Leaderboard

Greg’s schtick is stupid. There are thousands of better ways to spend your time.

It wasn't weeks but Shirley wasn't being truthful about that story. They didn't just see that he was off the board and start compiling a new strategy. Kiley McDaniel mocked Kelley at 47 for a reason. I was told that the Sox and Kelley had a pre-draft deal. I didn't find out about it until after he was selected but that's what happened. They knew they were getting Kelley on Wednesday afternoon once the salary demand was met.

Nice move to put the focus on the owners. Good set up for the CBA negotiations.

- Owners don't have to pay minor leaguers, which they long acted is a major expense. Hell, they've cut entire teams. - Owners don't need to do stadium operation costs. - Owners won't open the books - Owners keep proposing the same offer time and time again. They're bad faith negotiators who previously agreed to a deal. They could have possibly made profit if they started sooner, they didn't. This all lies at the feet at the owners.

CBSsports gave us an A. Baseball America called our class one of the five they were most excited about and considered both Crotchet & Kelley as top 15 prospects. Jim Callis considered Kelley one of the top three steals in the entire draft.

You have never engaged in an honest and open discussion. You have never acknowledged anything despite all of your pretending to not understand things that just happened to all fall along a single partisan line. If you ever want to drop the dumb greg act there are plenty of people who will engage you in an open and honest exchange. Until then don't come in here and demand satisfaction on some point while pretending to have been a full intellectual participant in this discussion. The day you drop the greg act, and actually act like the real person you actually are people will treat you with a real level of respect again. Until then, take your demands and stick them with the rest of the trash.

I like to say I take all situations individually and see what makes the most sense. I would say I'm fiscally conservative but not in areas like education. I don't necessarily support the owners in everything but when it comes to the finances it's just common sense. If the league doesn't generate enough revenue to sustain itself, there is no league. It's pretty obvious that there is financial issues. The league will have lost at least 2/3 of its revenue. You can make a valid case that the players shouldn't help the owners. In a normal CBA negotiation that true. However, this isn't normal and financial issues are real.

Huh, but I thought we punted on the last 3 picks and our draft was a waste? I could've sworn I heard how we did this draft all wrong, surely you must be mistaken.

https://mlb.nbcsports.com/2019/01/07/a-warning-about-major-league-baseballs-record-revenues/ This article reminded me that if baseball had just taken the players offer of 114 games at the onset, they'd probably have made enough money to not operate at a loss this season and build goodwill towards the future. But instead of not only can the owners not see the forest through the trees, they're just deciding to burn the forest to the ground.

The Wynn is opening up their buffet next week. Head to Vegas, take all the selfies you want....even stick you balls in the jello. Will that cheer you up?

That was going to happen regardless.

This. The owners are just full of shit. Always have been.

Talk about exploiting a situation to abuse the worker. Owners ought to be ashamed of themselves. Manfred has got to go, this guy is ruining baseball.

You dont need to listen to the owners figure it out for yourself. Revenues last year were 10 billion. Fans brought in roughly 3 billion. That leaves 6 billion from all other revenue likeTV, advertising, etc. If they play 1/2 of the games that another 3 billion loss. Hence the 2/3 loss. Its not hard. The big wildcard is the playoffs. That's why the owners have different scenarios for if the playoffs happen or not.

I know it's just a typo, but now I'm imagining "James Fox won't waive no trade clause for White Sox trade."

Maybe if owners hadn't insisted on paying minor leaguers poverty wages all these years, it'd be easier to listen them to cry poor.

Baseball owners and good faith. Surely you jest.

All unions renegotiate based on extreme circumstances. Our union had long negotiations to change our agreement based on the changes in the academic year. Its bargaining in good faith when circumstances change.

So for all of the posts directly to you and trying to educate you on your "questions" and general ignorance that you completely ignored, not to mention the garbage conspiracy that you have spread on a regular basis, now you are going to come in here and personally call someone else out? You have some nerve.

I absolutely love Crochet but I'm not nearly as high on Kelley as so many others are. Cole Wilcox was taken in the 3rd round. I would have much rather have him over Kelley. They also could have had two high upside HS pitchers like Ben Hernandez, Kyle Harrison or Carter Baumler for what they paid Kelley. We'll see how it works out but like I said this draft was so deep with high upside players I would have liked them get as many as possible.

Nope. He's signing.

Show me one post where someone argued the opposite

Excellent post. I root for the humans with you.

I'd love for you to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of protestors marching close together and still breaking social distancing rules has not helped. I just wish people were fair and blamed all factors. For some reason the protestors get a pass. Just be fair and blame all factors please. I'll probably never get to eat a delicious buffet again because of this. And I'd like to blame a whole lot of people not just certain folks.

