WestEddy

Lynn and Grandal were gets, at the time. The propeller-head stat-geeks loved Grandal almost as much as they loved Tyler Flowers' framing. And yes, most free agent signings don't turn out to have every year be an MVP season. Adding Wheeler and Harper to Lynn and Grandal would have been great. (Keuchel was a fallback after Wheeler's wife chose Philly, as I remember.) I'm guessing JR or KW pulled the plug on Harper.

Now Yamamoto's going to have to go to some pro shop and buy his own Rams' jersey with his name on it.

It's probably not them, it's Getz. He's the one creating the wait for Yamamoto to shake out so he has a clearer set of bidders.

I'm guessing Rick Hahn stopped by the offices to say hi at an appropriate interval after being let go, to tell Getz about this one clause in this one contract he forgot to put in the system calendar.

Elijah Evans wrote an article about possible trade packages for Cease. I think he also crowd-sourced on Twitter, a bit. https://www.justbaseball.com/mlb/the-five-best-dylan-cease-mock-trades-for-the-chicago-white-sox/ If you don't want to read the whole thing, here's his 5 teams (he doesn't think the Dodgers will pursue Cease):

Whenever I see that someone is from Chicago, I immediately Wiki them to see where they were born or grew up. She's vaguely, 'north side'. I want street addresses and pictures, dammit!!

Or at least something from Jones/Solometo/Chandler. The article seems like "let's send a bunch of our projects for the top trade piece on the market". I also have a feeling about Pittsburgh. We played the same game with Quintana. Austin Meadows and Mitch Keller were the headliners being bandied about. The interest never went beyond writers throwing out names.

MLB seems to have dropped their prospects link off of the main menu. You have to go to teams/players to back into the top 100. https://www.mlb.com/prospects/pirates/ https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/PIT/2023.shtml

Something called The Wrightway Sports Network wrote an article just throwing names against the wall. He seems to be focused on guys who already have pitched in the bigs and started their clocks. I don't know the Pirates' system, but some of the names thrown around (by some podcast nobody) seem to be big leaguers (Connor Joe?), who I can't imagine Getz being interested in. https://twsn.net/2023/12/the-pittsburgh-pirates-need-to-trade-for-dylan-cease

"Tracy" Lourdes Gurriel signs with Arizona for 3/42. Opt out after 1 year, $14m team option in 4 year. I would think this makes Eloy look expensive at $13 mil and a $3 mil buyout.

Nightengale says the White Sox are sad the Dodgers traded Pepiot to the Rays. Also says Atlanta and Baltimore are favorites for Cease.

Thanks for posting. I think this is a regular rut that Reinsdorf falls into with this team. Late 90's, I always imagined that Reinsdorf, Ron Schueler and Terry Bevington would sit on a conference call and b**** about ungrateful Sox fans. None of them ever seemed happy, motivated, or eager to mix it up with the hoi polloi.

I agree with this. If the best 3 are pitchers, they can certainly be flipped right over to a team looking for that in exchange for their 2B/OF LHH prospect.

My first thought on this thread was "Thou doth protest too much"

Well, duh. Any guy who's married is adamant about not being the decision maker.

Odd rumblings of Jesus Luzardo and Framber Valdez being looked at by teams needing pitching. I'm wondering if that's just smoke being thrown up by teams seeing if they can create the illusion of more market supply to bring down the price of Cease.

Isn't this what happened in 2013? All the starters tanked, and they didn't replace them.

I don't know if this string is the best place for this, but I just read an interesting article on Fangraphs about how horrible the White Sox were with roster depth. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/how-not-to-build-for-depth/ Spoiler alert: They had no one to plug in from the minors, their waiver churn didn't work, and they just ended up playing guys who weren't ready.

Touki Tousant would probably get an Erick Fedde deal right now.

Glad I got to see games in Clinton, Burlington and Cedar Rapids before they downsized/rebuilt.

I don't want to pay $150.00 for the season, and I don't understand the blackout rules, so I'd be pretty angry to get the package, then find out I can't watch certain games, depending on where I am. I'm too lazy to try to figure out the best way to give MLB my money right now. Especially with a "free" alternative.

My limited understanding of the deal is if Ohtani plays 2024, he's paid $2 million, and owed $68 million from the Dodgers, payable in 2034. If he opts out next off-season, I wouldn't think he's owed $612 million (68 x 9) by the Dodgers.

This all just seems like a floating opt-out for Ohtani. He wants to play for the Dodgers. If there's a change in ownership, the opt-out just ensures him meetings with the brass for them to pitch their vision. And if new ownership decides to "rebuild", they'd most probably want Ohtani to opt out, and take his deferred $68 million payments elsewhere.

Maybe he can go to Tampa Bay for Glasnow in a payroll swap.

On an Orioles' board that is similar to this, a person named "interloper" says: And on Twitter, there's a lot of "Just go out and trade for Cease, already" from various other teams' fans. I think Cease will be traded, and I believe he will bring back a Chris Sale type deal (2 top 100, 2 middling prospects). https://forum.orioleshangout.com/forum/2-orioles-talk/