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What does this mean? Is his contract very incentive laden on IPs?

I agree. I still think that's a tough price to pay and there is a bit of "if you were shopping around this guy was this the best you could get?" but the twins proved a lot last year at getting darn near everyone to perform. So I'll give them benefit of doubt.

Mazara isn't good vs. LHP either. Joc Pederson is better than Mazara, he's basically what you'd hope Mazara to be except you know he already is that. He's better vs. RHP than Mazara is. Even with his poor splits he was nearly 30% better hitter than the rest of the league. Mazara was 6% worse. And yes, he's also better defensively. So Pederson is better offensively and defensively which is why people like him.

I don't know, that's kind of the thing about bad teams. They mostly tread water around .500 most of the year then have one terrible month. 2018 sox had that horrendous start to the year but were mostly good. 2017 may have been pre or post ASB they tanked. This team is hopefully built to avoid that big backslide where nothing is working for anyone. The great teams are just good all the time, but if the sox are a good team it likely means they flip it, tread water most of year and have one really hot month. Think 2010 white sox. That team was 88-74 mostly off of a 22-7 run in June. were in the hunt until the end. That was one of my favorite sox teams that never made the playoffs until Kenny completely pissed all over it with the Manny pickup.

longenhagen has good insight, but he took on such a prickish persona in his chats it made them unreadable. And the fangraphs chats being weekly make them so much more accessible than previously espn and BA. But now Law is on the athletic for me...so far this year looks like it will be better for prospect news. Hasn't felt like there has been any new faces to prospect writing in a while.

I don't know that Maeda will be much worse or better than Keuchel, hard to know as he's moving from a pitching environment that was so beneficial to only putting them in successful scenarios in LA, and to top it off he's going to the AL. That said, the twins were brilliant last year and have a great front office. Since soxtalk declared the twins offseason a failure they acquired josh donaldson and maeda. They are going to be formidable throughout sox window, their stupid fo seems very good. Ideally you could still just trade for joc pederson as he already is what most hope mazara could be, at not that much different cost for this year. See if Marlins are interested in Mazara or just keep him and have a very awkward platoon but a lineup that has lots of flex vs. righties. And uh, sigh, yeah that trade for betts sucks to miss out on. Sox are in a good position. But these were some big swings with a low cost. Doesn't come around much.

Eh, at least it's novel and was a giveaway.

The correct way to do this would have been to do the baseball swinging guy with the chicago flag coloring him

also hilarious: https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/new-era-mens-san-francisco-giants-black-2020-spring-training-39thirty-stretch-fit-hat-19newmmlbgntstcspsfg/19newmmlbgntstcspsfg

Looking at all 30, the execution of the sox one is hilarious Like they just put it as the default and forgot to go back ("eh, someone'll figure this one out"

For those that want to buy it (everyone): https://www.dickssportinggoods.com/p/new-era-mens-chicago-white-sox-black-2020-spring-training-39thirty-stretch-fit-hat-19newmmlbwsxtcsprcws/19newmmlbwsxtcsprcws

Both the white sox and twins cannot handle any SP injuries (at least in first half) and the indians can't handle any significant position player injuries. So it will be volatile but yeah I think this is the scenario that plays out the most if you play the season.

Pretty plausible.

I don't, we never know, but sounds like they were much more into bagley.

Awesome!

Here's me being charitable though - they did get unlucky. Especially the sacramento jump year. They've had pretty close to their worst case draw every single year except last. We very much are talking about maybe the resurgence of pax if they had the luck of sacramento rather than the luck of someone like orlando recently. However, there are plenty of other teams, many who have had different scenarios and have been much better at putting together competitive teams than the bulls. Hell, look at Indiana. Look at the Heat. They both took different routes than tanking, both had the end of their dynasties around similar times to bulls. Both emerged much faster. Bulls just keep pointing to the damn knicks.

Right, I guess I don't think they are the most likely, but I would be pretty surprised if Texas wasn't among the top suitors based on behavior this offseason.

Listen, you guys may be measuring the bulls based on the scores of games or like wins, but he's measuring them on growth. So, unfortunately your opinion doesn't matter.

I actually think Rangers are very likely.

This was great. Nice to see the sox open up a bit on this. Did not realize where this guy came from. We heard from Sarris that the previously sent around list of teams and their # of analytics employees was misleading due to some teams use of vendors. Sox poaching a top guy from their vendor that made wearables is very reassuring. Getz definitely going to have a line to walk with getting buy-in, but he's certainly known what needed to be done, we just have to hope it's fast enough to take advantage and give an edge soon.

I don't know, doesn't seem that steep but yeah I think LA is most likely.

Oh definitely, but I learned a lot about Ramos/Gladney from it.

The third base writeup was so good