The governors are basically begging protesters to get tested. They have OPENLY called for that and admitted they are scared due to the large amounts of people. It’s a double swan at the moment for better or worse.

Demands? That deserves a chuckle. I've never made any demands on here. I just happen to think the peaceful protests and the unpeaceful ones are the biggest reason for the spike and the governors offend me by never mentioning it or even acknowledging it.

Cespedes won't be in NY after this season.

This is much worse for the White Sox though. They really needed expanded playoffs.

^^^

You miss it every time someone mentions it. @Balta1701 mentioned it last time you brought it up, I believe. not that it matters, why does their acknowledgment of it make a damn bit of difference? It doesn't.

There is a de facto salary cap. In fact, it is one thing the union knows they got played.They gain nothing because crying poor has worked for years. The media has bought it, and held their water, yet they somehow come up with the coin to pay a James Shields $20 million a year.

The question is why won’t they open their books if they have nothing to hide and making money owning a baseball team is extremely difficult? It isn’t about the public seeing it. We know the answer.

Owners agreed to pay in March. To renege is disgraceful. Pay the players what you agreed already.

My theory had more to do with those directly on the owners side, basically defending them against the players. One can view the reply's in all of the main tweets on this saga where there are people distinctively and aggressively supporting the owners over the players. I think your stance on here (from the discussion in the last page) is pretty level headed. I'm still 100% on the players side, but I do agree that both sides have room to improve. This debate is an interesting direct relationship to ones political beliefs from sports.

1. Given that a substantial fraction of the revenue comes from the playoffs, and the playoffs would still happen and could even be expanded, I think the first bolded item is wrong. It's probably wrong based on the Forbes numbers. But of course, more open books could prove you right, and that would make the players much more willing to make a deal. 2. The second bolded item is missing one hugely important factor; all the other things that go into running a game don't need to happen. You're not paying extra cops to handle traffic. You're not paying security. You're not paying to clean up the ballpark every day. You don't have to bring in a huge amount of food every day. Yes that costs revenue, but the non-player expenses are dramatically lower.

I've heard the White Sox, Marlins and Mets for Cespedes. The Sox have the most pool space. They can't trade for me. MLB isn't allowing the trading of pool space for this period and next one. They announced that during this shutdown.

They should have thought of that before they made the bad deal.

In retrospect from the discussion, I'm really not on the owners side. I've stated before that I can see both points of view. It's just that so many others are so anti-owner that I find myself attempting (and failing) to explain their point of view. No owners are going to run their team as a deficit for any length of time. Just not going to happen, especially with a new CBA coming up. People can talk about the billionaires should take the hit but they arent in business to lose money. Even if they sell the team and make their money the next owner will be the same. In the end it really doesnt matter to me. I love the game and if the 2 sides are too stubborn and idiotic to come to an agreement, I will mourn the loss of baseball this year. However, I will go back next year as I enjoy watching the game regardless of how much the player or owners make and regardless of how many other fans are there. I remember the days of the late 80s when it was just me and a friend in right field talking to ivan Calderon because there was no one else there. It was still baseball

Oh this reminds me that you have a dislike for business owners. We had a discussion a month or two on HF, right? But to me this is different than the real world. Because just about all of these people are filthy rich 0- both players and owners. the exceptions being the young players that havent been paid yet. I don't see why both sides can't meet in the middle. And for proposals, the owners are offering plans paying out similar dollars, but much different lengths of schedules. If the players are concerned they are risking their health, then one would think they would jump at the lower game total plans, right? Less games is less risk. But they want the opposite. How come? Oh we all know why, don't we?

There were 160 players drafted this year. Previous years 1200+. That leaves a lot of guys out there. I suppose one would have to look at the good players in the majors today and see how many were drafted after the 5th round to realize there are some All Stars who were not drafted. Who finds them? What do the Sox do ? If they plan on going heavy into IFA do they make a token effort to sign the UDFA's out there fora a pittance ? If you can sign 50 guys that's only $1M isn't it ? Sox need to go full bore after the best UDFA's unless since they are actually free agents and 2 or more clubs want the same player can they actually negotiate for higher than the 20K ? Seems like they should be able to otherwise it's not free agency . There isn't a cap on what you can spend on UDFA 's ? Isn't it that you can sign an unlimited number of guys at 20K ?

Yes it's better than fine . It's mighty fine ! 2 high upside pitchers, one college, one High School , one lefty, one righty . Both considered among the best Meyer , Lacy, Hancock, Detmers, Abel, Crochet ,Kelley those might be the best pitchers to be drafted. 7 names and we got 2 of them. Sure some will fail and others not listed here will step up, but going into the draft those 7 stood out most. Kelley should eventually pitch in the halfway to St. Patrick's Day game.

