en his helmet and Thomas facemask. Nelso | Forum

Earlier this week, we learned from one plugged-in agent via one plugged-in reporter that Aroldis Chapman is looking for $100 million. Puma Shoes Clearance Sale . The day might come when we should talk about whether Aroldis Chapman is worth $100 million, but more urgently, we should really talk about that rumor construction: Looking for.Chapman is looking for $100 million. Wilson Ramos plans to seek a four- or five-year contract. Carlos Gomez will be seeking a long, multiyear deal -- perhaps even five years.Is there any power in these aspirational clauses?To figure that out, we dove deep into the past almost-decade of hot stove rumors, collecting every rumor we could find of a free agent seeking, looking for or asking for anything of quantifiable value. We searched MLB Trade Rumors archives, along with the Twitter archives of Buster Olney, Ken Rosenthal and Jon Heyman. (We would have continued with other individual writers, but we found that most of these reporters tweets had already been aggregated by MLBTR and showed up in our initial searches.)The result was a spreadsheet with 78 lines of demands, some every bit as juicy at the time as Chapmans nine-figure request is now, some every bit as guffaw-inducing as Gomez five-year ask. As a body of literature, these 78 rumors cover the full range of hedgy hot stove linguistics: the hyperbole, the suggestion, the tease, the peek at an agenda. As a collection of numbers, though, they reveal some actual truth.The smallest rumor in our data was the shortstop Adam Everett seeking $3 million in the winter before the 2010 season. (Or, perhaps, Brian Shouse and Chris Capuano seeking two years.) The largest was Robinson Cano, seeking $305 million in his free agency before the 2014 season. (To simplify, well refer to every offseason by the year of the season following it. So you are living in the 2017 offseason right now.)In some cases, players sought different things throughout the course of their free agency; for our spreadsheet, we went with whatever demand was the most. In some cases, these demands were expressed as a range, e.g., Mike Morse is looking for $7m-$8m. For our spreadsheet, we logged it at the lowest figure in the range. So: highest demand on record, but lowest end of defined ranges.Alongside our seeking column was a got column, and alongside that we judged whether the player got what he sought. Each outcome could be rated one of four ways:+: The player got more than he asked for. Prince Fielder, for instance, was seeking $200 million. (I dont see that happening.) The Tigers signed him for $214 million.Yeah: The player got more or less exactly what he was asking for. Shin-Soo Choo was seeking a contract worth more than Jayson Werths $126 million deal. (Well thats hilarious.) Choo got seven years and $130 million.Eh: The player didnt get his target, but the request and the result were in the same region. It looks, in other words, like the spread of a normal negotiation. Wei-Yin Chen was seeking five years, $100 million. (Hes not worth half that!) He ended up getting five years, $80 million.LOL: The players demands were either so high that they look silly in retrospect, or the player was so stubborn that he ended up getting frozen out of the market. Jason Variteks agent suggested Varitek should get a deal comparable to Jorge Posadas four-year, $52.4MM contract. He would sign for one year and $5 million.We actually started with 80 players, but Joakim Sorias request (a no-trade clause, he didnt get it) didnt lend itself to the rest of this analysis, and Hisashi Iwakumas demands from the As were anomalous because Iwakuma had a posting fee attached to him. He was willing to go back to Japan and hit free agency without a posting fee the following year.Of the 78 free agents remaining:+: 4 playersYeah: 20Eh: 27LOL: 27This isnt as clean as wed hoped. There are enough LOLs -- more than a third of the outcomes -- that we have to take seriously the possibility that we shouldnt take the players demands (or his agents demands, or the second-hand telephoning of his supposed demands) seriously. Most day-to-day human interaction depends on our faith that people arent outright lying to us, that the waiter isnt copying down our credit card number so he can steal our identity, that the cop is a cop, that I really did put together this spreadsheet that I keep claiming to be working off of, that our mom really does love us. If a third of these players are seeking something totally unrealistic, it causes something close to a crisis of confidence in the whole thing.On the other hand, the majority of these asks -- nearly two-thirds -- are perfectly reasonable, either as legitimate targets or as honest positions in a negotiation process.So what do we do with an individual goal such as Chapmans? We could decide it lacks good faith, but as noted in the examples above, even in the rare