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I was told the ask from BAL is still Cowser, Norby +...but as of this morning Elias is balking just like at last year's deadline.

Something to keep in mind with the Braves is that they never leak stuff. This feels more like the Sox using them for leverage.

This is what we’ve been reduced to? Debating the relative merits of Bevington vs LaRussa? welcome to Soxdom….

Here ya go, sickos!

Sure starting to sound like 2 Top 100 prospects is floor not the ceiling.

I get that teams love their top prospects but you gotta give to get. There shouldn't be 3 "untouchables" in the Orioles farm system for 2 years of a Cy Young caliber pitcher.

I don't think any team that can afford Robert's price would want to pay that price

If there are 60 starting pitchers better than Dylan Cease in MLB, than the talent level in the league is absurd. I'm basically arguing against the notion that he's not a top of the rotation starter. Even in his "down" season last year, he was 18th in fWAR, ahead of Burnes, Verlander, and Castillo.

@Chicago White Sox will like this....Hjerstad is the left handed savage he wanted from BAL. I feel Jimmy wouldn't throw that out there unless he heard something was going on. They still need to add Ortiz to the equation and maybe Hall (now that he rebounded later in the season) or Povich, but I have my doubts Elias will go for the third piece and he may not even go for Ortiz as the 2nd piece, but BAL is the best match by far. We need positional talent.

Packaging bad deals with Robert while already slashing payroll would actually be the death knell for the franchise.

Cease is worth at least a top 50 guy, plus another top 100 guy, and then another couple a ball lottos. You sure as s%*# hold out for at least that return. If you have to wait until next summer, you wait. His value isn't going to decrease in that time, and at worst it will stay the same, with a good chance of increasing. If you can restock with 4-5 top 100 guys (including Montgomery) maybe you can squint and see a decent team in 2025 with the right FA signings.

Noticing a trend, what are they hiding under those things?Untrustworthy. Lance and keuchel are particularly funny, I guess it’s the phantom napper’s fault he nearly set the record for home runs given up. I think the highest hr/9 for qualified starters ever.

It sure sounds like Giolito didn't want to trash the Sox. He's a nice guy and probably didn't want to burn any bridges. But I'm not sure that means he necessarily wants to sign here.

Too soon for jokes about Chicago players and their moms. I think we've all had enough of that this week lol

the b in bWAR stands for Baseball-Reference the f in fWAR stands for FanGraphs They calculate them slightly differently. FanGraphs uses FIP whereas BR uses RA9, so FanGraphs isn't gonna penalize a pitcher for some horrendous fielding.

Thats interesting I wouldn't mind both Gio and Flaherty on one year deals.

I'm a bit worried about the Kjerstad vs Cowser thing being the next Moncada vs Devers thing and the Sox ending up with the wrong highly and similarly ranked top prospect from a team.

@Y2Jimmy0 Are they deep in talks with the O's? I'd be over the moon if they got Kjerstad and Hall in the package.

No pressing reason to move Robert right now short of a ludicrous offer. With four more seasons of control it may be hard to get fair value for him.

Don't like the Braves being involved or getting it done "before" the Winter Meetings. Be patient.

mmmmmm.. Rumors are like a drug i never wanna give up.

The remaining amount owed on his contract.

Winter meetings are next week, we'll be ok.

More like Jerry wants that money reinvested into his wallet.

Not sure I see Atlanta being the preferred trade destination, unless the Sox are hell bent on adding pitching to the system I really think a template of the Luis Castillo trade return, plus a little bit more considering the additional 20 or so Cease starts a club would get vs. the season and a half of control Castillo had at the time. Mariners receive RHP Luis Castillo Reds receive SS Noelvi Marte (premium consensus top 30 MLB prospect, #23 MLBPipeline - deal headliner) SS Edwin Arroyo (When dealt had a .899 OPS in A ball at age 19, rising prospect now ranked #57 on MLBPipeline - co headliner) RHP Levi Stoudt (has not panned out so far, but was considered to have backend starter upside) RHP Andrew Moore (lottery relief prospect)

Imagine the savings we could get with Danny Duffy and Brad Keller!

As always with the Yankees....I hope it doesn't work out for them.

Yes, I agree with this. Starter of game 1 is a meaningless label. Buehrle had the better numbers on the 2005 team, but Contreras was the hot hand, and thus, started all 3 game 1s. Cease, with 2 cheap years of control remaining, his near-Cy Young pedigree, his reliability and talent ceiling, presents as the best starting pitcher situation available right now. And he's going to command a huge return.

I don't disagree. My point is that, to the greater argument that seems to be happening, Cease is no worse than 3rd best on a very good staff. Every team doesn't have a "very good" rotation. He'd easily be the ace of a third of MLB teams, without even looking.

