Balta1701

So you’re thinking what, a 2 year deal for him and both of those remain rebuilding years, for the statement that he’ll be gone before we are good again to be true?

I believe the pick expires on July 1 or some date close to that.

For reference, if you trade for Greinke after 2019, he will have 2 years and $70 million remaining. It would really suck to have to trade something of value for Greinke for the right to pay him more than Verlander got. And a team with a payroll as low as the white Sox shouldn’t be sending extra players along to make Arizona pick up money. In general though the fit is ok.

As we're in the Verlander thread, the obvious answer is Zach Greinke, who could fill a comparable role.

If the White Sox are seriously thinking they're a 2020 contender, they are going to need pitching help, especially now with Dunning no longer being an option. They are not likely to have the assets that they're willing to trade for pitching next year, which means they are going to need FA help, and signing Santana-types and trading for Nova-types does not get them into a position that anyone would regard as competitive. There's still a lot of young pitching in this organization, and that's before they add anything from the draft this year or get lucky with any breakouts from previous draft years and trades. They may not want to sign a guy to along term deal given the number of arms currently available. If they want to compete, they need pitching help - even with Kopech and Cease you just can't count on the current 5 slots for 2020 to be ready to go and 100% healthy, but they may not want to do a full 7+ year commitment like Cole will get if he has another good year. Bumgarner is an option but you can't like the way his injury history is trending. An expensive, 2 year contract for a front line starting pitcher could well have made sense for this organization next offseason, if they think they're competitive. Cole and Bumgarner are now the only front line pitching options remaining, and I still think the Yankees will be in a position to go after at least one of them. So yeah, Verlander was a tentiative fit if the White Sox genuinely believed that their rebuild was nearing a completion point, and a potentially better fit than the other options. This is regardless of any other comments on their moves this offseason.

When given the choice of where to put him, 2b, 3b, or outfield, the White Sox immediately said they were going to work him at 2b only. I didn't care which position they put him at as long as they made the choice they thought was best for him...and then stopped screwing with him because he was raw enough that they needed to put him at a spot and let him develop. When given the choice, they said "2b and that's it". He was so raw that no matter where you put him his defense was going to take time to develop and he needed stability and time to work on his offensive game, and the thing that would have the greatest danger of hurting would be making him switch positions a lot. The org didn't have anyone of value at either 2b or 3b, or CF at the time he was acquired, and they immediately said they thought he was the best fit at 2b. So, either the people who made the decision to put him at 2b originally were imbeciles (indictment of the organization), or they're reacting on the fly to how things go (also an indictment of the organization). It's clear they're flying by the seat of their pants and reacting, but they've left themselves no other intelligent options.

Is there a way to just like the thread?

At the time I thought we had a legitimate shot starting in 2014 to pull one off in 3 years and we made legitimate progress in 2014 compared to 2013, but then we declared our 72 win team was ready to win right now and was willing to sacrifice 2016 for wins in 2015. It was a terrible decision top to bottom. A complete failure of Rick Hahn and company to understand their own roster, free agency, or the moves they were making But in hindsight, even if we hadn't, the guys making player development and selection decisions did such an awful job everywhere else that it really wasn't going to matter what we did, we were going to be in the 60s in wins by 2018-2019. Spend a lot more money and they're still in the 60s in wins and they've got Alex Gordon out in the OF or something like that. Try to do a short rebuild starting in 2014 and by 2017 they're falling back down as Quintana and Eaton break down and as they fail to develop anyone else. In either of these setups they have nothing worth any value to trade and we're looking at a bottom-5 system and a 65 win team in 2019. Literally, the only version of the last 6 years that gives us a path forward is the one we're on right now. Everything might still turn around with the amount of talent in this group, even if it seems unlikely right now at least the guys exist. Given our organization, this is actually the best case scenario, and it actually could have been far worse.

Neither Lowrie nor Cain were free agents after 2016 either.

As a starting point, this leaves the Red Sox probably slightly below the luxury tax line for next season. They are in the 3+ year penalty so they are paying 50% on any overage, and they'll be over by nearly $30 million this season which also earns another 12.5% penalty on top of that.

I think there's a big difference between doing those kind of position switches with Cody Bellinger or Kris Bryant, guys who grew up playing baseball and have had professional coaches since they were in middle school, and doing them with a guy like Moncada who clearly has work to do just on knowing the fundamentals, pitch recognition, etc.

I guess this means Boston thinks his shoulder is fine.

You can't be more injured and not injured at the same time. If he had gone down for TJS that's one thing, but the guy actually wasn't hurt. The league isn't going to give you a redo for a deal you did where even if the medical records weren't complete, there wasn't anything of note.

Something like $100 million of it was deferred he said.

If we did this with 100 players, I'm betting that 1 of them would actually get screwed up by it. Too much time spent practicing defense, not enough time to work on hitting, develops some bad habit.

They may very well have but Shields wasn't hurt.

With Sale off the market, Cole to the Yankees seems like a perfect match. Sabathia and Tanaka are FAs/retirees from their rotation next year so they have the money and need.

You may as well play him out there and see what happens. If his defense doesn't improve and his bat regresses, oh darn we lost some games, I wonder what that feels like. If either one of them gets better...hey this makes our team better in 2020.

Yolmer should go to a decent team this year when one of their IFs gets hurt or struggles, after this year he'll be too expensive for this rebuilding team to keep, and good teams still need backup infielders like Rondon.

I didn't like it when it was first done because the right move was to bring in a veteran 3b but that ship has sailed, so literally the only remaining option is to have both him and Madrigal be successful big leaguers at these positions so you pretty much have no choice.

Worth considering, 2016-2017 was the last year of a functioning Fa market, it didn’t break until the next year.

Even if he does, that's tough to be sure of. If the Red Sox are out, there are other DH options on the market including Khris Davis who is the same age...with only a handful of teams needing DHs and a number of teams like Oakland, etc., automatically out, I think it's entirely possible his market falls even flatter than after 2017.

unless the oriole's really loved that guy, why would they give up Machado for Giolito? Giolito was already looking at a low value last offseason coming off a slow rebuilding and reworking of him, and the orioles held onto Machado until they got a really good deal for him at the trade deadline..

Which makes a strong case for JDM staying in his contract.

I dunno, but I will say that "Let's be honest" and being dishonest about his numbers last year doesn't match up to me. I think there's a decent chance we traded away a solid player.