23 hours ago, Major League Ready said:

I just don't know how to explain it in terms you will acknowledge.  The debate is signing players a year or more before the team is ready to contend because then you will have them when you are ready.  If this is a good idea is 100% the product of how they perform after that 1st year,  There is zero "painting with a broad brush or taking least desirable traits.  Please PLEASE explain to me how it is not appropriate to look at ALL of the performance after the 1st year when the entire debate is the wisdom of signing players before the team is positioned to contend.  The only thing that matters is their performance after year 1 in the context of this debate.

Example:  Let's take the 3 big SPs / Price / Cueto / Samarzija /  from 2016 now that we have full history.   Price and Cueto were great in their first year.  Would that make a difference if the rest of the team was not ready to contend.  After that 1st year the 3 of them produced exactly 1 impact season above 3 WAR and 11 seasons at 1.5 or less.  These are not outliers. This pattern is common among all of the 5+ years SPs in recent free agent history.  I won't even go so far as to say this is conclusive but if you look at the history and don't question this strategy you have to have an extreme unwillingness to consider what history implies about this strategy.

I think arriving at a conclusion based on the worst years of these contracts, and then projecting that judgement onto future contracts is painting with a broad brush, and far from "hard fact." You said it yourself, it's a small sample, and I'd add that it's an inconsistent one as far as talent level is concerned. The certainty that these later years won't be productive and the timing/strategy of approaching them is the crux of the disagreement. It seems we've reached an impasse. 

17 hours ago, KirbyDome89 said:

I think arriving at a conclusion based on the worst years of these contracts, and then projecting that judgement onto future contracts is painting with a broad brush, and far from "hard fact." You said it yourself, it's a small sample, and I'd add that it's an inconsistent one as far as talent level is concerned. The certainty that these later years won't be productive and the timing/strategy of approaching them is the crux of the disagreement. It seems we've reached an impasse. 

Are we talking about the same thing ... This debate started with someone suggesting we get a high end SP now because they are available while acknowledging that contending this year is definitely a long-shot.  The theory being we are trying to build a contender.  Are we working from the same premise?