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If you plan on signing him next year, why not pay prospects to also get him this year when the white sox fan base is also planning on contending (just with perpetual playoffs-appearer Cole Kalhoun as our magic wand to improve 20 games)

Fair enough. I really did not imagine the rebuild needed to be done so that we'd have to play the same "gamble this cheap/oft-injured/volatile will emerge rather than going after top players" game we played for most of the decade. Say we signed or kept avi...would any of us feel great about him in RF for the future? We'd be in essentially the same place as I doubt he'd have received greater than a 1 year deal.

That's nonsense, there is no deadline here this offseason. They only need to have a greater return if the window is provided and contract accepted to consider. If Boston has judged that they cannot re-sign betts at the number they have in mind, they only need to worry about maximizing the return. If the player gets returned they can just return to negotiating deals not contingent on a new deal and they'll be in the same spot they were. Teams are only going to pay what they value Betts at 1 year for anyway.

Man I ... did not realize how bad the tigers were.

Unless Boston is picking up the cost, a team getting a 72 hour negotiation window that the player has to play ball for, and the team has no control over, is not going to be valued at a top 5 prospect.

Not if they trade him.

Yeah right field is definitely figured out for us long term.

If last year was an anomaly in Hahns tenure I wouldn't mention it, but that type of return has been all too common (despite even striking gold with McCann).

?

Yeah as I went through these I thought that Eloy definitely won the memories this year even if Moncada was just always dominant and Gio was amazing. TA's game against the tigers and the royals batflip leading to the fight were certainly memorable too. But, 2019 belongs to eloy the way 2018 belonged to Palka - so it's not a performance thing just he had a lot of opportunities and took advantage.

Built largely may have been not the right way to think of it, but last year the twins spent roughly 38 million on Gonzalez, Cron, Cruz, Perez, Parker and Schoop. That got them 9.1 fWAR combined. The white sox spent 38 million on Alonso, Colome, Herrera, Nova, McCann, Jay, Banuelos, Osich, and Santana (i'm actually not sure how to count santanas) They got 3.1 fWAR combined For similar price, they received 3x as much production out of their offseason additions. So as we lower our sights to add to this team through just money, I really wonder how much people can expect this management team to nab through injury gambles and depth plays.

Sell the team * *to an owner that runs a team like I would like and keeps team in chicago

I look at how the twins were able to foster a major offseason improvement largely through free agency on a minimal budget. It was probably an outlier free agency example, not many are as successful. But I genuinely wonder, with the sox just now setting up group, if the sox actually have the infrastructure to extract enough value from their money when discussing spreading it around as much as people are talking about here. So if money is to be the cure-all for the sox to get over the top I'd rather place my bets on some surer things than hoping this group finds the next odorizzi.

Mookie Betts career wRC+ is just shy of semien's career year wRC+. The wild card this year saw a team win 92 games and sit at home. Billy beane did very well on the Samardjiza trade, but it has very few lessons for acquiring an actual superstar.

This is absolutely true but many of the contending teams, especially in NL, don't have wonderful farms so I do wonder what a package would even be.

I would make the 2015 trade for samardjiza today for mookie betts single year even if you granted me the foresight of knowing what would happen to them.

They have not won a world series despite their efforts, I think they'd be willing to pay quite a bit for those few extra wins from a player like betts.

You want to compare mookie betts to jeff samardjiza, todd frazier, melky cabrera, david robertson.

He makes us better for a year, which is valuable, and it lets us negotiate his record-breaking deal the white sox should surely be willing to give in the offseason. The idea that the sox may not be willing to go after betts as a free agent is geniunely ridiculous, and that should be the focus of why this would be considered a bad move!

I like this post because it at least gets at the idea that mookie betts becoming available is genuinely shocking and taking advantage of that should be heavily considered. That we have to consider the sox self-made restrictions to judge it a bad idea is an indictment on our ownership/management team. As we had done last year, though an individually large contract, in terms of total salary there is no reason this team can't afford an exceptional contract. But yes, I'd say the ideal is to just sign him next offseason. But, what if the dodgers acquire him? I don't think he gets away.

This may very well be true but the question is how often when a player is intent on testing free agency and the incumbent team is also intent on keeping them do they lose them? THe nats did not really pursue, nor the orioles. The only one that sticks out to me is the Cards with Pujols.

No, absolutely not. Hate this logic. This is what this board did from 2007-2016, where we acted like merely plugging the leaks was akin to improvement. Going from -3 WAR to 0 WAR is no where near the improvement of going from 0 WAR to 3 WAR, and is not close to going from 3 WAR to 6 WAR. Depth is great, but it's not getting elite players. Get elite players!

I don't want to diagnose a player over the internet but yeah more worried about mental health episodes than drugs.

That's scary. Hope he's okay.

Yeah, I think the question for me there is had those teams still pursued in free agency (which I do not believe the nationals did in earnest) what would have happened if they kept those deals as a starting point. I think Harper would have been a national for instance. Machado - I don't know. Orioles were a mess.