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This is a nice summary of how I feel. In a vacuum, acquiring betts while he is available to get another year of his production because you are willing to pay what it takes to sign him makes sense. That the sox are not paying what it takes to sign him is the issue. Not paying talent to make sure you have the best shot to acquire him long term.

I mean they can value him like a 5-6 WAR player, but he's only actually done it once and the team acquiring him is getting a player off of a wrist injury which typically saps production for a time. But yes, I'd be open to trading madrigal for him. Rangers are said to be souring on athletic/risk profiles, sox have a match of these "polished" college players. Madrigal a good starting point.

Thanks, couple thoughts: - I think people have taken the information that the sox front office not being capable of signing high-level free agents due to incompetence/misguided sense of budgeting to actually being the correct thing, when obviously it's very bad. We should not as an org set-up be refusing to go after Betts, few other teams are in as good of a position long term to afford him. - If the sox acquired betts I would expect them to do everything possible to sign him long-term, that it would be the plan. That he would do so and expect at least a Harper contract, or a very player friendly opt-out period - for instance, what if he had an opt-out of 2021...and you get 3 years of betts. Is trading still not worth losing prospects? - I think a player this valuable becoming available is worth acquiring, and if worse case scenario it becomes clear that not only will he test free agency but would not like to sign with sox, they can trade him at the deadline and receive back some value. Push comes to shove, if boston said we'll trade you betts for Cease/Dunning I would do so and commit the organization to try and cobble a pitching staff together brewers/twins style. But, if the separate question is what do I think the white sox front office is capable of? Not much, but as a fan I am looking at a team struggling to develop and draft, and poor at identifying undervalued assets, and am supposed to get pumped about just committing to acquiring depth and letting all of our prospects fuel this entire thing? No thanks. The rebuild should have enabled plays like going after Betts, that it may not is an indictment not on the the idea of acquiring betts, but of this rebuilds shortcomings. And I think acquiring betts and paying him would overcome them.

Trading 2 pitchers with tommy john, one that has struggled with control and staying deep into games is actually not the worst idea if he has value. Relying on him to be a cost controlled TOR starter is also quite risky, but yes, we can just write in each of our prospects into their positions with their max ceiling value and everything will work out.

Yes, and I feel much more confident in filling the 2b and DH positions with lower cost and getting production than right field. - Eduardo Escobar - 7 mill a year - 109 wRC+ - DJ Lemahieu - 2 years 24 million (set market) mvp candidate - Tim Beckham/Derek Dietrich - minor league/min deals - 99 wRC+ - The one clunker you can really point to is Jed Lowries 10 million a year deal, where he got injured. It's a nice position with FA money. Scooter Gennett/Schoop/Moustakas on that wheel again this year. And when you are getting an elite offensive and plus defender in RF, you can cycle through 2b.

Ok, then sign him by bidding the most money for him.

Cease + walker would be a great deal. They should do that yesterday.

If they are spending $35 million a year on betts the perfect positions to need to fill externally are 2b or 1b/DH. Those extra savings will mean little if we have to throw amounts at marcell ozuna esque players, providing slightly above average offense with horrendous defense. You hope to have economic flexibility to pounce when a consistent 6 WAR player becomes available, this team will not be organically grown into a world series contender.

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).

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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.