almagest

With the chatter changing to "White Sox on outside looking in" and some reports coming out now about Harper preferring other destinations and/or other teams being in the bidding/being favorites my assumption is Harper is looking to get the final best offers from LAD/Cubs/Phillies to see if they can field a competitive offer (compared to the Sox). If so he'll probably sign with one of them.

Kopech is in Vegas right now and apparently he flew there by private jet. https://soxon35th.com/2018/12/08/could-bryce-harper-make-his-decision-this-coming-week/

Avi's DRC+ last year was 118. For fun I mapped that directly to a 118 wRC+, and last year the only player with that score was Shin-Soo Choo with a line of .264 .377 .434

What happened?

Wouldn't mind a 2 year deal with him but Atlanta makes sense for him since they're a playoff team. This probably takes them out of Machado. Harper still an option for them?

Machado's been more consistent but doesn't have a 9+ fWAR season like Bryce. That's Mike Trout territory. Not sure he'll ever get there again but if he could... man.

I don't know if you guys are watching the game or not but there's been some bad fielding and some lucky hits falling in. He doesn't look bad.

Man I want a t-shirt version of this.

Some really nice movement on this 2-seamer GrayAgitatedAztecant-mobile.mp4

He's throwing a lot of strikes. His command is a little off but no one can square him up yet. I don't think he'll ever need to be pinpoint with this stuff but the more he refines his command... whoo boy.

I'm liking this easy 96/97 with movement.

Sure, that's fine. I was assuming 1500 PAs was enough to take an average and that there wasn't a good reason for his lower BABIP this year beyond luck. I think the improvements in just about every other area warrant optimism with Tim entering his prime seasons.

Tim Anderson this year has improved in every way from last year (except BABIP). Higher walk %, lower K %, higher ISO, higher wOBA. If his BABIP was inline with his career average of .331 he'd be (bare minimum of just adding the BABIP difference) around .282/.328/.451/.779. Yeah he could be making consistently shitty contact and swinging at terrible pitches and that's why his BABIP is down but if Anderson ends up around these numbers in his prime I'm perfectly happy. That's probably a 3+ WAR shortstop every year with his overall skillset.

They're still buried now though, aren't they? A bad farm system means you can't trade for impact players to put you over the top. You can only hope to sign free agents (which costs you draft picks) or hope to get lucky in the lower-end free agent or trade market.

Mentor, second unit PG and you're banking on playoff Rondo