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QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jun 29, 2017 -> 12:34 PM) Given the teams rumored to be involved for Q, it seems we'll have a shot of landing a blue chip OF prospect. Yankees - Frazier Astros - Tucker Braves - Acuna Dodgers - Verdugo Cubs - Jimenez So out of these five guys how would you rank them and who do you think is most likely available? Tucker Jimenez Verdugo Frazier Acuna I'd guess Jimenez/Tucker not available. Frazier/Verdugo most likely. Acuna I have no idea. I assume he could be.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 29, 2017 -> 12:39 PM) Man that crew would be a huge disaster in this day and age. They'd have lebron so they'd be in the finals.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jun 29, 2017 -> 12:25 PM) Doc Rivers is the worst GM in the league, so you are missing the Clippers. And I disagree with you completely...most GM's in this league wish they could have the track record that John Paxson has had over his career. When his time comes (and I am perfectly fine moving him), people will look back long-term at John Paxson as being a good GM. Even Gar...as much as I don't like the run-ins with the front office and the fact that he is slimy...our historical drafting has been pretty good. 2016's draft got us two potential role players. Valentine & Zipser. Not saying either are great players or even starters in this league...but given where we picked, as of today, that is solid value. Additionally, 2015's 1st round pick (Bobby Portis) while inconsistent looks like a guy who can play in the NBA. Again, not a starter, but a solid role player. The Bulls heavily relied on young players (more so then all but a couple teams in the league) and they were the only team who actually won games. When people say they don't trust this front office or a rebuild...I would say I don't trust this front office (cause Gar is just a slimy dude) but their history of drafting has been very good (and that is over a long-term period). Yes, we had some years with misses, but from a relative value perspective, the last two years provided us with three guys, who at this point, appear poised to be role players (and given where we were picking...that is solid relative value). Who knows what can happen, but lets not act like we've been some horrible drafting team...the Bulls haven't. Anyone who says they have are delusional and has no perspective on how likely draft picks are to flop, etc. I hate defending this front office, but some of these statements are just so ridiculous and ignorant of a long-term track record that was pretty good. Everyone thinks its easy to win championships but it isn't, especially in the NBA, and the best front office people may not ever win one because somewhere in the equation...luck can be involved. Joe Dumars put together an improbably dominant team in Detroit before completely hamstringing it with terrible trades and signings. He was a fantastic and truly terrible GM in one tenure. Paxson was a good and then terrible executive in his tenure, and a fine record 5 years ago isn't enough to keep your job after the horrendous execution following 2011. The bulls front office has: - punched out a coach - Fired a coach for criticizing behind closed doors - Undermined a coach publicly for a year before firing him and encouraging players to trash him to the media - Hired an inexperienced coach from college - Publicly undermined that coach - Overseen a medical staff that has very nearly killed a player, cleared one to play with a broken leg, and oversaw a chronically injured team. Was never fired, eventually left on their own. Fired Jen Swanson after a year though, guess she didn't get on the loyalty train. - Traded 2 first round picks to move into the 11th spot to draft a one dimensional college 3 point shooter who couldn't rebound or steal in college. He was terrible. The two picks were much better. - Drafted Marquis Teague - Drafted Tony Snell - Drafted Denzel Valentine - Overvalued Niko Mirotic, he'll leave for nothing - Signed Rajon Rondo. He was exactly what you thought Rondo would be, except he also turned out to be improbably the most decent human being in the org. So I'm not going to talk too much crap on him. - Signed Dwyane Wade - Thought a team of Butler Wade and Rondo was really good (they were bad) - Refused to go over luxury tax after 2011 losing Korver and Asik for nothing. It all ended up okay though because they signed rip hamilton. - Continue to pay rip hamilton for the rest of time - Let DJ Augustin and Nate Robinson go but made sure that Kirk Hinrich would live forever - Refused to include Taj Gibson for anything, waited until he was least valuable, then traded him and Doug McDermott for 3 players with negative PER - Demanded coach play them - They were terrible - Coach got team to playoffs by benching them They have been terrible managing the team they put together for 5 years, culminating in trading their best asset for a rebuild and not acquiring future assets. It's cool he used the assets he inherited from Krause to get draft picks that created the 2011 team. But he's been terrible since, he's run a drama-filled embarrassment of an org culture.

IN the last month: - We were sure sox wouldn't pony up for Robert because they were cheap - We thought that the robert signing would make us cheap so we drafted college players to save money except: - We signed Robert for 50+ mill - We spent over our slot money for our draft class Sox may end up with money they can't use here but I can't say it's because they are cheap. This market may just be highly odd, and there may not be much teams that are in market for additional slot, and sox may just be incapable fo spending all of it.

A lot of the bad management in the NBA has been replaced by good management and the bulls have not improved. I can think of maybe two front offices that are worse than gar forman led bulls: - probably whomever takes knicks job - magic

QUOTE (Username @ Jun 29, 2017 -> 10:59 AM) Having seen what's happening with the Cubs this year (and the rest of the league) I'm starting to re-consider the need to focus on position players. Even the best core of hitters can't win without the pitching behind it. Young pitching is in demand more than ever, and to be a winner year in and year out you have to have a ton of it. If we end up with an imbalance then we just trade our pitching surplus and/or sign guys to supplement. Plus, then you don't have to overpay for pitchers on the FA market or trade market. I think it's a fools errand to constantly chase what the last WS team did. That said, how many of the pitchers we have could be good for 5+ years with us? Maybe 1. Going all in on pitching may mean a too short window. But if they feel strongly enough about this pitching, I don't know that you turn down a stronger package to get hitters. But I'd certainly weight the hitters as more attractive due to less variability.

