nrockway

Stroman declined a $21mil option, has injury concerns and also exploded in the second half. These guys are getting paid, or at least the potential reward is worth the risk. I can't imagine giving up 27 runs in 26.2 innings and then saying "no" to 20 million dollars.

pitching seems like the way to go in the rule 5 draft this year. there are some solid dudes that are worth a look, certainly more interesting than Padilla. maybe Banks and Lambert have some trade value and could be moved before the 6th to clear another slot. I'd stick with Touki. I bet if they were targeting bats, Remillard would be off the 40 man roster.

I think it purely comes down to Benetti talking to the media about how signing an extension was "kind of a pain." He talks a lot and Amin doesn't. Also think Benetti is better at his job than Amin, I really can't stand Bulls broadcasts since Funk retired and will try my best to listen to the other team's. Stacey has become unbearable, hawking his hot sauce and his podcast. Amin just kowtows to him. Doesn't help that the team is in a worse position than the Sox are. Frankly, I don't like having "national" guys as broadcasters. They're seemingly more concerned about not pissing off their bosses at Fox or other team's fanbases than they are about rooting for the home team, which is logical from their perspective. I'd rather have a homer than the best of the best. I can look at Baseball-Reference or Fangraphs or otherwise go on the internet to talk about advanced stats or whatever. I want a homer in the booth. Both guys see a close call and say "well let's go to the replay and get the whole picture, we can't really say". Wrong. the call needs to go in our favor every time and when it doesn't, it's refball. Make fun of Kwame Brown's tiny hands too. Amin's best moment was when he went after Grayson Allen for several minutes calling him a dirty player when Allen kinda just made a hardnosed basketball play that wasn't dirty in the slightest, just physical. That was the first and last time I ever saw him stand up for a Bulls player and Allen is an easy target since his days at Duke.

how do you know about soft contact? do they have statcast in the carolina league or at the ole miss park? he hit 40 home runs in 800 plate appearances in college, that seems like a larger sample size than 30 games in A ball. he changed his swing as a junior and hit for 60 points higher batting average but dropped his home run rate. one might expect a 21-year-old will continue to develop and find the right approach. who were you taking instead? I would've wanted Bradfield maybe, or Nimmala but they were never taking a high schooler, but Gonzalez was not a bad choice. compare to Brice Matthews and Brayden Taylor, neither one will play shortstop in the MLB and are dubiously better hitters.

why was it a mistake to draft him? 150 plate appearances in RK-A? left-handed bat with plus power who walks a lot and might actually stick at SS. give the kid a chance.

Can they unload more salary in the deal? Boegarts or Manny? I could see both teams going for that. Their prospects are nothing special imo but Volpe, Peraza, Dominguez, Thorpe isn't too bad.

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.

I mean, what kind of person leaves his job and then trashes the organization and his former coworkers publicly? true pro. you should listen to the bbc some time. there are ways to ask difficult questions respectfully and get interesting answers. you make my point, he said nothing interesting and most journalists are wimps and bad at their jobs.

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?"

I doubt Cease gets traded before Ohtani signs, maybe Yamamoto too. Let's say the Cubs somehow sign Ohtani, the Cardinals might conclude that Cease isn't the answer to winning the division and might want to stick with their prospects. After both guys sign, other teams might get desperate and drive up Cease's value. Red Sox, for example, could probably use Cease and have several prospects that could help us. They'd also probably want (and be able) to resign him. Unless there's some slam dunk deal from a team with no hope for either one of them (Orioles), just wait a month or two.

Yeah seems wiser to keep him for now and trade at the deadline. He’ll also only be owed about $10-15mil at that point which seems easier to stomach (or retain).

I'm obsessed with Masyn Winn. kind of slow to groundballs, but 80 grade arm. some analysts suggested his 'rushed' throws might draw first basemen off the bag, but that seems to me like Vaughn's biggest strength as a first baseman, scooping bad throws. Good fit. I think Cease could be enough to get him, but I'd risk throwing Ramos into the deal.

