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I’d give it two years before I never sat down watched a baseball game again if they expand to 16 teams. What’s the point? the playoff teams are decided in March, and the playoffs themselves are totally random. Fuck all that.

That's due to salary inflation. The best players are getting paid more, the average players are getting paid less or squeezed out. I've pretty much had it. We can agree to disagree here. In 2015 Max Scherzer got a 7 year, $214M deal. In 2020, Gerrit Cole got a 9 year, $336M deal. That's where the increase is happening. At the top. Just like everywhere else.

I don’t agree with this at all. Expanded playoffs leads to more teams trying. With 5 in each league, there will be much more tanking. What is the incentive for anyone in the NL West to try and win if it’s 5 teams per league? Why would the Phillies or Marlins add anymore at all? People agree with you but I don’t think it makes any sense

Say NO to Hamels. He's unlikely to be any better than Lopez/Rodon or Cease and would just be in the way when Kopech is ready. Say NO to a "veteran catcher" who won't hit nearly as well as Collins will if they just give Collins some relatively consistent backup catcher and lefty DH ABs. Say NO to any DH other than Nelson Cruz. Collins and other current options can hold down the fort for a month while they get an extra year of control of Vaughn. Vaughn should have been the man last year. Say yes to someone like Folty if you can get him on a minor league deal. That option has upside, and provides true depth because you can move him up and down from AAA as needed.

The NBA and NFL have a salary floor. Baseball doesn't. Massive difference. The NFL's floor is 89% of the cap. The NBA's is 88.8% of the cap. Every team in those leagues must spend as a minimum 178M of a 200M cap. It's apples and oranges.

Manfred and MLB are the worst. How much time did you have to prepare for this upcoming season, you're a week or two away from when pitchers and catchers are to report and you still have nothing solidified. Disgusting.

And the owners get their money from the fans. Majority of fans would probably want expanded playoffs. If fans want it, no matter who ultimately gets more money out of it, it should be implemented. If they don't agree to a deal to start the season by at least May, this sport is going to start losing fans fast. If the compromise is expanded playoffs, and they get NL DH, plus full pay minus 8 games...you gotta take it. Negotiate more with the expanded playoffs if you want, but that's a deal worth taking. No one involved in the business of this game can afford to not play out the season...due to money haggling.

With an expanded postseason, owners no longer have the incentive to build 95 win teams. In that case 85 win teams are suddenly acceptable. big hell no to expanded postseason. Union should reject it. It could result in teams with 78-82 wins making the postseason with regularity. This is a salary suppressing stunt.

The union would be dumb to accept this. The most important sword the union can wield in the CBA talks is the expanded postseason but the owners know if you have expanded postseason two years in a row and fans like it, it puts alot of pressure for the union to agree to it in the future, and at that point it becomes impossible to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

I think Brock holt and Travis Shaw should also be looked at.

I disagree with this part. Way different sports. You can't win a title in the NBA without the best players and in the NFL in most cases, you have to have an awesome QB. Baseball isn't like that. The worst team can go on a heater for 3 weeks and win the whole thing. I understand the random variance argument. I just thin it's better for the long-term health of the sport that more teams are trying to win and expanded playoffs accomplishes that.

I mean, there literally are floors in both of those leagues. I don't think you took very long to "fact check" that.

The issue isn't that baseball tickets are too expensive, it's that the average joe/jane isn't getting paid enough. Yes, baseball players are millionaires and it's really easy to dismiss it as millionaires vs billionaires, but the dynamic is the same one that's happening in everyday life. It's on a much larger monetary scale in baseball, and it might fall on deaf ears, but the basic struggle is the same as all of us go through every day. I know on a practical level the average person is much less financially well-off, but pointing it out anyway.

