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QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 28, 2017 -> 01:40 PM) A 31 year old with a velocity jump? Sounds suspicious to me. It happened to Dennis Quaid.

QUOTE (nitetrain8601 @ Mar 27, 2017 -> 10:45 PM) Alford really isn't that great. He's just hot right now. He hit the lottery being at UCLA because the school can pretty much sell itself with all the resources and location. While mostly true UCLA has had a lot of trouble finding coaches that can fit with that program (not unlike Texas with football/basketball).

Yep. His huge jump in velo is something to watch. Could be a big trade piece if it translates to outs.

QUOTE (Tex @ Mar 14, 2017 -> 08:48 AM) I don't pick a venue based on the food or beverages, but I enjoy an event if they have the beverages and food I like. And that is the trend in stadiums. Get this reasonable and sensible take OUTTA HERE

I mean, I think if you polled everyone they liked Austin Jackson in CF more than Shuck. I'm pretty sure May can match Austin Jackson's stats until Tilson is better.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 28, 2017 -> 09:03 AM) The point being, take away games that don't count, he's been far less interesting. Maybe he figured something out, or maybe he will be back in Charlotte quickly, but it isn't like they have a ton of better options. Maybe one of May, Engel and perhaps Leury will step up and show they belong in Chicago. They probably all will be flying a lot between the cities this summer. One thing here, the most likely young contributors we will see this year are pitchers. I'm glad all of the lower level prospects we are trying out in outfield are defensive studs or fast. I would want them to have as good of a defense as possible. Melky wasn't terrible last year but Avi needs to be hidden and having all of these super fast good CF types is the rebuilding with longshots I prefer.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 28, 2017 -> 08:53 AM) He makes Darrin Erstad look useful. Actually that was the name that I thought of as they described him, except the grounders are hit weakly to the SS instead of 2b.

Saladinos bat was supposed to be terrible too. But if he can somehow scrape out a .720 Ops like Salad with plus plus OF defense then congrats we don't need to buy that on the open market. Something we have spent a lot on with players like bonifacio.

Man there is a lot of indignation in this thread. Glad Bourjos is gone. I had a feeling he would be my least favorite rebuilding player after talking to my philly fan friends.

Seeing on Twitter that Virginia and Kansas now look likely to take Medicaid expansion. edit: said Nebraska meant kansas.

So, Mirotic with a nice march again.

The Otani thing is hard to figure. It is almost irresponsible given what he could earn at age 25 to come over 2 (3?) years earlier and get 5-6 million. BUT - he wants to play in MLB and he will primarily be a pitcher. I do wonder if cases like Kenta Maeda are what is driving this. The usage of pitchers in Japan has been heavy, and has hurt their physical outlook. I wonder if that is why he wants to get over more quickly.

I do think it will come down to costs, however. Signing Robert in the 2016-17 signing period means going to Jerry asking him to take on a certain amount of tax. I think Robert salary will be depressed a bit due to the constraints of when he's signing and the all you can eat buffet so many of those teams went on. If it's close to 10-12 mill, that's 19-23 million total for the Sox. That seems reasonable. But obviously much beyond that it becomes untenable. No, I can't see the sox paying $30 million total with $14 mill in tax for Robert.

I used to think Padres were favorites if it's pre 15 because of low payroll, now I'd say Braves/Sox/Cardinals.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 27, 2017 -> 09:34 AM) The Padres have a $55 million payroll for 2017. The White Sox have a $90 million payroll. It would be very easy to argue that the Padres should be the early signing favorite for a few reason. #1 they already have gone over the caps this session, and literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain by bringing in every single player they can before June 15. They also have a lot less payroll spent in this period giving them the ability to spend a bit more than the white Sox have. According to the Forbes list, the Padres actually have a slight overall revenue advantage as of 2016, so the $35 million difference in payroll is significant as to their relative spending abilities. But they spent a crapton in taxes already. Signing Robert to 10 million would be an additional $20 million to that franchise, one that already spent $30 mill (this is Jimmys article isn't it? http://www.chicagonow.com/future-sox/2017/...e-sox-preview/) So you are talking about a $50 million investment into the riskiest pool of talent for the Padres. I just don't buy it anymore. Still think Cards could, and others, but I'm not buying the Padres would go that deep in.

So i think with the Kushner news about him leading a SWAT force of CEOs to fix the government, I think it cements those Trump as Carter analogies. I don't think Trump is eager to go back to the Congressional fray. He's just going to stick to exec orders and exec branch stuff he kind of can control. Of course, he could just choose to nominate a bunch of employees to enforce the laws in his preferred fashion. But that requires a competent staff and work. So instead he will just get a bunch of rich friends to sit in meetings and come up with ideas that would certainly not benefit the men in the room.

