[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

7 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

Why would Jerry leak his own ask to the general public with a figure of a billion dollars?

Why would someone who thought this was a bad idea leak it at 4:00 on a Friday?

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

4 minutes ago, ptatc said:

I don't disagree. But until it's official no one with any authority is going to comment. There is just advantage to it.

There's a big advantage to getting out in front of this and giving people who think this is a good project what we need to make a case for it. I'll do the work, I'm excited for the concept, I understand that this is how big projects get done to grow modern cities, but I can't defend $500 million or $1 billion unless I actually know what number I'm defending and where it came from.

[Sox set ambitious goal for Yoan, Eloy: actually play baseball]

Ironically, with guys that have these long injury histories, failing to get them enough rest is likely to get them hurt.

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

3 minutes ago, ptatc said:

The key there is if they come up with it through reasonable means. These are just leaked numbers nothing official and there are people all over the place. 

They can't explain how the numbers were reasonably or unreasonably reached until the numbers are finalized. Nothing has been officially announced so the numbers out there are speculation. 

Once the final numbers are out there then you can reasonably decided if they should go to Nashville. But until then it's speculation.

It's not clear who leaked it...but if someone were trying to kill this project, they wouldn't' leak it at 4:00 on a Friday. They'd leak it on a Tuesday, for maximum press coverage. 

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

46 minutes ago, ptatc said:

Why would they report what's going on in the middle of negotiations? I don't see how it benefits anyone to reveal the numbers until something is finalized. 

If the current prospective contributions of the Sox are lower than than the final deal everyone here will have added info to crucify the evil billionaire. Not something the Sox want.

The number is out there. There are articles being written saying "not one damn penny". I'm sure sports radio in Chicago has had this today. I don't care how broken democracy is, if there's a strong, negative response from the constituents, money does not get spent on a project like this. 

Being upfront and open will help get people on board. If they came up with a number through a reasonable means, tell us what that number is and why giving it to them is a good deal for the city. 

If they didn't come up with that number by reasonable means, and they can't justify it, then those who say "Nashville is that way" are correct.

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

3 hours ago, soxfan18 said:

That doesn't make any sense. That would mean they only need $500mm for the park, which we all know won't come close. 

A $500 million ask would mean that the White Sox would be putting up probably the other $600-$700 million cost of the park.

This would be more reasonable and plausible than the city paying a full $1 billion for the park and the White Sox chipping in like $100-$200 million or whatever.

This is also why the White Sox should be out in front of this, because if we're not understanding things correctly, it benefits them to make everyone understand the numbers! 

[Hendriks signs with Red Sox]

3 hours ago, Squirmin' for Yermin said:

What a steal. wow.

That's basically a 1 year, $10 million deal for a reliever coming off TJS. That's pretty decent money for a guy when you don't know what you'll get from the guy. 

[ST Thread]

3 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/major-league?stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=8&season=2023&month=0&season1=2023&ind=0&rost=&age=&filter=&players=0&team=0&pos=rf
 

Santander is the 13th ranked qualified RFer with a 2.6 fWAR.  He’s the textbook definition of a solid player. 

Teoscar is way down that list due to defensive limitations.

Highly doubt they will trade him or Mullins.   Hays Mountcastle O’Hearn much more expendable...

If you go to their projections for this year, Teoscar has projections ranging from 2.5 fWAR to 1.7 fWAR.

Santander has projections from 2.6 to 1.7 fWAR. 

Furthermore, Santander via Fangraphs, the last 2 years, is at -11.9 and -11.1 on defensive value. Teoscar is at -8.4 and -6.4. The guy. you said is downgraded due to "Defensive limitations" actually was better on defense each of the last two years, at least in the Fangraphs version.

They're very similar. Santander might project a tiny bit better, but not a whole lot. 

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

1 hour ago, southsider2k5 said:

This is Chicago we are talking about.  When was the last time anyone asked permission for a public spending project of any kind?  Hell this is the same place where the Mayor decided he didn't want an airport on Lake Michigan and fucking bulldozed it to make his point.  

Everything in this city of consequence is done behind closed doors and then they get rewarded with 80% of the vote.

Even the super unpopular Olympics bid was done locally by the local pols and business community with about zero care of the taxpayer.

Again Jerry Reinsdorf is literally the only person in Chicago to get a brand new stadium built in somewhere around the last 100 years, and he has done it twice.  

If there is one thing I think has changed since the 90s - I don't think politicians will react with nearly as much panic to the idea of losing a sports team as they did the last time he got this deal done. I think that was very key to the White Sox staying in the late 80s - "what will this say about Chicago if we are losing sports teams to Tampa Bay" probably got some people on board. I don't think that happens this time, I think that motivation has switched.

[ST Thread]

53 minutes ago, YouCanPutItOnTheBoardYES! said:

And that’s fine. The White Sox still do not have a real crunch at the 40-man at the moment. They just don’t.