I don't think so, we may have some young pitchers up and not sure he's the receiver to deal with them.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Jun 28, 2017 -> 04:31 PM) I've posted this before but I'll post again here. I have a buddy that is good friends with someone close to Braves organization. He told me in the winter that Atlanta was really interested but balked at trading Maitan or Acuna in the deal. I posted all of that here. This guy gets legit Braves info a lot but the White Sox/Quintana stuff always seemed off so I never "run" with it. I've heard heavy pitching packages as the rumored offers with the following names in play: Mike Soroka, Max Fried, Luiz Gohara, Akeel Morris, and Touki Toussant. I don't think Hahn would go for an all pitching package but Rogers and Ofman have both mentioned Braves interest as well as Atlanta Journal Constitution beat guy Dave O'Brien. Just FYI I guess. I missed this, good stuff. Tough decisions.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Jun 29, 2017 -> 10:02 AM) I hope they use it somehow. Gonna be tough to spend it all though without big $$ items. I'd be cool if they spent $3 million and traded away another $1.5 million. This is exactly the amount I had in mind. It's not just that we suddenly shifted to being a max 300k team, it's also that that happened recently. We may have had a late start that makes it unlikely to me we get 15 300k guys. Maybe 6-7 and then 15-16 0-150k guys.

One thing that had held back bulls ownership that the rockets are undeniably better at is the Bulls did a very good job of drafting during the 00-10 decade, but they by and large managed those assets horribly. Whether it's trading JR Smith for nothing, letting korver go for an unused trade exception, trading luol deng for a bunch of largely unused assets. When Bulls had an asset like pick scenarios or favorable cap players, they largely let it go to waste. No sense to flip it for future assets, just let it die. If Morey was on the bulls, maybe we have same issues. But I also feel like he gets Carmelo.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Jun 29, 2017 -> 09:31 AM) With the new rules and the hard cap, there should be a lot of good talent to sign for $300k. Sox definitely picked a good year to go over the cap the previous signing period. This will be interesting to see, I wonder how indicative this year will be, or if it doesn't really get defined until all the teams are back in (mostly) next year and people had a chance to work with the new CBA.

Great stuff thank you. Will be interesting to see how many players we sign. Could be funny like the NBA, where the creation of a "max" on a number of teams means a lot of players that wouldn't have received 300k use it as goal post to hit. If we don't hit our bonus pool I'd hope we trade some of it out for whatever that market proves (maybe it just ends up being cash)

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jun 29, 2017 -> 08:03 AM) First round knockouts suggest they are a bit overrrated. Maybe they do better in the East, but they aren't in the East, and they are well aware of it before they make moves that basically put them in an upgraded version of NBA hell. Maybe Paul is the guy that finally changes that. He is 32 so he probably is about to start declining, but he can decline and still be a top of the line guy for a couple years I would think. Harden had his best season handling the ball. Now you take him off the ball. It will be interesting, but when it comes playoff time, they still need some key Golden State injuries to have any chance at all. They haven't had a losing record since 2005-2006 and despite that have been able to collect attractive assets with 2nd round picks and good free agent signings into better players. I can't really call issue with their strategy. I'm not going to call out a team for not tanking when they have evolved so much over time while still being able to win. Haha, idiots, you should have traded all your stars and been terrible for 5 years in the hopes you could either be a champion or the exact same place you are now with soem great players but not enough to supplant maybe the greatest collection of talent in 30 years.

QUOTE (Jake @ Jun 28, 2017 -> 08:45 PM) What I'm not seeing with Hanson is the ceiling to justify the kinds of rankings he was getting as a MiLBer with non-great production. Two things: 1) I think there is a reluctance to sufficiently revise downward after a high ranking 2) Players with one superior tool (speed, in this case) seem to have a more graceful fall. I think it's easier to imagine a player with a upper echelon major league trait using it to overcome weaknesses than a player with a wide array of modest strengths finding those 5-10% gains that make them a great player.

Great K! PetricKa

RIP petricka Putnam bullpen

As opposed to Kahnles last night, this is what an actual bad inning looks like.

Rockets org is very good. If they were in east they'd have been in conference finals every year since 2013.

Engel looks like the heel from Encino Man but damn if he's not the first good defensive center fielder to actually look the part when he came up.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Jun 28, 2017 -> 03:10 PM) Might be piggybacking off the fact there were scouts from 10 teams at the game. Ha good call!

Been burned hard by it before but theoretically chris paul in a D'antoni offense should be a lot of fun.

QUOTE (Jose Abreu @ Jun 28, 2017 -> 02:33 PM) If memory serves, the great Adam LaRoche fired a scoreless inning of relief that night. Yes sir!

Him and Joe Lieberman.

I'd want to focus specifically on catchers. I wish and hope collins finishes up at least around .245+ this year. But I am trying to respect the amount of information and technique he is trying to apply away from hitting. I am not saying this isn't a bad sign that he may have difficulty with contact, just that I'm going to give him time to develop before moving him to 15-20 range.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 28, 2017 -> 01:33 PM) He went from being a super popular two term governor, to an easily elected Senator, to getting beaten by an absolute nobody. I think the "cashing out" label is really hard to beat, so is quitting mid-term. I think it would be hard to beat especially in primary.