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I don't read Nightengale tweets like that. He is Kenny's mouthpiece, but he seems to have been used last 3 years to cool market discussion on sox. When there's a tweet that's like "sox are planning on moving quintana", nightengale will say "sox only looking to move him for right offers". He has basically been an anti predictor for the last 3-4 years with sox after having been a reliable source for a while.

And shout out to Garfein and his team as well

Unfortunately the trib sports section has been gutted. Poor Paul Sullivan is doing the job of like 10 reporters, a few beat writers sharing teams. Luckily the athletic picks up a lotta slack.

For me that’s the best part.

Ha yeah that’s a fun article.

I have found Morosi to be particularly inaccurate. But yes, for a while the idea that sox would be a player was non-existent because they were just speculating on how teams may respond. Now they are reporting what they are hearing, so it's nice to hear this.

Only posting this to say it's notable this is not how Rick Hahn sounds.

Wow. Man, really wish it was someone other than Morosi saying this (or depending on where you stand, maybe you do like that it's morosi)

Relevant, unsure to where:

I don't know that any team has ever tried committing $600 million to two players in an offseason for winning a title. Could be a winning strategy!

This is all true. Prior to the hustle parts though I read about people being negative on signing Machado because his relatively lower walk totals means when he loses a step he might become more of a .780 OPS manny of 2017 than the .900 ops manny of last year. I like manny, but something that has been brought up before.

There are aspects to the way the bulls spend money (or operate) that are very similar to the white sox and I would point to as a Jerry Reinsdorf way of running things.

Yeah, I do believe there is a number where it's too high, but also last year was illustrative. Although to do so I'm going to ignore hosmer because that was just idiotic. JD Martinez was the best position player on the market. He was gonna cost you 100 mill. Would you have gotten "value" getting a few cheaper guys? I can't think of any combo. IT would be nailing a trifecta of like chacin, and some position players. If you wanted actual production, you were better off paying for Upton or Martinez than "making it up in volume".

These guys were up in the majors at age 19 making this the anomoly that it is. Eloy is great, but especially if sox hold him into May, he won't be a free agent until something like 29. You don't often get players in FA at 25 years old, when you do it's because they were phenoms, like these kids were. There's big bucks, and then there's this. I think it's important to recognize that sox may still spend a lot but not end up buying the biggest contracts in history in the same offseason.

It's really weird. Hahn has not shied away from any of the machado stuff. And they are not idiots, they know the investment this will take. Clearly they have sign off on a large amount, but still, would be a huge tease. It reminds me a bit of 2016 offseason after frazier when they hinted at going after the big three FA outfielders and signed none.

Kinda sucks considering they have to turn around and play on thursday.

Well come on. I agree with you but we aren't talking about big contracts, we are talking about two of the biggest in history in all likelihood.

He really would have thrived in that early 2000s period where every team just had one "star" they built around and let play iso offense while allowing them to ignore defense. He definitely made more now though.

Yeah not even sure about FA, but want enough flexibility to take a hamels/verlander type player that have paid off so well for teams recently.

Well, you'd definitely want to structure the deals so that the burden is lessened as we would need to re-sign the younger core. It would suck if some of our players turn out awesome but we have to let them sign elsewhere because we have 33 year old machado for $40 million

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.