There is a decent chance that some young guy the White Sox dump from their 40 man this year (Romy, Sosa, Colas, Lee etc.) goes on to be a quality player with some other team.

It might not count as a 40 man crunch but they've created something truly weird here, where they are absolutely overloaded with NRIs and they have a manager who already has indicated he would rather play a 40 year old NRI than a promising kid. Maybe it's a "voluntary roster crunch" or a "managerial roster crunch", because the manager wants the vets and the kids have to be dumped as a consequence.

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

4 hours ago, ScootsMcGoots said:

As others have mentioned, JR is bad at alot of things but business isn't one of them. I'm sure he is aware of the state's hesitancy to pay for the stadium and has some other stipulation to sweeten the deal.

For a guy supposed to be good at business, he is blowing this one.

When the $1 billion ask came out on Friday, it was clear there were two camps. One side was going to say "Not a dime of new public money", the other side was going to say "look this is how these projects get done, lets see what their actual estimates say for how they came up with this number and how it fits in with the larger project." I was in the latter group.

It's now been a couple of days and they have given us nothing. The people who would be on board to sell this project if they showed us math for how it works out have no math to point to. They've given us nothing at all to work with, no details, no public numbers other than "you're going to pay the entire price tag for one of the most expensive stadiums in baseball and you're going to like it."

This has the feel of Reinsdorf going "calculate how much money we'd make if they extended the hotel tax for 30 years. Then, round upwards. That's what we're going to ask for, and I'll bully them into giving it to me by threatening to leave again." 

If he was being a smart salesperson, he'd give the people open to listening to him something to work with. The politicians aren't in the same place as the ones 30 years ago, correctly so. Thus far it seems like he thinks the same game as last time will work, that they'd be scared to let him leave. They won't be. The Sox need to be selling why this is a good idea for the city and for the taxpayers, they need to be proactive, and they're being Reinsdorfy.

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

1 hour ago, Y2Jimmy0 said:

Many plugged in people really close to the team think this is happening. 

 

41 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

If it does, it won’t include JRs ask. They talk to the mayor and aldermen who may like it because apparently it transfers the responsibility of any shortage from the city to the state. Pritzker will be a brick wall.

You can tell how the team thought the $1 billion ask would go over based on the fact that it leaked around 4:00 Central/5:00 eastern on a Friday. 

They did not want people talking about this fresh on sports radio during the morning drives, or in a weekday newspaper, or in the offices on a weekday. 

[ST Thread]

6 minutes ago, Y2Jimmy0 said:

 

I mean come on. Nobody thought those guys would be unsigned as camp opened. 

With Snell and Bellinger I think the path to that was obvious. Who wants to guarantee those guys $200 million with how inconsistent they’ve been?

Some guys teams got out ahead of, like Nola, but it was obvious this market would be iffy this offseason.

[ST Thread]

20 minutes ago, chitownsportsfan said:

The Sox expected two Boras clients, both veteran pitchers looking for that last big deal, to have signed already?

I mean, OK. You can expect that, but I can also expect a 60 degree sunny week ahead here in God's own PNW in the middle of February.

They believed that if they leaked enough times that there was a hot market for him, it would lead to a hot market for him. They told everyone who would listen for two months how hot his market was and were surprised that didn’t work.

[ST Thread]

24 minutes ago, Y2Jimmy0 said:

The prospects won’t be in big league camp very long 

Which would be a shame since a lot of guys (Eder, Nastrini, Montgomery, Lee) are in a spot where you would want them to get lots of looks early against big leaguers so that they could be ready to come up late in the season.

[ST Thread]

Just now, Timmy U said:

I think the cultural reset starts with Montgomery and, assuming he gets better hitting rhp, Ramos, and Quero.  But it's important to scrape away the wreckage.  It seems like Robert is the only one from the previous rebuild who's going to be here in 2025, so all these veterans are a transition phase.

The other thing on my mind about having 70 guys in camp: when will these guys ever see a coach? Or an at bat?

We saw last year how the Cubs had a professional development and scouting staff of like 90 and the White Sox had a staff of like 20. There’s been some turnover this year but no one has caught whiff of a massive staff expansion.

Furthermore, there’s only so many at bats in these games from either side.

If a rookie needs coaching, do they get the focus of that coach away from the 23 other infielders in camp? If they need at bats to work on something, when do they get them? If a veteran pitcher needs support to keep his mechanics under control, wheee is he gonna get that with a camp this big?

[ST Thread]

3 hours ago, Eminor3rd said:

Yes, and perhaps it will suddenly seem obvious why no other teams are doing this.

The thing is, I do still believe it all to be a ruse. Getz knows he needs a full rebuild, but his assets weren’t in a position to be moved, so he has to stall. And I actually think that, if you’re in a lost year anyway, it might just be a pretty good excuse to jettison as much as possible from a deeply troubled culture and put in some fresh faces to help those aforementioned assets rebound and the prospects develop.