I absolutely love this draft. They hauled in 2 of the best arms in the draft. I love it. I would trade my 2nd 3rd and 4th picks for another top 15 pick every time. And the great thing about the MLB draft, is that you don't even need a trade partner, just a willing player. In a way it is similar to what they did last year, except they traded for basically 2 second round picks. I love it. Get as much high end talent as possible.

The above charts are based on deaths/per million. R0 is absolutely is real thing: Countries behaved radically differently, however, there was little difference in the R value. Interesting observation from a well-known statistician discussing the impact of the "lockdown" in the UK: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.02090 Firstly, Sweden absolutely failed in protecting their most vulnerable populations (a mistake that has been made throughout the world, notably in the US). Deaths related to LTC facilities are over 70%. Sweden frequently concedes this failing; this is the "admission" of their top epidemiologist . Regarding the counts compared to their nordic neighbors, this can be related to their particularly inclusive Covid counting metrics. Sweden counts any death as a Covid death if there has been a positive test within 30 days. Literally any death from pneumonia to falling down the stairs would be a counted as a Covid death. However, their neighbors, such as Finland, are not even counting deaths outside of a hospital setting: https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/17567-finland-s-coronavirus-deaths-rise-closer-to-100-actual-number-could-be-much-higher.html. Surely, we should see a noticeable spike in death compared to their nordic neighbors: Sweden is actually 4.5% below their baseline, Norway is 9.00% below their baseline, Denmark is 2.7% below their baseline, and Finland is actually 10.6% above their baseline. Again, this does not demonstrate that Sweden performed well with Covid, they failed many of their citizens with a disease that is very dangerous to a portion of the population. However, they don't have a noticeable increase in death compared to their neighbors. It serves as evidence that the "lockdowns" had no correlation to the impact of Covid. Norway has somewhat admitted they overreacted: Regarding the nature.com publishing: They effectively assume a high growth rate, assume infinite exponential growth, and then assume that attenuation is because of actions without any casual link or empirical measures; there is no null hypothesis. You could apply the same assumptions to the annual flu and you would see the same drop without any of these actions. There is no reason to presume correlation or linearity in disease growth without non-pharma intervention. They are claiming that because the disease did not sustain steady growth forever that the actions their model claims should stop it must have stopped it.

I like getting whatever avenue gets us the best chance of getting an elite major league level player. Those guys cost money and aren't readily available. You can cheaply fill a roster with good players to surround them and those players are available all the time in FA/trades

I think Theo made some moves with the Cubs (specifically the Gleyber deal) which he wouldn't have made under other circumstances, but did due to all the pressure on the Cubs to win the WS. The next time around in that scenario, I don't think they make that move. Also they really didn't have the kind of Sale/Q/Eaton/DRob+Kahnle package of talent to dump (and Abreu also which was never done) when the new regime took over, so I think the Cubs started with less and were under pressure to empty the cupboards a bit faster. Overall I think they have done a great job obviously, I mean they won a WS and have been division champs mostly and legit contenders every year. We are hoping to equal that and it's absurd to hope to better that. We can't try to better it until we get at least 1 title first. But anyway, in a game built around pitching that always favors pitching (provided Manfred is kept under control) you really can never have enough, because you can never have enough backup starter, back-end relievers, or trade chips.

Y2Jimmy says the Sox staff think Crochet is a stud. You have to trust your people and Fulmer aside, the Sox haven't shown me anything that says we can't trust them on pitching. Given Crochet's upside it's a no-brainer to take him if that's what they think. Kelley, same thing. Given the upside, if he's their guy, that is great. On paper this was an attempt to gain the kinds of talent that really don't become available to you in a trade unless you are dealing the centerpiece in a major blockbuster, and the kind of talent that you don't see in FA until they're at an age where you're half-scared to sign them and stuck looking at $15-20M per plus regardless. I always want to see this kind of strategy. I wish they could have gotten at least 1 more player but I'm very happy overall.

I don’t think he’s talking about getting both. He’s saying if Crochet comes in at slot, then we could have had Abel/Kelley or Howard/Kelley, and he would prefer one of those combos.

Feels like they are tickling your brain.

No that ship has sailed

Alexei may not have been a "Very good" player, but he was absolutely a "Good" player for a number of years. Alexei also had the potential to be a very good to great player, so not reaching that potential was disappointing, but he was absolutely a fine player to have on our roster. If Tim Anderson had a career as productive as Alexei's we would be content. Not thrilled or delighted, but absolutely content.