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Floor is gordon bombay, ceiling kurt warner imo

lol I would love to see this for the reactions.

This is what I thought, they also were seeing their toolsy hitters just not developing a hit tool.

@Y2Jimmy0 is the college bats a timeline thing for the rangers? I thought it was just as much about reversing their strategy of going for super toolsy guys that were just not panning out for them.

No, I know, I'm just being dramatic, obviously Machado had 8 for 250. It's more that when we are in a chase for a player like that it never feels like we'll go enough over the top to sign, but the kind of player that would sign for a 4 year 18-22 million deal is the kind that will be old enough/limited enough and seems to be their wheelhouse of player type.

uh yeah I'll take the under.

Seems good for northern school guys imo.

on the other hand, the sox haven't won a division in 15 years.

no, no, maybe. The most interesting to me continues to be Kluber, but by far the most risky.

I kind of feel like the white sox have a "max deal" which sits around 4 years 80 million and whether they sign anyone completely depends on whether an "a-level" free agent is a combination of age or skill level that will sign at that amount. So you have your Yasmani Grandal last year. And in 2011 you have your 2011 dollars amount of 4 years 56 million. So will Springer sign for 4 years like 88 million? No. Will Bauer? No. Then we'll end up giving JAckie Bradley Jr like 4 years 48 million and feel good about how we saved money.

Listen, you don't have to like trading Dunning to see what I was responding to was saying that Lynn was only a marginal upgrade (if any) over dunning was pure silliness.

I don't. But obviously the ideal is keeping the higher level depth of kopech/dunning/cease/stiever and swapping out lower-level potential. Stiever would be first to go, obviously.

I do think he can evolve. His curve flashed as VERY good, but he barely threw it. Nobody on the sox uses their curve. Maybe that changes with new PC.

Lance Lynn 9 year career ERA: 3.57 FIP: 3.62 Last 2 years: ERA: 3.49 FIP: 3.66

His four-seamer is an incredible pitch regardless of even the velo differential.

One one hand, you have shane bieber, a fastball/curveball combo pitcher with a consistent mid 90s fastball with incredible ride and breaks in on RHB hands he nails at the top of the zone before using his curve down low. On the other you have Dunning, who mostly was a sinker-slider pitcher. Dunning has ability to grow, and his curve was really good and his sinker worked last year. He can evolve, pitchers do. But I'd just say that 2021 for the sox is more valuable than 2026 despite everything this board would have you believe. I would not TRY to trade Dunning at all. I like that we have at least one pitcher that can throw strikes. But let's not kid ourselves, Lynn is a big upgrade. He's thrown 200 innings before. He's already re-invented himself. Dunning can do all those things but he hasn't yet and that's a big difference in what to expect from pitchers.

Soxtalk player comps continue to just be the bane of my existence.

But that's not what I was responding to was it. We can live in a world where Dunning is a good pitcher without having to bludgeon our mind to believe that Lynn is actually not that good. But Lynn is very good, and with the exception of a single year, he's been good his entire career.

Lance Lynn is much better, much much better than Dunning is today.

I'm not sure I believe in Q producing much anymore. Quintana without excellent home run suppression has been just average. His FB velo has tailed off. His changeup looks like it could become a new weapon. He's gone from the fastball away, curveball, ride 2-seamer in to the high fb/curveball craze. And when he gets his fastball up it does kinda work, he gets a lot of swing and miss that way. But I wonder if when he's missing, he's missing low, as his basehits used to be on outside corner (where he located everything) with his fastball to now thigh-high all over the plate. His barrel% is a lot higher. It's just not working as well and one thing with Q is we knew he always had less margin for error. Love the guy, and that's probably fine for a #4/5 guy, but I could see it being "Ivan Nova first half with sox" kinda bad.

That 2017 draft really sucked. Just absolute garbage from sox pick on. The best play was Nate Pearson, 20 spots later. Baz probably would be better, but dude is still in A ball with no year last year. Evan White made the majors. His defense is still interesting, but man, I don't see him hitting enough to justify it. Just an absolutely garbage class, which you can tell with how many of them were not picked up on the 40 man and are rule 5 eligible.

I think Pace should go. He knew when he traded for Mack that was a boom/bust move. You have to push the chips in and assume the QB is good to take advantage of his contract. But the QB wasn't good, not even enough to re-sign. And you didn't have enough left to buoy him with actual talent, and you kept using the draft to plug specific holes and trading depth for it. It didn't work, and you shouldn't get a second drink from the well even if it's partially luck. The reason they are even worse off than normal is Pace's failure with first round picks, and his failure to acquire a surplus of picks when the bears were clearly rebuilding. He even left them with less than normal in too many years. His first draft with Kevin White was the perfect example. Yes, him busting makes it worse than normal, but selecting a WR in the first round rather than trading back and collecting picks was silly. When you are convincing yourself you are such a good scout that you can pick individual players out of huge draft classes and trading away excess picks - it will eventually catch up to you. But now we are entering the carousel that can be self fulfilling. Regardless of whether Ted Phillips is a bogeyman, they need stability at the top that knows how to run a football org. I think its right the differences people make about the McCaskeys and the Rooneys. The Rooneys cut their teeth learning how to scout and build football teams. The McCaskey's learned how to sell tickets. The McCaskeys are hands-off, they let the football people run stuff...but they also have no idea what the football people they hired are doing. I don't know, if I'm the mcCaskey's I fire phillips and try to install Omar Khan as president. Let him hire a GM under him, and re-build the entire org.

This is I think a part. The pressure has not been from top free agents, it's been solid vets that couldn't find second contracts. This year teams might grab those contracts rather than face potential of starting clock early on guys due to covid.

Garrett Whitlock would be most interesting guy to me from sox perspective, they've had such good luck with groundball-centric relievers. Man, there were a lot of college baseball fans that were so adament the MLB scouts were wrong about Jeren Kendall, but they were extremely right. I'm not touching anyone in the first round with >20% k rate in their junior year, and you'd like to see big improvement that Junior year. Even guys you think of with big swing and miss called out (kris bryant, george springer) both cut down their krates in college their final year to <15%. Kendall's k rate GREW his Junior year to 25%. I remember looking over and over at pro players with big swing and miss and what their college strike outs were and all were <20%. There was really only one outlier I can remember, and it was Aaron Judge with 21%.

I don't even know if it's that. Previous offseasons had such a select group of teams that were looking to improve and go for a playoff spot. Last year for instance it was Yanks, Phillies, (ostensibly) White Sox, Braves, Reds with teams like Red Sox, Astros, Brewers, Cubs just trying to retain or refill cheaply. That left the top free agents flush, but all the marginal vets getting squeezed. But teams like the Royals/Tigers rebuilding but trying to put good vets around their first call-ups. Teams like Giants seem back at the table. Marlins improbably made playoffs and have a new GM at helm. Blue Jays are going for it. Padres still keep finding money. Even teams like Mariners, are they shedding? They seem at this point like they are just holding court until the re-enforcements arrive.