Jake

I'm sure the Giants would happily play-act interest to try to push the Dodgers into the most expensive contract possible.

Yeah the main solace you can take looking at what's going on over in San Diego is how bad all of Preller's early moves were. Time will tell if those end up being an aberration or indicative of a simply bad GM.

You mean align with the strike year

Now that we're living it, you can definitely see the improvement the change to the lottery made. There really isn't much of an incentive for the Bulls to try to tank the last leg of the season and thus far we've been rewarded with some good ball and player development.

No matter how hard your heart is, you've gotta love seeing Luis Robert knock in Yoan, who knocks in Eloy...

I thought they should have brought him last year in August so that he could have actually gotten better at hitting MLB pitching. In that sense, the Sox would also have gotten something out of burning that extra year of control. But at this point, even though it has been wrong (morally wrong) to hold him down, you just have to follow through and call him up after two weeks.

Part of what made the 2005 approach work is they had an elite pitching staff in place and just needed to make sure there was some ability to score runs for it. So it kind of looked like all those new position player acquisitions made the team successful but the (especially starting) pitchers who had already been with the club were the ones really driving the boat.

The Sox also seem to think that Madrigal is about ready for MLB,

The bright side is it's now clear the Sox do not employ the dumbest people working in Chicago

You can say the Sox got lucky to be so good in 2005, but they were also unlucky to not to make the playoffs the next year. They had the 7th most wins in MLB from 2005 to 2010 but only got 2 playoff appearances out of it, a time in which we had the best pitching staff in baseball. Every team ahead of us in that timespan made it least 3 times, all but one of them 4 or more times.

He fills a massive hole and makes the team watchable. It benefits nobody for the team to be horrible. I would think our experiences with players like Gordon Beckham and Carson Fulmer should make it clear that putting an unprepared minor leaguer in the majors can permanently ruin his development. The Sox had negative WAR in their outfield last season and it's not exactly great for our young pitchers to have a bunch of Palkas out there every day catching their fly balls.

I don't think there's much reason to try to extend Abreu now considering how weak the market has been for 1B in both free agency and trades. You needlessly introduce risk that he declines this year and wastes your money when you know you won't have to break the bank to retain him if he has a really big year.

In what way does Jon Jay take a spot from developing prospects

JR doesn't negotiate with terrorists

Lauri's last 11 games: 24.1 points, 13.4 boards, 46% from the field on 17 attempts (38% on 7 3-point attempts). That's good for a 60.5% TS%. LaVine in the same span: 24.7 points, 5.7 boards, 5.2 assists (2.5 turnovers, compare to 3.3 season average), 52% from the field on 18 attempts (43% on 5 3-point attempts). 62.5% TS%

Sox/JR have generally made clear that every rule that they have is subject to negotiation. Contract length, opt outs, headbands...

Yes but where was Jerry?

The Sox will never have to sign an outside free agent for $30M+ in today's dollars to win. The problem is they showed that they actually are willing to do that, just not 9 and 10 years from now.

It's fair to say that when you compare Manny and Bryce, it was extremely unlikely anyone in the system today was going to be blocked by Manny but that's very plausible with Harper. It doesn't mean you don't want him, it just means you're adding to a place where the organization has some depth (although it is all not close to the majors).

Eloy = bust

Here's the way you look at Fulmer. Drop your expectations to zero, try not to think about him, and if he does anything positive it's a really nice bonus.

Moncada easily. What would Madrigal do with a bunch of power if all he does is beat the ball into the ground

I do think we're going to have a lot of certainty from Moncada by the end of the year. One way or another, I don't see a duplication of last year. He's either figured stuff out and will take a moderate-to-large leap forward or he'll never get out of his head and it will start to spiral out of control. Luckily our brilliant coaching staff has decided the best thing for him is to play a new position on the basis that it will require him to "focus more" which will surely help his bat.

God this graphic is horrible. As someone whose day job is partly about educating people how to present statistics, it kills me. The players are what I like about the White Sox. I don't care how much money they make, they're human beings. I'm not going to give them shit unless they do something to deserve it (and I don't include "playing badly while trying their best" as something that earns getting shit either).

Eloy is the only thing that can change the narrative