Balta1701

No, I want to compare Andrew Vaughn and Nick Madrigal to the guys we traded away. I want to compare Marcus Semien to Mookie Betts.

If he's not going to take a discount to stay with the Dodgers, the Dodgers aren't going to overpay to keep him from hitting FA. They'll put a fair offer on the table and if he doesn't fit their needs, they'll walk away. It's not like they're sitting on a huge hole in their OF that they will be $400 million desperate to fill.

The other thing we did during those years repeatedly was to attempt to acquire players to help now at the expense of our future, consistently. And no, I don't believe that either of them would have been nearly this good of players had they stayed with the White Sox, but seriously, 2 guys who we traded away that just play IF positions put up 11.2 fWAR in 2019 alone. We traded away a guy who, after a few years of work, turned into a top 5 MVP candidate in order to get a guy 1 year from free agency, and we told ourselves repeatedly that the guys we were giving up were no big deal. There's a lesson in that too.

Once Soto broke out, the Nationals genuinely were in a position where Harper wasn't necessary for them. Letting him go was the right move; their OF was fine without Harper and the money they didn't spend on Harper went to strengthen their pitching staff. They didn't pursue him because they literally shouldn't have pursued him.

So just to clarify, you are willing to go past 10/$430 for Betts?

I don't think Boston would want it known that they had a deal on the table to trade their MVP RF only to wind up with him coming back because they couldn't strike a deal.

No I would not trade for him. If the Red Sox can't get an extension inked with him then we can't either, and that's not an indictment of our front office. Whatever dollar amount we're willing to pay...Betts's side will know that if we're willing to pay it, there will likely be other teams willing to match it, and he wants to let the market play out. That is a respectable decision. If the White Sox put an offer on the table next March, and then they faced the prospect of losing him for nothing, they might up their bid under that pressure. From the White Sox's side, we cannot afford to lose a top 5 draft pick in a trade for a guy with 1 year of control who intends to hit the free agent market. It just does not work.

Too many guys who can't play defense even if their bats are really good is not a problem I want to have. Literally does not matter how good their bats are if they are as bad as our current RF group.

As of right now, they are apparently under orders from ownership to get beneath the luxury tax line next season.

This franchise had a $130 million payroll in 2011. They have been hugely profitable the last 3 seasons. If they push to $120 million, they should have plenty of money to spend midseason and next offseason while still breaking even.

Dude was an all star with an .800 OPS at age 23. People don't give up on kids when they're age 21-22.

In a related move, the Patriots have also released owner Robert Kraft who was caught on tape involved in a sex ring that included trafficked humans. Oh, wait.

He had a career .348 OBP, it was .363 over a 10 year prime period, and he had 3 full seasons of a .400+ OBP. Along with good defense I will take that any day of the week and in a double header on Sunday.

If Madrigal is hitting .280 I would certainly hope his OBP is in the .340-.350 range. Dude knows the strike zone. The only way his OBP should be that low is if his batting average is down near .250 because of weak contact.

They may well want to but they can pay for both.

No problem with it...can't imagine any scenario where he's not a Yankee next year.

He gets on base and plays excellent defense.

Madrigal.

This is only true if Madrigal flops.

While I don't disagree with your assessment of our front office (seriously dude I'm the one who pushed RH as the worst GM in baseball even before the Machado debacles), I want to point out how fundamentally different every single name on that list is from the guys you've noted above. Kepler, Polanco, Rosario, Buehler - none of those guys were signed on the offseason free agent market. Muncy was, but you haven't been listing guys like Muncy who bounced around as minor leaguers, you've been listing guys like Fiers and Moustakas who are later in their careers, established, and more expensive. The closest guy mentioned above to a guy like Muncy is Avi Garcia - but even if Avi had a huge 2019, he'd be a free agent after this year. The White Sox's performance on the international market this season is a complete embarrassment even if our big Cuban signing turns into something good. Rick Hahn should be publicly ripped for that. They literally had 2 years to prepare and couldn't find enough to spend their money on, so they sent it to Texas as a bribe to get them to absorb Nate Jones's contract and build equity with ownership. They should absolutely have been smarter about how they ran these things, no doubt. But none of that changes the point I was making above - that the moderate to big money free agents outside of Harper and Machado, prior to this season, were the wrong moves. Avoiding those signings was the correct decision.

Yes, it is entirely possible and likely that if we paid these guys more they would have joined us in 2019. However, it is precisely because we avoided making those sorts of moves in 2018 and 2019 that we now have the resources to go out and do them this offseason, when the timing is right. So yes, the White Sox could have signed Brantley and said "now we have an OF spot covered and it went well", or they could have signed other guys people advocated for last offseason - AJ Pollock or Andrew McCutchen, and had it go terribly wrong. It may still go terribly wrong with signings this offseason, but the good news is we didn't spend $14 million for 2019 on one of these guys this year only to get 0.4 WAR out of Pollock on a 71 win team for that money. The Jay signing was bad enough and that was only $4 million.

I don't know for certain that they will, because what the big league squad is doing might matter. There's a genuine possibility that next year the White Sox are sitting a few games over .500 in late July, Vaughn is killing the ball at AA, and our DH position is weak enough that we bring Vaughn up to try to help the big league team. I would also start him at high A next year. I do want them to be aggressive with him, but at the same time he has to earn it.

Even if Brantley, for example, had signed with us and done exactly as well as he has been in Houston, are the 6 extra wins for a team on pace for 70 wins something we're really going to brag about?

The article in the post we're replying to literally says that there's no reason to trade Jose Abreu because even if they're performing well, aging guys on 1 year deals don't have a lot of trade value. Schoop and Avi would have been decent players for this team and yes Avi would easily have been better than RH's right field Jon Jay with no physical trash, but pretty much none of those guys bring you anything of value in a trade. With some of those guys we have literally seen that - Fiers was non-tendered last offseason and even though he was coming off a good year there was no interest in him. He's got a great record this year, but his peripherals are weaker than his record, so not only would he not command much, but playing with our defense behind him instead of solid defenders like Semien and Chapman would make his numbers worse. These guys just aren't worth anything in a trade. I similarly would argue that with worse coaching, Brantley would be far less of a hitter this year. I have no issue with any of the suggestions you offer this year. But signing guys in order to trade them? It's just a rotten strategy. Sign guys because they fill a role you have to fill, you don't get that much back in trades for guys who signed fair contracts.

Well just think about how much you've narrowed it down. 1 franchise, 30 years. How many times during any 30 year period does even a really good franchise bring up 2 infielders within a few years?