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I was just thinking this. Obviously some stuff has happened this offseason, the seattle offloading and mets acquisitions, but all of the actual exciting things have just been a slow crawl of just neverending false starts. This was in fact how the Q saga went except the sox never committed to trading him before the best deal and obviously that worked out. So you never know.

lol I forgot they hired Darrell Bevell.

gonna be weird having no real draft stuff to look forward to.

On the other hand he's also described as noticeably bigger, so that angle is still there! But while people like Y2Jimmy say Sheets hits bombs in batting practice, have never heard his power even translated to that setting. So if he's getting higher marks there, even if it doesn't translate into game power immediately, that will be improvement.

I know "best shape of their lives" stories and beckham and all, but Gets gave some very specific info on Rutherford and Fulmer changes that could be easy to verify in spring so I'm looking forward to it.

I love Curtis Granderson, glad he found a spot.

I would really really love for Walker to have the type of year Gonzalez had last year. Kinda forgotten but Gonzalez struggled in his first post-draft year.

On a phone reboot all the sudden the mlb at bat push notifications came through a bunch last night. Basically 4-5 articles about harper / machado all about how he should not take his top offer now, or a list of teams that should make a big move that left off the sox. I turned off push notifications after that.

They do have a new sheriff in town, but I have a hard time believing this is a move he would make. The Giants are going to be hard to predict though, Zaidi has made secrecy a priority and they haven't telegraphed much.

The Rays getting the 26-29 years of a pitcher on pre-arb is like their dream scenario.

I would be of the mind that Narvaez was too poor defensively to improve if I didn't consistently watch Hahn ditch catchers that had a plus skill but not well rounded only to become well rounded on other teams.

What mess exactly? Would he be getting more money if he demanded less?

Have you heard anything about sox and j2 players this year?

This was pretty good. I did not know sox were top 5 in payroll in 95-97 and flexing as a big market team.

boo, bored of bears/packers national games.

One thing that kinda sticks out is in college he hit more home runs than doubles. In W-S last year he had 28 doubles and only 6 home runs, sort of a crude inverse of his junior year at wake with 21 home runs and 10 doubles. I could only find that he hit with wooden bats after senior year but without any power, and since the bat changes it's kinda hard to believe it would be this big of a shift but it does make me wonder if suddenly it became gap power.

Well that's mostly agreeing. My point was once you got past Dunning there wasn't another arm that you could see big growth from. Apparently that could be Stiever and Pilkington and I hope that is the case. It's not even that its because I think the rebuild will be doomed, I just want to see the factory pumping more talent so that acquisitions can be easier and the sox don't end up two years in with maxed out payroll and little talent left to trade.

Apparently from building petco where the previous owner took out high interest loans that came to a head in the last 4-5 years before they renegotiated.

All of those qualify for what Law identified as maybe a #5 starter. I hope pilkington dominates, but all of these feel like guys that will move up the white sox list due to attrition and not due to climbing into higher performance tiers. We do have a bunch of players that could feasibly make an mlb roster, but when we were ranked as the top farm system we had a bunch of groups of players that could feasibly become the top pitcher and position player prospects. Now past Robert/Cease there's not a lot of players that fit the bill as a potential big riser. Just bush/sosa level. The lack of investment into young players bites them, but they also haven't developed what they have invested in.

Good article from Jonah Keri on the Pads pursuit: 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/ In short, it's hard to see how it's not b.s., as they often cry wolf as a pursuing team, and this part that caulfield I think has brought up before

It was one of the more exciting nfl seasons and it ended with a thud, especially after these teams had such flukey plays that allowed them to make the game.

Mostly enacted through the salary floor that is dictated based off of revenues from the previous years (one of the reason there is a delay in FA in basketball is that is tabulated then the salary floor and cap is defined). If any one team employs players for less than the salary floor, they would pay a dividend to that teams players whatever the difference is. There actually may even be an end of year accounting to ensure it was hit that may get paid out to players if it wasn't. The same for teams over the luxury tax, except that is paid out to other nba teams.

I know drafting is a part of it, but this especially is where the lack of production we get from LatAm kills. For as little as we get on the hitting side, pitching has probably been more barren. The pitcher we traded for swisher was the last success I can remember?

That rings fairly true. None of the pitching prospects past dunning are remotely interesting based on what they've shown so far. Basically there is Hansen as a wildcard, and then a bunch of pitchers that don't feel like they will grow to be better. That pitcher we traded for Nova is probably more interesting than any of our pitchers in single-a/A+ aside from wherever hansen goes.

Yeah Lavine and a second for Payne and Nwaba seems good