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I think that could be true but I don't know what a bail out price looks like. Frankly its embarrassing that the nationals aren't going to go all out to keep harper.

You are on fire today lol The only thing you missed was posing a question to yourself to answer.

Confused by last sentence, you think the Nats are still a good fallback or are no longer going to be available if his market strategy fails?

Boras does like dragging on but it seemed to either bite him or at least give him no advantage last year. I do wonder if it causes any shift or if he goes to his old playbook. It's interesting with boras, his bread and butter used to be feeding the owners egos and showing b.s. analytics to justify the costs, but few teams operate that way now, especially the big spenders. I don't see him being that much more effective than any other agent now. FOs have become pretty smart at the same time.

I also like that offensively Harper will at least always bring nice OBP. Like your absolute floor is .350 with him. His down year he had 130 BB and 103 Runs. You get on base, you help your team score. Thomas always had like 120 walks and 100+ runs. Even if the power years are inconsistent.

Yeah this is right to me.

"Manny, here is a Hawk Harrelson alarm clock and, get ready, we'd like you to meet Southpaw, our mascot. Please clap."

Yeah but there has been such a disconnect between local (white sox) expectations and national it was noteworthy to me.

It reminded me of a Missouri-Florida game from 2014. Missouri blew them out like 45-14, I was at a movie for a lot of it. You get out and you are like "hoo hoo how did our offense do!" and the offense had like 120 total yards and were outgained like 250-120. It was a weird game. The offense still put up 27 points on their own, but a lot of it was short, short fields, and when it wasn't short fields, they'd have whole drives that were just a 60 yard pass interference.

The thing that sucks is this upcoming 3 game stretch is so bizarre (lion twice in like 10 days, minny in between) feels like it favors detroit, especially the thursday turkey game. Or at least it pushes whatever strengths to toss up territory. Minny is looking VERY good. Need a great mack to beat them.

I think it's a few things: - Immediately after the WS there was a clear push by execs to push down pricing narrative - I think this is a corrective in that vein of "there are more teams that want to sign these guys than the yankees, cubs and dodgers" that could drive price up. I agree with everyone. I find it incredible that sox would actually get to finish line in a bidding war that goes north of $300 million but also that I think the sox are set-up to do it and have desire so no use being too cynical on it.

Per the athletic: “• Rebuilding teams such as the Reds and White Sox, finally tired of losing 95-plus games, are likely to spend and maybe even spend big. One rival executive views the White Sox as a sleeper for Machado, whom they pursued heavily in a trade last offseason. The Twins and Angels, two other teams coming off disappointing seasons (and like the Reds, proceeding with new managers), are among the others that should fall into the category of “motivated.”” link: https://theathletic.com/633974/2018/11/05/rosenthal-harper-machado-and-shifting-dynamics-in-the-market-will-make-the-offseason-a-parade-of-crazy/

Would love to see Hahn and Chris Sale hanging out.

My big concern about this is it was a whole lot of "age appropriate" success. Basabe they can hang their hat on but my big concern is the amount of older prospects they have still in low-a to high-a, then you have a player like Jimenez that blows out of that mold. They haven't had a "big success" player organically despite a huge amount of focus that should have gone into talent accumulation. But Robert ties hands behind back in one sense, in other, the draft focused so much on college players that we just don't know if are good or just older yet.

Yeah, that's how I feel. That Q trade seems to have been legitimately inspired, but it's really the talent accumulation outside of that that has me nervous. It's EARLY for sure, but not that early. Also, I think the point I"m making is that Hahn and co have been in charge for 6 years now, but to execute this move to being a contender it's not a group you can sit back and say "if they just do what they do we should be alright". You could say that about dombrowski to red sox, theo to cubs. But Hahn actually needs to improve the outcomes and processes to do that. So he's just not a sure thing despite his experience.

I'm not really interested in creating an ownership persona, per se. You are right in that often ownership groups will inherently want to hire their own staff. I'm asking if I or YOU took control, following the sox like we have, knowing what we know, do you think this is the group to finish off the rebuild and get us to contention?

The rich get richer.

I will end up being wrong, but I have always wanted Salazar. Just seemed like the guy always on the verge of a breakout. But easily, the injuries just mean breakdown.

I am with that Eminor post, would add to DA and theirs that my biggest disappointment is the FOs lack of success in finding talent outside of trades. I am quite frankly not thrilled with the development of our draft picks, middling results from LatAm and truly bizarre handling of the 2016 class, waivers, and far and away, pro free agents. I will add a caveat that there could be big returns here if Palka improves and Rondon's power number end up for real. But they require big improvement. Those would be nice waiver pickups (rondon may have been a minor trade after a waiver claim). After initially being really intrigued, I'm very skeptical of this intense focus on collecting minor league relievers. Among other reasons, I worry that we will end up running out of space for them before they even get to bigs. Lastly what I've been batting around in my head, is if you acquired the white sox this offseason, would you keep Rick Hahn and co? I would not. I would do a huge revamping of FO to focus on getting this group into competition and one that has better pro scouting ability. And that's as someone that supports the rebuild and in terms of trades generally thinks Hahn did well, with the exception of the more marginal trades where he went after AAAA "one year past a prospect" guys instead of more raw A/INTL players. I think his trades were good, but, the phrase one foot in, one foot out, that's all I can think of when I look at white sox. Smart enough to know they should put soem resources toward things, restricted enough to ever go full bore.

Yes, when you include the last two years, which feature Avi Garcia's lone good offensive year, they do look like comparable players. Pollock can probably still play center. there is no CF for a few years in our system. It's the perfect place to supplement. That doesn't mean "make playoff teams now", but it does allow sox to support young players with not garbage and encourage competition. It also allows possible value if a young prospect forces issue and vet looks good.

If anyone wants a fun data set with some online courses to learn python, this is a fun free set that statcast provided. You really don't need formal training to learn python/R, you just need time and good data sets to practice on that you are interested in. https://www.datacamp.com/projects/250

They need both him to nail a bunch of picks and actually learn from getting his teeth kicked in, become more of a CEO coach that finds bring progressive minds to come in and turn it around. Who wants to bet on that?

I can't stop repeating this but it is really astonishing how quickly the raiders went from young up and coming team to trash.

I think the only way you feel this way is just quirk of the calendar. Had he been injured at such a time that the start of his rehab was in march, and then in May we heard he was being shut down from fatigue and his velocity wasn't back, you would be concerned. Instead he started rehab in late July, was throwing in AZ in August, goes to AFL in September and has to get shut down. But because all of that was out of site of minor league ball and then the offseason, we can just brush it off. But the guy has been throwing competitively for months.

I really thought raiders would be fine this year, seemed like last year just got away from them. I also thought for a time that Grudens time as a broadcaster connecting with so many in the game he could actually be decent for a while. That stopped when he hired his staff. I really feel for Raiders fans. This is just awful. Ruining your last few years for no reason.