No more watching actually good teams Duke it out. Instead, enjoying watching to see if a dog shit Marlins team can squeak in at 80-82

AP study: MLB average at around $4.4M for 5th year in row NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball’s average salary ahead of a postponed opening day remained at around $4.4 million for the fifth straight season, according to a study of contracts by The Associated Press. Following an offseason when Gerrit Cole, Stephen Strasburg, Anthony Rendon and Christian Yelich all agreed to $200 million-plus deals, the flattened salary curve is evidence of a shrinking portion of the pie for baseball’s middle class. The stagnant stretch is unprecedented since the free-agent era dawned in 1976. https://apnews.com/article/e4ec65ed068d9b636ac9c302453eac26

Have you been paying attention to baseball at all over the last 5 years? This isn't normal behavior, I'd agree.......and it is completely obvious........however it is a continuation of a trend that has been happening for half a decade.....and the pandemic is a built in excuse for the owners to put the spending cuts into hyperdrive. Ever since the Astros and Cubs showed the rest of baseball how to do the rebuild thing, it has been either an in or out with no middle ground system in baseball. You know who the playoff teams are going to be every year generally, because the gap between the playoff teams and the non-playoff teams is very high.

I do not believe that. I believe that the top teams will spend to a point where they're comfortable and have a relatively low risk of missing the playoffs. The more rounds a playoff team has to win, the lower the return on investment is and the harder it is to win a championship.

Parkman is correct as to the high degree of variance that short series playoffs bring. Look how long the Dodgers were probably the best team and yet the randomness of the playoffs made it such that it took forever for them to actually win a title. Home field and all that stuff doesn't make that much difference as compared to other sports in the playoffs. The incentive to suppress salaries is much greater than to spend 30m more in budget to get a bye or have one extra playoff home game. The cost benefit isn't worth it due to luck and matchups in the draw you get dictating alot of what happens.

Yep. Instead of signing Andrelron Simmons for $10.5M just sign Freddy Galvis for $1.5M. We're gonna make the playoffs either way.

Not if you realize that expanded playoffs are a salary suppression tool. No expanded playoffs without a floor and soft cap.

I don't think this was posted here actually: Lots of good insight in there for why they'll reject, such as the proposal including Manfred having full authority to halt the season, the fact that pitchers are already ramping up and would likely see an increase in injuries (like last year), the lack of off days in the proposal and their impact on health, and more

Without the owners, we get nothing too. I get you are very anti-ownership, but aligning yourself to one side without compromise is not how the business world works.

Ethan Katz is set up to be the biggest failure in White Sox history. I honestly feel bad about the level of hype he has received from the fan base, there is next to no chance he lives up to the hype that has been created around the legend of Ethan Katz.

We don't watch the owners. We watch the players. Without the players, the owners have nothing. The players should get more. Simple as that. Owners were making money hand over fist before the pandemic. Players are the product. The problem is that both sides should be thinking win-win rather than win-lose. The mentality that everything is a zero sum game instead of making the pie bigger is the issue. It's a US culture issue, and it's toxic and destroying society.

If I read this correctly, the owners are offering full pay even if they can't open the stadiums fully for a lot of the season, adding the DH to the NL, and only asking for another round of playoffs for this season as the trade off. The players would need to be nuts to pass on this. As far as setting precedent for the CBA, I doubt it matters if the extra round of playoffs is popular or not. I'd be willing to bet that what the fans do or don't want has never come up during a CBA negotiation.

154 today, then its 144 next week, then 96 , then 60 with 0 fans in the stands again.

I think the players union would be idiots to agree to anything that includes an expanded postseason. 10 teams is plenty. Less is more when it comes to the playoffs. Cut to the chase.

Its alot more lucrative to the owners than the players. And fan pressure is exactly what the owners are counting on in order to turn something they really want from a novelty into an expectation. The union should reject this at once. An expanded postseason also is bad for us.

Thanks for proving my point. The only reason to respond like this is due to a lack of argument. This is how an admin behaves. Wow. I guess this is all just optional? I mean if there really are no actual rules, why not just take this down?

I kind of hope this happens only to see the meltdown that will happen on White Sox Twitter.

