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LOL Passan tweets its to the Nats and then Bob Nightengale tweets "Phillies are the favorite to sign Corbin now, with the Yanks steadfast at the 5 year offer". Now he deleted it. So close Bob! Truly a great resource.

All else being equal, I'd be more inclined to see what Moncada could do in CF. Of course, that's a hell of an experiment to try at the MLB level and I'm sure he'd be more likely to resist it. That being said, there's no reason to be considering any move at this point.

Yes, I follow professor. This Corbin deal will be terrible for the Nats, and I will be happy to remind you of such when it occurs.

I appreciate it! I have enough negativity in my life. Don't need a constant stream of it from reading a White Sox message board.

God bless you fathom, you could a negative in winning the lottery.

Thanks. I personally feel pretty strongly about Yoan being a 4 win player next year and I wouldn’t be shocked if he’s even better than that. I truly believe he was rushed and a guy like him, who was able to succeed in the minors on talent alone, needed to experience failure at the major league in order to make the right adjustments. There’s no denying his physical abilities, but I’m generally impressed by his work ethic, which is evident by him going to Arizona this offseason and working with Renteria & Steverson on his hitting. As for Corbin, I shaved over a full point off his 2017 WAR. For Machado, I don’t believe using career averages for a guy just hitting his prime and believe he could be a 7 win player next year at 3B, but decided to shave off a point. For Eloy, I simply took Steamer’s projection and bumped it up slightly to account for a quicker promotion and the general conservatism it has for young players. With Rodon it all comes down to health and my entire premise is based on relatively good health for the team. If he makes 30 starts next year, he should easily be a 3 win pitcher IMO with the upside for more. And that’s a key point here. I personally think Lopez could be a 4 win pitcher next year. I agree that Anderson could be a 3 win player with some moderate improvement with the bat along with his 2nd half defense showing up for the full season. People keep looking at the downside, but I’d argue there is still potential upside in my projections and those can potentially cover for areas of underperformance.

I didn't see this anywhere else, so I figured I would mention it. Baseball Prospectus has just introduced a new hitting metric called Deserved Runs Created plus (DRC+). Its supposed to be more descriptive and have better predictive power than wRC+ or OPS+. It is like those in that it has 100 equal to league average, but I have found several players where the difference between the it and the old ones is more than 10 points. Its also nice because on each player's page it not only has their DRC+ but also the standard deviation amount so you can tell how confident they are in the number and what kind of range of possibilities seem plausible. They have also folded this number into their WAR calculations, so we can probably expect their numbers to be different than the other two. https://www.baseballprospectus.com/drc-deserved-runs-created/

Hah. He's number two on the BA Top 2018 Cape Cod Prospects list. Right behind Vaughn. Will post both. Paywall. https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/2018-cape-cod-league-top-10-prospects/

You guys don’t believe an owner is stupid enough show his hand in the most expensive deal in his lifetime, do you? It’s absolutely a decoy to drive up bidding for someone you’re not after to eliminate competitors for guys you’re really after. Why? Owners usually has the last say in handing out a deal, the fact that MacPhail said what he said and did not follow through when he has the finally blessing suggested it was a bait. Look at how it worked out - Nats knew Phillies had interest in Corbin and they went overboard and handed a deal to him no one saw coming - and guess what? They were one of the destinations for Harper and now they might be out of the race. Now Phillies will likely focus their attention on the real targets. On top of that, they could also now use the narrative that Nationals did not believe in Bryce and spent their money on a worse player instead. By signin with Phillies he could win division races against his former team and homer against the said player everytime they play. Harper strikes me as someone who would buy into that.

I think you’re missing some context here. I’ve pointed out in here & perhaps other threads that the Phillies front office is said to be conservative. The Phillies were always going to amongst the favorites for the whales, but it wasn’t until their owner came out and said “we’re going to spend some stupid money” that they became the big bad wolf. The reason I believe this to be promising (at least for Harper) is the Phillies have positioned they won’t be topped (including for Corbin) and then proceeded to be topped. As eager as their owner may be to spend, I truly don’t believe he’s going to pull a Tom Hicks and bid against himself to ensure they have the biggest offer. And if it’s true the front office is putting some guardrails in place, then that’s a win for us IMO.

The Phillies capped themselves at five years. How would that extra year prevent them from adding Harper or Machado? They decided in this case they have their limits and now that is confirmed.

4 years, 54 million with a presentation showing his jersey at the United Center

You'd be losing your mind if the Sox paid Corbin $140M.

THINK OF ALL OF THE PEOPLE THAT WILL BE CALLING ME FOR MONEY!

Yah, got to pay all those damn taxes!!!

My optimism will never fade, that’s for sure!

So Yanks, interested in trading for a lefty that throws a lot of sliders?

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

I think that's exactly it. The funny thing was that when college DFS was around at the start of his career at NC State, it was the exact same thing. He was listed at TE yet would get multiple carries out the backfield, he was plug and play no matter the price

Lency Delgado was the team's 4th round pick this past June, but he was and to an extent still is a bit of an unknown. So our Ken interviewed him, pulled together quotes from other folks and some videos, to help add some color to the picture. Read all about him here.

Well done and thank you for the write-up. I think the Sox were smart in drafting Delgado when they did.

That is a great question, and one I will never understand.

Upside? To me upside means the chance for a player to become a superstar or to significantly outplay their contract. I think there is less than a 1% chance Seager is an MVP candidate anytime in the remaining 4 years of his contract and around a 5% - 10% chance that he outplays the around $18,000,000 per year he is owed. I'd call that NO upside. This is the kind of bandaid move the Sox would have done prior to the rebuild.

$300 million has a way of saying lining up at 3B isn’t so bad.

Wow, you’re sticking with ERA as a better indicator of pitching staff quality than fWAR. You are literally the walking example of the dangers of people incorrectly using statistics to make any argument they want.

The Oakland A’s won 97 games last year due to their young positional group. The Braves won 90 games with two of their best players being first year guys in Albies & Acuna. Neither team had a dominant pitching staff. You & Balta act like any holes / question marks means a team can’t be competitive and that’s simply not true. Development isn’t linear and young players in particular can take massive strides in short periods of time. Moncada & Jimenez are elite talents capable of leading a huge turnaround next year. If you want to wait for those guys to breakthrough before investing in the team, you risk losing a crucial year of service time if it happens next year and you don’t have a respectable roster. That doesn’t mean we should go all-in by any means, but the days of tanking should end the moment Eloy is up here.

Amen. Nothing against Seager but he is the kind of a player a contender plugs into a hole. Aim higher, Aim younger, or at worst Aim at a lottery ticket with some upside.... Seager is none of the above.

Until they get rid of GarPax, any other move is just window dressing. They aren’t winning a thing. They got close when they got DRose against all odds. But still really had no shot. They need to bring in someone dynamic. Pay them a ton, they will be worth it. You won’t have to pay for bad players. You won’t be paying ex coaches. It is mindboggling how Gar and Pax get away with this. Bulls fans fill that arena all the time, and pay a premium price to do it, they are owed better. There should be notice given to these 2, yes you are 5-19, but make the playoffs or you are done.

Did she go to Iowa State?

I would say the primary reason is, well, Jerry Dipoto.

Any analysis of Narvaez that doesn’t include defense is flawed. As of today, he’s one of the worst defensive catchers in baseball. Maybe that changes to some extent over time, but I’m not really convinced it will. I also don’t buy into the power surge he showed last year. To me, now was the time to sell and I’m assuming the Sox shopped him around a bit and felt Colome was the best offer. I really don’t see this move coming back to bite us.

We’re underestimating the fact that Rivers will be able to field his own baseball team.