Pauly D on the South Side? He was already here!

I'm going with $115 mil max. subtract Cease's ~$10mil (can you retain the salary if he's traded before arbitration hearings? I don't think so), add about $2mil in pre-arb contracts from that deal, puts the projected payroll at about ~$110m. I tend to think we'll roll with Perez/Lee at catcher and that there's enough infield depth to avoid re-signing Elvis or a similar player. I don't see any point in spending on pitching, there are 13+ guys who are at least AAAA quality without Cease, unless you really want to spend 8 or 9 mil on a guy like Hyun-Jin Ryu or Carrasco. I wouldn't. Could possibly add someone in the Rule 5 draft too. Probably just need some outfield depth. Haseley was DFA'd today to add DeJong, could see Remillard being DFA'd for that purpose. But who to add? I wouldn't mind adding Kiermaier as a super-sub or to even start in RF but that seems very unlikely. Who else is really available? Someone of Trayce Thompson's caliber at $1-5mil. Or add someone in the Rule 5 draft. I bet they'd really love to get under $100mil. But will any team be willing to take on the majority of Moncada's salary?

You're right, the division is up for grabs, the Brewers will certainly be worse and I had a dream (prophecy) that Bellinger will go home and sign with the DBacks on a giant deal (or I read it 'rumored' somewhere but can't where. I'm going with vision). Their position players are running out of time to do anything. Might as well go all in the next two years. Still, I don't think they'd want to part with Winn who is probably starting at short next season. He's the main guy I'd want back, fits perfectly at 2B on the Sox or realistically at SS with Montgomery moving to 3B. depends on Ramos I guess.

looks like a fair deal. too bad, was still hoping we could get Winn and Hence out of them

I'd be looking at the guys the Dodgers couldn't protect. Joel Ibarra comes to mind, great stuff but no control. Which other teams have loaded 40 man rosters, ie no space to protect guys?

Overpay for lee jung-hoo and I’ll be happy. Offer him at least $100m/5, well higher than benintendi or yoshida. Risk worth taking for a 25-year-old whose game may or may not translate (great contact, dubious pop). Is this the free agency discussion thread?

IDK it depends what lEaDeRsHiP costs but vet leadership shouldn't be ignored, especially a guy that gives the boss legitimacy (Grifol). depends if Quero joins the MLB roster this season, which I kind of doubt. there's a point to be made that "team chemistry" is derived from team performance, but this team will be a loser next season and there's still young guys that need to stay focused for 162 games.

Sorry for the delay, I am traveling and sort of forgot about this post. Very much appreciate your knowledge and specific insight into this issue. I lived in Berkeley for a bit and thought the Howard Terminal site was a perfect place for a ballpark and fit perfectly within the comprehensive redevelopment of that area; and despite some of those concessions you mention, I thought Oakland was getting fucked over just "giving away" the land to the A's. I hope they can find a better use for it, but my (biased) opinion is that a ballpark fit perfectly there. I was under the impression that the A's were too cheap to pay for environmental remediation or otherwise deal with California's regulatory environment (which, in some ways, is absurd and unwarranted and only the biggest corporations can comply with it...such as the A's). It doesn't surprise me that a California corporation would want to move its operations to Nevada. I assume Fisher is a logical person and stands to make more money from the move than if he stayed in Oakland. The East Bay is a giant market but the team did very little to ingratiate itself to its residents. My dad is from the East Bay and is a Giants fan because he was a teenager when the A's arrived, but his loyalty didn't change and I don't think the team did anything to actually foster a fanbase beyond having "Oakland" in their name. They could have and they still could, why not market the team like "hard hat and lunch pail", it's a similar ethos to Chicago and I think the two cities are very comparable, especially when you compare 'south side/north side' to 'Oakland/San Francisco'. There are two giant demographics in Chicago that live predominantly on the south (and west) side that the team could actually try to appeal to. Winning in the 70s is one thing, but a baseball team is a civic institution that should fill a larger role in the community. There's a lot that a baseball team could do for a city like Oakland to, not only ingratiate itself and develop a fanbase, but actually do something good in the city and region. I worry about the Sox for a similar reason. Although we have a longer history, the Sox do nothing on the south side and never addressed the demographic shift and so there's a giant market of potential baseball fans if they tried to do something about it. The diamond near my house was built by the Cubs and have their logos all over it. Why didn't the Sox do that? The street has numbers in the name. It seems like the perfect storm to move from Illinois to Tennessee if the city doesn't give them a sweetheart deal to redevelop that entire swathe of land around 35th/Shields or take over Soldier Field and develop Northerly Island or the former US steel site (a great location for a ballpark IMO).

