nrockway

Sox also took Jace Fry out of OSU in the third round in 2014, right below Michael Conforto, Of course, OSU produces a lot of good players like Adley Rutschman, Steven Kwan and Drew Rasmussen so maybe it's just a coincidence.

That's an interesting point. I wonder if there's a Sox/Oregon State connection like there was a Bulls/Iowa State connection. Sox did select an an Oregon State guy in the 17th round of this past draft, Mikey Kane, who played 7 games in rookie league and posted a .839 OPS, 9 singles and 4 walks.

I like this guy. I guess he works for Oregon State now. Wish him the best.

frankly, all these signings and personnel hirings makes me think that Bannister is the shadow GM. Listening to Getz talk the other day, he seems charismatic, which is good, but like the eggheads are running the show. No complaint from me.

better than Carlos Perez. Probably moveable. Seems even better if the Braves are eating his salary

Why do you all hate this move? He's a good player who was acquired for nothing. Atlanta doesn't have room for him with a superstar catcher and another very good backup. Are you paying his salary? It was him or Maldonado, good defenders, biding time for Edgar Quero. Catcher and shortstop is exactly where you should be playing defense first/bat second players. All of this will help the pitching staff. He is far better than Carlos Perez. My only concern, which I noted in the other thread about Maldonado, is that Hackenberg is probably major league ready and looks really good.

I posted this in another comment. An economist did measure it. $337mil in 2022 (Japan and USA combined) though you should probably not consider his salary in the equation. How Much Revenue Does Shohei Ohtani Actually Generate? It probably increases playing in Los Angeles for a brand like the Dodgers. Of course, this is assuming he continues to pitch at a high level which is a big risk. Any investment is risky but it seems like a good one.

I hate that it's the Dodgers. He really could have transformed the city of Toronto. A study done at Kansai University put his economic impact in 2022 at $337million. 700 million dollars is a HUGE capital investment, but it's a savvy financial one that could potentially return $3.3 billion. Even if he played for the Cubs, which I would hate as a baseball fan, it could potentially help our city. The rich get richer. Congratulations to Ohtani though.

Absolutely. I assume mental hang-ups would mean even more in baseball, where you have only a 200 or so millisecond window to make a decision that means the difference between success and failure. You can't second guess yourself. I don't think Pedro is the jerk that Flores is, but listening to him speak, I doubt he's inspiring confidence in his players to be their best. I think even La Russa was better at that. I still love TA as a player, but he strikes me as a pretty insecure guy and needed an "inspiring figure" to help him succeed. Pedro is not that.

I fully agree with what you say about Lakeview, I think this probably bears out in the statistics and supports my own perspective that Hyde Park (a heavily-policed bubble), Bridgeport, even Auburn-Gresham and Grand Boulevard (places I spend time these days) are probably safer areas than Lakeview. Certainly, if I've ever felt uneasy in Chicago, it's been downtown (a recent innovation) or on the North Side. I think it's fair to assume that petty criminals are logical and they stand to gain a better score in these areas than anywhere on the South Side. Regarding the baseball component of your post, I think that speaks to my point of a contradiction between good management and an unlimited budget. Good management can produce very good teams on a limited budget, but the richer teams tend to win out. On the Padres, I feel as though they only traded Soto to look more desirable to a new owner (I think you made this point as well). They traded a potential Hall of Famer to a financial powerhouse for scraps for financial reasons, not baseball ones. Baseball would be more interesting if the Yankees and Royals had the same budget to spend on players. The entire arbitration process seems frankly absurd to me, that removing it would create more parity on a year-to-year basis if every team had the same limitations to work within, like the NBA, so that maybe a team like the Royals could legitimately trade for Juan Soto and expect to re-sign him, being able to offer a higher salary or otherwise retain its talented players via Bird Rights. Or that the Devil Rays would be a consistent powerhouse because they're effectively managed in spite of poor real estate decisions the ownership group made. Trading good players on their last year or two of arbitration is fun to discuss, thinking about the prospects that might be gained in return, but it seems better for the sport if every team operated under the same financial conditions. Yes, in the NBA, luxury tax is a concern otherwise the Oklahoma City Thunder wouldn't have traded James Harden for scraps and broken up a team that potentially had 3 homegrown MVP talents in their primes playing together, but otherwise the parity in that league is far better. Which is why a salary floor is good too, so that teams are forced to spend on players or else lose the money by distributing the difference to the rest of the roster.

