Jake

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

Well they moved one of the most valuable players in their organization off his natural position because Nick Madrigal may someday play there, so they have been known to think that way.

Bulls win, Lauri ?

Always a fool-proof plan that goes well

I think that's a pretty good deal for the Twins. I would have considered going a little bit higher just to try to make it harder for them to get to the playoffs this year.

I think Calipari tends to be the one using millions to get people to change their mind...

Several things: We have no idea what the Sox did to improve Narvaez's framing. I suspect that, at the least, they knew it was a problem. If they didn't buy into the framing metrics, you couldn't justify trading him given the amount of team control he had and how good his offense was last year. The Sox know Narvaez and it's hard to guess how that affected their projections of him. Maybe they think he's a dumbass and can't be taught. I don't know. It's great to put on a full court press to make a player better at something he's horrible at. But baseball is hard and sometimes trying hard doesn't ultimately work. It's kind of like asking why nobody taught Gordon Beckham how to hit or Alcides Escobar how to take a walk. There's a lot of unknown with Narvaez. With his past level of pitch framing, he's really only playable as one of the top 30 catchers in MLB if he hits as well as he did last year. Even then, he was probably bottom half of the league due to how extremely bad his pitch framing was. If he improves the pitch framing, his potential value obviously goes up. But he also has to maintain the level of hitting, to some extent, to remain valuable. It's not hard to squint and see the same old high .600s OPS hitter in there that he used to be. His big year was predicated on doubling his career home run total across many professional seasons. Maybe...he just won't be able to do that again? Anyway, the point here is I can see exactly why the Mariners decided to go after Narvaez but it's also easy to see why the White Sox saw a guy who could very soon see his value drop to Kevan Smith levels.

I'll just say this: I feel pretty negatively about most of the big decisions made this offseason, but I'll be rooting like hell for them to turn out looking good. I hope Machado plays horribly and handicaps the Padres for the next decade. Generally speaking, I'll feel satisfaction with every failure that happens to the Padres. I hope Yonder Alonso wins MVP. I hope Yoan Moncada wins a gold glove at 3B. You get the idea. I don't think most of these things happen, but I'd love to learn that I'm the stupid one, not the ones running the Sox.

Perhaps, as I've been speculating, Lozano was making a take-it-or-leave-it offer and somebody took it.

I strongly suspect that Machado's team told his suitors that if they would give the thumbs up to 10 years 300 with a mid-contract opt out, they'd accept on the spot and would not go to any other teams to match or beat it. He probably went to each team in order of preference, presumably Philly, then Sox, then Padres. Sox didn't get some last minute call because the point of the offer was to close out the process and make a team jump a little higher than they otherwise might have for the certainty of ending the bidding. Sox assumed nobody would go for the deal and they were wrong. All that being said, if you were willing to go to that number or some other number, there's not really any good reason to lay that out there after the fact. This is especially true if you have any interest in getting Harper. Even if we want to be cheap on Harper, to try to play the long odds of scoring him at a discount you have to signal that you could never pay anything but discount price.

Wouldn't an opt out make him more motivated to continue producing rather than rest on his laurels?

To be frank, this hasn't changed my anticipated attention level at all. I may be paying less attention during ST just because without a Machado acquisition (and presumably no Bryce) I doubt we'll be players for the remaining free agents. I was looking forward to seeing if we'd try to grab some of the other remaining talent after getting a big fish, but now I strongly doubt we do that and am not sure if I'd like it if we did. But I want to see these guys play. I really like everyone in our infield (despite management's stupidity regarding where they should play), I'm very ready for Eloy, and we have a bunch of interesting pitchers. What else am I going to be watching every night anyway?