Roughneck

Even ignoring that Jay is aged, that his numbers declined last year and might decline further, it's wrong to assume he will get on base at a higher clip than Moncada. In a year that was pretty bad for him and his expectations, Yoan still got on base at a clip of only .015 lower than Jay. If he improves a hair, he's beating Jay. And I don't even want Moncada batting leadoff.

I read this post in an eastern European accent.

Yeah, these guys are people, like anybody else. We don't know what they are dealing with in terms of family, emotional issues, physical pain at any moment. We all have moments where we don't want to deal with people. I have wondered about this, but how does that work in the NBA/NFL/NHL? Do players get something like dividends at the end of the year? I don't imagine it's just tied to salary cap increases, because I'm sure most teams aren't at the cap.

This is incorrect. Majestic is the official provider through the 2019 season. But Fanatics now owns Majestic. When Nike takes over, the Majestic factories will still produce the on-field uniforms, but they will be branded with the swoosh instead of the Majestic logo. This is pretty common, as the same factory in Wisconsin has made NFL game jerseys for the last 30 years and stitched manufacturer logos on for Starter, Nike, Adidas, Wilson, Reebok, Puma, and Logo Athletic. This factory still makes game jerseys for the Packers and Panthers, who use traditional jerseys. All other teams have moved over to the supposedly advanced fabrics and templates, which Nike makes in-house. Instead of trying to redo everything and bring the space-age fabrics to baseball, looks like Nike will have teams wear the fabrics they do now, made by Majestic. No indication yet if Nike will make the replicas or let Majestic/Fanatics produce them, but I would imagine they will be the same as the current jerseys, too. They will very likely take unsold Majestic replicas, remove the logo, add a swoosh and change the tag on the bottom.

You are correct, but the variable is the market. If the new CBA has something to force higher payrolls, teams might be spending more for talent. Payrolls across MLB have been far more stagnant than in the other major sports over the last 18 years, so they could be due for a correction. Maybe that means everybody else gets more money but top guys stay around $35 mil a year, or maybe it means $35 mil players are now valued at $50 mil a year. But we do know that the PA screwed up big time last time around and the next deal will be much different.

Right. An opt-out can only help a player. It's insurance on two fronts - money and team. If 4 years down the road, Harper thinks the market will give him $45 mil a year instead of $35m, he can opt out. Also, if he signs with the Sox because they are building a winner, but all the prospects end up terrible and the Sox have a losing record every year, he can opt out to choose a new team, rather than demanding a trade but not having full control over where he goes. EDIT: I'll add that the opt-out could get Harper more money without even having to use it. Like I said, 4 years down the road, maybe Harper would get $45 mil on the open market, but he loves it here and the Sox just won a title. If he makes it known he intends to opt-out, the Sox could negotiate an extension to pay him more without him even having to test the market again.

These $100 jerseys are not the authentic on-field jerseys. Those are much more money. The team is given a stock of jerseys each year from Majestic, as part of their contract. They have an in-house seamstress who sews on the names/numbers for each player and coach jersey. Anyway, they do sell the $100 replicas (both player jerseys and blank) in the team store. They aren't going to have the poor team seamstress customize 10,000 Machado jerseys, but they could be buying those to send them to local shops. I'm not sure if Granstand customizes themselves currently. They used to send their jerseys to Exclusive Pro Sports in Rockford. Anyway, EPS could easily turn several thousand blank jerseys into Machado jerseys. So again, I'm not saying that it proves anything, but this would fit in with the Sox wanting to stock up in hopes they will land Harper or Machado and suddenly have a demand for thousands of new jerseys.

There is probably nothing to this report, but here are a few points: 1) I don't know if he's saying that the team buys the jerseys from Majestic's website and pays $100 for them. But the team *would* get the jerseys directly from Majestic for the wholesale price, which would then reflect the stock which was available for fans to buy. 2) Majestic is now owned by Fanatics, and it was recently announced that Majestic will keep producing the on-field jerseys next year, which will be Nike branded. So it's not like Majestic is going to stop making White Sox jerseys a year in advance of the Nike deal because they don't want all that dead stock. The replicas are likely to be the same this year as next, with the only difference being the manufacturer logo. The replicas have heat-pressed Majestic logos, so they would probably just leave those off the extra stock and press the swoosh on next year. 3) While there's probably no fan rush of jersey purchases based on the Yonder trade, I don't think the Sox buying up a bunch of jerseys is a smoking gun here. We know from many reports and our insiders that the Sox are confident they will land one of the two whales. They could have just bought the jerseys because they think they'll end up with one of them, and not because they are closing in on a deal with Machado.

