Black_Jack29

I don't think that they're going to sign a FA to play CF, with RF, DH, 2 SP slots, and a couple of bullpen slots to fill. My guess is that they run Robert out there and bury him in the lineup to keep the pressure off.

God, I hope so. IIRC, we're stuck with him for two more years.

I'd let Yolmer walk and let Leury be the infield utility guy with Engel as the utility OF. (I'm assuming that we sign a RF that can hit at least a little.)

Isn't Ozuna a Boras client as well? If so, you can probably cross both him and JDM off the list.

I'm fine paying Colome, but Herrera's contract is awful.

Yeah, he's basically a utility player.

Sounds like he's kissing Jerry's rear to ensure that he'll be back. I don't understand why he thinks that he might not be.

Wow, two errors and a walked pitcher. Good lord...

Wow, this is an insane first inning. Would love to see the Cardinals in the WS, so I'm lovin' it.

If Martinez is still a Boras client, I’ll give this about a 5% chance.

So he basically repeated what I and a couple of other posters have known and been saying here over the past four days. And this whole thing is a big nothingburger, and most likely a publicity stunt.

That’s awesome. Thanks for sharing. My parents and sister are Sox fans, and it’s something we can share together. When my family was back in the south suburbs a couple of months ago, I took my dad to a game. It was just great to be back there with him, after all those years that he took me to games back in the 80s.

Ditto. I’ve been a Sox fan since ‘82 and was admittedly too into them from age 8 or so well into my 20s. But age, marriage, kids, and my career put an end to that. The Sox are still great, but I have no qualms turning off the TV in August during those bad seasons (most of them 😄) and not giving a thought to them again until March. The Sox are great but, at the end of the day, they’re just entertainment.

Sorry to hear about your divorce, but nobody should be that addicted to a sports team. If you can’t walk away from something if it negatively impacts your life (a bad relationship, alcohol, gambling, etc.), you have a problem. The “I don’t have a choice” line that I’m reading here is bullshit. Some of you need to man up and take control of your lives.

Much of that is true. JR and Einhorn's disastrous decision to move the Sox to pay TV and off of WGN cost them dearly. And, of course, there are JR's other PR disasters that I won't even bother getting into. My point, though, is that culture matters just as much as market size. If market size were all that mattered, Green Bay would've lost their NFL team 70 years ago, the Rays and Marlins would be drawing 2 million fans every year, and LA wouldn't have spent most of the last quarter century without a single NFL team.

And many of those millions of more fans choose to watch the Cubs instead.

$3 million isn't that much for a MLB franchise. I'm skeptical that the second-most-popular baseball team in Chicago has an inherent advantage over smaller-market teams that have a different culture and less competition. Maybe they do in their TV contract, but I'm not seeing much past that. Especially with a Bears-first culture, the Blackhawks winning a few cups within the past decade, and the Bulls being a dynasty within (most of) our lifetimes. I'd argue that the Cardinals are better situated in their smaller market with their baseball-first culture and fewer professional sports teams, than the Sox are.

Chicago may have more people, but they also have a second, more popular baseball team, and more relevant sports teams in general. So I'm convinced that the Sox have a market advantage over the Twins.

I know, but seeing the way that he's been over-used in the playoffs in previous years... I just have this illogical gut feeling that he's due for a long-term velocity decline at some point in the near future.

Not necessarily. If you have to spend yourself into debt to finish in first place, second place is obviously more valuable from a long-term financial perspective. And if you want to go nuts and hand out a Machado-like contract, it’ll lower the value of your franchise if you’re looking to sell. Like I’ve said a few times in this god forsaken thread, I don’t believe that JR is attempting to come in second place to maximize profit, but I do believe that he’s risk-averse and prioritizes long-term financial stability over all.

I love Stoney and the way that he was willing to lose his job to call out the Cubs for tanking down the stretch back on ‘03 (?). But it’s pretty well understood that if you want to keep your job as a Sox announcer, you need to run interference for JR. So I’m not sure what to think of his comments.

That’s it in a nutshell. And while I’m not in the business of telling other people what to do, one has to wonder what the point of spewing vitriol (even righteous vitriol) on the internet is when it’s not going to change anything. I made peace with being a Sox fan, despite the ownership, decades ago. I enjoy the positives and tune out when the negatives become too much. If you’re miserable and there’s nothing to look forward to in the foreseeable future, why not just walk away and put your time and energy into doing something that actually makes you happy? If you wouldn’t let your wife or girlfriend screw you over and make you miserable, why are you letting Jerry Reinsdorf do it?

I just get the feeling that Bumgarner’s arm is going to fall off any minute now.

Good God, this thread is a complete shit show.

Much of this is driven by the league-wide revenue sharing from streaming (which is going to be a big point of contention during the next CBA negotiations). So when you combine that with a few years of rebuilding (i.e., not spending much), you're going to make a pretty nice profit. It'll be interesting to see how much the organization spends on FAs this winter.