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Luis Gonzalez had a minor groin injury in september.

hey, I said he "could be", could be could be not! - Jim Bowden probably

Really gets down to if the owner felt comfortable being cash flow negative for the team.

The board is weird with him because 1) I agree there is way too much assumption that he's gonna make it and moving a player in anticipation of him is nonsense but also 2) the board is way too certain on his ceiling and what type of player he'll be based on two months of baseball.

To me that's a good thing because it was all padres.

One thing for doubters to keep an eye on is how willians astudillo performs this year for twins. Guy had basically one skill which was he didn't k and also didn't walk much. Not much else, little power, no speed. He finally made it up to the twins and performed pretty well. Like Narvaez, he seems to be developing decent power later in his 20s. Madrigal has a much better tool package.

He had more issues than sale with endurance and keeping his stuff late in starts. If he wanted to be a starter it needed to change, but if he isn't then he should go back to what worked, though still needs better command.

cool, didn't say they couldn't! Point was that soxtalk is hypercritical on the failings of every other organizations farm system, but padres are well suited to fill pitching soon. You think all their top 100 pitching prospects will fall off with another year, I think some may rise to the top faster than you expect. Good thing about investing in intl spending like Preller does is even if you have players drop off, you have more reserves that suddenly grow and get better. It's a great concept I wish the white sox would follow.

Then they can be traded for pitching.

I think the white sox should have had their infielders practice more positional flexibility back to last year. Id love Yoan, Timmy, Madrigal, Machado all to be able to move around for when we have an abundance of guys, more than positions. That's what good teams look like!

They have volume and have younger prospects that get better as they come up. That's the benefit to not drafting maxed out college players that are what they are and get picked off to injury and lack of stuff.

This post is good and has links to more detailed posts https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/the-padres-are-in-the-mix-for-bryce-harper-and-manny-machado-will-they-strike-a-deal-or-fall-short/

The sox have two top pitching prospects and then 1 good pitching prospect and then a bunch of mediocre pitching prospects. The padres have like 8 good pitching prospects.

Everyone keeps talking about the creative Hosmer deal. I truly don't understand why they had to get creative. It seemed they were way out in front of his market (another thing that scares me!). Yeah, maybe the soft 3 year 36 mill to end the deal got him and he could have gone for 5 years 100, but...that's still 3 years 36 mill more than I bet he would have gotten elsewhere.

Is that what they said happened? I figured he was just nearby since he was an HR intern.

I agree with this, it's also why I'm most scared of the padres because they seem to be more emotionally invested in big splashes. It really wouldn't be worth it if there is an opt out in year 2. Ideally you begin to build around machado, but if you do that and he opts out, you don't have as much flexibility to re-sign then 28 year old machado just as you need him.

I like how buster straddles this line of both that teams should be more involved in free agency and trying to win and also that only World Series contenders this year should sign top free agents.

They are going after Harper too and nobody has described that pursuit as fake. I’d throw the Padres financials out the window, it’s clear they are gonna give this a ride. I’m definitely nervous, the Sox may be more dogmatic about player value than the Padres (see Hosmer$)

That wasn’t my point. People are pointing to his recent tweets floating about his previous reports as good news for Sox, but it is outdated and doesn’t reflect on what the current situation apparently is with San Diego being much more aggressive.

The good news is it has validated players waiting until last minute so every offseason can be like this. wait did I say good news?

Gomez cares more that his reporting on the Sox offer was right, not that the Sox are still going to land Machado.

Or you could have publicly had a 275 million offer instead of pushing your “won’t go past 7 years and offer 175 mill” line of strategy and prevent the Padres from ever pushing at all.

But Sox may also not want to pay more than “what they think he’s worth”, which is my bigger worry.

This is often what it’s like when the Sox don’t land someone.

Yes his weeks old information really comforts me.