Balta1701

Lumping “public and private financing” together as though those are equally controversial is certainly a thing someone could do. Well maybe. Actually…no, that’s not a thing anyone can do? That like makes Reinsdorf look honest in comparison?

But as of now there’s enough talent in the system that you’d also be surprised if it was only Montgomery. They should get more than that. If they don’t, that’s a different indictment, on the coaching staff he brought in - keeping “Sticky stuff” Katz and Grifol doesn’t raise confidence but we need time to evaluate that. That talent may also not be enough for a division contender, but you can’t wash it away like this.

Annoyed and wondering? Right now. Actually pissed? Let’s at least get regular season numbers on both.

If I understand Tax Increment Financing, the idea is that over time a lot of that $1.3 billion would come from the taxes that would be generated by that property being developed - that they’re pumped back into the site this way. While that does limit the city’s short term benefits from the construction on this site - if construction hasn’t happened yet, then very little tax money should have flowed to the site. There are ways to screw that up by making the rules too lenient - Foxconn got $300 million for hitting 600 workers in Wisconsin (the state spent $500k per 1 year job creation), but it’s also hard to be as terrible as that Wisconsonian governor.

At the same time, there’s some credit due here. There’s an owner who went on a rant about how this year couldn’t be wasted, and a GM who - if he followed that instruction - would demolish several future seasons, in an all too familiar pattern. So, aside from a handful of hopefully minor moves, the GM ignored that rant and did what was best for the franchise. No win now moves. Colson is still here, Quero is still here, Noah is still here, Nastrini is still here. Bummer is gone. Santos was amazingly turned into something valuable despite his injury. Crochet is even being given a chance to turn into a starter. Somehow, the owner went on a rant about the importance of this year and the GM either convinced him to think long term or recognized that he’s so out of touch that a bunch of former Royals backups will be something he interprets as an attempt to win this year. We will see if any of the riskier moves backfire or pay off, but there were few of them, and none of them should seriously threaten 2026, despite an owner wanting to throw away 2026. For that, credit is due.

He's already been sent to minor league camp.

No amount of math can support $1 billion for a stadium, I would agree. Several hundred million seems totally justified given the location of this property and how long it has remained undeveloped. But that, of course, is not an exact number, because Jerry Reinsdorf didn't bother doing the homework.

True. After all, this is the first note from any so-called insiders we've heard the entire offseason. It's not like they've yelled "Things are about to go down" after literally every other thing that happened the entire offseason and been wrong every time.

I remain somewhat concerned that in a couple years we'll be regretting those two deals where we traded away the minor league pitchers, but other than that - they cleared out some guys they needed to move, one who I didn't even think was movable at all, and they avoided any gigantic "convert my 61 win team into a title contender" trades or signings that set them back years without much benefit, as has been their M.O. for the last 11 years. But seriously, this Royal obsession is straight up weird.

Some of this is still a little bit weird. The obsession with the Royals is a little bit weird. Seemingly over-buying on veterans, I have no idea where they think they have roster spots for all these guys, and I'm the one who complained the most about lack of depth the last 3 years. Some of the money they spent on these veterans is a little excessive for a team trying to massively cut payroll (Maldonado is tops on that list). Otherwise, despite the weirdness this would mostly be fine - if we weren't also making moves like the trades with the D-Backs and Cubs, where we gave away lower-level minor league pieces for back of the roster pieces to help improve the team now.

Math can be done correctly and accurately if one wants to do math correctly.

While Claypool was a debacle of a 2nd round pick trade, the Sweat deal for a 2nd rounder had some very promising early returns. If you're hitting on your first round picks, and meanwhile you trade away your 2nd rounders for guys who you extend - and you get one strong piece out of 2 trades, and you pick up some extra picks elsewhere to make up for the loss of depth from trading away the 2nd round picks - that's generally still going to work out.

Because Jerry Reinsdorf is a classic 80s billionaire. He thinks he can bully the government into giving him exactly what he wants, that was how he acted when he went to Springfield. He'd prepped his threats with his meetings in Nashville, he'd prepped his interview with Crains where he said "The team would move and it would totally not be my fault", he expected the government to cower before him. It worked last time, why wouldn't it work this time? Literally we've heard both the governor and at least one representative say "we need to make sure this is a good deal for taxpayers", one of them quoted in here said that they wanted to see the detailed analysis of how this will work out for taxpayers using conservative numbers - Reinsdorf could have had that prepared! Hell I have been sitting here since this proposal came out asking for the same thing, that's what I need to sell this idea! The fact that he didn't have it was some combination of laziness, arrogance, and misunderstanding his audience.