QUOTE (kwill @ Mar 27, 2017 -> 01:26 AM) I wanted to see what others thought of Jacob May. He like Tilson has an injury riddled past but is having a solid spring training. I know Spring Training are tainted given the small sample size and pitchers are often working on certain things. He is a 25 year old prospect that has some very good tools. He has never really put up the stats to be given a shot at a major league spot but who are we kidding, what is the downside of giving him the nod at centerfield? If this season has anything going for it is that you afforded to give opportunities to guys who normally would be stuck as career minor leaguers. Peter Bourjos is not exactly a viable long term solution. What is amazing about May is that he has never had any power to his game. He plays solid defense and can steal some bases. He does not have terrible strikeout numbers in the minor leagues sporting a 22.4% K percentage last year. The real knock on his game is that he just has no power with only 3 home runs in 750 at bats the past 2 season. I look at his size 5-10/180 according to Fangraphs which this would make sense given his low power numbers. I decided to take a look at his twitter page and some of the pictures out of camp. May looks pretty solidly built with muscle. It could be his swing path is more for grounders given his speed. I was wondering has anybody seen May up-close to see if he listed wrong. https://twitter.com/Jacob_May1?ref_src=twsr...7Ctwgr%5Eauthor My hope is that in the process the Sox are able find a few regular major leaguers who could be starters in the future. Would love to hear some other Soxtalk thoughts on him. Not a bad idea. Especially a guy like him with speed was probably told to just make contact. If he can get some lift though, he would be much more valuable.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Mar 27, 2017 -> 09:05 AM) This isn't really true. Most of the other guys already have agreements in place with teams. It pretty much seems like Robert or bust at this point which is why I think they end up with him. I am certainly open to idea I'm putting my fan hat on and ignoring more compelling evidence, but to me that Badler article is still reassuring to me. It reads like "they don't seem like the obvious candidate since they didn't already spend over limit but the white sox keep coming up". It could be a case where we "pursue" with a lowercase p, and fool ourselves to thinking we can land Robert with whatever available funds are left in 2016-17 period, but I think the sox are preparing themselves to be contenders no matter what. I think the main part of it to me is they just seem like an org that is much more comfortable buying into paying a bunch for an 18-19 year old talent than betting on 16 year old ones. Especially ones that had been playing professionally, even if a light league.

One takeaway from me is that pitch from Abreu on Cuban players really seemed to effect Yoan and may come into play with Robert if we spend comparably.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Mar 22, 2017 -> 08:30 PM) Didn't watch it but that stat line doesn't scream out at me - thoughts? Ha, he had a bad 4th inning but 1-3 was televised and he looked dominant. Stuff looks real good.

I am pretty confident Giolito will end up as a good pitcher, I just think he'll end up doing it with a repertoire he didn't expect. He's had a lot of pitching tweaks and changes trying to get him to be the controlled 4 seam fb/curve/change guy. He needs to figure out what he's comfortable with to get guys out, not live up to that.

So basically all Trump is capable of with a house and senate majority is signing symbolic or unconstitutional exec orders domestically. Hopefully he doesn't try to make his name in foreign policy where there are less road blocks.

SuperPACs continue to be a great use of money.

Yes well I still read and enjoyed the whole article so jokes on me.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Mar 22, 2017 -> 08:38 AM) I appreciate the foresight that he had though. Floyd was a terrible hire. In Jonthan Abrams book called " Boys Among Men" about the HS generation of athletes going to NBA, there are very detailed stories about Krause. After the 5th title, Krause had a deal to trade Pippen. He loved Tracy McGrady and I guess McGrady even thought he was heading to Chicago. Would have been Pippen to Boston for multiple lottery picks and one of them was going to be McGrady. Jordan caught wind of this and balked. The Bulls obviously went on to win their 6th title but I appreciate the fact that Krause wanted to pair Jordan with McGrady and have McGrady be the star to lead the Bulls into the next generation. Krause was a forward thinker. He recognized that Brand was a solid player but not special and tried to pair Chandler and Curry instead. It didn't work but I get what he was trying. When he "retired" in 2003, that Bulls team had Curry, Chandler, Crawford, Jalen Rose, and Jay Williams. Also remember how much slack he caught for how he was drooling over Yao Ming even though he drafted chandler/curry previous year? He was dead right. He would have drafted the best talent that draft and figured it out later. I have more respect for him now because a lot of the stuff he caught flack for he was running a modern rebuild. Now, in my head I'm giving him benefit of doubt for jalen rose deal because I'm assuming he got the same sort of Reinsdorf pressure to start winning that Hahn did. But had they waited just one more year they would have gotten that amazing 03 draft and had Crawford, Artest, Wade/Melo/Anthony hopefully, Curry and Chandler. But they also really should have tried to get KG harder.