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Amazon’s HQ2 Spectacle Isn’t Just Shameful—It Should Be Illegal This whole thing really has the feel of an elaborate con. They went through this whole year-long process to conclude that they were just gonna end up opening regional branches in NYC and DC (Crystal City is, for all intents and purposes, DC) and after all that staged drama they were like "we weren't really that serious about doing this in the first place." In the meantime, all these suckers were throwing money at them and Amazon's got the data to know what they can take people for the next time. Now that the public is finally starting to wise up to the idea that subsidizing wealthy sports franchise owners isn't really a benefit to the city, regular businesses are getting in on the sham. People apparently didn't learn from the Foxconn debacle in Wisconsin but Jeff Bezos sure did.

It's not competition in the capitalist sense, it's just politics. What you don't realize is that as soon as one company gets these incentives, every company already in the city or state will ask for the same with little fanfare or attention. Wisconsin is now dealing with Kimberly Clark as an example. It undermines the tax base and shifts the burden to homeowners, who then complain about the cost of living...and then leave.

Companies like Amazon are what future movies like Idiocracy and Demoliton Man are based on. It's really dangerous what they are becoming and scary how the public and government just bows to every wish and command.

?yiiiikes. “Outrage culture” is the best term I’ve heard to describe what’s been going on lately

I don’t block people. You just always have your subtle comments that are suspect at best.

If the Sox were legit contenders now, I would have no problem giving him an opt out after 3 years. But you are asking for a lot of things to go more than right very quickly for that to be the case. I am sticking with 10 years $350 million. No opt outs. The most well known MLB baseball player is a White Sox for a decade. See what that does with Harper and Boras. The money can be negotiated higher if necessary. But you have to see where you stand, and see if you are just being used. It is amazing to me how much you read about these players dancing with teams and how long it takes for an offer. Give them something legit. If they just want to file it, the White Sox are probably in the same position on his destination list Chicago was on Amazons.

Rabbit, you are king at getting threads shutdown. You can't help yourself.

Easily the worst comment I've seen on this site.

Under no circumstance was that taken out of context.

What's wrong with the following two statements: 1. We should assume the person accusing superiors of harassment has a valid point until proven otherwise 2. We should assume Dipoto et al. are innocent until proven guilty by an MLB investigation These things are not mutually exclusive people. If they were mutually exclusive, the entire justice system of trial by jury would fall apart.

Comparable contracts are quite literally how other people decide what to ask for in their own negotiations. There is no better point than a player of the same age, position, and offensive set to project someone's future deals.

Sorry, the point behind it was lousy* I'd engage further but you have a tendency to get into petulant arguments that get threads locked, so I'll leave it at that.

WGN and ABC taking the choppers to watch him practice was hilarious

I'll take it as you can't support that point.

How much do we really think the Yankees care about blowing up their budget?

Could you provide your source on this? With range like that you know it has to be a valid report.

Exactly. To believe otherwise is to believe most people would flippantly throw away their careers and put a giant target on their back for others to hit. That just doesn't make any sense.

More often they are true and buried with the offenders walking away scot-free.

I think with the MLB investigating this I hope there are repercussions for all involved should one be found to be lying. Too often these type of allegations are found to be false then the person who made them walks away scott free. Here allegations are very specific. I don't think they are true going off Dipitio history but if they are he should pay the price.

Yeah, I was thinking 3/$45 million might get it done.

In fact, since you posted it, let's go 10/410 with opt outs at 3, 6, and 7. 55-55-50-/-55-50-50-/-40-/-25-20-10 So, let's look at year 3, assuming he's produced well. Teams aren't stupid, so he won't be looking at a 10/400 deal at age 29, but for sake of argument, let's say 7/280 is out there. Why would he opt out of 3/155 to get 7/280? He'd be getting over half that money in the first 3 years and could then supplement those earnings at age 32 with a 6/150 deal, which would likely be available at that point, or he could stick with it one more year, get 4/195, then supplement that with a 5/125 deal that would likely be available to him were he performing well at age 33. Any way you look at it, with the exception of teams becoming stupid again, it's stupid for the player to opt out at the age 29 season, and a lot smarter to opt out at age 33, which I want them to do anyway.

