bmags

the perfect ending: trade protected Portland 1st back to Portland for Larry Nance jr.

Boo I wanted this pinned for the entire lock out

I feel like I read a bunch that there are some things that would prevent bulls from re-signing him technically but no idea how long that lasts. But there were definitely some people writing that had he been cut in offseason the bulls would not have been allowed to pick him back up.

incentives shouldn't count toward overall salary imo

I don't think Jerami Grant will cost more than a first. He's expensive and it brings down the value. Yeah, exactly. Bulls can win enough regular season games for now to get to buyout season / trade market, where they will finally be an attractive team to sign with.

someone tweeted that Ball is incredibly feast or famine on threes. Like he goes either 80% or 20% and it averages to 40%, but you either get good Ball or bad ball.

My belief is it won't be an issue. Teams can still look at his crap period with the sox and see a pitcher striking out 39% of batters, good for 3rd in the league over that time period with the sox, and think that they can put that to use more effectively than the sox.

I mean that happens all the time. 1st half Jermaine Dye in 2009 had a 142 wRC+ and looked like he was the same old all star, 2nd half it cratered to 56 wRC+ and his career was over. Baseball.

he's saying your correlations aren't the same. If Kimbrel was getting hurt by the bouncy ball, then cesar's power numbers should have maintained on the sox. Instead Kimbrel was getting crushed with homers while cesar's power evaporated.

Maybe I'm wrong since this will be too nuanced to really get a full view to measure it up. But my argument isn't intended to be Sox are terrible and can't draft or develop at all. But the way they operate has not created the depth from their minors of other teams, so they rely on major league depth more through trades and free agency more than a good portion of other MLB teams. And this is fine because this isn't a jerry is cheap argument, this is possible because he hasn't asked his front office to be the Cleveland Guardians, we can go out and pay 5M for a good utility guy like Leury. So maybe I shouldn't have said sox pro scouting is better than minors/intl, but I also do think that's generally been true when you account for the 00s. So - they can identify talent. But the structure of their talent pipeline makes it harder for them to have solid replacements consistently. One - we are not a competitive balance team, so we don't get extra draft budget and international budget every year. The mlb literally wants the white sox to use more of their budget on MLB free agents, so having a free agent pool of younger players would help them get more production from that group even if it's not cheaper. Two - we have chosen to go after higher likelihood players from international and sign very small classes. So much of the Tampa Rays depth was built 5-6 years ago in the 2014, 2015 intl classes. And much of that will continue. They have more money to throw at it structurally, but even with what sox have they don't prioritize it. So the white sox have smaller draft pools than half the teams, and they choose to sign smaller intl classes than pretty much all the teams. No matter how good they are at it, they are going to have waves where they missed more than they hit, and that's where this comes into play. The way I see it, this helps sox in two ways. - The pool of free agent players is younger, so they are signing more players for their productive years vs. their decline years. - In trades, the sox have not often targeted more control, they don't seem to go after trades where they have to pay for 3-4 years and not just talent - possibly because they can't afford it. But this means more players are nearing the end of their contract sooner (logic: the age limit players + end of contract players) so you are paying lower prices for younger, possibly more productive years. Add to this, the sox are good at locking up their players. So even if it adjusts to 5 years full stop (more likely an age hard stop than lopping off a full year of control), the sox have shown a strong ability to extend this for the key players.

Has there ever been a player whose star line so hides their real impact as Caruso?

Amazing that Jim boylen couldn’t get us to worst defeat in history.

the weather was also worse.

grain of salt, wasn't a press conference answer:

I'm also going to add game 3 was incredible. Game 4 the crowd really really tried until a double play ruined a rally and it was just clear the day wasn't gonna be it. But game 3 was just insanity from an hour before. It got a little quiet at 5-1, but once grandal hit the 2 run it was just absolute madness. Shortest lines I've ever seen at a sox game because nobody ever left their seat.

I know you were joking but I actually think if you placed each team on a line of who it helps or hurts most the sox would definitely be on the "helps" side since they don't create a sustainable pipeline of young talent. As bad as Hahn was at this in the first half of his tenure, over the last 20 years you'd easily say the white sox pro-scouting org exceeded the intl/amateur scouting.

This was also my takeaway. Once Escobar was gone, the best 2b remaining were Leury and Hernandez. So if we are getting a better 2b than leury they are coming from trade, or we are shocking everyone and signing Trevor Story.

I think it is Harrison if we are counting out Story. But he definitely has the "I'm about to fall off a cliff" vibe, he was just brutal with the As. But is graded at 2b way higher than I expected. It's not good though. Escobar was the FA play that made the most sense, just like he was the Trade last year that made the most sense. And now there isn't a 2b out there that you can trust to get you more than average offensive production, so we are mostly just measuring defense. Last year there were multiple cheap, great options at 2b in Wong, La Stella, etc. Really confused what they have in mind here.

What do people like about Villar? He may have been one of the worst defensive players in baseball in 2020 for that amount of games, and while it's nice he produces evenly from both sides, it's just a slightly above average wRC+ vs. RHP. Add to that - he Ks a LOT. The right side of the infield with Abreu/Villar is potentially the worst right side of the infield I can imagine.

Thank goodness you are here otherwise delicate eyes might see that headline get sucked into the dark seedy world of owner-supported content until they are just a bunch of tiny manfreds walking around with stop watches timing everyone's movements

There are never easy answers here. Scherzer is built different and may well be right, and had me wonder if Dallas's attempt at preserving himself had the opposite effect.

Sheets and Seby qualify for the pension now, however, which does come with some benefits. But I fully agree.

holy hell he's 6 ft 9 we got a Jon Rauch on our hands

Mack ties up the money, but hopefully he is an attractive trade candidate since the bears eat that. I think you still try to re-sign roquan though.

That's pretty fun. My brother is near there, with a normal schedule I can try and check that kid out.