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If they are getting two top guys they want, just eat the money and be done with it.

I'm at rock bottom with Bulls and Sox fandom. It's sad. I have no excitement. I haven't even pulled up the Pitchers and Catchers count down yet this February.

Yeah. I just think if you get the two top guys you want (no matter who it is because it’s likely 2 position players), might as well eat some of the money. I think he’s kind of risky to carry into the season. Just be done with it.

If Francona really wants him then just get it done. What else did you hire the guy for?

I voted Dodgers but it's Los Angeles teams and LA sports fans generally. Bring USC fans into it too. I'm not so crazy about CSU Northridge either. Don't even talk to me about Pierce College athletics. I can't hate the Chiefs, they're still a Midwestern, small market dominating the league. You kinda like to see it. The 'sportwashing' thing is probably the correct vote but it isn't just the Saudis, it's people like Henry and Rubenstein and Cohen and Ricketts too. Money in sport has always been a problem to me but now the sheer amount of it stands to destroy professional sports.

Well at least we have a couple of Left Handed starting pitchers that we can trade in a couple of years.

Sheesh. Law makes it sound like Montgomery should give basketball a shot.

Harold likes this post. You better pull at that same math for when we acquire Kelenic haha.

Notre Dame

I just don't get it and have no tolerance or patience for it anymore. The door has been slammed shut. Like 4 years ago you could squint and see "competitive offers" and believe we would open the purse when it made sense. Now we've created a team so talent poor that even if the Sox went on a Dodgers like spending spree it would still only propel them to 78-85 wins. I don't think it was their goal of course, but it is disheartening they've created a situation so awful that simply spending money won't solve anything soon. So to talk about sending money out in trades is just lunacy. Only someone dropped on earth yesterday would assume such a thing about JR and the Sox at this point.

Send money? hahaahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahhahaaha.

This system is weird now in that yes, they're absolutely missing high ceiling talent other than the lefties, but they also seem to have more candidates to be position player regulars than the 2017 system. I'd definitely take the 2017 system in terms of high ceiling position players, but one of the things that system was lacking was anyone behind the top few guys, which we've seen the results of. You got down to like prospect 11 and suddenly you're at Zach Collins and thinking "I'm not sure this guy's a big leaguer". You look at Meidroth and you think "ok maybe?" I'd certainly hope they could get at least a couple of position players who stick, even if they're not all stars.

I heard he’s also in the best shape of his life.

How in the world do you not have the Lakers? Reinsdorf doesn't even crack the top 10, because few care outside of Chicago.

Lmao “I wish you a daily diet of prunes for the rest of your life!” Is the kind of energy I like

This is what the White sox organization has done to us. We are left bickering/arguing amongst ourselves about the value/return for star players we are trading away. Jerry, I hope you have constipation for the rest of your life...... you miserable clown.

This is just who Keith Law is. He's a glass half empty guy, but he can usually back it up because he knows what he's doing. The Colson report sounds like what we all knew - he might have trouble sticking at short and he had a bad season where he was too passive. Law is right to question the back injury, too. Who knows how that plays long-term. I'm hopeful due to Colson's rebound at the end of the year, but back injuries can kill careers, so I get the pessimism.

Eliminated before the season even started. Sure makes you want to spend your hard-earned dollar on Jerry’s product, don’t it? 🤣

I actually never said he was a signing.I also mentioned Fajardo by mentioning the 17 yr. old, but not by name. I think it's inconsequential but it's difficult to say whoever you get back for Booser is going to be a better prospect than Fajardo. They will likely be impossible to compare until both either end up in the majors or never do. Relatively speaking pitching is the Sox strength so you're going to see them draw from it once in a while.

Rudy...lol.

One of the main insiders here has been suggesting fair value could be Robert + prospects for Lux…this certainly proves the floor right now is much higher.

Even though I’m not super high on him, I will say it’s nice to see that the Reds were willing to include Arroyo in a Robert trade vs. this idea he basically has little to no value.

Matas might be the real deal. He was already playing well the last 5 games and he went 10 of 10 from the field tonight for 24 points.

