Balta1701

What the Red Sox get and what the White Sox give up is not necessarily the same thing, the penalty only applies to the Red Sox, the White Sox would give up their 2nd rounder for their first signing with a QO attached.

Leury Garcia would make a very solid platoon RF partner.

He's not a free agent yet, but Kole Calhoun is widely expected to be available. He has a $14 million option; the Angels may or may not pick that up depending on how strong of a push they are planning for Cole, but even if they do pick it up, he should not cost much in a trade with that high salary. Steve Stone has floated Calhoun as an option and Stone is very much a front office mouthpiece for this organization. Josh Reddick similarly is very likely to be available this offseason as the Astros are right up against the tax and need pitching help in their bullpen: Kyle Tucker is ready to take that spot next year and putting him there is the right move if you're the Stros and you want to contend for years to come. In both of these cases I can see the teams picking up a portion of their money to move them, for a limited prospect return.

The Dodgers absolutely do not think this way. The Dodgers play legitimately 5 outfielders, maybe 6. Bellinger can shift to 1b. Pederson gets platooned. Pollack will miss 1/2 the season for injury. Especially with an extra roster spot, they will happily go into next year with Pollack, Bellinger, Verdugo, Pederson, Lux, and Taylor as outfielder/1b types, expecting some people to get hurt and some people to switch positions.

While Encarnacion has been a better hitter than Moustakas, if you're looking for a short term version of that, Moustakas still offers several benefits: he can play the field and is more flexible than Encarnacion (so you don't necessarily need Sanchez on the bench), he's left handed which we really do need, and he's younger so hopefully the odds of a cliff in the near future are lower.

I think this is a very poor description of all of them. Dunn showed signs of falling off dramatically in the 2nd half before we signed him, but we didn't catch it at the time - 2 years into his deal we were all wishing we'd paid attention to that early sign of dropoff. LaRoche was a good player who we signed to a 2 year deal at age 35 - that one the age got us. Yonder's OPS dropped by 100 points between 2017-2018. We've been acquiring DHs as though it's the 90s, where they can last into their mid-late 30s, without paying attention to their ages or the first flashes of dropoff in their early 30s. If Martinez came here and showed another dropoff in 2020, literally all of us would be pointing at the dropoff in 2019 and saying "F***, we shoulda seen this coming again". It's certainly not guaranteed, and Martinez could also easily be the one to break the trend, but let's at least understand better how these things went.

And yet he goes after the Cuban human smuggling market.

And that problem is a symptom of the rot at the very top.

Correct, fixed.

"Mr. Hahn, the White Sox have had international signing penalties for the last 2 seasons and thus they were limited in how they spent their money. However, this year, the White Sox had a large international signing pool available to them and those 2 full seasons where they could have been scouting players prior to the penalties expiring. However, despite those advantages, the White Sox chose not to spend all their international money on players that could have made them better in the long term, instead signing only a handful of players and sending excess money off to Texas in exchange for a pittance of extra money in a year where the payroll was already extremely low. While I'm sure you're happy with the players you did get, as White Sox fans watching this behavior, how can we judge your failure to take advantage of all your available international funds to mean anything other than the money this year was more important to the front office than winning, and how can we interpret these trades to mean anything other than teams like Texas clearly care more about winning than you do?" Anyone wants to ask it at Soxfest? Already written.

The other part of it is...outside of 3 guys who are near untouchable (Robert, Madrigal, Vaughn), almost everyone else in their minors has a knock against them. Either injury, struggling at AA, or recent draftee/hasn't reached AA yet. Outside of those 3 guys, it's entirely possible there are a few good quality ballplayers, maybe even really good players. But, you can't convince me you believe anyone else in our system aside from will be contributing to a big league ballclub in 2 years, that they have a high likelihood of success, or that you know which guys are the best to bet on. Some of those guys may well turn it around before the deadline this year, and it would be nice if they did, but right now? Nah, they're all gambles at best.

I sure as hell wouldn't pay that if I was an NL team and not sure that he can stay healthy playing the field every day.

I'm assuming that the number bolded also includes the $14 million off-the-books insurance costs that every team seems to pay?

Bummer plus a couple of those guys would be far more intriguing, and also a move that is much tougher for the White Sox to do since they're not exactly overloaded on bullpen pieces.

If I was the Mets GM, there is literally no reasonable package you could make out of those players that would convince me to give up Nimmo right now. I'd turn down any 4 of those guys. Maybe talk to me at the deadline if some of them have some success. Brandon Nimmo is a 27 year old former first round pick with 3 remaining years of control and a 4-win season 2 years ago. I don't care how many other OFs they have, there is no good reason to give that up without a top 50 prospect keying the return. If I go back to Carlos Rodon after 2017, even after he had his first injury problem, and say "would I trade Carlos Rodon for a package of 5 of those guys?" I'd have said "good lord no." Those guys have enough value to do the kinds of deals the White Sox did in 2015 and 2016; getting guys who are now in their last 1-2 years before free agency, who don't have a lot of time left to build any additional value with their team and who are getting expensive. They're not valueless, but the only way they could bring Nimmo in return is if the Mets FO is awful.

I think trading young players for veterans is very much ingrained in this front office and they've had to hold themselves back from doing it the last few years (even still did it last year for Colome). I don't think it's a particularly effective strategy, as you note, but it's entirely reasonable to expect the White Sox to consider that option.

I could see the White Sox trading anyone in their system beneath Vaughn and I could see them making said move for 1 year rentals if the price was right. Calhoun is similarly a 1 year trade stopgap. What the White Sox would be willing to part with and what I would be willing to part with have, historically, been 2 very different things.

I could absolutely see the White Sox trading for a 1 year rental this year...as long as they aren't having to pay way too much for said player.

Did you see what Joe Kelly and Nathan Eovaldi got last offseason?

The picture shows him in Phillies gear accidentally saying "We want to bring a title back to DC" rather than saying bring it to Philly.

Well yes, but the Yankees and Dodgers can afford the luxury tax. The Yankees have only been a non-tax-paying team in 2 seasons; 2018 and 2019, and at some point they're going to realize that they're choosing avoiding the tax in favor of beating the Astros.

No, not like that at all. You're totally not understanding the point of that post.

Yes that's how it works.