It's absurd. Ballparks clearly have a much longer life time than 20 years, just as any building does, but as with everything in modern society, it's disposable and there's profit to be gained by getting the public sector to subsidize a new development so that the team can fit in a couple more "amenities"...anything to make a couple extra bucks so people can do anything besides watch a baseball game. I was an infant when the Ballpark in Arlington opened but I always thought it was a beautiful park, much better looking than the new one...airport hangar is exactly right and that area now is quite literally a giant theme park. However, it seems to be a success for the city of Arlington and so it will be the model to follow. Dunno, it's still journalism that reports on an industry that produces $10+ billion in revenue per year... and I care both about sports and integrity in journalism. Definitely a little dramatic though.

Just saw this tweet and didn't see a good place to post it...please merge with a different thread if there's a more appropriate location for it. This seems like a complete 180 from whatever the last front office was doing, hiring people with science (kinesiology) backgrounds to assist in player development. Feels like Bannister has his fingerprints all over this and seems like a modern approach to baseball.

Cubs ballpark produces more revenue just for the sake of being a historical landmark (an attractive tourist attraction, even for non-baseball fans) and now for being in a gentrified neighborhood with high real estate values and a clientele that will pay $100 to watch a game from behind a pole. The WGN deal has also given them a national audience and there's some logic in assuming that Cubs capture 'the North Shore' as fans, people with far more money than south and west suburb baseball fans. It seems like Reinsdorf wants to emulate this with the Stadium network and all these "documentaries" about how cool the Sox hat is, to capture national revenue in what is ultimately a regional sport. As it stands, it's hard for the Sox to compete with the Cubs financially. I don't expect it will always be that way, the gentrification of the near South Side is in full swing and will continue on until it's hardly distinguishable from Lakeview, a neighborhood which was not so long ago a working class area. Personally speaking, my dad is a Giants fan from California and what drew me to the Sox over the Cubs is the ethos of the fanbase...fans that actually enjoy baseball and are not going to games to wine and dine corporate clients (but in 9-year-old lingo and a child's intuition). I still prefer a Sox game over a Cubs game because I can actually afford to go to games on a semi-regular basis and fans are actually watching the game and following the team, as drunk and belligerent as they might often be. I much prefer the team's history too over the Cubs, gritty and corrupt just like the city. The Sox are truly Chicago's team, the Cubs are the team of Ohio State graduates and out of towners who settle in the North Side. The biggest thing I hate about baseball is how much it's tied to market forces relative to other sports. Basketball owners have a salary cap and floor that they must stay within, it makes for a far more interesting financial environment where teams can't waste money. The Knicks are a garbage team because they have a garbage owner and they can't spend their way out of it. San Antonio can be a top team because of effective management, not because their owner bails them out with blank checks. Revenue is not tied to team success, as it ought to be.

If you can’t actually grow a beard, don’t even attempt to! I will die on this hill. If the Yankees rule was something like “no peach fuzz, what are you 14?” I would be right there with oldsox.

you could come visit his restaurant here in Hyde Park, BARDAVID, and spend $21 on a cheeseburger. seems like a con artist to me.

I doubt it. the only "good owners" are the ones who don't care about extracting as much profit as possible, but buy the franchise for the prestige or because they're genuine fans of the sport and have enough money already (few and far between, especially in baseball). Something tells me that the private equity guy with no history of baseball fandom doesn't actually care about anything more than the potential profit. He'll do what every other private equity firm does: own the company for a couple of years, build shareholder value, then sell the team at a gain. Spending on players doesn't factor into that in a market like Baltimore.

