Jake

Comparing the price the Cubs paid, when they were arguably a good closer away from their first WS in 100 years and had plenty of near-MLB and MLB players in the positions Torres would play, to this situation probably won't make you happy about anything that could plausibly happen. Same goes for the Shelby Miller trade. If the GM is drunk when he makes the deal, great, but you can't bank on that stuff happening.

Benetti brings out a different side of Steve, but it's just a more arrogant one.

Wouldn't shock me if Musgrove is the guy the Astros don't want to part with.

Something I think is encouraging about Anderson is it looks to me that while he has very bad plate discipline, I think his pitch recognition isn't bad. Some players are undisciplined but also have bad pitch recognition, which is very tough to teach. I think Avisail Garcia is a player who has bad pitch recognition, so even when he has a good plan at the plate he may end up swinging at bad pitches because he failed to realize what it was he was swinging at. With Anderson, even when he flails at a slider, he often looks to me like he knew it from the start but just couldn't stop himself from pulling the trigger. If I'm right, it won't take an amazing feat of coaching to get his strikeout rate down.

There are reasons for serious concern with Anderson, but he could get slightly worse with the bat and still be a useful player due to his defense and the position he plays. The optimistic case for him is that he was an inexperienced player when he was drafted and has basically never had the chance to spend much time at any level. It isn't crazy to think that getting settled in at the MLB level, where he can't be pushed to any higher levels of competition, might result in improvements across the board. I also think that his Adjusted Contact score is not a bad sign. Suggests that more balls in play is his main hurdle, which I think is the most likely improvement he will make (lower K%, that is).

Hawk is uniquely qualified to pump up underachieving young players

He was the player who made the most positive contribution to the day-to-day watchability of the team. And while I suspect he's a bit immature and perhaps rubbed some of his teammates the wrong way, I found him easy to root for. I hope players fans can gravitate towards get on this team soon...I think Tim Anderson might be too much of the quiet type for the job.

If you want to look at blown saves for a non-closer, you also need to look at holds. Holds+saves/blown saves is roughly comparable to save percentage. With that said, setup guys are often asked to come into more challenging situations and to pitch multiple innings more often, giving them more chances to "blow" the save opportunity that they never had a chance to finish.

Having a non-horrible pitch framer is useful because you don't want to stack the odds against your young pitchers. If you're going to bring in a vet trying to rebuild his value, you'd like for him to be a guy who can help develop your pitching staff.

Yeah I don't think Millar was meaning to convey any inside information

I really didn't think the league would value Eaton this highly, but they do. I think there was a good chance that he would never be seen as a potential 6 WAR player again.

My feeling is that in the winter, all the GMs know that 1B aren't really that hard to find and that just because Abreu is a pretty damn good hitter doesn't mean you have to sell the farm to get him. Come July, though, there are going to be 2-6 contenders who aren't getting production at 1B, DH, or perhaps another spot who will do anything to get a lively bat in their lineup. I look at it the same way that I do the idea of trading relief pitchers. You want to trade a reliever for a young Chris Davis? You won't do it in the winter.

I had my eyes on Severino as a secondary piece in a WAS deal. He's no Pudge (either one of them), but has a good shot at being a solid regular for a long time

I'd like to see Pedro Severino as a second-tier piece in a Nats deal. Would be our Opening Day catcher in all likelihood. Not huge upside, but good chance of being a longtime major leaguer.

Sounds like the hotel bar kicked the GMs out. Bob Nightengale ‏@BNightengale 7m7 minutes ago The #Whitesox did not come close to trading Chris Sale tonight but acknowledge the #Nats were very aggressive in proposals

I'd be really surprised if the Rox would look at a proposal of Hoffman for Abreu as anything but lunacy. I really like Jose in terms of a fan liking a guy, but he makes a lot of sense as a player to move. He's making money now, isn't under control in the super long term, and at his age we've likely seen the best of him. Get something shiny and send him along.

In spite of the current state of the rumor mill, I'd love to see Anderson, Turner, and Eaton batting one after another in some order. Would be an amount of speed in a lineup you don't see often, especially in Chicago

Giolito is a MLB pitcher. Yes he had a poopy ~30 innings in MLB last year, but he also dominated AAA as a 21 year old. He's not a perfect prospect but has ace upside and has little left to prove in the minor leagues. We're not talking about some guy who you'll never see in a Sox uniform. Robles, of course, has a substantially higher risk of never reaching the majors due to his age and experience. With that said, he has a skillset that makes him a quite low risk for a 19 year old and for a player with no AA experience.