case when the player exceeds his demands, there will be people who find the target laughable. We are, as a population, horrible at putting player demands in perspective. Were always a few years too late to adjust our brains to the actual market.We could take into account the agent involved and decide whether hes an honest broker of rumored demands, but to kill that idea: all four of the examples I gave above shared the same agent, Scott Boras. You cant throw out the Variteks without losing the Choos.So we prefer to keep everybody together and trust that the large cohort would quiet that noise. We took each players goal and calculated what percentage of the goal he ended up getting paid. Some players were asking for years, so we looked at how many years he got. Some were asking for money, so we looked at how much money he got. (Usually we used average annual value. For three players -- Fielder, Ervin Santana and Ricky Nolasco -- only total contract dollars sought were available in our rumors, so we used total contract dollars.) Some demands were expressed as both -- as when Jhonny Peralta was looking for four years and $56 million, or Hisanori Takahashi was seeking three years and $12 million -- so we calculated both outcomes (years and AAV) separately.Heres what we found: the median outcome for a player who was looking for X years was: 87.5 percent of X. A player who asked for three years got, on average, 2.625 years. (The median result was actually Chris Davis, who asked for eight years and got seven.)And the median outcome for a player who was looking for X dollars was: 87.5 percent of X. Exactly the same! A player who asked for $18 million per year got, on average, $15.75 million.That puts Aroldis Chapman in line to get $87.5 million, and I wouldnt be surprised at all. It will still come as a shock to the system, but most precedent-setting contracts do, until the precedent is set and we quickly get used to them.The concept of seeking a specific contract is, of course, total nonsense. This isnt an eBay sale. Theres no buy it now button, and if a player who seeks $100 million gets an offer for $100 million, hes going to start seeking one thats worth $105 million.But the linguistics of the offseason arent arbitrary. A player seeks a certain contract for a lot of reasons: he wants to anchor the negotiations at a certain range, or he wants to encourage comparisons between himself and another player. His contract will ultimately reflect the value that the sport places on him. The contract he seeks reflects the value that he places on himself. Theres meaning in it. Theres also, broadly speaking, useful information to the consumer of the rumor.A few leftover details that might be relevant:Why median instead of mean?We went with median instead of mean because a few extremely unrealistic players dragged down the average. That might or might not have been the right decision, so here are the mean outcomes: For years, the average player got 76 percent of what he was seeking; for dollars, he got 79 percent.Does the date of the rumor matter?It does! Rumors from November, October and September turn out to be closer to the actual signed contracts than rumors from December and onward. This goes counter to my hypothesis that agents would start high but settle into more realistic territory once actual negotiations have happened. My new hypothesis is that once December comes along, the data starts to gather the unsigned players who are simply unrealistic about themselves, or whose stubbornness will end up suppressing their salaries. It might also be that the later the offseason gets, the more likely an outrageous request will be talked about and reported. (Also, the difference is small.)Do I have a favorite? I do have a favorite! In the offseason before the 2009 season, Adam Dunn asked for four years and $56 million. That was apparently so absurd that even a rival agent mocked it, saying he wouldnt get more than $5 million per year. Dunn ended up settling for two years and $20 million, and over the next two years he did almost exactly what he had done before his free agency:2007-2008: 80 HR, .919 OPS, 206 RBIs, 2.5 WAR 2009-2010: 76 HR, .910 OPS, 208 RBIs, 2.0 WARSo he hits free agency again and asks for ... four years and $60 million. The best explanation here is that two years earlier, Dunn had an honest view of himself and his place in the market. The world rejected it, but Dunn meant what he said and he held to it. Given a second chance to describe himself to the world, he chose the same words, the same story. What Dunn sought, he sought with total honesty.The second time, he got paid four years and $56 million. Puma Shoes Australia Sale . -- Peyton Manning will have all of his wide receivers available for the first time in a month when the Denver Broncos begin their playoff run Jan. Cheap Puma Shoes Online Australia . The Vancouver coach and an announced sellout crowd