Balta1701

This signing would push Boston to a $220 million payroll next year and put them into the full "Every year" tax paying penalty for that season, but Martinez opting out could push them back under the tax line. If they were willing to pay a similar price next year as what they're paying this year, they could quite readily extend Betts, bump up Martinez a little, and afford it.

My personal favorite setup is drafting Vaughn, having Alonso's option vest, signing Martinez, and then having Abreu surprise the team and accept a qualifying offer.

Way over paying for the DH slot and finding ways for it to hurt the rest of their roster is very much a White Sox thing.

I have one guess that's at least plausible. The 2012 White Sox broke down the stretch. They were legitimately exhausted. They were exhausted because their pitching staff was so young - Sale had spent 2011 in the bullpen, Quintana called up straight from A ball. But...imagine that Ventura blames himself and thinks he worked them too hard in the spring of that year, so he decides to take it easier on everyone in the spring in 2013. The same players who were doing basic things like hitting a cutoff man or completing a rundown in 1 throw are out of practice in 2013 and everything turns into a circus. By 2014, Ventura's got his new contract and everyone sorta likes the low effort, no pressure, few practice format, so they just run with it - and by early 2014 things that should have been corrected in the spring still linger because no one bothered to work with people. Garcia has no idea how to slide for a ball, but no one coaches him, so he goes diving for a ball and is lucky that he doesn't destroy his shoulder. No one on the coaching staff bothers doing anything about it, and 2 weeks later he does the same thing and destroys his shoulder, costing him nearly the whole season. Abreu somehow makes it to mid-April without anyone noticing that hey, he has no idea where to put his foot on a throw to 1b until he almost gets himself spiked (seriously, did no one bother coaching the 1b from February 20 to April 20 of that year?). By that point, the whole coaching staff has just checked out, and we never really got out of that mode. I don't know if this is how it went down...but it's the only guess I have for how that 2012 team could turn into the 2013-2016 Ventura teams, in some cases with the same players.

2012. Best coached team I have ever watched. Midseason they were in first place and I thought that had they been as sloppy as any normal white sox team, they'd have been below .500 instead.

It's rather amazing how our ludicrous ways to get Machado to take a huge discount are going to infect our whole season. It's screwing with Palka. Palka being in the OF screws with the pitching staff. Errors by the OF put us behind and that will screw with the type of ABs our hitters take and who we call out of the bullpen. At some point we're going to be wanting Abreu to get used to the DH slot because he's not a good fielder and he won't want to, so there's even controversy upcoming from this virus. Today's loss? Maybe we still lose if we didn't go through that, but you can literally draw a direct line from Manny Machado to this game. So to everyone telling us to get over it - go buy Reynaldo a steak first.

It doesn't have to be rash for it to be dumb. Palka is in a spot that is poor for him because trading for Manny Machado's buddies will be the thing to convince him to take a $50 million discount. Maybe with experience Palka will get better in RF, but we're not talking about a 21 year old here, we're talking about a guy who will never be a "decent" RF, we can only hope he can get to tolerable. He has a role on this roster, even on a competitive roster, but we put him into a different role because that was our key to getting a huge Machado discount. Remember Davidson pitching? That's Palka in RF. Davidson is a cheap option for a couple spots,just not good, and if you try to make him a starting pitcher...it won't go well.

I can't say how White Sox it would be to have Palka go off and hit 40 HR as Oakland's next DH next year after the White Sox cut bait with a cheap but suitable DH in order to keep Alonso for a few months because you have to play the expensive vet, leaving the White Sox forced to go out and sign Khris Davis or someone like that as DH next offseason (only to, of course, have his batting average fall below .247 for the first time in recent memory as he suddenly gets old with our roster).

The last time I saw a White Sox team that was fundamentally sound and convinced me "the coaches are doing a good job" was 2012, under Ventura. Since then it's been a disaster. I have a hypothesis that after the team wore down at the end of 2012 (because their pitchers were so young), Ventura decided they wore down because he made them practice too much and decided to do the exact opposite in 2013, and the end result was a culture of "don't overwork people" settled in and never left. It's at least consistent with the available evidence.

Alexei could have been a better player with focus but he was what, a top 10 shortstop in baseball for 7-8 years, probably top 5 in a couple of those years? We aren't there yet with Tim unless he gets better somewhere. I could deal with that.

6 runs today is nice but it's also against the Royals, so there's an asterisk as well. That's like scoring 8 runs against the White Sox, it's nice but blah it's going to happen a lot.

Yolmer is a decent enough player. He should play there for the first half and be traded to a team that is competitive and needs an infielder.

I know that we're losers this year, but if we're ever a team that isn't, we do actually need to be able to win first week/first month games when its cold.

Now that we're past the BS we can get onto the main point. This isn't normal. It doesn't mean that the guy is hurt, but you should start saying "Hey wait a minute, why do our guys have this issue, this is something we need to work on".

I added up his first 30 fastballs today, his fastball average today is 91.5. His average last year was 91.8. Ergo I conclude that you can totally be ok with a 0.3 mph drop in Lopez's fastball today based on the standard you just set.

I already checked, Junis's normal fastball range last year was 91-93 with a 91.8 average and he hit 92.9 in the 2nd inning. So literally, Jakob Junis's velocity is not down. It is right where his overall 2018 season average was. Why is his velocity unaffected by conditions where the White Sox's pitcher's velocity is affected?

how is Jakob Junis unaffected by these conditions?

If you expect that Abreu and Alonso and Castillo will all be the players they were during their best seasons, the offense looks decent.

Last year Jakob Junis's average fastball was 91.8 and Gameday shows him hitting 93.1 today so he's right at his velocity from last year despite the conditions.

If this offseason didn't already kill it nothing will. This offseason should have been enough to leave 10k tickets unsold for the home opener.

Nobody gives a flying f*** about that team in Boston. What are they even called again? And that team wearing blue in Los Angeles needs to be contracted. Seriously, Boston, Los Angeles, i mean why would anyone care about these franchises, when's the last time these teams made a world series?

Your statement is technically true but misses 100% of the nuance. They moved him to 3b at the start of spring training, and that was after they were already told the Padres had a better offer on the table than what the White Sox had put forth. So while the whiff was not complete, it was known and in progress. Basically, the FO swung and missed, but you're saying we can't call it a whiff until the umpire says the word strike to confirm things.

After paying out $50 million to settle police misconduct penalties in 2018 the fiscally responsible city of Chicago would like you to know they will still try to get Smollett to pay a few hundred thousand dollars to cover the costs for the investigation into this case.

Youngest player to start opening day in 20 years apparently.

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