Balta1701

Their 2019 first round pick, #42 prospect on MLB.com. https://www.milb.com/player/michael-busch-683737

If we are being smart about this, something like Anderson and Hendriks to them for Andy Pages and Gavin Stone is an interesting concept as it's two guys the Dodgers aren't likely to rely heavily on this year as big league contributors but who each have substantial value. The Dodgers seem really unlikely to give up pieces that they can't replace without doing more trades, unless there's a FA option available comparable to Lux? You might be able to work something in where they give up a lesser prospect in exchange for taking Moncada's deal on.

I think they'll look at the White Sox trying to include Lux and realize it's not a smart setup for either of them. They'll push to have something else in Lux's place. The Dodgers aren't going to be desperate enough to make their big league roster worse in order to add Anderson. Pepiot I'm not sure, they do have a pitching need next year too.

The last 2 guys to sign were at $280 and $300 million ($340 offered). Last year Turner was a 6.3 fWAR player and Bogaerts was 6.1. Tim Anderson's absolute best season so far in his career is 4.7 fWAR. Tim Anderson is clearly not on the same level as these players and this is a pretty substantial exaggeration of the value of a White Sox lpayer. Swanson is much more relevant to Anderson. Swanson has mostly been "slightly worse than Anderson" as he was similar to TA in the brief 2020, he was a 3.4 WAR player in 2021 - so that's slightly worse than Anderson, but then he dropped a 6.4 WAR season last year. If Timmy returned to a 4.5 WAR season next year and the year after, he would be hitting FA several years older than Swanson is, without the same peak as Swanson in the year before FA, but with more consistency. If Tim remains a 3-4 WAR player the next 2 years, he may still get less than Swanson because of his age at the time of FA, but he may balance that out with more consistency. If he continues dropping off or has another major injury, then perhaps Swanson still outearns him. If Tim wants to drop a 6 WAR season somewhere in there, then more power to him and we can just enjoy how good the season is.

You need dramatic improvements from Vaughn, a ROY level season from Colas, you left out Kopech and Lynn, and you don't want a bench that is full of below replacement players or any 6.52 ERAs in the bullpen so you have to add Leury and Diekman as well.

What's terrifying is if you do the math, there's a solid chance they don't. That's right with the Yankees last year, and the Yankees were several games behind the Astros. All of that could happen and the Guardians still have a shot at beating them.

So let's work through this. You've set up basically an 18-20 WAR rotation and a 6 WAR bullpen, this is comparable to the Astros last year as the best rotation in baseball. Optimistically you have set yourself up a 30 WAR lineup, including an average catching performance (big boost from Grandal), a nonterrible 2b, and a couple WAR from a LF. If all of that were to happen, the White Sox would be comparable in their overall performance to the Yankees and Astros this year. Also, you are 8 WAR behind where the Dodgers were this year. Literally 0 major injuries, healthier than 2022 Guardiansm, 0 players struggle, the Cy Young list has 4 White Sox pitchers in the top 10, Colas is a contender for the ROY award. That is literally what it takes just to put the White Sox in the conversation for 100 wins - and there is no reason why Cleveland can't be a few games better than they were last year and compete with that. At the very least, you've put together a certain Wild Card team through your imaginary "everyone is totally healthy and no one struggles in any way" setup. Now I ask you, how likely is it that this team is healthier than the 2022 guardians? That question alone should end this discussion.

IMNHO, on paper right now they're worse than last year. They've lost a ton to free agency, they have a tougher schedule, and they outplayed their run differential last year thanks to performance in 1 run games that they may not match. But we've said this already. They need a substantial improvement from multiple guys just to be a couple games under .500 rather than 6-7 games under at the deadline.

They're not at fixed cost but it's 3 years of control on an arbitration schedule. In some ways it's actually better than a fixed price - if Cease were to do something horrendously stupid in his offtime and not be able to pitch the last year, or if all his power comes from his moustache and he puts up an ERA of 9 without it, you could actually nontender him in his final year for larger savings.