Seby's defensive prowess (which is good) doesn't balance out his useless bat imo. 47 OPS+ is fucking terrible. seems like Seattle just wanted to save a couple bucks, swapping out Saurez for Urias. That franchise is as hopeless as the Sox in a similar market, larger in the context that they aren't playing second fiddle to a different team.

Hey guys, I'm in Arizona for a couple of weeks and wondering if there's any winter ball to watch. Unfortunately just missed the fall league, but is there any baseball going on in any of these complexes in the Phoenix metro? Thanks!

his FIP was as god awful as his ERA, ostensibly because he gave up so many home runs. Is 2.2 HR/9 the worst ever for a guy who pitched at least 150 innings? Lance almost broke Blyleven's record and Burt pitched 90 more innings. but yes, TA is not a very good defender relative to other shortstops...apparently that was up for debate.

Ohtani isn't going to the Cubs, there are just 10 million people in the metro area and sizeable percentage of them will read an article that makes their team and city look good...or bad. TBH I don't appreciate how these articles that are essentially forum posts get published. It's basically just a summary of some teams in big markets rosters followed by "Shohei Ohtani is a good player who can both pitch and hit and will help a team." thrilling analysis.

This is my point. Every team will do this from here on out because real estate development is more profitable than owning a baseball team is. I'd like to do more research into this, but I'm sure the Las Vegas A's are planning the same thing. Off hand, the area surrounding their planned suburban site in Paradise, NV looks primed for redevelopment. I wish city and state governments were less lazy and developed the sites themselves If the Sox stay in town, I suspect they will do the same thing to 35th/Shields, Soldier Field, the US Steel South Works site, around the United Center. That will be the reason the Sox stay in town and not move to any other city, that they will be given carte blanche to develop an area because, logically, this is the only way cities can sustain themselves nowadays; property taxes from businesses that serve exclusively yuppies. I personally think it's a poor example of urban planning and I've met some of the bozos who make decisions at DPD and they're definitely on the side of the billionaires and not the constituents that the mayor vests power in them to serve. Not related to this topic, but maybe the city could incentivize high-skilled manufacturing jobs like Germany and Japan do. It's a different mode of tax revenue that actually creates something. I think I could also make the point that this sort of development correlates with increased crime as well. New York was able to effectively neoliberalize the 5 boroughs and push criminal activity to the fringes, to Yonkers, to Newark. Thanks, Rudy. I think there could be a great balance struck between the city and the Sox to develop a site beyond "incentivizing" private interests to do whatever they want just so they can produce tax revenue. I really think a city like Chicago could strongarm these losers to stay in an incredible city, we'll see what the environment looks like in 20 years or whenever Jerry dies and we "need" a new ballpark. I actually am optimistic that the development environment will change by then, insofar as politicians and un-elected administrators might get over the Ronald Reagan brainwashing. I wrote a similarly long response to your post but accidentally closed out of the tab and PHPBBB restored the post I was writing to caulfield and not to you. I want to go to bed so will rewrite it tomorrow; but the gist was more of my perspective on the Ricketts and Lakeview (and how that family didn't kick off the gentrification project but probably should not be allowed to own a historic landmark and develop the neighborhood). and Tom Tunney and zoning laws and how I should probably do a bit more specific research on Bridgeport or "Bronzeville"'s relation to the park. bummer.