For this player at present they wouldnt. However, they would have for Santander and Alonso, both of whom you’ve suggested signing this offseason. I could not tell that this post applied to only one player. For this player, Kim, he CLEARLY does not want a 5 year deal at reduced annual salary because he accepted a short term deal with an opt out after year 1. His goal is to prove he’s a solid player this year or this year and next year and test the free agent market again. Even if you made the full contract offer a lot richer, he wants to hit free agency again so you’d just be increasing your payments if he sucks or is hurt. Furthermore, by signing with the Rays, he gives himself a good chance of playing competitive games this year and a good performance in those games or in the playoffs could make him more money - in Chicago you’d have to pay a year 1 premium because the only way he’d play competitive baseball is if he were traded, which is disruptive as well. This fit is terrible from the players perspective, so you better be shelling out a much higher salary in Y1 and your spread out the payment plan shows you didn’t pay attention to the contract he signed.

Just think he’s a lower ceiling guy and I’d rather aim a bit higher given we’re just kicking off a rebuild. And yes, I’m aware that Crawford slaps the ball a lot and the defense hasn’t come together just yet, but I feel if it all clicks he’s a more impactful player than Arroyo.

With so much regression across the board last year it is hard to have the same prospect optimism as the last rebuild, especially since the offensive guys don't have the ceilings that Yoan, Eloy, and Robert had to start with.

Which makes spending on free agents and even bigger waste of money as this team is even further from contending.

Fans who aren't aggressively angry.

In this case its far more justifiable given his injury history and the risk of him being non-tendered. I just wonder if people are ready for him going while bringing a return weaker than the Cease deal.

Yeah, I can also see that. Kinda like the Cease route

Old acquaintance alert:

But there's only pitchers ahead of him on Pipeline's 2024 list. Burns or Lowder seem to be out of Robert's league.

Yeah, I just listened to the podcast and now I think Wittenmeyer is a dope. He mentioned how the Sox could pay Robert’s entire contract — well, sure they could Gordon, but look at who the owner is. Not.gonna.happen. Also, Wittenmeyer said that this would only be a one-year proposition for the Reds to acquire Robert so they aren’t going to want to pay too much. Huh? Does he not know about Robert’s team options for 2026 and 2027? This report lost all value once you realize Wittenmeyer is clueless.

I’m not a fan of Justin Crawford I’m not opposed to the White Sox eating $$ but they need a much better headliner than Edwin Arroyo to do so.

So there. Dominic Fletcher is #7. We couldn't sign Kim if we wanted to.

To be fair, Colson's 2024 has taken a lot of joy out of the Colson hype

The Red Sox 2029 first round pick might as well just get ready.

The rest of the writeups make sense to me, too. Mason Adams sounds like a quality control pitcher. Nastrini and Iriarte lost velocity, plus Nastrini couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, so I see why they fell. Meidroth has a similar profile to Madrigal so the comp makes sense, and it was more of a "he needs to hit the ball hard so he doesn't turn into Madrigal" than a "he is Madrigal". A 3% barrel rate in AAA is terrible. He needs some more time there to see if he can make more solid contact against AAA pitching. The Jacob Gonzalez writeup is interesting - he faced the best college pitching in the SEC and more than held his own, but can't hack it in the minors, and Law doesn't know why. If he could turn into at least a league average SS that helps dull the impact of Montgomery switching to 3rd, but that seems unlikely now. Hopefully he figures something out during the offseason, otherwise what a wasted pick. The writeup on Zavala is rough, but it's all stuff we heard during the season - bad swing decisions and a bad attitude will tank a career quickly. Hopefully he had a wakeup call.

Yes, I think there is a notable trade this week where the GM sold a guy without a fair return, and that was more a commentary on the GM than on the player. The market right now for Cease is probably about what the White Sox got for him, because he has only 1 year of control left rather than 2 playoff runs worth of control left.

No idea what this means .It's so cloak and dagger. Am I supposed to know what you're talking about ? I think you're saying I'm making excuses for Getz but I'm stumped on what events are happening this week that's proven anything or the mysterious point you think you're making. Cease is on the market again. He hasn't been traded. Why don't you assess the trade market for his services right now and tell me exactly what the Padres should get for him just so I know you can do it not only just after the fact .