I'm betting they have a few guys improve, they wind up a few games under .500, but convince themselves that they're in the race because the Wild Card is only like 5 games ahead and don't sell off anyone.

The Phillies bullpen had a 1.71 ERA in the World Series. They pitched 26 innings compared to the Astros 21. The difference was in the starters. Both had elevated ERAs, but 4.3 for the Astros beat 5.4 for the Phillies, and the Astros rotation pitched those extra 5 innings. You remember the bullpen losing the last game because it happened, but you don’t remember that Wheeler struggled in his first game so they were hesitant to leave him in for game 6 when a couple guys got on by very soft contact even though his pitch count was super low.

If all the White Sox have left to spend is $12 million then they need to be asking themselves whether they have any path to competing at all. This isn’t going to be any easier next offseason when Giolito, Clevinger, Lynn, Lopez, and Gallo (if brought in) are all gone, we will be talking about how to find 3 starters, a starting LF, and almost certainly bullpen help for about $50 million. Less than $10 million a player for 60% of a starting rotation is a mess! Maybe going with Gallo is the correct move and hoping for the best, but if they’re sitting around .500 and a few games back at the trade deadline; they have to be aggressive in clearing payroll and restocking even if they’re closer than you’d like to be if they called it quits.

Basically the Nationals offer for Eaton was also available for Sale.

Now that this is over…nailed that.

Baseball franchises are insanely profitable right now. League wide the average revenue is more than $10 billion. That’s at least $330 million yearly per team on average. A team filling its park will generate quite a bit more than that. The costs of running a ballpark have risen a little but revenues have doubled in like 10 years. The true breakeven point therefore for most teams has to be 70% or 80% of their revenue going to players. If the Padres have a full ballpark and playoff games it isn’t crazy at all to think they’re still profitable with a $300 million payroll. Teams that have payrolls less than $200 million are for the most part just printing money.

Well he does hit left handed.

I once had a student who had his face broken by Joey Gallo.

Sure. How do you plan to get rid of him? He's on a major league guaranteed contract. Cutting him on opening day costs $4.5 million.

We wouldn't be getting that riled up at this if he hadn't done such a poor job beforehand. No one will be that angry if Jim Crane says that in Houston and he just lost the #1 pitching FA on the market.

Yes, Lambert still has options. Assuming Ruiz makes the big league roster, Lambert is presumably #8 on the depth chart. Hendriks/Lopez/Graveman/Kelly/Bummer/Diekman/Ruiz (that's 7). Lambert with options is 8, this guy has a spot if: someone gets hurt, Someone gets traded or they carry an 8 man pen to open the season or they move on from Ruiz, pretty sure that arbitration deals aren't guaranteed so it could be this guy vs. Ruiz Bummer I believe technically has an option also. Obviously Crochet will fit into the mix at some point, but July 1 would still be fast compared to a lot of TJS guys, so I fully expect them to try to have him around in May or June because that's how they act.

Never been above AA, only 27 innings at AA, but had a 1.33 ERA at AA last year. 25 years old. Big leagues would be a jump for him but maybe worth it?

See the post right before that.

Teams aren't going to aggressively trade for closers when they can sign FA relievers and when they can convince themselves that their young guys are going to step up. We saw this happen last year. Teams will do that at the trade deadline because they have no other choice.

More than all of them. If you go through the Zips projections, every single name you mentioned is projected to be worth more WAR than last year, either because of better performance, playing more games, or both. And ZiPS has them as a below .500 team despite all that. Why? They were a negative team on run differential last year and outplayed their talent level - entirely because of a strong record in 1 run games. And from that point, a team that should have been a few games under .500, they have lost their 2nd best starter and best offensive player, in addition to a tolerable 2b and a backup OF. They have to replace all those guys just to tread water. They need massive improvements from all of the guys you mentioned to dig them out of the hole, and they might still be behind Cleveland.