2019; 141.2 innings, 3.81 era

I posted this on another thread: If he has one project this year it should be Cease. The analytics show that he has PLUS stuff but cant generate swings and misses. His awful swing/miss and chase peripherals remind me of 2018 Gio which makes Cease such a break out candidate IMO. Cease's O-Swing% (Swings on pitches outside the zone) was 26% (8th lowest among 81 pitchers with 50IP) and his swing and miss % was 9% (18th worst). He also had a first pitch strike percentage of 54% (7th worst). In 2018 Giolito's O-Swing% was 24%, his Swing and Miss % was 8%, and his first pitch strike % was 55% . In 2019 that went to 32%, 15%, and 62% respectively. Jake Arrieta, another guy who had a rough MLB start but had plus stuff had similar changes in those percentages. Both made minor adjustments on mound positioning and increased first pitch strike % significantly. Having plus stuff doesnt mean shit if youre behind in the count. His swing % was 41% which was sixth lowest which makes sense he started as many counts 1-0 as nearly any pitcher in the league. _______________________________________ The point is that I think, yes, he was lucky he didn't do worse this year, BUT, there is very real upside because if he's able to get to make some mechanical changes to improve his command

This is one of those deals that I would like more for another team than for the Sox as Rodon could stand to benefit from a change of scenery. The plus side of this is that Rodon doesnt agree with that and seems to either think hell crack the big league rotation or he's changed his stance about coming from the pen. Maybe a new manager and pitching coach is enough of a change to spark something new with Rodon.

He’s a lot more lenient than Judge Judy or Judge Dredd.

For a completely unrelated player, nonetheless.

If the Sox sign Judge Mathis, it won’t be long before he puts La Russa behind bars.

No, I have a mustache.

If someone is only using batting average for player comps in 2021, I definitely know who the fool is.

How is anyone not excited? We’re coming off a playoff appearance and are loaded with young locked up talent. The doom and gloom around here is baffling.

I don't think this is true but I do agree that they'll be minor league deals. I think a catcher is coming still and possibly Folty and some versatile vet infielder/DH type on a minors deal.

Obviously a small 10 inning sample size, but I thought Collins looked perfectly fine last year. I’m not ruling him out as the backup at all.

Don’t we get some credit here for TA? How many really good all-around catchers are there, in general? Maybe five, seven tops. It’s the most demanding physical position, and really good hitters at that spot like a Mauer, Posey or even Salvador Perez find themselves eventually at 1B/DH. That said, the White Sox have had some high profile misses, like Kurt Brown and now Collins. Before AJ, it seemed we went 10-15 years with a different FA catcher ever year or two. Guess you can also add discovering Omar Narvaez to your list, as well.

Sign Tyler Flowers, trade Zach Collins.

The team was bought in 1981. By 1983, there was the first division title and the first ever 2,000,000 attendance season. Then the team spent almost all of the remainder of the decade under .500. Won the division in 1993, had a good shot at the World Series in 1994. Then the strike came, and the team spent the almost the rest of the decade under .500. Had a nice stretch from 2000-08 with three division titles and a World Series championship. Then from 09-19, had only two winning seasons and didn't come close to the division title. Makes you wonder.

You're not being dramatic; you're 100% on point.

And it's come to this, the inevitable final stage.

For my two cents, always look for an index fund first. Those are going to be the lowest expenses, and they are going to track the market dollar for dollar. While some funds can beat the market on an annual basis, they aren't going to do it on an ongoing basis. It just doesn't happen. Also don't worry too much about YTD returns as of now. With the market correction currently going on, gains for the year have been pretty well wiped out, so that an index being slightly down on the year is to be expected. You are doing a great job of saving for retirement, but I without knowing your financial situation, be sure that you aren't accumulating consumer debt at the same time, otherwise you are giving away future spending power anyways. Pay down your debt by highest interest rate to lowest. Move down your 401k contributions a bit if you need extra cash to do it.

It's a good thing I'm winning the lottery tonight. Otherwise the large drop in my portfolio the last month would be a little concerning!