pointless and paternalistic. what they did to that poor batboy is a tragedy. on the other hand, 99% of mlb facial hair looks terrible. LIK like, this isn't a good look, his boss shouldn't tell him to shave it, he should just know better

the issue is that the Yanks young talent isn't that interesting, at least for our team, outside of Volpe. I guess a trade for Volpe/Dominguez would be pretty good, but it doesn't excite me personally, would rather just keep Cease. Plus I doubt NY goes for it.

if I'm the Sox, I'm waiting around for STL or Baltimore to get desperate. Maybe no team does and you take a risk keeping Cease until the deadline. I think it's reasonable to expect that he will be better than he was last season and that health won't be a concern. As such, I don't see a reason to ship him out as soon as possible just to do a deal, but I do expect better offers will materialize when those free agents go off the board. I also don't hate the idea of eventually signing him to a long term extension. At the very least, he sells tickets. Personally speaking, I went to 3 Sox games this year specifically on days that he was pitching. I hope this is the leverage Getz and co are using against other teams, that they're not actually that desperate to trade him and that he could be a mainstay on the Sox for a long time. Don't know what qualifies as a nearly acceptable offer, but another SoxTalk poster made a good point about ATL adding Kelenic to their package, and it makes their offering nearly acceptable, though not necessarily a home run like a Winn/Hence or Cowser/Kjerstad trade might be (in my eyes). Cease is also a better, more reliable, pitcher than either Glasnow or Bieber (again, IMO) on better salary terms and should command a better return in a vacuum, though perhaps not in reality if those teams acquire either one of those guys or otherwise shore up their starting pitching. I'd rather take the risk in waiting and potentially re-sign Cease rather than trade him for questionable talent, especially because we're a Chicago team and not "small market" like those other teams. We don't need to shed salary, there's no reason for us to be desperate, we should capitalize on desperation like Atlanta does...the Sox could model their actions, the markets are similar in terms of population and household income (spending money at a game and on merchandise) when considering that there's another team in town.

I would've thought he could net Peraza and Dominguez as well. maybe one of them is the "additional player".

literally no reason to trade him until the cream of the crop starting pitchers go off the market. some team that is coveting starting pitching will miss out. more of a competition with Glasnow and Bieber IMO, there must be some balance between waiting for Yamamoto, Snell, Ohtani to sign deals and losing out because Glasnow and Bieber were exchanged for teams we should've dealt with.

I don't mean Tsai specifically but I suspect Chinese nationals will become increasingly interested in investing in American sports/real estate developments and that Bridgeport/Armour Square/Douglas will be majority Asian probably in the next decade (at least the areas close to the park). Looks like a good business opportunity if I'm a Chinese billionaire.

Nasim Nuñez and Deyvison de los Santos were also selected in the rule 5 draft. I like either one of those guys better than Nicky Lopez but they probably aren't major league ready. pretty surprised that they weren't protected, Nuñez stands to be one of the best defensive shortstops in the league even if he can't hit.

I think they might. INVEST South/West is one of the stupidest programs in city history and is pouring public money into the south side so that developers can 'rejuvenate' blighted areas. GRF doesn't qualify for that program, but right over the freeway does, and the potential tax base increase has to appeal to the city if a sports franchise wants to re-develop 100 acres of parking lots and perhaps the former Stateway Gardens site. Every city is obsessed with 'public-private partnerships' especially if it's "equitable" which I think it would be an easy sell to build an entertainment district that would predominantly serve middle-class Asian and black communities (and everyone else arriving on the red line and freeway). This is JR's leverage to get the city to fund a large portion of it. I doubt he'll build it in his lifetime but these stunts he performs have to raise the value of the team. My conspiracy theory is that a Chinese billionaire (Joe Tsai) will buy the team whenever Jerry croaks and do it.

The level of talent in baseball means that expanding to 32 teams makes complete sense. But owners don't want to because they think they'll make less money overall, that the 'supply' of baseball teams will outpace the demand for baseball. Or that a Nashville team will siphon off fans from Atlanta, Chicago, St Louis or wherever else and that the new media revenue won't compensate for their suspected loss of revenue. I think they're full of s%*# personally. and I think Reinsdorf stands to make more money building a new ballpark and complex in Chicago than in Nashville.