QUOTE (Two-Gun Pete @ Dec 6, 2016 -> 01:00 AM) Fangraphs has his FV as all of 40, largely owing to his hit tool being judged as being below average. http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=OF In other words, his FV is roughly equivalent to Charlie Tilson. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/top-21-pros...cago-white-sox/ The evaluation of Robles you're looking at it is nearly 2 years old. Bear in mind that means the player was 17 at the time.

The role of Trea Turner here is interesting as it pertains to negotiations. On one hand, you could see the holding out Turner as an untouchable could be a ploy by the Nats. Get the Sox nice and thirsty for Turner until at the last moment you allow Turner in the deal but greatly restrict the secondary talent. This would especially make sense if the Nats actually are higher on Giolito or Robles than Turner but are playing up general public opinion on the involved players. On the other hand, you could also imagine the Sox putting Turner on a pedestal for the specific purpose of pushing the Nats into giving up more secondary pieces. Convince them that the Sox are really taking a hit by not getting Turner and to give them the equivalent in value to Turner without actually giving him up, they will need to include the majority of their top 100-caliber players.

I'd go Benintendi, Bregman, Turner, Swanson, Urias

Rodon has 5 more years left

I was at OSU. My first broad thought a day later is that if the initial emergency calls from students had realized the only gunshot came from the police officer, then this story wouldn't have had much reach outside of Columbus. The prospect of an "active shooter"—which was the story for several hours—is far more newsworthy than a guy who drove his car at some people and then managed a few swings with a kitchen knife before getting shot down. The havoc experienced on campus is largely from having had to spend a couple hours on lockdown thinking there was a gunman running around. To the extent this man was a terrorist, he sure was a rotten one. There's no doubt that he intended to hurt people, but from what I can tell he must have either not planned much at all or was in such a deranged state that he failed to have a plan that would kill anybody. I've seen a Facebook post attributed to him which is a semi-coherent rant about mistreatment of Muslims, though he seems oddly focused on Burma, a place where he does not appear to have familial connections and the US is hardly involved. He makes mention of wanting the US to quit fighting ISIS (he refers to ISIS by an Arabic alias) by reaching some kind of diplomatic agreement. I've yet to hear from any of his acquaintances about how well-connected he was in Columbus, on campus, etc. The Somali Student Association at OSU says he never participated in their group and was unknown to them. Current indications are that the fire alarm having gone off was purely coincidental. I've heard some on campus say that everyone who was forced to evacuate due to the fire alarm had already headed back inside. The student newspaper published something on him a couple months ago, as previously mentioned. I do want to clarify, though, that the piece was in the style of "Humans of New York" in which they approach people on campus and ask them to make a short statement about themselves, which the newspaper prints verbatim with no additional introduction or commentary. The attacker complained in the piece that he didn't know where any on-campus prayer rooms were and that he worried about attracting negative attention with his prayers in public. He also said that he is sympathetic to the fears people have because of what he calls unfair portrayals in the media. The entire thing was probably 150 words long. Columbus has the second-largest Somali-born population in the US after Minneapolis. I read recently that there are around 50,000 native Somalians, some of whom are refugees and others who immigrated via more conventional routes, in Columbus. I see them around town often and haven't had any remarkable interactions. I've chatted with a few at work who were very gregarious and friendly while others who I have passed in the store were speaking another language and may not have been comfortable talking in English. In other words, they are sufficiently large to be diverse in terms of how assimilated they are, how financially secure they are, and so on. The community has been established long enough that there are a lot of people the attacker's age who spent virtually their entire lives in the US, attending the grade schools and so on. My general impression is that Somalians in Columbus are not terribly impoverished as many of them run businesses and are never shabbily clothed or anything like that. I do know from my work that there is a lot of untreated mental illness in the Somalian community due to social stigmas and the sometimes horrific experiences that led some to become refugees. With that said, there have been some frictions. There have been numerous incidents in which native-born people have gotten into road rage incidents with Somali immigrants and I vaguely recall an incident in which a Somali driver killed some pedestrians—by incompetence, not malice. Earlier this year, a Ghananian man stabbed 4 people (none died) at a "multicultural" restaurant (it explicitly appealed to Muslims, Jews, and Christians) and said ISIS had inspired him. In Columbus, most people believed the stabber to be Somalian due to his appearance and some errant reporting when it first happened. There has been some jostling in local politics in which the city government has faced accusations of not providing city resources, like bus routes, to the parts of town where Somalians and other minority communities live in greater numbers. I wouldn't call these really big stories, though, and I rarely hear them discussed in the local news or around town. Anyway, there's some context. I'm interesting in hearing more details about the attack and the attacker in the coming days.

Let's not forget the Sox could very well say they won't deal with the Cubs as a negotiation tactic.

What I don't understand is why the players would have risked anything over the international draft. I'm also disappointed that ownership doesn't seem to have any ideas for how to give something to the players other than the QO system, which affects vanishingly few of them.