Jake

Who the hell is Diaz???

If you're really confident he's going to opt out, then it's easy to offer him a boat-load of money.

The trust you put in her statements shifts quite a bit if she was fired after making these complaints through internal channels. It wouldn't be rational to make these claims after you're fired in general, but sometimes people get pissed off when they're fired. But if she was fired because she tried to do this privately, it only makes sense she'd try to put them on blast now.

I haven't engaged with all of the bickering this thread so I'm not sure if we're still talking about baseball, but you should find it noteworthy that especially in the case of the Cubs, the winning roster they put together was based on mostly pieces that were not acquired via rebuilding and/or were not obviously good assets when acquired. Kris Bryant was basically the one major piece acquired via *tanking*, although they didn't do it all that well (only picked #3). A number of other key cogs came from trades, but some of them prior to the rebuild and some as guys that weren't exactly seen as valuable (Arrieta the most obvious example). Then you have free agent signings like Zobrist, Lester, Lackey. Astros were more obviously built from pieces acquired while rebuilding, but their rebuilding process was also very tortuous and a league-wide embarrassment. They also made a number of big mistakes along the way but managed to power through them. Best strategy is to just get as many good assets as you can and see what shakes out. Use your big market resources to add good assets at possibly high prices as needed but still look for the good values.

I'd hope we'd have the cajones to front-load the deal so we can take advantage of our payroll flexibility now and retain some going into the future

I won't assign a number to anyone, but I feel really good about Lopez. He has really developed this year and I see what he's doing now as something that it was always clear he could do. In aggregate, I see this season as a floor (thinking in terms of ~4.50 FIP moreso than the mid-3 ERA). Giolito has at least pitched himself into a comfortable slot into the rotation, but I'm seeing him as more of a backend guy once we have a deeper group. I hope he does better, I think it's possible, but my expectations are low. No idea what to think of Rodon. Maybe a regular offseason and spring training is all he needs. He hasn't had his slider all year and I wouldn't expect him to be good without it.

I think Reinsdorf as an owner sticks out not for a refusal to spend, but a major reluctance to repeat bad expenditures. For instance, I think he probably walked away from Albert Belle's tenure here thinking we lucked out when he opted out of a deal that would have been an albatross by its end. He also saw that the deal didn't bring us to the promised land like we hoped. Later, we set records by drafting and signing Joe Borchard. That really didn't work out and then Jerry goes back to wanting to stick to the spending norms in the draft, which had served us well in the past before a number of other organizations started profiting greatly in the draft by overpaying kids who weren't quite 1st rounders but wanted to be paid as such. When our season fell apart in 2016 after a couple years of signing and trading for veterans, I think Jerry became convinced that this strategy wasn't working anymore like it had 10 years before. So it won't surprise me if we make a bold move or two in FA this offseason, but I also expect us not to do it again if it blows up in our face.

Minnesota looked like they were going to be a pretty good team when they got Jimmy but now it's a pretty sad situation over there. It's become clear that Wiggins just isn't going to be that good, KAT's defense is a question, and they now have to ship out Jimmy because nobody gets along.

I do think Palka has played himself into being the priority between himself and Davidson, but what to do with Davidson isn't so clear. At this point, Davidson is a very similar player to Mark Reynolds, who has had himself a long career but has never been a particularly valuable piece. I'm not sure how much defensive ability Davidson has at 3B at this point since he's played so little there and he has clearly put on some weight since he last played there on an everyday basis. Matt took a huge step forward this year, so for the Sox you have to ask whether you think he has it in him to take any more steps forward. It would make things easier if Palka could play the outfield, but he's just been so bad out there I feel like it may not be fair to our pitchers (or our fans for that matter) to play him on defense.

Part of Moncada's recent change has been effectively eliminating — for the time being — his problem with making contact with pitches in the zone. Note that he hasn't improved his contact rate by just taking more pitches in the zone. His contact rate has gone up along with this swing rate and pitches in the zone. As of right now, he's having the best 15-game run of in-zone contact of his career. Over that span, he's made contact at a rate well above league average. We'll see if he can keep it up. The flip side is that we can see his terrible run in late July/early August was driven in part by a shocking drop in his contact rate at that time. You have to wonder what was going on physically/mentally during that period of about 3 weeks when he struck out in nearly half of his plate appearances. Note also that Moncada has been making more contact on pitches outside the zone while retaining his elite selectivity on those pitches: He hasn't changed overnight, but these are fairly positive trends.

If a team was offering me Dylan Cease for Nick Madrigal, I'd do it.

If you haven't seen a pretty significant change in Moncada's approach over the past month-ish, you've had your eyes closed. It hasn't turned him into superman, but he has definitely been working on things.

FWIW, Anderson somewhat recently emerged from a rather deep slump and is now hitting pretty much like his typical self...which isn't great, but is good enough for someone playing shortstop and doing it quite well defensively.

Reynaldo has been absolutely pitching his ass off.

Don't forget to watch the baseball games and appreciate the many ways you can end up at the same season statistics

There's basically no way he returns to the minors outside of a possible (but unlikely) rehab assignment. Only persistent ass-kickings in MLB would get him sent down, in which case you won't care about his service time.

If Kopech suffering an injury that has a high repair rate is what foils the rebuild, it was always destined to fail.

His 21% K% over his last 15 games is his lowest 15-game K% as a major leaguer.

Side note: I think this seals the deal that we bring back Shields, probably on a 1-year deal rather than his option.

Similar to Ohtani, it's good that it happened now compared to potentially having it blow out in Spring Training next year. We can second guess until the cows come home, but chances are this was unavoidable without a far less aggressive innings regimen for him. I don't care about the team control, these are the chances you take and it may well have kept our competitive window earlier than it would have been if he had to miss most of 2021.

I don't understand what this is rewarding: So is he the top pitching prospect now or is he being rewarded for pitching best?

Found it weird they didn't bother to quantify their assumptions on this. You have lots of data, both in terms of scouting grades and automated projections, that you can take and cross-check with future results. Why not do that instead of rely on your gut feeling that a certain type of pitcher (great 3-pitch arsenal, unimpeachable statistical production, but no "feel") doesn't pan out?

Hindsight is 20/20, but clear in retrospect that the mixture of his stuff being off and the delay was not going to go well. Had to give it a shot, though.

This game's a stinker but to me it's still clear as day how great Kopech is going to be.

So far everything seems consistent with the Tigers zoning in on his fastball only and Kopech not having the usual power to make guys miss it. They've hit his fastball in predictable fastball situations, they've looked terrible when he locates his offspeed, and they've been able to kill his hanging offspeeds because they're being so aggressive.