The White Sox are going to make a large profit this year, whether or not they sign Machado/Harper. They weren't losing money when they had payrolls of $125 mil a few years back, and they aren't going to lose money now with an $80 mil payroll, especially since ticket prices and their TV rights have gone up since then. So, they have the $13 mil to spend on Jay and Yonder. They are both here for a year, using money that wouldn't be spent elsewhere, and not blocking young talent. That $13 mil is not going to come back to bite the Sox two years from now, like they can't trade for an ace at the deadline because they can't take on the extra $13 mil salary. They either spend the money this year or they don't. It won't influence the future at all.

It's only one year of salary commitment. The Sox aren't competing with the Indians this year anyway. And they're looking to trade Kluber, so it's not all that helpful for the Indians. Alonso will DH, Eloy will be in LF, and Palka can play RF in the instance they land nobody, which would obviously be disastrous. But if they land Harper, that just means they deprived the fans of getting to see Palka #108 it for a year. I still think Alonso will be a better player than Palka next year, so I wouldn't call it a ridiculous acquisition.

They're veteran players on short contracts who aren't blocking young talent and cost the team almost nothing to acquire. Not a huge deal. I don't think Harper is their first choice. I think Machado is a much better fit for this team. However, as I have said, Harper is clearly the bigger fish and the bigger deal. If they want marketability and want the face of Major League Baseball to always have a White Sox cap on its head, that's the way they go. Landing Harper does a lot more to wake up the fanbase and get the casual Chicago fans to start paying attention to the Sox again. Ultimately, winning is what matters, but I getting Harper signals to the world that the Sox are back. The Sox can't go wrong with either choice here. Unless they decide to be outbid and end up with neither player.

Even if the Padres are serious and can spend, that park is just too huge a hurdle. Manny might go for playing there, but Harper is looking at where he's going to be statistically when he retires and how he'll be viewed among the all-time best hitters. Dude is going to get paid over $300 million anywhere he goes. I can't see him agreeing to play in San Diego where he'd be extremely lucky to hit 15 HR at home a season.

I'm not accusing collusion. Mid-market teams are scared to commit that much money to one player, even at a discount of maybe $100m. Big market teams are near the ceiling, the Mets, Giants and Mariners are all hot messes, and about a third of the league is trying to lose. You're down to the Sox and Phillies vying for both Harper and Machado. Seems pretty straight forward here. But if there is collusion, you can't blame the Yankees. They can't just spend like crazy and laugh at the tax like they could 15 years ago. There are substantial penalties now.

But those teams are all at or near the tax and penalty threshold. The problem here is that the PA agreed to the current system which for all intents are purposes is a salary cap, but without getting the benefit of revenue sharing. They can't blame the huge market teams for not breaking rules they agreed upon.

You got yourself a keeper there.

That feeling when you think the player to be named later is a recent draft pick, and it turns out it's Marwyn Fernandez.

No way. Wife and I are off work today because of it. Netflix n' wind chill.

Hahn's hitting up Rosenthal in the DMs like "That was a good idea, bro. What do you think it would take for Manny to sign?"

While the team and MLB wants to hold this news off until it would be a big story and not get buried by football, that doesn't mean it won't be announced then. If the Sox and Machado come to an agreement and sign a contract on Sunday afternoon, news will get out that day. The Sox aren't going to wait a few days to sign the contract and let another team come in with a bigger offer. And the national reporters aren't going to sit on the news until Tuesday morning out of a civic duty to MLB. Not saying it's likely to happen then, but it'll happen when it happens.

Guys, I don't want to alarm you, but it's Wednesday. The possibility exists that it might be a White Sox Wednesday. That's all I got.

Yes! This is your best post to date. I think you should do a gimmick change to be the guy who responds in nothing but pop lyrics which are topical to the discussion. I think you can pull it off. Deadly cold and wind Manny sees Weather Channel Fuck that; play for Pads.

Only 1? You need to dream big.

Regardless, the point I was trying to make is that there are far more players closer in talent to Sale than there are Machado. Just common sense that every team has 5+ starters and 1 thirdbaseman. Maybe they sign a #1 starter any use the difference from Sale elsewhere. There will be other really good starting pitchers available. There won't be another Manny. Caulfield brought up Sale, and I'd actually run from offering him a huge FA deal at this point. Right now, I'd much rather sign Bumgarner next year, anyway.

Right, and considering Joc only has two years of control left, I don't think he has any impact on Manny's thinking about where to play for the next 7-10 years. It probably has less impact on him than "you can play with your bestie and brother-in-law for one year."

With the nature of pitchers, there will be other starters. Maybe not one as good statistically as Sale, but they might be better served getting a slightly-worse pitcher and then adding a much better 3rd or 4th starter, or something like that. For the people thinking you need an ace to win in the playoffs, He hasn't shown anything ace-like in his two postseasons, and the Red Sox won anyway. But other than Arenado who may or may not hit free agency, there aren't any solutions coming up for the gaping hole at 3B on the Sox. There will be a gigantic dropoff from Manny to anyone else.