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It is truly a singular posters obsession. I don't know of another that continuously posts about trading him.

I just am at a completely different place than you guys. I'm willing to trade talent for position players. I would much, much rather get pitchers through FA, or soak in an expensive/market priced vet through trade. Woodruff is good, but I'm not interested in paying the huge sums for cheap control. Pitchers are too volatile. He's not even openly on the market, so you know he'll take a ton. Ideally a great pitcher the next few years gets dangled and we have resources to get them, but the obsession over woodruff is misplaced to me.

Well, that will be tough. Another thing that makes this a weird spending environment.

He’s a top 30 pitcher in this league. While that may not be an ace, those also don’t grow on trees.

Sigh, well that's very reasonable.

Bai Hive gonna be happy about this

My answer isn’t as interesting but according to ye olde baseball America it is prep up the middle talent.

oh crap this is a good point. If I'm a college coach ESPECIALLY big ten baseball, I may be nervous on job security.

Well different time though. Owners actually making roster decisions was typical. But Veeck also did grow up around the game and was basically a lifer. Reinsdorf also makes clear from his invisibility to media, and mostly hands-offness that it is in charge of his pres/GM to make decisions even if he sets budget and has parameters on contracts to sign. So jumping over them so publicly brings questions to why now?

Mo Cheeks officially added to Bulls bench, along with Bucks Josh Longstaff (Cheeks was longtime donovan assistant in OKC)

Is there some thought out there that Veeck was good at that? People, years removed, liked his gimmicks. But he made horrible baseball decisions, especially the Roy Sievers trade. Who knows if they could have captured a few more penants in the 60s, especially 64.

Who knows what will be available but I like the BA writeups on prep SS Marcelo Mayer and OF James Wood and OF Ethan Wilson and Sal Frelick. Lots of prep LHP to attack in rounds 2/3.

I'm starting to lean this way. I am not sure I like paying Bauer as our #1 as chance of him souring out on deal at some point is high. Stroman would fit right in with this group, have had success with groundball pitchers recently, and leaves us in a position to still have flexibility in future FAs where an unexpected player becomes available (trade or FA). Plus pair them with a high upside vet.

If I was KW/Hahn and was told by JR we could expand payroll, I'd go after the number one guy they wanted first, be aggressive and try to get them to sign early in free agency. Then I'd let the market play out. There are guys now that we have place holders of >$10 mill that may very well be under. A guy like Joc might really just be paid as a platoon guy on a tough market.

I'd be a fan. Not sure that could lure Fedder away, who has been a pretty popular candidate with his background in majors and success of college pitching coaches moving over to mlb. But you could also bump zaleski up to pitching coordinator, fedder as pitching coach and keep Hasler as bullpen coach.

Yes haha, michigan, but Fedder would be a great pick.

Then we should try to use FA for quality depth and wait for the right time for a high quality pitcher to be dangled rather than thinning out our assets without even building upon them.

While I agree, I don't know what it means that brad hand under a 1 year / $10 mill deal just got rejected by every team in the league.

The brewers, who have done an amazing job putting together a winning roster with paper clip transactions, are going to trade their marquee star at his lowest possible point, when he is paid market value AND off a down year. And to get him, we are subtracting value from our team to “balance it out” more effectively. No thanks.

Watches Ted lasso once

I agree. I didn’t want Odorizzi last year as our main SP signing. As our #3 or #4? Sign me up.

I respect Joel Sherman but feels like agent side pontification

Part of this is just usage. Snell and Kershaw were fantastic last year but their teams don’t have them go CGSO like Bieber/Giolito had. But I’m not particularly in love with any of this crop, so I’d rather take advantage of the quality depth and wait until a big SP becomes available.

Though lacking star power this FA really has a lot of quality depth, which is exactly what Sox need.

And his age means he is not under the typical INTL restrictions?