bmags

Alderson's recent comments have indicated he is not there just to build it out, he is in charge and going to be active as a baseball prez and that's why they are closer to moving on players than people think.

I think hiring a football connected president will do good to ease concerns that bears are in a death spiral the browns were in of cleaning house every few years with no stability. George and Ted will not be stability because they aren't running the football operations. DBB mentioned Eliot Wolf today, who is available. I still say Bears need to raid the Steelers or Ravens of some very high up people and promise them they get the org. New facilities. Flush with cash. Long-term deal. Do what they want with it.

Every year since 2015 we’ve done this dance where there was no prominent connections to a big free agent to the white Sox but soxtalk still gets hyped due to some insider gossip. The Sox being interested in someone means very little. They will never sign an A free agent even if their front office tries very hard. Even if they are optimistic. The problem will always be other teams exist and also want top free agents.

I doubt it. Timelines don’t match up.

I like Joel Sherman a lot but this screams more just looking at fits and making a guess. By fit - Bauer is perfect here or in NY. But that doesn’t get you much farther

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.