Balta1701

Based on previous years, the White Sox will probably need to keep his service time under 120 days on the big league roster if they want to get around the "Super-2" deadline where he would make more money by having one more arbitration year. That would put him sometime around early July.

Maldonado was one of the guys who screwed over himself this offseason he had an offer for more money from the Astros, turned it down, and then wound up signing the same deal Mccann got after the Astros went elsewhere. He would have been a better deal than McCann, but still doesn't solve the big problem - "How can we afford to keep our next core together when we waste money on catchers and closers in a 70 win season" remains comparable to "How can we afford to keep our next core together if we have salary commitments in 2028"?

The new information that arrived later in the offseason was the White Sox crying that they were still poor and couldn't afford to compete with big market teams like the Padres. That should have refocused everyone on the $44 million they wasted. That's the basic budgeting mistake. That's complaining publicly about how they're being foreclosed on for not paying their mortgage while standing in line at Starbucks for their 3rd $5 coffee of the day. One of those was more important than the other, and the White Sox decided it was the fancy coffees.

*Let's at least see where the lottery pick winds up before we start projecting our needs* (walks out after being annoying but apparently necessary)

The basic problem is - for a front office that was competent, Keuchel would be a poor move with where this franchise sits. For a competent front office, we would have spent money more intelligently last offseason, done a better job identifying and developing players, and we'd at least be pointed in the right direction. We would have confidence that we would do something intelligent with our 2nd round pick, and we'd have confidence that the next free agent or two that they signed - they'd be the last piece of the puzzle. We'd want the competent front office to use its resources intelligently. The last time someone asked Rick Hahn if he was competent he replied with "How dare you ask me that of course I'm not I can poop whenever I want to". So while signing Keuchel wouldn't be the right move for this franchise, it would be better than most of the moves Rick made last offseason, and no one has any confidence that Rick Hahn won't go onto the free agent market next season and sign a bunch of magic beans to be his 4th starter. All that combined makes Keuchel look reasonable enough that we're going to keep having threads on him until he signs somewhere else.

So I wanna say this. Yolmer is not a great player, please don't treat me as saying that he is. He's a solid defender, he's been average to above average at 2b and 3b the last 2 years and you can survive with him serving as an emergency SS even though he's not good there. His career OPS is .653, but it was .732 and .678 the last 2 years, so his career average is in part swamped by the fact that the White Sox called him up early in 2015/2016 as a desperation move to fill their terrible 2b positions on teams that an absolute fool named Rick Hahn thought were competitive - not his fault. An average defensive 2b/3b, who can play multiple positions, who puts up something like a .700-ish OPS, that's not a great player. On a great team, you might have 1 or 2 starters at most at that quality at best, but you will absolutely have a few additional players like that.. Historically, the White Sox have a huge problem finding these "average" players, and they've been so desperate for them that they've been forcing them into starting roles rather than the utility they fit the best. Most excellent teams have guys like Yolmer who fill important roles, the Cubs had them, the Astros had them, the Red Sox had them, the Dodgers had them. Good teams could use the 2017/2018 Yomer Sanchez. The White Sox were desperate for that type of player when they were trying to win. We spent money on guys like Beckham, Bonifacio, and Rollins because we couldn't develop Yolmer Sanchez quality players. Or, when we did have them, we traded them off in other desperation moves - like acquiring Liriano. None of this excuses how bad Yolmer has been to start this year, he's been WAY worse than these numbers. So far, he's been an average player in the last 2 years. You are correct that the White Sox don't need this player right now, he should be traded, he's worth way more to other teams than to us, he should have been traded at the deadline last offseason, and it is incredibly disappointing that now that we should be moving him he's falling on his face for no obvious reason. But that doesn't mean we should forget how desperate we were for Yolmer-like players when we were insisting our 70 win teams were competitive, and we need to continue making sure we have these players rather than trading them away for 1-year rentals as Rick has been doing. I'm frustrated by Yolmer's start this year, but I'm also frustrated by the fact that the White Sox spent >$10 million trying to find guys who could be 2017/2018 Yolmer caliber players when they were trying to pretend they were competitive as well. So rip his start this year all you want, but understand how important it is to stop desperately spending money to fill the role Yolmer could fill right now.

He has been an average player the last couple years and was 4th on the 2018 white sox in fWAR. A 2 WAR player is an average starter and Yolmer has been that the last couple years. This statement does not excuse his play this year at all, his play this year has been ridiculously bad. It's not just a slow start - guys get off to a slow start with the bat sometimes even if they're doing everything right, but his defensive mental miscues make this something far worse. Either mentally or physically or both, he's not there at all right now. This is particularly disappointing, because if he was just doing the same thing as last year, there would already be teams calling about him. All he had to do was be a fundamentally sound, average infielder who can play several positions. The Yankees could use another of those right now. But of course, somehow, lack of preparation or poor coaching or poor focus - always has to screw over our franchise.

and he appeared in the 6th inning as an inexplicable pinch hitter with no runners on or anything and then apparently proceeded to make a fielding mistake later in the 7th.

