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-New York Post I love some three-team action but who would we even target here...Jansen?

Didn't know Levine was a Preller disciple.

People think this is funny or absurd but for all offseason I heard that trading for betts would DESTROY OUR FARM SYSTEM FOR ONLY ONE YEAR and yet the trade happened, the consensus is not that the dodgers farm system is destroyed, the consensus is they kept all of their top prospects and made out fantastic and also oh wow we forgot that mookie was one of the best players in baseball wow. The white sox offseason featured searches to upgrade pitching and right fielders, names were brought up, sox made their choices, and two nights ago a bunch of pitchers and right fielders were traded but apparently that is not relevant at all to the sox and we just need to stick to #brockholttalk.com.

OTOH, is the question should we be more bearish on our hitters or more bullish on our pitchers?

what???

There are so many fake obstacles in here it’s ridiculous. Oh they’d have to beat the angels offer in a short amount of time?!?!?! They’d have to trade a player teams know they don’t need? Why that hasn’t happened since...the last time Mazara was traded. It can’t be done dammit! I’ll give shorthand to the last 13 pages: any move the Sox make is not only the best move, but the only move that could ever have been possible forever and ever amen.

I agree they should never let betts get away, but it's clear the luxury tax escalators are effective. The yankees have been scared off by them, the dodgers have, and the red sox have. That re-set is clearly legit.

If I'm a Boston fan I'm annoyed they are doing this, but let's be real. Would you rather be the crash-boom red sox of the 2010s or the Dodgers of the 2010s? Considering the resources, I'll take the Red sox approach of going for the jugular, as they have shown the ability to rebuild quickly. If the white sox were the red sox, last year would have been competitive because they could have spent stupidly without concern for long-term tie-ups. It's only the repeater taxes that kill them eventually.

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.