Jake

I've always been a Hawk fan but due to some mixture of his old age and the lighter workload, his performance was dropping fast. He's made his mark but it was time for him to go. I like Jason — Steve, not so much.

I don't think Hahn is going to have the public position that we will pay whatever it takes to get our targets, so whether he is optimistic or pessimistic he has to acknowledge the possibility they miss out and be prepared to put a positive (if lame) spin on it.

U.S. Cellular may have asked them to announce it that way during negotiations in order to get a little attention boost.

I've been assuming that the Sox's approach to this is that if they can announce something at Soxfest, they'll try to. They wouldn't ever be sitting on some big news for weeks or make a bigger offer to make sure it was accepted, but they might do something like expedite the physicals or try to keep something under wraps for a couple days so they could have it break at Soxfest.

Last week (I think), BJ Upton was a guest on a number of MLB Network shows. I found it interesting that he said for him having close friends and family on the team would be a big deal and play into his decisionmaking quite a bit when choosing a team. It was the first I'd heard a player take much of a position on the issue one way or another.

To evaluate the rumored return, you have to consider the fact that not everyone is a White Sox fan who hates every young player that has had an unsuccessful run in the majors. First-round picks who are in good health but with control problems have been the centerpiece of many a deal. And Bummer at this point shouldn't be considered a player without any value. Sox jerked him around last year just to get a non-return for Xavier Cedeno but Bummer pitched well in MLB and AAA. Lefty relievers that aren't horrible always have value and in this case he still has minor league options, which would be of interest to the Dodgers. Laz Rivera is pretty good for the third piece of a deal like this. I would like this trade for the Sox but it's not hard at all to imagine the Dodgers winning it. Pederson isn't far removed from a bust of a season and there are questions about whether he can play defensively in CF or every day as a hitter (needs platooned). Fulmer putting it together at all makes it very plausible that he alone is more valuable than Pederson over the period of time that the teams control the players. 6 years of solid relieving from Bummer could make it close as well. Rivera isn't likely to be some kind of star but also seems to have a good shot to come up and be a nice roleplayer some day.

I'm saying the UZR/DRS metrics have a wide range of uncertainty (a guy with, say, a +5 UZR/150 may have been playing with a true talent of -3 UZR/150 and just got lucky/on a hot streak/benefited from errors in the metric). And if you take the longer view of the numbers for these two players, they aren't obviously different. For instance, Steamer projects Semien to be slightly worse defensively than Anderson in 2019. The reason I raise Anderson as a positive example of the White Sox's development is because Anderson was by most reports completely raw and bad in college and the low minors but as a major leaguer is somewhere between competent and good defensively. I'm looking at the value added by the White Sox coaching staff, who took a player with limited experience and at one point a sub-90% fielding percentage player in the minors and helped him become a legitimate MLB shortstop.

Players with more than 1 career WAR drafted by Jed and Theo with the Cubs: Bryant (21.6 in 559 games) Almora (3.5 in 331 games) David Bote (1.0 in 74 games) Zack Godley (traded for Miguel Montero) Kyle Schwarber (2.7 in 337 games) Ian Happ (2.3 in 257 games) After Bryant, who was obviously very important but was also the most obvious choice a team is going to get, we're not exactly looking at murderer's row here. Some of these guys may very well take on bigger roles in the coming years but weren't important for their World Series win. I think the bolded is an overstatement of where Semien's defense is. His numbers looked quite good last year, for the first time. Looking at the full body of work, I don't think it's even fair to say he's clearly better than Tim Anderson, whose defensive development is a feather in the cap for the White Sox.

I'm aware. My point is that there are going to be some guys who are not going hard on a larger proportion of their trips on the bases (see the drop in Yoan's speed last year as he nursed leg injuries). In those cases, the sprint speed metric won't be as informative as to how fast the guy could be when he's going all out.

About Sprint Speed metrics: I think this method is basically fine but I think it will give you a number that is too low for players who are nursing injuries or don't regularly hustle. I don't know if that applies to Joc or not. Worth noting that Statcast's outfield defense metric (which considers only the player's ability to catch balls, not their arm) had Joc doing quite poorly this past year and 2017 but was a touch above average in 2016 (when he was still in CF if I recall correctly). Fun fact: Yoan had a 98 wRC+ against lefties in the second half, not far off from his performance against righties.

Wonder why the Sox didn't sign him.

I'm not eager to trade Alec Hansen, but it is categorically wrong to say he is at his lowest possible value right now. Someone who says this really believes in his potential upside to be a good MLBer. If he has another season like the last one, few will believe in that upside and his value will be much lower.

Sure, I just don't know what it would be that he knows now but can't tell us until very shortly in the future (or why he would have foreknowledge that some other reporter will be reporting new details)

Hard for me to understand what it means for the rumor to be "added to" short of either the deal occurring or some other move occurring that makes this one seem more sensible/clarifies the likely players involved.

Would you do Abreu for Pederson straight up? Would they?

If we bring in Pederson we just have to get rid of Palka. Davidson would be a better fit at that point if he isn't already.

The hat has to be this: Also, I made the spouse look into this and she says by playing with the saturation, etc. she's confident there's red on the logo of the hat.

There is what appears to be a flag on the side of the cap, much more similar to the Dominican Republic WBC hat.

I do like the "swell option" deal structure as a possible explanation for the competing claims on length and dollars. The only question is whether someone would knowingly misrepresent the offer to reporters or if perhaps the source is someone who isn't plugged in enough to understand how to convey the parameters of a proposal like that.

I don't know about anything anymore, but one interesting thing to consider in light of the comparison to JD Martinez is that this deal may be pretty complicated like Martinez's was. A lot of forking paths where the team has to decide to keep him at a high price or risk losing him.

I don't see any of the ingredients in Nugenix on the WADA banned substances list (which I assume is the basis of MLB's list)

Even if Lozano is sure the Sox are behind this and want to send them a message, he wouldn't want to make it too obvious because he doesn't want to make it seem like Manny won't sign with one of the very few teams known to be in on him.

To be clear, anyone involved with the White Sox or Phillies (the only two clubs/entities who I think would leak this) leaking contract details, real or imagined, is engaging in some real shady behavior. Collusion casts a long shadow in MLB and Lozano sees what looks like someone trying to artificially cap the market at a low number.

I should add that there is a cost because fans like continuity; I'd like for there to be a clever solution that allows teams to retain their star youngsters for a longer term while paying them handsomely.

I think the change that would most improve baseball is reducing the time teams control their young players. Right now the potential value of young players kicking ass is so high that most teams see no reason to build through free agency, which is usually cluttered with 30+ year olds who no longer have steroids to keep them going late into their 30s. By reducing the time that teams control their young players, those players are less valuable *and* there will be more young, promising free agents available. This should lead more teams to try to win every year rather than do drastic teardowns in an effort to stock their farm systems with as much young talent as possible no matter the cost to the MLB product.