I think they've overestimated the Sox chances of making the playoffs.

Doncic's father furious with Mavs for trying to make him a scapegoat...

In my extremely objective opinion, the Titans are the perfect fit.

Raiders are gonna fire Carroll after one year for Deion? Mmk

Zero chance to make the playoffs...sounds about right. But JR's OK with it because he's going to turn another very nice profit.

They're going to eat how much left on his contract? Without Tucker...it really doesn't matter who the manager is for 2026. For who? Vogt? No way Ricketts eats $24 million...and the majority of Cubs fans realistically believe the owner is more responsible than the GM here, not unlike the situation in St. Louis right now.

I'm still ok with what he got for Cease as were many others. The fans expectations were out of whack with what he was worth. The problems was his 1st decent year was 2021 3 bWar, then 2nd in Cy Young 6.4 bWar , followed by 2023s 2.4 Unfortunately he had his worst season in 3 years on the worst team he had pitched for. Also unfortunately the trade keeps looking worse when prospects get hurt or regress and your MLB pitcher rebounds to about middle ground between his 2022 and 2023. So it looks worse.Guys with better track records get more and selling high gets more. Sox were selling low despite peripherals and the market reflected that. And I think there was some loss of velocity also. And I do not blindly stick up for Getz. I think he was in a terrible position, just as the fans are in a terrible position. I can blame the puppet master a lot more than I can blame the puppets. Again unfortunately JR gets to hide while Getz is at the forefront of every move that is made making him the biggest puppet target even though his decisions are always based on the guidelines set by the JR Hated the Fedde trade .You could say Fedde had a better year than Cease bWar 5.6 to Cease 4.2 , little bit better ERA. But probably not many people would say Fedde is more valuable , but he had more value than Getz got for him. Do you want to know the biggest mistake Getz made so far ? The move he didn't make. He should've made trading Robert his top priority before he traded Cease. But once again after that 5 WAR season fans thought he had finally arrived.No way the Sox could get equal value for him. I'd like to see that thread again. But if he had got traded most probably would've thought he didn't get enough. People here referred to him as a superstar. I think I spoke up once and said he wasn't a superstar.Superstars have track records of above average play multiple years in a row. You cannot get greedy and ignore that he was consistently injured up until that year. Trading Robert could've been the best opportunity to get the position prospects the Sox desperately needed. It also might've created a little momentum towards trading Cease. I'll critique myself the same way I critique others. I don't know what kind of offers the Sox got for Robert that off season. But I did know that holding onto Robert was a way bigger risk than holding onto Cease . It sucks when you have to trade a guy at peak value for fans but it sucks worse now that they have to hope that a guy like him doesn't end up the same as Moncada. He'll never get anywhere near that value he had after 2023. He'll need a Crochetian type miracle and some major OF injuries among contenders to recover value.

A Magic 8 Ball has 10 positive answers , 5 negative and 5 neutral. You're just as likely to get the correct answer using that as asking anyone here.

Apparently they are worried that Doncic is fat, lazy, and possibly an alcoholic, which means he may not age well and is a potential risky investment when at a super max cost. They also didn’t really negotiate with anyone else and allowed the Lakers GM to drive the cost down by embracing their fears. Seems like the Mavs’ GM simply overthought things and made what is likely a really bad trade.

The Cease trade looks bad now, but it's still way too early to give up on Thorpe and Zavala. Yeah, Thorpe maxes out at 92, but his MiLB stats are undeniable and his change up is legitimately one of the best individual pitches you'll ever see. If he can stay healthy, his floor is a number 4 innings eater that will flash brilliance. Zavala is 20 years old and has a beautiful, effortless swing and plus, plus plate discipline. Both of them have a legitimate shot at being contributors on good teams. Zavala isn't the type of high ceiling no floor prospect we've featured over the last 20 years. He's a very high floor, disciplined hitter with exceptional fundamentals. Give it a little time and try to have some faith. What's the worst that can happen?