Balta1701

I flat out don't believe Madrigal will ever hit that average because guys don't hit those averages without a bunch of home runs. Only 2 players in baseball hit .330 or better last year, Betts and JD Martinez. That might have been possible in the league a few decades ago but pitching and defense have reached a point where guys just don't hit those averages unless they're hitting the ball so far there are only fans to catch them.

There are very few guys in baseball who meet that standard. It would be nice if we could get Madrigal to be one of them eventually, but I'm still skeptical.

Those teams specifically targeted a few guys who could do that, but it's telling that KC went with the speedy guy option and they're one of the few teams worse than us, so lots of speed doesn't translate to lots of wins even early this season. Tim Anderson is actually leading MLB in stolen bases right now, but you didn't suggest him. The White Sox and Rangers are tied for 3rd in baseball with 20 stolen bases already, so the White Sox are pretty active on the basepaths right now. It's not a bad thing to have people who are good at that, as long as they can stay healthy doing it (Robert), but it's not nearly as important as finding good hitters or guys who get on base.

In this league...people don't cause havoc on the bases very often any more.

Milwaukee's starters have a 5.74 ERA on the season so far, Chacin was strong for them last year and he's been Ivan Nova bad so far, and their young starters like Burnes and Woodruff have been as bad as our young starters, so that's a sensible landing spot even before you consider that Gio pitched there for a spell last year.

Frankly, if Moncada continues hitting like this, there's no reason why he can't lead off. What the White Sox need far more is "good" hitters. If someone comes up and has a strong on base percentage and that bumps Moncada back to #2, that is also great. Our problem right now is below average production from what, 7 of the 9 positions in our lineup?

I don't think you sign him to that today, let him play out this year, but that's roughly a reasonable and fair offer.

It's actually even worse because of inflation so that the $45 million today is worth >$50 million 10 years from now, but overall, it's money. This is literally why humans developed it; to transfer goods and services across space and time without having to worry about the barter system. It doesn't go bad. You may not put it in a bank, you may pay down debts, you may take profits right now and distribute that to shareholders so that they're still content later if you run a deficit to pay for your contending roster, but there is no reason why those funds aren't fungible across multiple years.

If he gets all the way to free agency hitting like this, he'd score well over $350 million in the current market. If he gets to his arbitration years and you want to extend him, that's comparable to what Arenado got this year. Pick your number, an extension for Moncada is a $200 million+ contract or he has no reason whatsoever to sign it.

You do realize "Banks" are a thing that exists right? That $45 million today >>> $30 million in 10 years because money can be saved and stored for future use?

A couple important points. 1. The people who thought the White Sox could be competitive this season by spending their money smartly need to stare at this list for hours. Remember when people spent January saying we had the best bullpen in the AL Central? (Slightly bitter) 2. The White Sox were always going to have to spend money on some garbage this offseason. They needed starting pitching. Bullpen help was useful. They simply didn't have the warm bodies. Nova is annoying us right now, but last offseason people were screaming "Anything but another year of James Shields we'll even pay extra for it". They did exactly that. 3. The White Sox could have gotten a good amount more out of their money, even by dumpster diving. Shields instead of Nova, no Alonso, Holland instead of Herrera, no Jay, non-tender Abreu if desperate. Honestly though, they're extremely profitable and their payroll is extremely low, on paper we shouldn't care if they wasted $45 million when they coulda gotten by spending $10 million. That should have been a minor matter, except: 4. Where this really stung was the team spending this money and then immediately coming out and saying "How on Earth do you expect us to afford to keep our next core together while spending money on a guy like Machado"? Those repeated statements from Kenny Williams are the salt in the wound here. We were always going to be losing, we were always going to be bottom feeding, but to see this substantial amount of money flushed down the toilet while they simultaneously, publicly, repeatedly cried and acted poor...That contrast is the real debacle. If they're too poor to sign a guy to a competitive deal with an opt out, then they're too poor to waste this money.

If Moncada keeps playing like this, he just has to wait 1-2 years and he's a $250 million contract player. Are you prepared to commit that money to him? Would the White Sox be?

You are correct that a couple guys out of last year's free agent class had huge years. But that's the trick, it's "a couple". Here's every player who signed a $10m AAV contract in 2018-2019. Hosmer Martinez Cain Arrieta Carlos Santana Alex Cobb Wade Davis Jay Bruce Zach Cozart Tyler Chatwood Brandon Morrow CC Sabathia How many of those guys do you actually want in 2018 for the money they signed? I count Martinez, Cain, and Sabathia. The same thing happens in the next tier down - you're lucky if 25% of the free agent signings have good solid years, another 15-25% might be tolerable, and then half of them are "well we wish we hadn't done that".

And how many of those leave teams like the Orioles or Royals or Pirates set up to never actually make the playoffs again?

Everyone realizes that somehow, Nova is going to go to either San Diego or Oakland next year on a minor league deal with a ST invite, make their rotation out of spring training, and throw the best season of his career, like 160+ innings with an ERA around 4 or maybe a bit under, right?

hmph, i last looked at the score and it was 1-0 like just 15 minutes ago.

There used to be a limit where if you won 5 games in a row you retired and only could come back in the Tournament of Champions. Once they got rid of that limit, you had guys like Jennings appear who became legit famous for winning weeks to months in a row.

The bolded really doesn't fit his history at all. He struggled way more with Pittsburgh and a "Classical" pitching coach than he did last year working with the Astros and advanced statistics. If he's good enough this year that we'd actually want him, then that would mean that pattern held and the Astros metrics-based coaching techniques will have worked far better with him than anything else he tried.

The White Sox sorta don't have a 3b need right now. Cole could be interesting, but you are gonna have to beat the Yankees...and I think Cole is a terrible fit for our pitching coach.

If he's at 400 Plate appearances by the trade deadline, that might be nice for a team because they know he's healthy, but any team acquiring him will know that the option is certain to vest, and that might not be appealing to them.

Who the bleep is worth that kind of money any time soon?

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26582024/one-trade-idea-fix-cubs-bullpen-problem

Worth noting that because the numbers can't be different by units of "1", they can only be different by units of "5", the R^2 is going to be artificially increased. If one site had a guy scouted at a "63" and the other site had a guy scouted as a "61", those would round to 65 and 60 and that would artificially increase the variance. At the very least, whatever your number is for a "good amount of variance in a regression" has to be adjusted in this case. It would be interesting to see what happened to that number if you divided everything by 10, such that you can have one page give a guy a 6 and another page give a guy a 5. I assume that would propagate through.

There has to be someone who wanted to be competitive who has lost a couple of starters already right?

Worked great that time, so let's do it again.