Balta1701

I think 500 is way more than they thought they would get them for - notice how when Manny's deal requirements started rising past the White sox's initial offer, you got comments from Hahn at Soxfest about how they didn't think they could do both and still maintain "Flexibility" or whatever it was he said. I think they thought they could get both for just over $400 mil.

And we didn't draft Giolito, Lopez, Cease, Kopech, Dunning, or Medieros. Somehow Cleveland pulled off a dominant starting rotation using far fewer resources than we have spent on that position, and they haven't had to go sign a $25 million pitcher to do it. If all those resources we spent on that position flop...then our position player prospects better work out great to leave us money to spend on pitching. And that post I replied to was saying "Well Moncada may never be what we wanted", which means we're concerned about the position players too.

Just as a general point...out of 8 key guys the White Sox traded for, 5 of them were starting pitchers. Throw in the 2014 and 2015 top 10 picks, all the other draft picks the white sox made since then, trades for minor leaguers like Medeiros who are somewhere on a top 20 list...and then compare to Cleveland, who has 4 top of the league, 200K starters developed from their own system, and I think there's a simple statement we can make. If the White Sox can't develop enough pitching that they have to go and spend $25 million a year on a starter, it's unlikely this rebuilding round is going to work.

I've heard him linked to the Bucs who have $15 million in cap space prior to cuts, and the Texans who have over $40 million after franchise tagging Clowney.

Honestly, with a rotation this young and inexperienced, I want to push them as much as I can, I don't want to help them out by burning a reliever in the first inning. Throw them out there, start the game, and do the best you can. If you last 2 innings, poop, but at least we still have a full bullpen. Even with a guy like Covey who looks like a promising contender to be one - maybe that's just him being young and this year he shows up as someone who lasts longer. If it turns out that after another year Covey still shows up as strong in short 1-2 inning doses but not in longer, and we're talking about a winning team in 2020 or 2021 where we care about the record, then maybe think about it then.

Tyler Flowers was a decent framing catcher going back to 2011. He also dramatically improved in his framing between 2016 and 2017 while working with another coaching staff, 2017 was his first elite framing year. So, you've got a guy who was always decent at it with the White Sox even before it became a thing to be measured, and he dramatically improved after leaving and being coached on it. Your example suggests to me it's not a big deal for the White Sox and that guys can improve with proper coaching.

If this post link works - his velocity is noticeably down after 2015. 2016-2018 it held pretty steady but it dropped after his Cy Young season.

This assumes competent coaches. You can't fix a problem with framing if your coaching staff doesn't work with the player on fixing it, and especially if the coaching staff doesn't even realize it's a problem in the first place.

Without a salary cap, teams just aren't motivated to give up talent in a deal like this, not enough to make it fair for the other team to take the player on. If you have a $20 million player doing nothing and a prospect of fair value to get the other team to do the move, 90% of the time the team will just keep the prospect and eat the $20 million, especially if that expensive player does fill a roster role.

This is one of those statements I wish I would never hear again, it misses why these 2 free agents were so important. Yes there will be names to fill those voids. Here are some of the names people signed to big deals last year to fill voids, and their 2018 salary: Jake Arrieta ($30 million) Yu Darvish ($25 million) JD Martinez ($23.75 million) Eric Hosmer ($21 million) Carlos Santana ($18.3 million) Wade Davis ($16 million) Alex Cobb ($14 million) Lorenzo Cain ($13 million) Zack Cozart ($12.67 million) Tyler Chatwood ($12.5 million) Lance Lynn ($12 million) Jay Bruce ($10 million) CC Sabathia ($10 million) Out of the top contracts given out on the market last year, only 3 - the bolded - are guys who actually lived up to their salaries. Everyone else on that list underperformed what they were paid in 2018, a 3/13 ratio, and that's totally normal for previous years! Now that baseball mostly has the steroids out, players who aren't HOF caliber move along the aging curve so quickly that by the time they get to free agency, team sign them thinking they're filling a hole, and then that guy winds up being a disaster and a waste of money. It's going to happen to guys this year, it's going to happen to guys next year. Next offseason I'll be able to make a comparable list with the signings this year. The Astros have done better getting these level of Free Agents than any other team the last 2 years - Morton was a huge addition for them - but even for them, they signed Beltran to DH and he disappointed, and Josh Reddick was good in year 1 and weak in year 2 of his deal. The reason why the FA market has been so frozen the last 2 years isn't just that teams are trying to save money by rebuilding, it's because of lists like that. It's because playing the free agent market for guys in their early 30s sets the team up to waste their money. It's flat out dumb. When your team has a void, you're going to fill it with the next Yu Darvish. Why were these 2 free agents so important? Because the deck is stacked in favor of the teams for once. The player is hitting free agency at such a young age, 26, and while they are putting up such elite performance that even if they age normally, the team should get their money's worth. This was our chance to sneak around these odds and to avoid the mistake that so many teams made with those signings. But we blew it, because even management hasn't yet been able to figure out that this is a problem.