If the White Sox sign either of them before the draft, they would lose their 2nd round pick. There is also "hurting 2019 draft pick position and cutting amount of money available for 2019 international signings" that would be affected by the difference between 70 and 73 wins or whatever they produced.

Anything entertaining in today's game at all? Half taking shelter from Texas storms right now, can't hurt to ask.

With a .752 OPS. He's still an ok player, let's see if he stays healthy.

is it just me or is that a weirdly good defensive outfield? i feel intimidated and frightened by its existence.

The talk has always been that this team would be likely to be sold after it was passed to JR's heirs for tax purposes, as the tax bill would be much higher if it was sold first and then that sale was followed by an estate to settle. I don't believe this changes that much, although I'm sure they enjoy the extra $5 or $20 million that they're taking home depending on whatever their actual ownership share is this year.

I know he threw yesterday so he isn't ready to go today, but so far on the year Carson Fulmer is back to showing promise. Maybe don't rush him, but if it is a revolving door I'd like to see him swing back through it, maybe even within a few weeks.

The only way you would treat a regular season betting line as relevant to how the playoffs have gone the last several years is if you haven't watched the games. Those series have been heavyweight bouts. The quality of the 25th man on the roster has determined games.

The Cubs absolutely paid a premium price for Chapman. I believe any team that is on pace to win 95+ games right now and has the resources to make themselves better should do exactly what the Cubs did for Chapman (and what the Indians did for Miller btw). You simply don't win the world series right now unless you overload your team with talent to cover every potential eventuality. It will get even more important this year now that the waiver wire deadline no longer exists. I'm skeptical about the very notion of a team like the White Sox achieving "Sustained competitiveness" or whatever we call it, because I think once you get close enough in this market, where you are likely to be facing a 1100+ win superteam at least once in the playoffs, you sacrifice your team 3 years down the road to win the trophy while you can. Jalen Beeks is one of Tampa's many young pitchers, we'll see if he has success this year or not. The Red Sox gave him up for Eovaldi. How key was that move for them winning last year's title?

Do you believe they win the world series without the 7 innings he pitched? Yes he broke at the end when they ran him out for more than 1 inning in game 7, but he'd pitched 7 innings of 1 run baseball in 5 appearances before he finally gave up those last 2 runs.

Apparently I have heard of literally no one being mentioned on this board today.

From your AAP is it fair to say that the 3 seasons he spent in AA were because his elbow gave out?

i don't remember this name at all, any backstory to his acquisition, moves with him?

1. Where would that team have been without JD Martinez? Clearly not 108 wins, but they still win the East. 2. How many free agents have they added that didn't work well? They are still paying Pablo Sandoval money, they were still paying Hanley Ramirez last year, David Price hasn't exactly been worth his contract (although much like Barry Zito and Heyward maybe the postseason makes up for it), they are still paying Rusney Castillo right now. Boston has some advantages in that they can go out and overspend on a number of players that we can't, but that isn't changing the rules. As I say about the busts for other teams - they can have all of the money back from the Sandoval and Ramirez contracts and have Price's contract end right now if they give back the trophy.

The point I've been stressing over the past 5 years is that B and C free agents can't work as an essential part of building a competitive roster. You can find B&C free agents signed, you can even have them contribute, but they cannot elevate your team above what it would be without them. If you count outright busts and disappointments, it's like a 75% rate of things being bad league-wide. If you need 1 or 2 players a year to fill holes and your team is a 98 win roster without them, maybe one or two of them fit well and help you reach 102 wins, while one struggles and gets benched (Literally the 2017 Astros described there). If your team is a 72 win team, you can sign and even trade for a bunch of those guys, add $50 million in payroll, and you wind up with 76 wins. I've taken 2 messages from this history: right now, you cannot build a winning franchise on the free agent market, your team must be strong enough to win on its own and your free agents should just be looked at as warm bodies - anything you get from them is gravy on top. Second, you are better off signing one top-level guy, Scherzer or Harper or Machado, than you are signing several mid-level guys, because even though there are busts at the top and the cost of a bust is higher, the rate of busts is lower at those dollar amounts.

Since he doesn't know what consent means, maybe he can just say he's with the Bulls and the team will have to go along with it.

That talk was just to convince white sox fans to buy extra early tickets.

We'll see how this statement holds up, but right now I think they ran into a very good TB team, not just a hot one. Their lineup doesn't have stars but it is deep and has a lot of solid looking OBP numbers that, if they hold that up, will make them score runs. If Chirinos is as good as he has looked this year, then they have 3 strong young pitchers with a solid Charlie Morton in there, and their bullpen has the makings of a good one - it was top 10 ish in baseball last year by the basic stats (which are screwy for them due to the opener but anyway). I think one reason it's particularly annoying is that Tampa Bay looks so much better than us, they look like a competitive team, and they have a roster that on average is younger than us, it is cheaper than us, and they haven't had to spend 7 years below .500 to get that accumulation of talent. Maybe they're not going to hang with the big kids in the East all year, but Hell that roster already was a .500 team last year and it looks better this year. So, without a complete tear down and with far greater salary constraints, Tampa Bay has pulled off in 2-3 years what Rick Hahn hasn't been able to do in 7.