The people saying "not one dime" of public funding for what should be a good project are as unreasonable as the ones saying "we need $1 billion in public funding for a $1 billion stadium or the team will move to Nashville." The difference? The former of those are random folks on a message board. The latter of those is...Jerry Reinsdorf.

I do agree that our 4-5-6 of "random pixels" will make scoring runs a challenge.

Blake Snell does not come close to making this an 85 win team.

If Blake Snell can’t get a contract worth $200 million when he has 2 Cy Young awards on his record, what is Dylan Cease worth? Right now I don’t have a clue. He certainly wouldn’t be a guy I would want to commit to for 8 years based on his current performance.

...I'm pretty sure this is completely false? That spot isn't in good shape at all.

Dog and I spotted one out walking.

You are correct in that rebuilding and hopi my they can make it work is the strategy both times. You are also correct that it is being done in a Reinsdorf organization so full skepticism is warranted. However, let us also consider that Rick Hahn was a uniquely terrible GM in just about every way. While Getz can be as bad as Hahn, it will take effort to be that bad. Furthermore, also consider that the only reason the White Sox have any playoff appearances since 2008 is that rebuilding was a correct enough strategy that it overcame how awful Hahn was and got them a playoff spot. Had they continued trying to patch holes like they did in 2012-2016, do you see any path to a playoff appearance? If you aren’t going to at least hope Getz can figure some things out, then what’s the point? They aren’t going to turn themselves into an 80 win team through trades, they aren’t going to sign free agents to make them an 80 win team (ask the Mets how that goes), at the very least Getz so far has done the right things in general with the overall Strategy, now it must play out.

Gave up too much for guys who are likely to produce too low of an impact.

yes they would be. That doesn't change the problems with these two deals.

I do agree that the "Profit-taking" teams in MLB is a problem - the teams that have lower payrolls than they receive during revenue sharing. This does hurt the whole league as it leaves those markets under-served, with little chance at a multi-year run of competitive baseball. I think that what the Dodgers did this year - backloading a $550 million contract and relying on revenue growth to deal with it - is a potential new threat to competition, as most markets won't be able to do that. I don't know whether that will make a huge difference until we see the results. I think that baseball has an impressive degree of parity despite these couple of problems. The teams that make the playoffs nearly every year - one of them has a lot of resources (The Dodgers) but they also have a front office that is as good as any in the league and regularly develops their own talent. Other franchises that regularly make the playoffs get there because they have skilled employees. The Rays, the Astros, the Braves, the Guardians - they have front offices that are doing their job. With a few financial exceptions (Pittsburgh, Florida), the teams that are always at the bottom of their division are there because their front offices are poor. The Rockies, the White Sox, the Mariners, the Royals - they can't compete because they can't identify or develop talent, so they make the playoffs once every decade or so. I think it's especially impressive in baseball that teams like the Yankees and the 2023 Mets cannot buy their way to the playoffs. That tells me the financial difference between teams still is less importance than the skill of the front office. Teams like the Rangers make the playoffs by spending money, but who was key to the Rangers last year - Adolis Garcia in the playoffs, for example, was a guy they picked up and developed. The Diamondbacks made the playoffs last year. The Rays overcame a key player seemingly having his career ended early in their biggest contract. Aside from the teams where the owner is a parasite just taking in money, parity in MLB is mostly fine, hire good people, have them do a good job, and your team will have a competitive run soon enough. Finally, I see no problem with the cycle of competing and tanking. That is absolutely normal in most sports. Normal behavior in sports should involve a team developing a lot of players, peaking for a couple of years, trying to win a title, then backing off to rebuild, get younger, and restructure their financial situation. The Golden State Warriors drafted and developed an incredible team, but it seems like their guys have gotten old and there's only so far they can push them. The Buffalo Bills couldn't get past Mahomes in their best chances, now they're losing a lot of their players to free agency. The teams that manage to shortcut these cycles tend to be ones that have elite front offices regularly developing players - the Chiefs and 49ers in the NFL, the Rays and Dodgers in MLB. The NBA, because of the dominance of a few stars and the way their max contracts work, has in many ways been the least competitive, lowest parity league, but even with them we're now seeing teams go through cycles. The Bucks weren't that great, but built a great team and won a title. The Heat are seemingly an elite coaching and front office combination. The Spurs fall apart, get a #1 draft pick, then build championship teams around them. The Thunder sold off Durant, Harden, and Westbrook, piled up tons of draft picks, now those draft picks are growing up and they're back to a #2 seed. This is normal, it's how leagues should work.

Most, not all. Some of us did say that the roster looked just plain bad coming into the season. Throw in guys being traded away, and dropping into the 60s was entirely within the realm of possibilities. It was an old, bad team.