Fixed it for you. Caulfield please be careful- nobody wants the thread closed because of random, stream-of-consciousness tangents. We love you, but that stuff doesn’t belong here in a fine-line, filibuster-style thread, shortly after the filibuster closed. MOD audition over.

In a perfect world, this is what I want the Sox to do: Get Harper or Machado. A superstar in their prime to anchor the lineup and be the face of the franchise long term. AND Sign a couple of the bridge guys (Donaldson/Brantley/McCutchen/Moustakas/Happ/Cahill/Familia) to 1 or 2 year deals. This would make the team much more formidable in the short term, but these guys wouldn't be blocking any prospects. The Sox would once again have a substantial amount to spend in a couple years once these contracts are up to use towards filling holes when the team should be closer to being a legit contender. This would be the best of both worlds in my opinion.

No, in this model, the worst-case scenario is not signing Harper altogether because you wouldn't relent on the opt-out at year three. So instead he signs elsewhere, that team enjoys success in 2020 related to Harper, then he uses his opt-out leverage to get a raise for the remaining years on his contract without hitting the open market. The Sox, meanwhile, save $40 mil/year for three years but have nothing really to show for it.

Because of the team schedule. There's a huge chance that the White Sox are not competitive in 2019 - IMO if they have that many players take huge steps forward they need to make Renteria and Cooper and Steverson coaches for life because that would be incredible performance even with Harper. 2020 looks Iffy at best. You can convince yourself that everything could go right, but we still have a young team, we would have very young catchers, we would have Kopech coming off an injury and needing to get innings more than anything else, we would have Cease as a rookie and who knows what you get from rookie pitchers even when they're talented, we would have to replace Abreu and that's going to eat into Free Agent dollars we have to spend...and that's before any other injuries happen. If you want to believe that Kopech is going to come back and have the same control he finished this year with, and that no one else is going to get hurt...you can see a path to competing that year, but that's so much of an "Everything goes right" case that it's hard to fathom right now. 2021 - that's the year this season's Winston Salem OF hits the big leagues. That's the year Robert should take over CF. We're going to have more players hitting the big leagues than we know what to do with. We might have no choice but to trade 2 of them, and maybe we target someone like Blake Snell or Trea Turner or someone ridiculous like that because we'll have so many resources. We should be disappointed if we're not competitive that year, that would require everything going wrong again. If you sign Harper to a 3 year opt out he's here for 2021, but the more you front-load the deal the more likely he is to opt out. If he opts out after 2021, you have to be ready for Harper to be here during 1 competitive season. Imagine the scenario where the White Sox win 75 games this year, 81 games in 2020, and then 92 games and a wild card birth in 2021, only to lose in the Wild Card - and THEN HARPER LEAVES. Now you've done everything right to get to a Wild Card birth, you get 1 game in the playoffs, and then your best or second best player leaves as a free agent. Congrats, you paid $120 million, you got 1 playoff game, your fan base is disappointed because you lost, and then they're demoralized because Harper signed a 10 year deal with the World Champion Yankees. Aside from the nightmare of the injuries continuing...that's just about the worst case scenario I can imagine.

Illinois has played dirty in recruiting, to think otherwise is being naive. They've got outplayed in that area many times. Our admissions are harder than most P5 schools, but they've made exceptions for the right kind of players as well. Whitman is starting to change that, he won't be able to change everything with admissions but they've gotten in guys like Verdis Brown when in the past they couldn't. What it comes down to it is really just bad hires and not supporting the programs financially (in the past). Whitman has given the money to the programs (close to the top of staffing dollars for both bball and football) and is upgrading facilities (sorely needed) so the last piece of the puzzle is hiring the right coaches. So far, both Lovie and Underwood have underperformed. They have paths to success but I think fans expected both to coach better and not have such extreme rebuilds. At this point, fans or non-fans expecting Illinois to be a powerhouse year in and year out is not fair, the rest of the Big Ten has gotten better while we've gotten worse. We should eventually be able to get back there and we have the fanbase and resources to sustain it similar to Wisconsin/Michigan State, but we are so far away from that brand again that we need to adjust expectations.

listeners are not quite as lucky

I didn’t bring up the comment, I’m just denying that it was taken out of context because that isn’t true. I’ve said plenty of dumb things on this board, but I’m not going to outright deny them if called out. That’s the risk you take when putting an option on the internet.

