Balta1701

For there to be a 0.1% chance of it happening, that's a 1 in 1000 chance. For it to happen 3 times, that would mean the White Sox had 3000 pitchers in the last 10 years. That seems high to me.

As dominant as that is, we've basically seen 3 White Sox pitchers do practically that within the last 10 years. 11.8K/1.8BB, 12.6K/2.4 BB.

Who prevented him from being himself?

While we don't know what they are, we 100% know that the White Sox absolutely, ardently refuse to give him another chance even when the opportunity is wide open.

I can think of one larger broadcasting team mistake in the last year than either of these, IMO at least.

The governor of New Jersey was freaked out by the Constellation Orion.

Wow, I didn’t pay any attention to his stats after about the first half, and wow did his numbers go nuts in the second half.

I don’t know that he’s a good backup catcher. Right now he’s a replacement level player. That has some use, but he has work to do before I’d call him good.

Apparently now that this is a thing, people looked at the videos and there’s some combination of people freaking out about planes, helicopters, and occasionally, Venus.

Also not just this…if he were to sell the team, a large chunk of the funds coming from the new owners who want to own their stadium and surrounding land for business development is also expected. In that case, helping procure land and transit access can be something that a city kicks in.

If Suzuki isn’t traded to clear Of spot and salary.

Houston is definitely calling it quits/going cheap by letting both of these guys go. But they went to $255 million in payroll last year, Tucker and Bregman alone easily push them to $250 million+ this year with no extra additions, and their team last year just wasn't great. There was a lot of unhappiness at this fanbase when they traded away a couple of minor prospects last year because the fanbase could tell they needed some young guys and those young guys helped when they arrived. They're going cheap, but they're also filling multiple holes with a single deal. I think this city was mostly prepped for that. They're cheaper now, they're cheaper still if they trade Framber, but that leaves them room to spend elsewhere.

I think the .850 OPS, 5-WAR per year player the Astros had from 2021-2023 is a $350 million player. Last year, he took a jump to a 1.000 OPS.

The Yankees gave up catcher Kyle Higashioka, who was important for the Padres this year, 3 pitchers who were on the edge of the big leagues including Michael King who put up 4 WAR for the Padres this year and looks like a solid rotation piece for them next year, and one minor league pitcher - Drew Thorpe. Yea, that one. Michael King didn't have a lot of control left, but the padres got a lot out of him last year by moving him to full time starter. I'm not sure that its heavily in either direction.

Before he fouled a ball off his shin this year, Tucker was otherworldly, he was on a path to the AL MVP award with a shot at 50+ home runs. If you see that player again next year, I could seem him maybe even pushing close to $500 million. I have no concept of what it would take for the Cubs to extend him right now.

Thinking about it - in terms of "happy to see the Astros take a step back", the Astros have been so good at player development that I wonder if we will be happy about this in 2 years.

This is definitely a "We're out on Bregman" move.

One White Sox angle - its darn smart that Getz got the Crochet deal done when he did, as Framber Valdez is clearly on the trade block from Houston now and, although he's more expensive in dollars, he has a postseason pedigree that Crochet doesn't have.

2.

Without even focusing on the guy or guys that I think are overrated…what are the odds that all 4 of those guys stay healthy for a full year? This can be said about literally any set of 4 pitchers in the big leagues.

That's part of the problem - When you are buying guys in their late 30s, going for them to fill your DH role specifically because they're cheap and because your team isn't developing enough guys to fill that spot internally, there is a very high chance of it busting. Adam Dunn, Adam LaRoche, Edwin Encarnacion - 3 data points is enough to define a pattern. All of them seemed like smart signings at the time.

While you couldn't prove that...that would be a pretty red flag and a lot of questions would get asked. That could easily be the kind of thing that ends an agents career and provokes pretty severe restrictions from MLB. They could literally void Sasaki's signing, they did something similar with a bunch of Braves prospects. If you tried to do it in Y1, MLB is going to come in asking all sorts of questions because of how weird that deal would be. You're going to sign the guy for what, 16 years and $350 million after 1 year? Think that would look a little weird? If you tried to do it in contract Y5, you're going to have to pay him a fair contract anyway, and if he wanted to say no, he's 1 year away from free agency.

While I have no major qualms with this deal, let's also note that on paper, Rick Hahn did better than this return several times in trades. This package seems fine, it seems fair, it seems like a good deal and one we should do, whereas Hahn got a couple of packages that on paper made you say "Wow that's a great return" because of a strong headliner. I'll cite the Quintana trade where I said "Wow I didn't think he could get a package like this with how the player is performing." However, now with hindsight, literally no one will say "he knew what he was doing."

Just to calibrate, the Fangrapsh projection has him at 2/$24, MLBTR has him 2/$20.