Balta1701

For a backup OF available at low cost, you get a choice, do you want a defensive guy or do you want a decent bat? If you're looking for both...the guy isn't a cheap backup.

I think he's unlikely to be our 5th outfielder.

Then you want Engel, Pence has long been pretty poor.

Kuiper Belt Object?

Assuming they offer arbitration to Mazara, Rodon, Giolito, Lopez, Moncada, Bummer, and Fry, they'll be right around $100m. $53 million currently guaranteed next year, that's a little over $40m in arbration assuming most guys are decent. Could save some of they lop off Rodon and Mazara, could be slightly higher if guys like Engel or Marshall are retained. Do have an option on Encarnacion that they might consider.

Yeah that's $30 million but we'll have no closer, and Moncada, Giolito, and Lopez all hit arbitration. So we save $30 million but need a closer and have $20m or more in new arbitration payments to make.

Like how Tino Martinez has a higher WAR than Konerko, played 1b for the Yankees, picked up 4 rings, and did not get in.

Assuming that Rodon is a bust as I'm doing...Chris Sale. But at this point, whether or not the White Sox have a strong starting rotation is going to depend entirely on the guys they traded for, because they went heavily in on trading for those guys. They haven't been particularly adept at developing position players either.

For Dunning and Stiever - there's no obvious reason why those 2 aren't replaceable. We gave up comparable value to 1 of those players for Nomar Mazara. I have little urge to trade for Arenado, but if you're getting a player of that caliber for 2 seasons and all you have to give up is those 2, I'm listening. It's when we start talking about Vaughn, Madrigal, that level where I have a problem with it.

Link from earlier this season: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/when-it-comes-to-the-mlb-draft-the-nationals-need-a-turnaround-there-too/2019/06/02/c6fc31ac-8548-11e9-a491-25df61c78dc4_story.html

If he takes a 1 year deal he leaves himself exposed to the qualifying offer next year, so not as easily done.

One other part of that has been that the Rockies haven't seemed like they've made any moves to get better this offseason, so if they really aren't going to push to win why are they holding onto him and paying that salary when they only have 2 guaranteed years left before the player option hits?

He pretended to not speak english well so the Congresspeople basically ignored him and asked stuff of the other guys. His lawyers and he read a statement saying he had never "injected anything illegal", but which left taking anything in any other form or having done something while in a different country uncovered. The perjury investigation of him ended in 2010 as the statute of limitations ran out.

Some of those guys might genuinely retire rather than take the ST invite and minimal dollars.

Apparently when they picked up the 5th year option last spring they created a situation where it is guaranteed against injury but where the player can be cut prior to the start of the NFL year in early March if the team no longer thinks he's worth the contract ($13.2 million for Floyd). I didn't know that was the case with those options.

See I really don't buy this. I think they were both just "Very bad at drafting and developing in general", to the point where they only could find 1-2 good prospects every 10 years. Kenny didn't trade away any prospects who made a major impact after 2003 or so...but aside from Gio, who did he have who made a major impact in those years? McCarthy was ok, Chris Carter wasn't the worst player in the league, but there's basically no one else worth mentioning who came out of that system until 2010 when Sale was drafted. They held onto Gordon Beckham when they should have dealt him, they held onto Chris Sale and that was the right move, they shoulda dealt Rodon. Semien and he who will not be named were, outside of Sale, the only guys this system developed over a decade+. When you don't have anyone of value, you can't make a mistake by trading them away, and it's hard to go a decade without having at least one or two guys be surprisingly good.

Obviously there's no choice but to run with Trubisky for at least 1 more season and hope to pull something off, the real question with him is - do you pick up the 5th year option? Beyond that, they've got 2 second round picks to work with, ,but are missing #3 and #4. Hopefully they can get something useful in the latter rounds, open to trading down for extra selections if they can, but no way they should be thinking about moving up. They are near the bottom of the league in available cap space. Somewhere they need to bring in additional QB help, but it's going to have to be cheap. They're going to have to look into doing things like reworking Mack's deal and maybe others to try to clear space, and they're going to be playing the bottom of the FA market. In general you have to hope you can find a guy or two who overperform what they're paid when they enter the Bears' system, and you have to hope to get more out of guys like Montgomery next year. There's not enough resources available to hope for a major overhaul or major upgrades of this roster.

While I don't have any urge to trade for Arenado, one important thing that would be different in this case is that Arenado is actually a bonafide, legitimate star. The trades you're talking about are moves for guys like Jake Peavy when his numbers were already down from his peak in San Diego, Jeff Samardzija when we convinced ourselves he was way better than he actually was, and James Shields after his performance had fallen apart. When trades became available for guys who could actually change a franchise, like Miguel Cabrera, we made attempts at them but were beaten because we didn't have enough talent to made such a deal. The deals that killed the White Sox were paying high prices for middling players, because they didn't understand that they were paying high prices and they didn't understand they were getting back middling players.

The last big name player I recall us seeing this discussion about was Matt Holliday. In 2007-2008, right before he was first traded, his home OPS was 100-250 points higher than his road OPS. His numbers dropped a little in the first half while he was in Oakland, then they shot back up when he got to St. Louis. He ended his career in St. Louis with a lower OPS than he had in Colorado by about 50 points, but with a higher OPS+ in St. Louis than he ever had in Colorado (Park adjusted). We don't see true all star hitters coming up in Colorado and leaving often enough to really put together a trend, but Holliday was a better hitter in St. Louis overall than you'd have expected from "Here's what he did on the road while he was on the Rockies". Many players often hit better at home, and "adjusting to not hitting in Colorado" really does seem to be a thing. I guess another recent example of a guy leaving Colorado and continuing to put up really good numbers is DJ Lamahieu, who went nuts with the Yankees last year. I think the overall rule is, if a guy's a really good hitter in Colorado, his numbers are usually slightly worse elsewhere and there might be a transition period, but he remains a really good hitter. I am struggling to think of guys who were "only good hitters in Colorado" in recent years, maybe someone like Tulowitzki but he had other issues.

Maybe. If as part of their immunity agreement they signed something saying that they would tell the whole truth, and then they didn't, MLB might now have the authority to suspend them for violating that deal.

Both of these are true. Had there been a rule on the books, agreed to by the players union, that allowed management to suspend the players for this type of cheating, MLB would likely not have offered immunity, at least not to more than a handful of them. Had that rule existed, that whole roster (Keuchel included) would probably be facing some sort of suspension for violating it. But since no rule existed, it was not worth creating a new fight with the players union that would have lasted years and prolonged the investigation indefinitely, so the sensible move was to offer clear immunity to the players to get a full statement from them on this part of the incident.

The other thing that happened at home in August of 2017 was Harvey, so the whole area around the ballpark was a mess at that time.

As much as we heard about how Darvish and others were "Tipping pitches" during that playoffs...yeah. I don't believe he was "tipping pitches", I believe they had a camera on the signs and that spotted them 5 runs in game 7.

It sure seems like in 2017 teams didn't really realize the Astros were doing this, Farquhar seems to have legitimately been the first to recognize it and the fact that he figured it out made the astros panic that they had been caught so they started destroying the evidence.