Join us » right fielder Delmon Young made a leaping catch

Earlier this week, we learned from one plugged-in agent via one plugged-in reporter that Aroldis Chapman is looking for $100 million. 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. Curtis Leskanic Jersey . -- Charline Labonte couldnt have asked for a better homecoming. Troy Tulowitzki Jersey . After Mondays hard-fought loss, the wait seemed longer than usual. Getting set to go their separate ways for a short Christmas break, the Raptors coach credited his team for their effort on a seemingly impossible three-game road trip, urging them to build on that success when they get back to work at the end of the week. https://www.cheaprockiesjerseys.us/1314t-lance-painter-jersey-rockies.html . - Levi Browns tenure at left tackle for the Pittsburgh Steelers is over before it even began. Peter Lambert Jersey . McPhee said that Ovechkins father Mikhail is in stable condition after having the surgery this week and is no longer in intensive care. "Weve told him to stay as long as necessary with your dad," he said. Ovechkin and his Russian national team were eliminated from the mens hockey tournament in Sochi on Wednesday with a 3-1 quarter-final loss to Finland. Chi Chi Gonzalez Jersey . "Four now," Carl Gunnarsson told the Leaf Report proudly following a 5-2 victory over New York on Tuesday night, the clubs fifth straight at home.PHILADELPHIA -- The Philadelphia Phillies turned to small ball after the long ball hurt them. Domonic Brown drove in the tiebreaking run on an infield grounder in the eighth and the Phillies snapped the Cincinnati Reds six-game winning streak with a 5-3 victory on Friday night. Jimmy Rollins hit a two-run homer and Cliff Lee threw seven sharp innings for the Phillies, whove won four of five. "Were more fundamentally sound the last week or so," Lee said. Joey Votto hit a tying solo homer off Antonio Bastardo in the eighth, and Jay Bruce connected for a two-run shot for Cincinnati. Lee gave up two runs and six hits, striking out seven. Justin De Fratus (2-0) got two batters out in the eighth and Jonathan Papelbon finished for his eighth save in eight tries. Reds rookie starter Tony Cingrani allowed three runs and five hits in five innings. "I made a couple mistakes," Cingrani said. "I just didnt get inside enough." After Cincinnati tied it in the eighth, the Phillies answered in the bottom half against Sean Marshall (0-1). Michael Young worked his third walk of the game with one out. Ryan Howard followed with a check-swing infield single. Jonathan Broxton came in and hit Delmon Young to load the bases. Brown then hit a grounder up the middle that shortstop Zack Cozart fielded on the second base side. Second baseman Brandon Phillips tried to barehand Cozarts flip and dropped it for an error. Young crossed the plate with the go-ahead run as the Phillies took the lead without hitting a ball out of the infield. "I know he throws 97, 98 mph," Brown said. "I was looking for a pitch I can drive." His bouncer worked just as well. Howard then scored on a headfirst dive on Carlos Ruizs sacrifice fly for a 5-3 lead. The Phillies slugged their way to five straight NL East titles from 2007-11 and won the World Series in 2008. As their core players get older, fans want to see the team manufacture more runs instead of relying on homers. "When you talk about playing small ball, you have to have the talent," manager Charlie Manuel said, adding hes tired of hearing questions about it. The Reds closed to 3-2 when Bruuce connected in the sixth after Phillips led off with a double.dddddddddddd They tied it when Votto took Bastardo deep to right-centre leading off the eighth. Bastardo, who normally works the seventh, was pitching in the setup role because Mike Adams is day to day with a mid-back strain. Bastardo left after Bruce hit a one-out single. De Fratus came in and nearly gave up a go-ahead extra-base hit to Todd Frazier, but right fielder Delmon Young made a leaping catch at the warning track. "Im concerned about a lot of things," Manuel said, refusing to single out Bastardo. "Id like to see us play good, solid baseball. We did some things sloppy that got overlooked tonight." Rollins blasted a 3-1 pitch out to left to put the Phillies up 2-0 in the third inning. He is batting .375 (9 for 24) in his last six games. Lee, a good-hitting pitcher, helped himself with a leadoff double in the bottom of the fifth. Lee knocks balls out of the park routinely in batting practice, and just missed his third career homer when his drive to right bounced high off the wall. He hustled into second after trotting down the first-base line, and appeared slightly annoyed the ball didnt go out. Lee advanced to third on a sacrifice by Rollins and scored on Michael Youngs two-out triple to deep left-centre for a 3-0 lead. "I thought it was gone," Lee said. "But I still scored. Mike got a big two-out hit." The Reds had chances in the first two innings, but couldnt get a key hit. Lee stranded five runners, striking out Cozart to leaves the bases loaded in the second. NOTES: An MRI revealed a strain in the middle of Adams back. ... The Phillies recalled RHP B.J. Rosenberg from Triple-A Lehigh Valley and optioned LHP Raul Valdes down. ... Rollins is tied with Chase Utley for the team lead with 16 extra-base hits. ... The Reds are 8-3 on the road since losing eight in a row away from home in April. ... Frazier is hitless in his last 19 at-bats. ... Cincinnati swept a three-game series at home vs. the Phillies last month. .. Bronson Arroyo (3-4, 3.76 ERA) takes the mound for the Reds against Kyle Kendrick (4-1, 2.47 ERA) on Saturday afternoon. ' ' '