Balta1701

Frankly, making tough decisions like that has worked out extremely well for that franchise thus far, and they consistently are able to bring in talent to replace the ones they trade away.

If they've had actual discussions to the point where an offer was proposed, this does seem very disrespectful.

Then you don't have the owner take the phone call of a prominent baseball writer. He doesn't have to pick up.

I just think teams don't want to pay the luxury tax. They're ok with paying a certain amount for a player, but that certain amount plus 30 to 50% and suddenly ownership says "why"? There might even be a bit of collusion going on with teams publicly stating that they want to be beneath the tax line.

When teams have missed out on Cole and Stras, there will still be 4-5 teams with money, pitching needs, and Ryu and Bumgarner left.

Yes he does but it's because of health.

I would be shocked if the rest of the league viewed Robert that lowly. He seems like he has a "nearly top of the league how are we getting this guy available" value. If you want to get the Mets talking about DeGrom, he's the kind of guy who could make that happen.

The Yankees might not, but the Angels might.

I think it makes sense that Bumgarner and Ryu will wait until Cole and Strasburg have signed as the teams who miss on those 2 could easily bid up the cheaper guys. Since the White Sox won't bid on the big boys, they're going to be waiting for the other guys to be ready to sign.

I dont' know but it isn't 0. His defense is acceptable in LF but not great, his offense has been acceptable but not great. People have noted how his batted ball profile is high velocity but messy in a way that makes him susceptible to shifts. An injury that slows him in the OF or a moderate dropoff in his exit velocity could put him at risk of dropping below that floor. Both of them, IMO, are risks to get worse next year. Probably more likely for Calhoun with his age, but one of them will be paid more for longer. The argument for Ozuna, the best one - he has upside that Calhoun does not have.

His 2018 was rotten but he's been a 2.1-3.5 fWAR player 5 of the last 6 years. He's been an average to slightly above average bat and an average to slightly above average glove almost every year. He has effectively 0 chance of dropping a 5 win season, but he also has 0 chance of being a $50 million bust.

Kole Calhoun, because I believe he will get a 1 year deal rather than a 3 year deal for substantially less money (The Halos just declined a $14 million option on him), he is solid if unspectacular at defense (Definitely not a major liability out there), and he gives us additional LH balance.

Whose player evaluation would you trust more, the White Sox or the Rays? I'll hang up and listen.

I get what he was saying: trading a starting pitcher for a more expensive starting pitcher leaves us with improved starting pitching but still a need of 2 starting pitchers, with less money available to make it happen.

If you could make Pollock substantially cheaper than those other options I might be willing to gamble on the injury history. He could cover CF part time, make RF defense excellent when he's in there, but yeah we'd have to think about who could be a LH hitting platoon partner for him so that he can have some extra time off at least and we don't currently have that. If the org still has confidence in Rutherford and Adolfo and company, then maybe you get AJP on the cheap from the Dodgers and you try to push one of those guys along quickly if and when he gets hurt, and you use Pollock to limit their early exposure to favorable matchups when possible.

That'd make sense. Ozuna says he feels fine so he says its done, the White Sox say it isn't done it's on the table but they need a physical and maybe even an MRI or something like that.

If the Rays value Cease highly, maybe.

The only way that makes sense to me is if there's a physical concern that the team doctors want to examine in person.

Castellanos does seem to me like a guy who might need to wait for his market to develop. Some team in January deciding that they could use another bat and entering the bidding for him at that point could be the thing required to get him to fair value.

The White Sox FO characters are incredibly incensed by being called cheap or midmarket or second tier (see Kenny's rants last offseason). Even when they're being cheap and refusing to bid on top guys because they're cheap, they're willing to go to the press and say "We could do this we just don't want to!" because they know they have apologists who will take that and say "See, they're not cheap, they could have been in on Cole if they wanted".

If only someone had tweeted that this was a bad deal beforehand...

Last offseason people here wanted to be in on Pollock despite this team not being competitive in 2019 and despite his injury history. Think of it this way; there's a good chance the Dodgers would pay a substantial portion of his contract to clear the roster spot right now. How substantial does that have to be to interest you? If you had to trade Alec Hansen (very little value) and the Dodgers took on Herrera's deal and also added in another $14 million, effectively making the White Sox have to pay less than $20 million over 3 years for that player, would you think about it? If not, what dollar amount would you need him to be paid to take him on?

"I'm employed as the Dodgers GM. I've made 2 world series appearances in 3 years and my teams keep winning 100 games, and we are doing it without paying the luxury tax any more." "Sir, twitter is telling us that the leaked deal with the White Sox is bad and we shouldn't do it." "What? I never would have thought of that. How on Earth could we let this happen? Quick, ask the magic 8 ball if this deal is fair or not, that's how we make all other personnel decisions but maybe a twitter poll should be added".

It was RH covering his tail with a BS statement that made no sense but was still enough to leave some people satisfied. Which makes one wonder how many other tail-covering-statements might have been similarly BS. (Some of their statements about money to Machado? The supposed higher offer to Wheeler maybe?)

Because, like most people with sources, whether real or not, flaunting it gets them attention.