Balta1701

Ironically there might have been a path to competing. Developing guys like Semien, Bassitt, and then eventually Tatis would have filled in some of those gaps, but we traded all those guys away (while saying we didn’t give up much in the trades). We would have had to find some extra contributors and get lucky a couple times, but we had talent there we just didn’t want to work hard enough to develop it. People weren’t kidding when they said Rick Hahn had 3 teams in the playoffs this year. Quintana falling apart, Rodon flopping, and a coach who was completely checked out probably, in the end, would have prevented that, but patience and development in 2015 and 2016 had a shot, rather than going all in and busting on those foolish gambles which prevented any of that.

The FA thing with Hahn is that when you count everyone he's signed, including Abreu and McCann, he's spent over $10 million per WAR (someone did that math last year). He only is ever willing to play the low to middle levels of the free agent market, and those levels are extremely high risk, with a majority of players underperforming or outright busting. So it's not terrible, but basically Hahn needs to build a 98 win team before he can be trusted to spend money, because he'll only be able to bring in a tiny improvement by signing FAs. I will grant, his performance on signing veterans is far better than his performance trading for them, which is consistently awful.

This is the kinda stuff that really bugs me. The White Sox signed Melky Cabrera to a $39 million deal. Over that deal he was worth 2.2 fWAR. That's nearly $20 million per win at a time when an average contract was something like $8 million per WAR. Cabrera was a replacement level player in both 2015 and 2017. There's a reason why they spent $50 million+ in new money going into 2015 and traded away several players and improved by a grand total of 3 wins.

I don't know how this series is going to end, but mercy this Dodgers team is just straight up relentless.

This is an...interesting choice of language...given the groups that are invigorated.

I would sincerely doubt it. Stiever only had a couple outings this year, it’s not like he dominated AA for a whole season, so the Mets would probably be skeptical on that, and with a brand new owner I would be surprised if that was a team that would push hard to cut costs.

I...somewhat disagree.

Even if Mazara is better than you saw this year, are you willing to risk $6 million+ on him next year? He will make that if you offer him arbitration. If you are unwilling to offer him that money, then he is going to be a free agent on December 1. Thats' the determining factor - the arbitration deadline is the start of December, and if you offer him arbitration you are effectively guaranteeing him $6 million (you can cut him at the end of ST for $1.5 million). I think there's a decent chance he's better next year, but given what we saw this year, there's zero reason why I want to spend $9 million on a Mazara/Engel platoon. In a league where so many teams are going to be cost cutting, that's crazy money to spend on that weak of a platoon. Go spend that money on someone better, or let Mazara go to the FA market and try to sign him or someone else for a chance to earn $1 million in February.

True, but that was in reply to "Would you go with Blake Rutherford" there. The right answer is "you have to do both somehow so figure it out. The Dodgers and Yankees and better teams are going to. You have to be ready to beat them."

If we are going to spend $10 million on RF, which is the salary those two would require if Mazara were offered arbitration, we can do better.

I think it says a lot that the White Sox didn’t trust him enough to play him over Mazara even when he was clearly playing better. No one, and I mean no one on this planet, hates Rick Hahn trades more than me. But if we can’t afford to sign both a RF and a starting pitcher of the caliber that will make us a threat to the Rays and Yankees and Astros, let alone the freaking Dodgers with Betts, then now might be the time to trade for a real one. Can another GM make the deal for us? This remains a league of superteams. You want to beat a super team, you build a super team.

Engel is a fair reply, do we still have him this year though? He's arb-1 right?

I don’t believe we have a 1 WAR OF in house. Try a -0.5 WAR OF and you’ve got guys like what we have right now.

I’d argue the exact opposite. If you have a great weakness in your lineup, that weakness will always find a way to cost you games, particularly on defense. Remember that if we ant a title, teams like the Dodgers are standing in the way - how do those lineups and rotations stack up? At least give me a guy who can field out there, if he can’t hit well I can live with catching the ball.

With the shortened season, spotrac shows the league average payroll at $59 million. That means total player salary for 30 teams comes to $1.8 billion. When they didn’t have to pay staff to open ballparks, does that claimed loss make any sense? It still does not to me. The White Sox’s payroll this year was $43 million. If revenue was 0, that means everyone else would have to blow through $57 million, without having to pay any ballpark employees. Revenue of course is not zero, so all the other staff have to blow what, $100 million to believe that number?

That’s....great news.

The signal strength should not be affected by viewership but details like weather and atmospheric conditions can affect it.

Antenna?

Just to point out - Hinch, LaRusa, Geren, Quatraro, Jirschele, Bochy, Fuld - there is zero diversity amongst the list that I'm seeing talked about so far. I would bet that will not be the case in the end.

Now that we're into spike 3, I'm familiar with the initial literature on this but I don't feel bad about suggesting it's a minor effect unless you get the circumstances correct. Even though people are wearing masks a lot more, we're seeing that the population continues acting like 90% of the country hasn't had it yet. During the second spike, even with a lot of mask wearing, it's difficult to say there was a huge decrease in the death rate, which would be the measureable result if it was was alleged by one study. Texas, for example, at its peak had something like 8k cases per day in the seven day moving average, and had well over 100 deaths per day in the moving average - meaning that there was still a large number of cases missed even if treatment had the death rate down to 0.8% from better treatment. If "mask vaccines" were dramatically cutting into that, it would require Texas to have had what, 25,000 cases per day and detected 8,000? Testing is available enough now that also seems unlikely.

It’s interesting to see Dave Roberts pull Gonsolin after 1.1 innings in the World Series after our game 3 discussion.

The answer is they're all just lying and trying to make themselves look better so they can get new jobs.

FWIW, depending on what is meant by "No experience", I'd be ok with a manager with no experience here if he had the right temperament. Ricky Renteria's problem, IMO, was best illustrated in 2019, when he was asked a normal question about how he took analytics into account while making decisions by the press, and responded "F*** you!". He didn't just refuse to take external opinions or information into account in any decision making, he was stridently opposed to hearing other opinions if they came from someone he didn't like, and we saw that this year as the bullpen management got more and more absurd. Any manager is going to make calls that don't work. I want someone who learns from it when it happens. If that's someone who hasn't managed a big league team before, I'm ok with that. I might be a little curious if they've never been a bench coach or anything, but I'll have an open mind until proven otherwise. If you want my "for god's sake don't do this", it's trying to hire a person who doesn't even want the job, Ventura-style. Please for God's sake don't do that again.

Ok I’ll ask. One paragraph you say you can’t hire someone with zero experience, then the next you say you have no problem bringing in someone with no experience. Can you clarify what you’re saying because I’m lost?

We are in a league where all the players went to other teams and said “hey the Astros are using cameras” and they were right to do so. Hell the White Sox caught them live doing so. So yeah, he better be ready to open up on any other rule breaking if he’s going to interview with my team.