Balta1701

QUOTE (scs787 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:42 PM) Major League Baseball Alone among the big four professional sports leagues, Major League Baseball has no salary cap, but it does have a luxury tax. Rather than a hard cap, the luxury tax penalizes teams whose payroll is over an annually determined maximum. The teams pay a sliding percentage of the amount over the limit, depending on how often they exceed it. Teams pay large signing bonuses, and the overall effect is similar to a salary cap. The teams can spread the bonuses over several years to reduce the effect on their payroll. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/effect-sign...-cap-38630.html No time stamp on the article so I'm not sure when it came out or if things have changed recently. That's in order to minimize the luxury tax payment, it doesn't have anything to do with when they're booking the salary on the budget.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:16 PM) Again, you're assuming Abreu's bonus is included is this year's payroll budget, which has yet to be supported by any sort of evidence. Second, if you add Cano you can turn around and deal Beckham and/or Ramirez and clear a decent amount of payroll pretty easily. Third, we don't know how hard (or even realistic) the rumored payroll budgets are. Seems to me that every offseason we start at one number and end up at a much higher number. And quite frankly, I think Reinsdorf just might be willing to increase the payroll to bit if he could land someone like Cano that might sell some tickets. And if it isn't included...fine, then they have $10 million to spend on a player you'd like to offer $25 million. Dealing beckham doesn't clear much payroll. Ramirez does, but still not a whole lot. And clearing out both Beckham and Ramirez to add Cano...might help with the offense...but then you have the obvious problem of running a rookie SS with 1 month in AAA out there next to him.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:07 PM) Also getting McCann and pursuing Stephen Drew and Omar Infante, things that probably aren't possible if they are spending on Cano. That is, unless they know something about the ARod case that we don't... Somehow if they lose Cano, those signings don't impress me at all. Between losing Cano and losing guys from their pitching staff, they'd be spending a whole lot of money to barely tread water in a tough division.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:05 PM) I mean, if we wanted him we could pay him. But it wouldn't be a good allocation of our resources at the moment If the budget Hahn has quoted is anywhere close to true, their budget this year is about $90-$100 million. They're already at that number. Signing Cano would push them well past their quoted budget.

QUOTE (Jake @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:00 PM) I see no way they sign Cano at this point. Swapping Cano for Ellsbury probably makes the Yankees worse, not better. What was the point of this signing if they can't keep their biggest bat?

QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 08:57 PM) Do the Sox have room in the payroll for Cano? No.

Well, that's how the Yankees responded to missing the playoffs last time...sign a couple $100 million deals and win the series the next year.

QUOTE (Dunt @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 05:37 PM) Im not saying to make a deal just for no reason, but I would like to think this team wants to atleast be a little competitive next season. There are moves to be made, make them. If not, sell off parts and start this rebuild already. The White Sox right now are in a position of "we need nearly everything to go right in order to be competitive". There's no move out there, or even set of moves, we could make to change that. We need guys like Viciedo, Garcia, Abreu, to hit, we need the defense to remember what 2012 was like, we need the pitching to stay solid or even get better next year. You could upgrade catcher and 3b and still not change that statement. If all those things go right, then maybe whether or not our catchers produce could matter, but if they don't kill the ball then our catcher won't make up the difference. And if all those guys are killing the ball, then we can worry about upgrading the spots that aren't producing at the deadline when we're in better shape.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 05:15 PM) I really do agree. I thought he might have gotten a 4th year, but I guess he barely got a 3rd. I thought he might have gotten $10 mill too, but the $7-8 is still significant. I don't think the Sox liked the idea of Saltalamacchia. If he's getting that kind of money then no one liked him.

Please tell me you didn't edit that post.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 04:31 PM) I would take a guy who hit .270 with a .270 obp over a guy who hit .220 with a .270 obp. Last year AJ hit .272 with a .297 OBP. Last year, Salty hit .273 with a .338 OBP. If I also note that Salty outslugged AJ...well then. It all comes down to whether you think Salty's last year was a career year or whether you think that's actually who he is.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 04:16 PM) How are his on base skills better than AJ's ever was, yet AJ has a higher career OBP? Am I missing something? Clearly the assumption with Salty everyone is making is that he's closer to the player he was last year than the guy who hit .228 from 2009 to 2012. But he got less than 1/2 as many PA's as AJ over that stretch and had an identical number of walks.

QUOTE (Eminor3rd @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 04:22 PM) VERY interesting... You'd have to figure Miami is only interested if he was a bargain, thus making you wonder why we didn't get involved further. Or Bud Selig is at their throats demanding they spend money on something.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 12:22 PM) Haven't seen this mentioned but Teague is heading to the Iowa Energy.... There goes Tank Commander Teague....for now My first reaction was that it was a shame they didn't put him there for a good portion of last season.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:45 AM) BJ Raji is going to be a free agent, The Bears can sign him. I will drive him to the airport. Unless you have a replacement DT, that would seriously hurt the Packers. You may not like him but their run defense is vastly worse without him.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 10:00 AM) It buys you another year to look for your future C, as far as I am concerned. By making sure that when we go into next offseason we have exactly the same problem as we have now, Phegley and Flowers who are too good for AAA but who haven't produced in long stints in the big leagues. Except Flowers is a year more expensive.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 10:02 AM) We'd still have the $500 million payroll though, just no players left That's how you get prospects, pay other teams to give them to you!

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 09:21 AM) Not a lot of teams have a guy they can say with any confidence will be their catcher the next 5-10 years. You are lucky if you get a guy for 3 or 4. But the only reason why you should consider a guy who would be your starter for the next 1-2 is if on paper you have a team that is competitive for that first year going in to the season.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 2, 2013 -> 04:11 PM) Emery keeps saying it is not going to happen He's got a good point in that the 3/4 DT is really tough to find...but you could also say that just maybe he doesn't want to play his hand before signing or drafting that guy.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Dec 3, 2013 -> 02:24 AM) Have to debate on Taj, whether he'd be best to keep or if some team would overpay with a high first rounder for some insane reason. If someone offers something good including cap relief, you take it. And I say that as a guy who thought the Bulls had a shot to knock the Heat off coming into this year.

Cooper already decided he didn't like the guy once.

Any Chance the backup if in the deal is a guy they're focusing on with Iglesias taking over short and Cabrera moving back to 1b?

@scottmerkin: White Sox also have re-signed Hector Gimenez to a Minor League deal

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Dec 2, 2013 -> 09:15 PM) So it's either a Jose Quintana type return or simply taking a draft pick? That's a pretty wide range of outcomes for there to be no potential middle ground. I did include "hold him til the deadline" in there as well. And people are drooling over extra first round picks these days.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Dec 2, 2013 -> 08:40 PM) The NY SAFE Act had a pretty pathetic grandfather clause. A lot of people were made criminals. And when a law has a weak grandfathering clause it correctly gets labeled as so weak that there's no reason to pass the law.