SoxBlanco

This seems most likely to me. If the Sox simply made an offer, they would deny any rumor that a deal was in place (and they'd be telling the truth). If Ozuna likes the offer and tells his family he will fly to the US to complete a physical and sign the deal, it could leak to this Frank Castillo guy.

What do you think the chances of are of Ozuna being a $50M+ bust? Seems like his floor is a solid 2-3 WAR player.

Of course he doesn't know for sure. I respect his opinion and like talking baseball with him. I'm not looking for an official announcement of a deal.

Three questions for you, raBBit: 1. Do you think we sign Ozuna? 2. What percentage chance would you put on the Sox making a trade this week? 3. Do you think Cease could get moved in the right deal?

Ask him this... Did you communicate with Frank Castillo after this report surfaced? Or do you just trust his reporting?

I think it's Cease or Lopez. If we are getting a good starting pitcher, we probably have to give up a major league ready starting pitcher prospect in return. Would Cease, Collins, Walker, Flores come close to landing Snell?

Was Gomez able to speak to Ozuna last night? If so, it seems like it would be pretty easy to shoot down this rumor. If he's sticking with his "I trust Frank Castillo" line, I would guess this is happening.

Good lord, that would be ridiculous. It would also allow us to put all of our focus on pitching for the next couple offseasons.

It's funny, I really didn't want anything to do with Ozuna until this report surfaced. Now after gathering more info, I wouldn't mind it. It's obviously not a perfect move, but if we wait around for the perfect move at every position, we could end up with nothing. I want this to happen. Our offense would receive a huge boost, and I love the Menechino connection.

So to get this thread back on track, what's the latest with Ozuna? He did travel to the US last night, right?

I’m going to guess 4/$64 or 5/$75 if we needed to give the 5th year to get it done now.

If true, I wonder how much Menechino played a part in this. I also wonder if he looked at his swing/approach the last two years and saw something that he feels is correctable to get him back closer to his 2017 numbers.

What do you mean control sucks?!?! Didn’t you watch the video? Every pitch he throws is a strike, AND he throws 100+!!! This guy is the greatest pitcher of all time.

It's at least pretty interesting that some people say it's a horrible trade for the White Sox and some people say they would jump on it right away because we'd have to give up more. Does that mean it's actually a fair trade?

You can just click EDIT and fix any typos/grammar issues that you might have.

Agreed. And if we are worried about this thing dragging out because of Boras, I'd even be ok offering 3/$75M right now. You think he would take that right now? If not, we move on to other options and he might not ever get another offer like that.

What team out there will be so desperate for pitching that they would give Ryu 4 for $110M?

No doubt. We need to go after Ryu now. We should be less scared of an injury compared to other teams because we have Kopech and Rodon coming back. He's actually a perfect fit for us.

I mean, it’s not impossible for Ryu or MadBum to have an equal or better year than Wheeler.

Sox don't offer a free agent the most money: "Just offer the most! Why doesn't RH understand that players will sign wherever the most money is offered?!" Sox do offer a free agent the most money and he signs somewhere else: "Why didn't we offer more?!?! Doesn't RH understand that we need to offer an amount that is even more than something that is already the highest?!?!"

Yep. The productiveness of Kopech and Cease are going to play a HUGE part in our success over the next few years. That obviously would have still been true if we signed Wheeler, but we really need one of those two guys to be a #1 or #2 type pitcher.

I think just the number of innings he has pitched. He has around 1100 more innings than Wheeler, for example.