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That Heyman and Morosi are the main pushers of these narratives tells me all I need to know on whether to believe it.

QUOTE (OmarComing25 @ Feb 23, 2018 -> 05:36 AM) I’m not really that worried about the payroll. For much of the previous decade we were consistently in the top 10 for payroll, and while I don’t think we’ll be a top 5 payroll again like we were in the past a few times, top 10ish should be reasonable, and at the very least we should be top half. The 15th highest payroll last year was $140 million (10th was $163 million), in 2019/2020 a $150 million payroll will probably be below average, and there’s no reason we couldn’t go that high. One thing I’d love is for the Sox, who clearly are trying for this, nail down a lockdown bullpen with mostly internal candidates. Bullpen help expensive and longer term deals now, avoiding this contracts make splurging on a position player or two easier to handle.

Nice, I may get to see an SEC tourney at least. hopefully we can turn win at least one more to guarantee the big dance.

I do think especially motivated people can kill people regardless, but when we discuss that in terms of terrorists we try to throw many obstacles in their way and have been fairly effective at that. Meanwhile for these mass shootings we've thrown very little into the way of preventing the shooters ability to increase lethality. Without any resistance in the supplies they can acquire, they have just ratcheted up tactics and strategy, and it has happened more frequently. The Parkland shooting was over in 5 minutes. The lethality of these weapons means a whole bunch of damage can be done by the time it takes an armed officer to run across a high school campus (my campus took 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other). So, for the love of god, can we stop curtailing the rights of literally everyone else, and try to make the high casualties of these events harder to accomplish? Forcing someone to make 100 sparkler bombs and plant them and light them successfully as the best way to perform massive casualties sounds a lot more favorable to reducing the amount/lethality of them than their current ability to buy a stockpile of weapons legally and go into a highly populated area prepared to die shooting. In the latter, if they were checked at their house as being suspicious nothing could be done. We need to acknowledge that the goal is to reduce the amount of shootings, but at very least, lower the amount of casualties, and it's okay if not every solution eliminates all violence forever. But while the rest of the country now has kindergartners performing drills for an active shooter, the small vocal percentage says "I cannot be restricted in any way, ever, no matter what"

I'm kind of excited to focus on making Leury and Sanchez as multipositional as possible.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 22, 2018 -> 02:06 PM) Yeah. The plan for Columbine was really awful and, thankfully, mostly failed. --Plant bomb in nearby residential area --Bomb goes off, attracting attention of local law enforcement and EMS --Shortly after bomb goes off, enter the school and plant two large bombs in the cafeteria. the plan was this would collapse the floor above as well, though I don't remember if they actually had enough explosives to do that --At 11:17, which is what they had observed to be the busiest time in the cafeteria, the bombs explode --As students flee out of the school, the two killers shoot as many people as they can with interlocking fields of fire All but the last step failed because they couldn't make the bombs. If the bombs had succeeded, it's possible it would have been the second worst terrorist attack in US history, only behind 9/11. The underwear bomber failed because he messed up the bomb-making. So did that guy in Times Square a few years ago. The recent Port Authority bomb did pretty minimal harm. Building a reliable bomb isn't easy especially if you're not willing to be blown up by it yourself. Another myth from Columbine, somewhat relevant because some of the emerging narratives yet again about bullying and video game/movies violence, was that the main plotter was a bullied loaner. He wasn't. He was a somewhat popular psychopath. We also allow tracking of more common bomb making material pushing the bombs being created to be less reliable and hacky. Can't track guns though.

Reading the BA chat, this stuck out I read that and think I'd prefer Turang.

Seeing the Brent Honeywell news (he left with a trainer during warmups) reminded me that it's Tommy John season and I have my fingers crossed we get through it okay. Luckily, unlike last year, nobody is surprisingly "taking it easy"

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 22, 2018 -> 09:33 AM) They also define a well regulated militia as anyone who can operate a gun. That offends me less.

The NRA defines liberty as the ability to own and purchase as many of any kind of gun as possible and carry it anywhere without restriction or tracking. That is liberty. You know this is the narrow definition because they so willingly trade the liberties of children and people with mental health issues at a moments notice to preserve their maximalist view.

I have not heard anyone list turf as an injury factor since the newer astroplay replaced all of the old astroturf.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Feb 21, 2018 -> 02:35 PM) SS Lenyn Sosa was signed for $350K out of Venezuela as well and went right to the AZL last year. Yeah and to be clear when I say "the signings were heavy with VZ" I do mean across league. I was specifically looking for it last year, every team had a big vz presence.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Feb 21, 2018 -> 02:16 PM) Do you know that if 2.0 is average, there are less than 7 players on average that are at least average on each team. How's that for averages? I guess that depends how you handle bullpens but that doesn't sound that off.

And I guess the takeaway from that is the stuff that is absolutely more likely to happen to try and change something that will be rare but quite terrible. If you put 3 armed soldiers in front (Facebook meme), whose to say the school doesn't start asking them for help to do so and so, when they are just there watching the doors? And it bothers me that we so easily put this loss of freedom (getting in a fight in school without being sent to prison) on students and put so high of a barrier to things like delaying purchases of guns.