What I’m afraid of is that it may turn out that he’s underestimated the counter-acting negative effect of consistent losing. The feeling that you have no way of influencing a change in that can do dark things to the psyche. 

I do think it’s clear that Getz thinks he can import a culture. You can see that in detail from his player choices.

my problem with this continues to be that I don’t believe it works. Keuchel was supposed to be a leader and a winner, you can still find Kenny’s quotes praising him for his leadership. Lynn was supposed to be a veteran leader. They all ripped the org while leaving, because the org itself was toxic. 

How are all these 38 year old former Royals going to react when they’re stuck losing every game 3-0, their manager is too busy bragging about how important he is to manage anything, and their staff is so small that they can’t get feedback when they’re not having the success they had in their 20s?

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

52 minutes ago, Stinky Stanky said:

I'm pretty sure I've heard Governor JB say "not us."  And I hope he sticks to his guns.  And I think your pipe dreams about all the loop workers who now won't hop on the subway for a 10 minute ride to GRF, will be walking to ballgames are just, well, pipe dreams. Besides, the current park is quite serviceable and already well located.

Be prepared for another cliffhanger with threats from the team and a romance with an ot-of-town destination except that this time, it just might happen.

If the team decides to threaten to leave once, hand them a printout of the directions.

This should be a project where everyone can win. If the Sox need so much money that the governments think they don’t come out solidly on the plus side, then politely wave goodbye. 

[ST Thread]

2 minutes ago, Eminor3rd said:

This is going to be one of the most supremely brutal offenses I've ever seen in my life. But, since I already knew the window was closed during ST of 2023, I'm kind of over it -- and I'm legitimately curious just to see what a defense-only team looks like. How much will the pitching staff actually benefit? Will the dread I feel every time I watch them fail to convert a single baserunner be offset by the confidence I'll learn to feel about how they'll get out of jams?

They're going to lose a lot of games, but they'll be clean ones. It's a sort of interesting experiment. At least on paper. In my head. Kind of.

The pessimist that they've drilled into me starting in 2013 says that the pitching won't benefit that much because the pitchers will have to treat every game as being lost if they give up a single run, so every pitch will have to be treated as a max effort pitch and they'll wear out and make mistakes too quick.

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

1 hour ago, hi8is said:

That if they build it, developers will come… is how I read that.

There's good reason to expect this development will happen though. Combine bringing in 2 million people per year for ballgames with a strong location in the city, this should be an area primed for growth if smart development is done. The company Related was noted as having built these sorts of developments in other cities, including New York. In general, they know what they're doing. In numerous other cities, ballparks have been used to drive development in areas by bringing in regular visitors, and that gives a baseline audience for restaurants, bars, hotels, and retail that allows those businesses to bring in other events, exist throughout the year, and draw in larger and larger crowds. If done correctly, this should work.

[Cease To Padres per Passan]

2 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

 

Major League , 3WAR , switching hitting , starting RF for a team that won 100 games who's hit 61 HRs the last 2 years, has a good arm. Why wouldn't there be a market for him when conservatively 90 % of all minor league players will never see an AB or pitch in MLB ? Surely someone somewhere would think he'd be a fine edition to their team and be willing to find something  reasonably close to equitable for him.

$11.7 million salary, limited positions, 1 year of control. Teoscar Hernandez only got a $15 million deal ($8 million deferred on top of that). How many prospects would you give up to save $5 or $6 million?

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

24 minutes ago, Dick Allen said:

Amazon creates jobs. How much greater of a head count would the White Sox have in the South Loop. Vs. Bridgeport?

If this whole complex is developed? And the land in Bridgeport is redeveloped? Thousands.

[Sox looking at building in South Loop]

54 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

My impression would be that a reasonably negotiated plan which fails to come to fruition shouldn't affect future financing of his projects.  Failure to pay?  Sure.  But negotiations fail a lot, as do projects which can't get off of the ground after an agreement is reach, but before ground breaking. 

Let’s say that Reinsdorf’s demand here isn’t reasonable, that they came up with a billion dollars because he wanted an impressive number to punish the taxpayers, and the government would lose massively if they said yes. If that blew up the deal, would that impact his future financing options?

[Cease To Padres per Passan]

2 hours ago, Bob Sacamano said:

Yeah would think you would trade Santander for prospects (or a one for one swap of a rental SP) and plug Kjerstad in RF, who is ready. Then you have more guys to deal now or in the summer for pitching.

This assumes there’s a market for prospects in exchange for Santander. Most of the moves like that involving position players have been attached to other moves as salary dumps this offseason.

[Sox Sign Mike Moustakas]

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

Colas has negligible value right now...although probably more so to other teams who think they can still work with him.

Yeah right now anyone else in MLB thinks there’s probably a 50% or better chance Colas is on waivers before the deadline. Only so many 40 man roster spots available for all those Royal NRIs.