Balta1701

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Strasburg was not signed by the Nationals, he was drafted by the Nationals. Verlander was traded for by the Astros. I guess you are correct there are two guys on that list who were extended by their current franchises, but Verlander was most definitely acquired by trade from the Tigers and Strasburg was absolutely drafted by the Nationals. The only big money free agent pitcher who has recently won a title seems to be Scherzer.

Literally one of those was obtained as a free agent from other teams. (One, Kershaw, was resigned). This makes a very strong case that paying high prices for free agent pitching isn’t a good move.

Absolutely flip him (unless the team is in first place because he’s a cy young candidate). Do you trust his body enough to give him an extension even covering next year? Let alone a multi year deal? If he’s spectacular in April and May we will be praying he stays healthy through mid July and begging Getz to get a deal done before his next start. Hed have to be one of the top Cy Young candidates before I’d even think about giving him a QO.

If Terry Francona came out of retirement to manage this team, can you confidently say they wouldn’t start 10-30 with him?

This question is legit. Longest thread in Soxtalk history will be: Fire Chris Getz Building in the south loop Dylan Cease trade concepts

Lumping “public and private financing” together as though those are equally controversial is certainly a thing someone could do. Well maybe. Actually…no, that’s not a thing anyone can do? That like makes Reinsdorf look honest in comparison?

But as of now there’s enough talent in the system that you’d also be surprised if it was only Montgomery. They should get more than that. If they don’t, that’s a different indictment, on the coaching staff he brought in - keeping “Sticky stuff” Katz and Grifol doesn’t raise confidence but we need time to evaluate that. That talent may also not be enough for a division contender, but you can’t wash it away like this.

Annoyed and wondering? Right now. Actually pissed? Let’s at least get regular season numbers on both.

If I understand Tax Increment Financing, the idea is that over time a lot of that $1.3 billion would come from the taxes that would be generated by that property being developed - that they’re pumped back into the site this way. While that does limit the city’s short term benefits from the construction on this site - if construction hasn’t happened yet, then very little tax money should have flowed to the site. There are ways to screw that up by making the rules too lenient - Foxconn got $300 million for hitting 600 workers in Wisconsin (the state spent $500k per 1 year job creation), but it’s also hard to be as terrible as that Wisconsonian governor.

At the same time, there’s some credit due here. There’s an owner who went on a rant about how this year couldn’t be wasted, and a GM who - if he followed that instruction - would demolish several future seasons, in an all too familiar pattern. So, aside from a handful of hopefully minor moves, the GM ignored that rant and did what was best for the franchise. No win now moves. Colson is still here, Quero is still here, Noah is still here, Nastrini is still here. Bummer is gone. Santos was amazingly turned into something valuable despite his injury. Crochet is even being given a chance to turn into a starter. Somehow, the owner went on a rant about the importance of this year and the GM either convinced him to think long term or recognized that he’s so out of touch that a bunch of former Royals backups will be something he interprets as an attempt to win this year. We will see if any of the riskier moves backfire or pay off, but there were few of them, and none of them should seriously threaten 2026, despite an owner wanting to throw away 2026. For that, credit is due.

He's already been sent to minor league camp.

No amount of math can support $1 billion for a stadium, I would agree. Several hundred million seems totally justified given the location of this property and how long it has remained undeveloped. But that, of course, is not an exact number, because Jerry Reinsdorf didn't bother doing the homework.

True. After all, this is the first note from any so-called insiders we've heard the entire offseason. It's not like they've yelled "Things are about to go down" after literally every other thing that happened the entire offseason and been wrong every time.

I remain somewhat concerned that in a couple years we'll be regretting those two deals where we traded away the minor league pitchers, but other than that - they cleared out some guys they needed to move, one who I didn't even think was movable at all, and they avoided any gigantic "convert my 61 win team into a title contender" trades or signings that set them back years without much benefit, as has been their M.O. for the last 11 years. But seriously, this Royal obsession is straight up weird.

Some of this is still a little bit weird. The obsession with the Royals is a little bit weird. Seemingly over-buying on veterans, I have no idea where they think they have roster spots for all these guys, and I'm the one who complained the most about lack of depth the last 3 years. Some of the money they spent on these veterans is a little excessive for a team trying to massively cut payroll (Maldonado is tops on that list). Otherwise, despite the weirdness this would mostly be fine - if we weren't also making moves like the trades with the D-Backs and Cubs, where we gave away lower-level minor league pieces for back of the roster pieces to help improve the team now.

Math can be done correctly and accurately if one wants to do math correctly.

While Claypool was a debacle of a 2nd round pick trade, the Sweat deal for a 2nd rounder had some very promising early returns. If you're hitting on your first round picks, and meanwhile you trade away your 2nd rounders for guys who you extend - and you get one strong piece out of 2 trades, and you pick up some extra picks elsewhere to make up for the loss of depth from trading away the 2nd round picks - that's generally still going to work out.

Because Jerry Reinsdorf is a classic 80s billionaire. He thinks he can bully the government into giving him exactly what he wants, that was how he acted when he went to Springfield. He'd prepped his threats with his meetings in Nashville, he'd prepped his interview with Crains where he said "The team would move and it would totally not be my fault", he expected the government to cower before him. It worked last time, why wouldn't it work this time? Literally we've heard both the governor and at least one representative say "we need to make sure this is a good deal for taxpayers", one of them quoted in here said that they wanted to see the detailed analysis of how this will work out for taxpayers using conservative numbers - Reinsdorf could have had that prepared! Hell I have been sitting here since this proposal came out asking for the same thing, that's what I need to sell this idea! The fact that he didn't have it was some combination of laziness, arrogance, and misunderstanding his audience.

The people saying "not one dime" of public funding for what should be a good project are as unreasonable as the ones saying "we need $1 billion in public funding for a $1 billion stadium or the team will move to Nashville." The difference? The former of those are random folks on a message board. The latter of those is...Jerry Reinsdorf.

I do agree that our 4-5-6 of "random pixels" will make scoring runs a challenge.

Blake Snell does not come close to making this an 85 win team.

If Blake Snell can’t get a contract worth $200 million when he has 2 Cy Young awards on his record, what is Dylan Cease worth? Right now I don’t have a clue. He certainly wouldn’t be a guy I would want to commit to for 8 years based on his current performance.