My personal experience with the addition of an SRO was also poor. Kids did seem to be getting arrested for things that used to just end up with them in a cool down room and in school suspension. There was also a fight in the atrium, where the SRO ran in and indiscriminately pepper sprayed, causing hundreds of students to go home. The SRO was of course not disciplined. Assault is assault, but when you are a kid figuring stuff out physically wasn't that out of the ordinary but some just disappeared after that arrest and some stayed and I'm guessing those that stayed was the right move. I don't think an SRO can't work, but it's one of those things where I'd rather it have federal guidelines than left up to individual school districts.

QUOTE (ChiliIrishHammock24 @ Feb 21, 2018 -> 01:53 PM) I think part of it is that he hangs around with Robert and Eloy, and get pics taken together, so now it's easy to kind of associate the 3 of them together, which elevates Adolfo's stock in the fan's eyes. I don't think so. It's definitely coming from the prospect outlets. I've wrote this before, but last year when people like Longenhagen were asked about Adolfo, they said his approach still didn't indicate a major progression, their tunes have changed. Still a high variance guy, but clearly his second half approach plus whatever he looked like at instructs has people intrigued. When asked about our prospects outside top ten, he's the only guy that comes up consistently, maybe Hamilton.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 21, 2018 -> 01:47 PM) That was a contract that was pretty universally horrible the day it was signed. Yeah I should even say noah's contract isn't worth it. Top 5 pick? obviously we are talking.

At this point, it's okay to take on salary for next year, but you don't want any contracts beyond that. Noah's isn't worth it.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Feb 20, 2018 -> 05:12 PM) That's true, especially for Pace, but I guess that depends on how.much Sitton does have left in the tank. Whatever their.plan is to replace him, having 85% of the production at one G position is not of big a deal for a team fighting for 7 or wins, as opposed to a team trying to win it all I think. (85% was just a random thought) Now if they don't spend much of their salary cap money, then it's also a different discussion. If they just replace him with an undrafted free agent wild card, that will look bad on their part. If this was Pace's first year I'd agree with the "cut one year early rather than one year late", problem is when he has made the right decision in letting go talent, he has not made the right decisions in replacing it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 21, 2018 -> 12:42 PM) Doing the little things is going to become so much more important for last year and this years classes. Hopefully they are working hard to get players who might have been missed (aka late bloomers) and places like Venezuela where teams aren't willing to go as much anymore. I don't know what to make of VZ. Yes, rumors are scouts aren't keen on going (light way of putting they are worried about their lives), but when I looked at the signings last year, there were tons of VZ signings. You wouldn't be able to pick it out as different than any other country. I'm wondering if maybe what's happening is the VZ talent is so willing to leave they are coming cheap teams are taking more flyers from VZ with less scouting. For instance, Anthony Coronado from the white sox last year. He signed for 100k and was the only guy moved from DSL to AZL in season.

QUOTE (Tony @ Feb 21, 2018 -> 11:30 AM) I don't know, every GM is different but Theo was on the radio last week and said "We're done, Yu was our last move, we have a little flexibitiy right now but we're going to save that for the deadline and during the season." Obviously the Cubs are in a much different spot, and GM's have different ideas on how to deal with the media. With that said, Hahn could have said "Right now we're OK with the group we have here in Arizona, we want to see what they all bring to the table" and be done with it. Hahn always equivocates though, and says we are looking at our current guys on the field for our 25 man roster.

Because they tweeted it out, going to create a thread. Badler has sox linked to a 16 year old venezuelan SS Anthony Espinoza. Subscribers here: https://www.baseballamerica.com/internation...ytpFB13d1e3x.97 Only link I've seen. Sox are in penalty again this year, so can only sign for 300k. It will be interesting to see what kind of market there is for INTL budget without an Ohtani looming.

An important part of this is Farquhar was coming from the Rays who believe the high low as gospel, where side to side isn't as effective. At the end it gets into how this isn't so obviously a "hack" to pitching. Sale, after all, used a 2 seamer to establish both sides of plate, where is slider could go one way and two seamer another. Giolito wanted same 4 quadrant coverage. It's one reason I'm so excited for Duncan. Cooper will keep them fundamentally sound and accurate, Duncan can create great game plans like this.

You know people talk about relegation and how that works for EPL. We are so tied to this "worst team should get best pick" system, and I think it works for NFL/MLB (I do! Not as bad as NBA)/NHL, but basketball has zero depth element to its drafts. You don't get a great draft by finding 3-4 top talents like football, you get a great draft when you either get a top 5 pick or back into a talent. So basically what I'm saying is, maybe we reward a team for being the best of the rest. Have an actual sudden death tournament for non-playoff teams where the winner gets top pick, the runner up gets 2nd, and the worst team is guaranteed at least 3rd. It would prevent just running a bare bones team, you could even seed where the best of the worst get a more favorable seeding, so incentive to not suck. And while giving the team that wins the more valuable pick, you could allocate more cap space for up to 3 years for the worst 5 teams to try and get them to spend out of it.

I'm with Jack Parkman. If you only followed baseball media rumors in a vacuum without knowing team moves you would think the White Sox this winter were aggressively trying to upgrade their position players and pitching. If you only followed the white sox transaction log you would think the white sox have no interest in big moves this year and are just going to let players find themselves. I am not going to get tricked by the former. Hahn isn't going to say "we are not signing anyone even if it makes sense", why would he, he could also be establishing a good relationship with an agent by fomenting rumors for Moustakas, but everything the sox have done this offseason has not indicated they are going to take a bigger player like this.