Seems like an awful deal for the Sox. If it gets up to $400M, its better to just say no.

Also how many times have we heard "so and so is untradeable with that contract" only for them to be traded and a decent return hauled back. If the team is stuck and can't improve, they can get out of these contracts, even with a NTC.

Yeah these guys are 26. That is rare for free agency. I'd rather overpay on one of these guys than stars who are free agents at 29/30/31.

Go big or go home. I just don’t see the value of spreading money around to fill a lot of holes. At some point, you’ll just be blocking your young guys. Now, I’m all for adding “bridge” guys in the near term, but those contracts would ideally be one or two years in length. Personally, I think adding a Harper or Machado is critical to the rebuild. We need a star that can anchor this thing without costing us a big chunk of our prospect capital. Failure to land one of these guys puts us in a tough spot, as we’ll be forced to settle for expensive secondary free agents that are unlikely to move the needle as much as a Bryce or Manny and puts a ton of pressure on Moncada, Eloy, & Robert all needing to develop into legit stars.

There isnt much about the 62 acre lot. These are the renderings I can find: https://www.som.com/projects/the_78 I think the Sox are stuck in their current park for the foreseeable future.

what could have been... https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/the-white-sox-ballpark-in-chicago-that-never-was-and-could-have-changed-history/

Fixed.

I like how he puts "thread derailed" before he posts as if it excuses his post's lack of relevance.

This is true, but it's not the media/twitter people but actual NY politicians making a bunch of noise. Here's what Georgia had offered: This sort of stuff seems obscene to me, and not the foundation of a healthy society and economy.

lmao Hey, at least you got your new home before the housing market out there got even more absurd.

Local politicians, at least in NY, are NOT happy. Cuomo's planing to do an end-run around local approvals though. NoVA location is not shocking at all given Amazon has enormous contracts with the federal government for cloud services now. It's funny, in a way, to see the hopes of all of these mid-sized cities completely dashed in what was a bs search all along while the people in the cities who "won" are largely shouting DEAR GOD NO HOUSING IS ALREADY INSANE HERE! It's too bad we don't live in a world where one of the wealthiest companies in the world is having to solicit cities with offers for access to their talent pools rather than the other way around. I'm sure the $3B Amazon will be getting could go a long way to improve housing and badly needed infrastructure in those places.

Nothing new and its beating a dead horse now but they just need to come out ahead with the most cash.

And as with FoxConn, it would have been cheaper per job for the state to just hire people itself.

Holy shit is someone reporting that something is close!?!

for starters...their admission standards are ridiculous and they refuse to get in the dirt with the rest of the programs. BOT has made sure of that. Closer in basketball than football IMO. I think the bb program is on the right track. Nice big man they got a commit from today....and if you saw tonights game...they need all the big men they can get. I think it started in bb when they hired a safe "rule follower" that they knew wouldn't bolt at the first opportunity when they hired Weber. For some reason he failed miserably for failing to capitalize on the Final Four team recruitment wise. He had some really horrible classes. Funny tho how he's doing better out at KSU tho huh? What does that tell you? Illinois doesn't "play ball" in the recruitment area. plus...Chicago shouldn't even be a consideration. They are as dirty and corrupt as the day is long. I'm glad Underwood is going national with his recruiting. The coaches and AAU people seem like a huge pain in the ass to deal with. Illinois just needs to start winning in hoops...and I think it's coming. But people want these instant results...and it's not going to happen the season after Underwood had to purge some dead weight. If we're having this conversation in two years...then I'll consider it a problem.

Thread derailed. (And MLB already has these policies for managerial and GM openings...not preferential hiring, but at least to offer the opportunity to interview for qualified applicants.) Maybe they'll hire only Asians who were discriminated against by Harvard because their SAT score profile was TOO GOOD compared to white students, lol. (Like that will ever happen.) In fact, talking about exploiting a niche market, the White Sox should simply hire all the Chinese and Indian quants who get paid 50% less in Silicon Valley and bring them each to Chicago to create a computer database/algorithm to rival the Astros. Boom. Problem solved.

It's going to happen. I'd bet one of Greg's houses on it.

I do think there is a lot of racism and sexism in baseball. This is really not a good situation and the worst is that this might cause other front offices to avoid hiring women or minorities to avoid scandals if they fire someone.