Eloy has played at DH for over a full season and has not performed. 182 Games, .739 OPS There is nothing elite about that. He has nearly twice as many home runs as a left fielder (55 vs. 30) over 51 more games. He is not cut out to DH, does not want to play DH, and his poor attitude about the role is one of the things that need to change if he is going to last in the MLB into his 30s, because he cannot field and cannot stay healthy attempting to field.

i don't think that's fair, he said no worse than 2-3 "on a good staff". I think that's how most people discuss being a 2. Certainly a number of baseball staffs have 5 pitchers better than the white sox current number 2. I do think that's probably what I'd say for Dylan. At his best he can be a 1, but at his worst he still shows up to pitch and strikes a lotta boys out. That is not common.

The hill that Cease isn't a top of the rotation starter, since 2021: 8th in fWAR 1st in games started 4th in K/9 22nd in FIP - so it could be better, but Snell is 21st and Gallen is 23rd 15th in wins, despite being on the Sox 20th in HR/9, ahead of Gallen, Rodon, Montgomery, Ohtani, etc. and just behind Bieber at 19th.

Flaherty and Giolito would be great gets. Potential QO if they pitch really well, OR if they pitch really well trade deadline pieces. We will suck anyways so if they suck, who cares.

I think there's a decent chance Gio comes back on a 1 yr prove it deal. Get back with Katz and bring his buddy Flaherty here and they figure s%*# out. They both put up good seasons and get paid next year.

Maybe you have a misunderstanding of how most interviews work. Usually it's a controlled situation where the person agrees to be interviewed as long as the interviewer doesn't put the interviewee on the hot seat about anything controversial. No player in their right mind really wants to bash anyone while they are still capable of earning a paycheck. That can come back to bite you in your ass . It's the Bull Durham school of how to speak to the media.

Love Gio, seems like a great guy, pretty much the only ball player whose interviews I'll watch. I watched some video last year featuring him and Blake Snell and Snell seems like the biggest moron alive whereas Gio seemed cool, charismatic and intelligent. Cool that he's still living in Chicago and welcomed the idea of coming back. The bit about Ohtani is more interesting than what he said about the Sox."the pitching was good when the hitting was bad and vice versa. we didn't click" snooze...but Shohei sleeps 14 hours a day? fascinating. wish these podcast guys actually knew how to conduct an interview and asked something more specific than "why did you guys lose so much?"

Team is going to suck next year with or without him. Trade him.

Since all is quiet on the hot stove, I figured I'd talk about some TV shows. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple+ is a lot of fun. More character-driven than the movies, but each episode has a monster or two showing up. And the production is superb; much more like a big budget movie than a show. A Murder At The End of The World on Hulu is a very good mystery. The pace is relatively slow, but the building of the mystery and character development are great. The new season of Fargo on FX is good so far. The reviews and write-ups on it say it's a return to form, and I'd agree it's more like the movie and first season. Good story-telling with quirky characters. The Fall of The House of Usher on Netflix was another winner form Mike Flanagan. More a drama with a bit of supernatural than his other shows, it was filled with outstanding performances (especially from Bruce Greenwood). Think Succession with a ghost or two.

The Dodgers weren't going to start him over Kershaw this past year, despite Kershaw's postseason struggles. And they normally would have had Buehler and Urias starting as well, not to mention the injured Gonsolin and May (will give you Dylan Cease over Bobby Miller). Miami was without Alcantara, who's clearly their #1 despite a relatively down season for him statistically. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if the team that acquires Cease (and he puts up another 4-4.50 ERA season) is actually going to start him in Game 1 in the post-season...ASSUMING THEIR #1-2-3 guys are unavailable for various reasons, lol. The only time Cease has really performed as completely reliable and trustworthy TOR/ace starter was 2022.

Versus the guy who has like a 25% chance of being healthy come October? What point are you actually trying to make here?

It’s gotta be the O’s. Outside of Dalton Rushing I really don’t want anything the Dodgers could be offering. O’s, Rangers, Rays, or Phillies for me in that order, I understand you’d like pitching for pitching but I just don’t trust any position player in the Sox system to ever amount to anything so go get them from another team instead.

Exactly why I want them not to rush this, let more teams get involved.

Not only that, Glasnow is owed more in 24 than Cease will make in 24 and 25 combined. Perhaps by as much as like $5M.

Terrible comp as Cease has an extra year, and he also didn’t have the health issues those two had last year

To add to this... it would cost money to update.

Bring on the youth! Trade, trade, trade.

I hate to break it to you, but intentional tanking or not, this team is going to be brutally bad in 2024, with or without Cease. Given that JR won’t spend his way out of this mess, and the farm is a barren wasteland, what alternative is there? Doing nothing or adding a few washed up stopgaps in the name of “not tanking” is hardly a sound fix for this mess.

Kjerstad or Cowser + Ortiz is really the obvious solution here, it’s just a matter of it Baltimore will stop prospect hugging and give them up.

I prefer not to have a full-time DH. If you have someone like Robert who maybe needs a couple days not in the field you can keep his bat in the lineup. Or the other guys. Keeps everybody more fresh.