Balta1701

So what happens if he misses June and July but is nails in September? That’s what happened to the guy for the Braves basically.

Aren’t you supposed to be at a dinner? ?

Here’s the thing with the White Sox - if they work with what is already on their roster, getting 2 months that are elite from Rodon is a big help. Kopech can probably start for half a season, if they bring in another bullpen lefty Crochet can get some starts, and Lopez deserves some shot that he will probably get when there’s another injury. The White Sox would be better paying Rodon $18 million and getting a half season from him than paying a Ray $25 million over several years, with the partial-year pieces they have in their roster.

That’s not how the Qualifying Offers work, players had 2 weeks to accept or decline them. All that happened 2 weeks ago. Conforto has already declined his QO.

Whatever they are planning, it’s time to do something. While none of them were likely to be the White Sox’s top options, it is 100% true that there are 2 fewer IF options and 1 fewer front line OF option as of the last 24 hours. Every other team out there with interest in those positions also now has fewer options, and strategically those other teams should now also respond by saying they need to get something done soon to make sure they don’t miss out.

If that were the case, then you get it done and get the contract cleared now. You’re not suddenly going to get a top 50 prospect for this guy if you wait longer. The market may improve slightly, but not so much it reshapes your franchise. As CWS said, there won’t be a lot of suitors for this guy at his price level, and right now the White Sox are holding all the risk if those handful of teams start finding deals elsewhere. Holding if you had a tolerable offer and hoping for better would be a high risk, low reward move. The other option…there actually is very little activity on him and the White Sox are leaking that they have tons of interest in the hopes that they can create a market.

Well, the in-between options have suddenly dwindled, so some urgency could now be justified. Semien could have an acceptable deal from someone available for all we know, and if that were to happen what is left? Seager or Baez?

Pessimistic side says they miss out and wind up with Cesar and/or Leury?

Do you actually think Schwarber comes in at substantially cheaper than Conforto?

Wasn’t Didi badly injured? Like that 1 year was a “he will miss some time” contract?

Also consider the number of fake insiders at this point. If I wanted to be a fake insider, it wouldn’t be hard to guess at guys that fit the White Sox and relentlessly repeat those names. The White Sox are likely to sign guys who fit them, so a very good chance you will be right often enough while guessing.

Woo hoo we have justified Cesar again for the exact same reason!!!!

This will surely be the end of…Steve Cohen’s money?

Yeesh so I ran the dog around and then watched an episode of Leverage and meanwhile the Mets took the entire free agent market?

So you have managed to exclude any circumstances where you’d believe either the White Sox made a mistake or that Boras made a deal on behalf of his client? Convenient.

Scott Boras will not play games like that with his clients. People go to Scott Boras because he won’t play games like that. The idea that he will do some favor that helps the team at the expense of his player? Not Boras. If you want a Boras client, you pay the price for that player. If you want that price lower, you need leverage like a QO that limits his offers. Avoiding the QO was potentially worth $10-$20 million to Rodon, if he can pass a physical.

If they literally blew all their money on the moves the last few years, then don’t worry about a RF with pop, worry about one who can catch the ball in a rotation of players. Improve the defense at those positions and maybe you get lucky and Eloy and Robert play enough games for the offense to take care of itself.

I will suggest a 4th, and I’m not sure if I believe it but it makes more sense that your #s 2 and 3 - the Sox had a handshake agreement with Boras prior to 2021 to not use the QO on Rodon if he stayed for that tiny deal.

You can’t say we have no solid defensive catcher and then say Vaughn and Sheets should play RF a lot. Same problem.

If they’re insistent on this option, maybe adding an Odubel Herrera to a rotation so that there’s some depth? He’s been a decent CF and bats lefty, hasn’t spent much time at the corners but that could be his role going forward.

That’s sure how it seemed to me. Again, I was surprised they didn’t give him a chance in September, but he also didn’t earn it.

When he was brought in, either TLR or Hahn said some version of "they'll figure it out" which implied that they would alternate in the roles in some way, neither one of them would be full time in either position. But then Kimbrel's first few outings were so bad that they couldn't put him into the 9th inning in a close game, he would have lost the closer's job if he'd had it. It was surprising that they never gave him a chance to close in September. They lost games for worse reasons than that.

You wrote Eng*l’s name. This caused his hamstring to pop while he was sitting down for dinner. Rehab is 4 months.

I bet it will take longer to know than you are expecting.

This would have been a very well supported description of his career up to that point. A great first half by him was very much unexpected after struggles going all the way back to his time with the Red Sox in 2018.