of 18,910 watched in dismay as the Canucks lost 7-4 to the New York Islanders on Monday night by squandering a 3-0 lead in the third period. http://www.cheapaustraliapuma.com/ .Y. -- Sabres forward Drew Stafford has witnessed plenty of turmoil during his eight seasons in Buffalo. SALT LAKE CITY -- The goal for No. 11 Utah was clear this season -- win the Pac-12 South Division. The Utes have trended upward since joining the league in 2011, but have yet to play in the championship game.Their hopes of doing so this season ended Saturday.Justin Herbert hit Darren Carrington for a 17-yard touchdown pass with two seconds remaining to give Oregon a 30-28 upset victory over the Utes.A chance to win the South, thats the next step for our program, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said. We won nine games two years ago, 10 games last year. Were winning games. Weve won more games in the Pac-12 than any team in the Pac-12 over the last three years. But the next hurdle, the next step is to win a South title. Thats what we need to do.Herbert led the Ducks (4-7, 2-6 Pac-12), who have struggled all season and suffered several lopsided losses, on a 10-play, 75-yard drive in just over two minutes, capping it with the TD pass to Carrington. Carrington was initially called out of bounds but that call was reversed after a replay showed he got a foot down in bounds.Oh man! Carrington said. Big-time players make big-time plays and it was definitely time to make a big-time play so I just had to come through in the clutch for my boys. I just turned and saw the ball in the air and went and got it. I had no idea the ball was coming until it was up in the air.The Utes (8-3, 5-3, No. 12 CFP) blitzed on the final play and left man-to-man coverage on the outside.Disappointing to say the least, Whittingham said. (Oregon) made the plays when they had to be made. We were not able to make those plays. Second half, couldnt get a stop on defense when we needed to. Couldnt put a dagger in their heart when we could have on offense.The Utes had taken a 28-24 lead with 2:18 remaining off a Troy Williams 30-yard touchdown pass but the Ducks then began their comeback drive.Ive got some of the best receivers in the country out there, so I trust them to make catches like that, said Herbert, who finished the game with 324 yards passing and three TDs. He also scored on a one-yard run in the fourth quarter.Royce Freeman led the Ducks ground game with 129 yards. He also scored on a one-yard pass from Herbert early in the fourth.Carrington had a quiet day until the game-winning catch, finishing with 37 yards on five receptions.Joe Williams rushed for 149 yards and a touchdown for Utah. Cheap Puma Shoes Australia. The normally stout Utes defense gave up 575 yards of offense to Oregon.That was a long, long, long, long review, Oregon coach Mark Helfrich said about the final play. There would have been a lot of questions if that wasnt ruled a touchdown. Our guys drove on an excellent defense in the fourth quarter in their stadium, down, but stared it right the face.POLL IMPLICATIONSUTAH: The Utes will fall from No. 11 after the loss to an Oregon team that is still three games shy of .500 and wont reach it this year. The Utes, however, should stay in the Top 25.OREGON: Will remain on the outside looking in.THE TAKEAWAYOREGON: The Ducks are still simply running out the clock. Even with a win against Oregon State in the season finale, Oregon would fall shy of the six normally needed to be bowl eligible. This would be the first time since 2004 that Oregon missed a bowl game.UTAH: The Utes lost control of their own destiny. After the Oregon loss, Utah needed Colorado to lose to Washington State to remain in the hunt for the Pac-12 South Division. Colorado won 38-24 on Saturday. The race is now down to Colorado and USC, which beat the Buffaloes 21-17 in October to earn the tiebreaker.SACK KINGUtah defensive end Hunter Dimick set the schools career sack record in the first quarter with a sack of Oregon quarterback Justin Herbert. He wasnt done there, picking up sack No. 2 later on the same drive. He finished the day with two sacks after entering the day tied for the nation high with 12. The record is now set at 29 and Dimick has 14 this season.EJECTEDOregon starting receiver Charles Nelson was ejected midway through the second quarter after being called for targeting. Nelson peeled back for a block on Justin Thomas as Herbert ran around the right end. Nelsons shoulder pads mostly hit Thomas in the chest, but there was some contact between his helmet and Thomas facemask. Nelson entered the game with a team-high 47 receptions and 501 receiving yards.UP NEXTOREGON: The Ducks wrap up the season against in-state rival Oregon State in the Civil War.UTAH: The Utes travel to face No. 12 Colorado next Saturday.---For more college football: http://collegefootball.ap.org and https://twitter.com/AP-Top25 ' ' '