bmags

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.

That's 6 teams targeting McCann, two I wouldn't have even pinpointed as a suitor. This is not going to be the cheap offseason many think. It's true that someone like springer may be hard pressed to match what he would in 2018, but he'll still beat 100 mill easily (imo). There will certainly be a group of 1-1.5 WAR vets that end up pining for work in feb, that a writer will put out a "best of the rest" team and we will say "wow a lot of talent". Then those that sign will do terrible that year and we'll remember why teams didn't target them. Overall, encouraging! But the pitching situation sucks at this point. Richards does seem to be one of the better 2nd pitchers to add and target. But first pitchers? It's a small group (and this has nothing to do with minor).

At this point, the offseason doesn’t feel that different than previous. Whatever teams may cut back - feels like it’s made up for by more trying to add than previous offseason a where there were only 3-4 bidders.

ive kinda thought since alderson confirmed they weren’t looking for a president since he’d be more in control the search for a GM became less of a waiting game. Sounds like they are moving forward.

Oof.

I’m now completely confused who people are talking about.

Man I damn near went cross eyed looking at this post until I caught that I’m you responded to a post about Michael Brantley with Jackie Bradley jr. Brantley is very much not positive in center.

Same.

It’s acting like he’s a Pujols type contract but if he was a free agent right now many would probably view him above JBJ.

Also you could easily trade Heyward at some portion of his cost rather than eat all of it.

Maybe a good idea to get people to take it is to create appearance that in scarcity it will go to rich/elite/connected first. This thread went from people skeptical of going first to being jealous that others get to jump the line.

This is a good way of putting it.

This is me too. It’s nice to hear other pitchers are available more so to avoid all teams converging on same guys.

O am i

"Check out these pitches from three years and a UCL ago"

It’s our old pal Jeff!

Boring AF