We literally traded for every single pitcher you said we signed.

Almost all of those guys have similar records of success. I even dropped Greg Holland from the list because he was terrible last year, but he got 1/2 as much as Colome. And you insult me as stupid and then you say that Narvaez is a 0 WARP player, so you go specifically to the one where he looks the worst, but he was a 2 WAR player in both B-R and Fangraphs last year and the projections put him from 1-1.5 next year, and that's without any additional coaching. So in my eyes, the White Sox gave up a more valuable, 1-2 WAR player from last year for a 1 WAR player and the right to pay him more than market value. You can disagree with me fine, but you needed to make it personal. I'll point this out every time you want to rip him because it's flat out true, the White Sox would have been better off releasing him and signing a FA, but I'm done for now so call me stupid all you want and I hope it brings you joy.

Do you really need to write an insult? Jesse Chavez put up a 2.55 ERA, 1.17 WAR last year, 1.059 WHIP, he got 2 years and $8 million. He's 35, but you get 2 years of him for 1 of Colome. Justin Wilson - 0.74 WHIP ,3.46 ERA last year, $7.5 million, age 31. Brad Bach: 3.59 ERA, terrible WHIP last year but prior to that better numbers than Colome, 1 year, $4.35 million. Jake Diekmann; 0.77 WAR, bad ERA last year but solid in previous years, 1 year, $2.75 million. Shawn KElly - 2.94 ERA last year ,sub-1 WHIP, $2.75 million. Adam Warren: 3.14 ERA, 0.7 WAR, $2.5 million. David Phelps: 3.40 ERA, $2.5 Million. Alex Colome, 1.2 WHIP, 3.04 ERA, 1.0 WAR, 30 years old, $7 million. He's getting paid comparable to Soria next year. Picking up his option - he'll get paid like a closer. That's selling low.

When your employer just wants to employ yes-men and yes-women and there's no pressure on you as long as you tell them the person above you is great, the job is great until the employer goes out of business.

They did not sell high on him. Colome is paid more than a comparable reliever would be paid if signed as a free agent. If they did not believe in Narvaez and wanted a reliever, they would have been better off releasing Narvaez for nothing and signing a reliever. They took on payroll to remove Narvaez. They sold him at a value of negative several million dollars.

Now that we can see how the idea of competing in 2020 has worked out, that's 3 years of likely wasted JD Martinez.

I think they're making money just fine.

Sparty woulda but for one team. At least I can enjoy that.

It has been a bad week for any ranked big 10 team to come there. We just did Purdue a lotta favors.

Barring injury i'll be stunned if this org doesn't have Madrigal starting in the big leagues early in 2020. That would mean moving Sanchez - I think he's ok as a trade asset, maybe could be better if he gets off to a good start this year.

And if the Phillies can make a playoff push, well that pays for like the first 2 years.

The Phillies average ticket price is just under $40. Maybe all the tickets sold are upper deck, but probably pretty close to an average sampling. That's most likely something like $7 million.

Classic mistakes: 1. Getting involved in a land war in Asia 2. Going to Assembly Hall in February.

That was also the first and only time in his career Escobar had ever put up numbers like that. Prior to last year, he was a 0-2.6 WAR player - in 2017 he put up 1.7 WAR, in 2016 he put up -0.2. Yolmer put up 1.7 and 2.2 WAR in his age 25 and 26 seasons, Escobar put up 2.6 and 1.9 WAR in his age 25 and 26 seasons. Escobar is a tiny bit more valuable because you can survive longer with him at SS than you can with Yolmer.

Only whether or not he can stay healthy. When he's been healthy he's looked like a damn baseball deity, but he missed more than 1/2 of last season and played hurt some.