily through the YES Network) and they can afford to pay for contracts which will be underperforming in the future.

The Angels can not. The Angels do well with season tickets and merchandising, but lack the pipeline of cash the Yankees have, something which makes the Yankees different from every other franchise in the sport. As a result, the Angels can’t possibly afford to give Lackey “Burnett money”, much less “Sabathia money”, and still be a viable franchise in all other areas of the game (other payroll, scouting, player development, signings of draft picks, etc). Expenses are a zero-sum game, and matching Burnett’s $82.5/5 yrs ($16.5M/yr) figures to be well outside the ability of the Angels. The $23M/yr for Sabathia is simply lunacy.

  Yah a good player, but definitely not worth the contract.
  Oh and suppose he gets hurt? then what?

There’s a longitudinal aspect to markets as well. Market hours don’t end in 2010.

It’s as simple as this: the Angels can overpay this year, shelling out nosebleed figures for less-than-elite goods, and then be stuck with a bloated contract for five or six years while strong teams get stronger in 2011, when the market will be flush with truly dominant pitchers (that the Angels will no longer be able to afford).

Or the Angels can make some high-risk-high-reward moves this year on short-term contracts, and save their money for next year when it matters. Don’t lock yourself into high-priced inferior technology, when you can spend your budget on low-priced well-tested next-gen product just over the horizon.

I mean come on either way athletes make millions upon millions of dollars. The 26 he already made should be more than enough to provide for him and his family and possibly his grandchildren if he stopped playing today.

During contract negotiations all that athletes are really choosing between is being rich or richer.

This is why I laugh when I hear guys like Abreu making 6 million this year being called a “discount”. Most of us could live off that “discount” for quite a long time. Athletes get to make this choice multiple times during their careers.

I’d love to live on 16MM/yr after taxes (and you forgot federal tax, so it’s more like 5/90 = 5/45 post-tax). I’d love to live on 9MM post tax. Where do I sign?

My understanding is that the players have to file income tax reports for each state in which they played during the season (assuming that state has income taxes). Granted, if half your games are played in Texas then that can represent a savings, but if Lackey signed with Texas he’d still be paying CA state taxes for the games he played in Anaheim.

He will most likely be pursued by the Mets, who have blown millions on stiffs like Oliver Perez, but still lack a #2 behind Johan Santana. The state income taxes in NY are pretty gory (about 7%), but if they offer Lackey $17M+ per season and that’s the high bid, you can bet he’ll take that offer and the taxes which go with it, rather than take a lower bid in Texas. For that matter, there is no income tax in Washington State, either, but I doubt that will entice him into playing for the Mariners.

Come to think of it, state taxes in NY didn’t scare off A-Rod, Sabathia, Teixeira, Burnett, Santana, etc…

Weaver, Saunders, Santana, and Kazmir could probably qualify for number 2-3 type rotation players. Maybe Weaver blooms into in Ace this Spring. Maybe Kazmir gets right. Maybe Santana and Saunders return to their All-Star form.

Or Maybe Matt Palmer gets another 10 wins. I’m not going to worry about what the Angels are capable of. They seem to know much more about drafting, trades, and development.