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Yes we all know how you feel about this . You have made it abundantly clear. However sooner or later someone will be telling the truth. Yes there have been joke posts in the recent past and if those members who did the joking around had just followed the rules about using green font then maybe we wouldn't have to be so skeptical of another rumor. Excuse the hell out of those of us to continue to trust some of our long time members. Like many rumors involving player movement everything can fall apart in the blink of an eye so even if nothing happens that doesn't mean it wasn't true at the time it was posted.

Manny Machado or not, I don't think re-uniting the Baltimore Orioles is a good way to rebuild.

Yeah....I presume there was legitimate truth to what was reported. Very long time poster who I thank for sharing the info. Whether it ends up happening or not...I'm not going to doubt the legitimacy of the source.

A couple of the leads came from posters who have been long time members with no history of trolling, not sure why there is a need to mock them like trolls.

@Buehrle>Wood just seen your tag from the other thread. Wasn’t that crazy back then when soxtalk went world wide. Sports illustrated called it a “rumor” but in fact it was all true in the end. It’s been years since I posted but I always follow here. I just haven’t logged in under my name in very long time. I wish I had something good to pass on....Just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Maybe I will be back to posting more often now. I got the itch! Heck I think I was one of the very first members here back in the day.

Quality rant but machado isn't a boras client. Have another egg nog you're rolling.

Joel Sherman literally posted a thread in the last few hours saying how there’s very little work done this week. And fwiw, the person who posted the rumor has never made up anything during his entire soxtalk “career”

Lol this guy is so full of shit

Who is left and what are you willing to pay for them? I'm ok with adding a guy like Pomeranz, but I'll bet there's a decent chance of Covey outpitching him. Gio could be reasonable but I'll still expect a multi year deal with him, which means he's not a bridge guy. Right now, James Shields looks to have been in the top 5 of starting pitchers remaining.

Alonso does. Probably Castillo does, but at least Castillo is a halfway decent catcher. I already said if he signs Machado, Alonso was a great trade, if he doesn't, it's laughable. But you can't continue to fill roster spots with his friends. He can make some new ones. The object if he signs will be to win, not what he will be doing after the game. One of the major guys quoted an exec wondering what happens if the Sox play starts going south after they signed Machado. He thought it could get ugly. But if friends are required, what if they suck? Are the White Sox stuck with them? What if it upsets Manny? The pitch should be to field the best team possible, not we'll just load it up with your friends. If Castillo and Alonso can't make him comfortable enough, it just shows how low the White Sox organization is regarded.

Lol

The White Sox don't have enough good players, and Manny's friends aren't good enough either. Exactly what happens if you lure Manny in with his buddies and suddenly his buddies get replaced? Manny's best buddy is Benjamin Franklin. Show him enough of those and you won't need one former Oriole.

Seriously. This isn't a Peavy44 situation (or even Ron if you think he's full of shit). B>W is a hell of a poster. I definitely back with what he said.

Who the heck does what? Who the heck is honest with a potential superstar and tells him we both know we lost 100 games however here are all our good prospects and this is where we see this team going in a very short time with you leading the way ? "As I am sure you have noticed we traded for Yonder and Ivan and Alex Colome. Last year we signed Welington. All these guys are special to you but they also were signed because they are what we need right now. We want you to feel at home here. It may be unorthodox but that's how much we really believe that you are the key to the start of something big. We are all grownups here and we all know nothing is permanent and some of these players may be replaced when our prospects lead us into our window of contention perhaps as early as 2020. Again we want you to feel at home here first and then we expect to win and win for the majority of your years with us.

What young players are getting blocked. You keep bringing that up but haven't shown which players are losing a spot/at bats

Because that's just -I don't know what to call it - who the heck does that? And the Sox have done enough in that regard: they downgraded catcher and traded for a first basemen who isn't very good and in a position of non-need. The second trade makes them less competitive and blocks a spot for young player development, and the catcher move arguably might as well.

People have screamed that the cubs are over leveraged since 2014 and it hasn’t mattered a smidge. You are lying to yourself if you think the cubs wouldn’t do this deal if they thought it could get them a World Series with this core.

I like chests

The Cubs are owned by a trust fund and are heavily levered. I know it’s fun to treat the Cubs as the boogeyman around here, but the Ricketts are not going beyond their means until they have cash in their pocket. Their new TV contract doesn’t help them in 2019.

Yea the only thing that suggests the Cubs and Dodgers might be the favorites is the headline which is click bait. All Heyman said is that the Cubs might be more likely to be taking Harper more seriously than the Dodgers Not once did anyone say either should be considered a favorite.

Only thing less surprising is YOU NOT EMBEDDING lmao

That's not them being worth nothing, it's them being worth what they were last year. The Catcher's spot was worth 3.3 fWAR to the Sox last year, so that's Wellington Castillo having the best season of his career.

Those are increases in WAR from the 2018 season. So Castillo would be worth ~3 fWAR, Abreu/Alonso ~2 fWAR, etc

FWIW, WSD said he got a text last week that said Sox are very, very confident they’ll get one of the big 2. This was on red line radio podcast

If you're counting on a rookie midseason callup with an innings limit to be a big addition to your rotation, you're probably being too optimistic.

Boras is drumming up the Cubs to get the teams to offer more.. bid against themselves. No one is taking Heyward.

John Heyman was talking about it on MLB Network not that long ago

Maybe we are trading for Trout?

I like you being hopeful, its what every spring is for,but all 3 doing something they have never done before is pretty unreasonable. I'd be thrilled if Rodon fulfilled his promise finally and Giolito showed he can control his mechanics and if Lopez made a slight improvement in his peripherals. Improvement yes but considerable improvement is unlikely. Get the babies walking instead of standing and falling down .

And not once in this paragraph is there mention of the pitching. The pitching has to take some major strides to be a good team.

Didn't say he was. That's why I said this is worse.

I like my friends and all, but if you give me a few million dollars more I could care less if I play on the same team. These guys train in the offseason together, can travel wherever in the offseason together, spend spring training together (dependent of AZ or FL) ... I just don't think it's that big of a deal.

I hope it is Kikuchi. He'd give the Sox an interesting rotation and if Rodon, Lopez and Giolito take a step or two forward they could win 75 games just on that alone.

Bad teams have good players too. They are bad because they don't have as many as the good teams.

That's awesome! Congrats!!

My wife and I are expecting our first child in April, she got me a White Sox shirt with Dad on the back. Pretty happy about it, will wear when she is giving birth!

I would be shocked if the Sox traded for Realmuto. Shocked. A trade like that would go against everything the Sox have been trying to do since December 2016.

There was something that's been in the works for two weeks and escalated very quickly this past weekend. All I got.

Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. ?

I really do hate this whole process.

raBBit has proven to be pretty well connected in the past. And didn’t you just claim the Cubs had something big in the hopper and then absolutely nothing happened? I’m not sure you have the right to be calling other people out at the moment.

I was reminded of it because I saw @spataro51 viewing the Harper thread the other day despite not having posted in 9 years. I was hoping he'd post another bombshell, but alas, no dice.