Balta1701

The poll yesterday was how angry are you about the White Sox missing out on Machado on a scale from 1 to 5. 5/5 or "Very Angry" was at about 80% yesterday at the time I voted. I assume that means the poll changed today.

Haven't we learned enough that in baseball this other stuff doesn't matter unless the money is equal?

Their version of a "Full court press" isn't to put the best deal out there, their version of a full court press is the presentation to Harper, it's bringing in Manny's party buddies.

An analytical FO will also understand that Harper is the difference between a shot at the playoffs this year and a strong likelihood of missing them with their current roster.

How many times did the insiders say exactly that - they weren't going to bid against themselves. As we see these details and answers, it seems to me like the White Sox leaked like a sieve during these negotiations, and the things that all the insiders said all fit together.

Think of how this fits if the story I told earlier is true. The White Sox thought they were bidding against themselves, the white sox's player evaluations are a mess, so even when they were presented with a chance to sign him at $300 they laughed it off and thought no team would be anywhere close to that.

Think of the context - Lozano's number has been higher all offseason and the White Sox know that, he's coming down to $300 million. He gives them the number and asks if they will accept it and the White Sox say no. If all 3 teams say no then it's still open, but one of them correctly said yes. They didn't need to go around to the other teams because the White Sox already told them no to matching the offer San Diego accepted.

The first reports were very clear that Lozano's side called around on Monday basically asking the 3 teams if they would put $300 million on the table guaranteed. That was high enough to knock the Phillies out, the White Sox had no idea other teams were even involved and stuck to their previous offer, and the Padres said yes. The White Sox probably did up their offer on Monday - either a small boost to the guarantee or perhaps a shift in those option years, but those option years were so crappy that the Padres saying "Yes" was a much smarter move. They weren't told about San Diego's final offer, but they were given an offer that Machado would sign at $300 and stuck to their much lower value. The Padres said yes when presented that dollar amount, which was higher than their previous $280 - and people have said that the White Sox were told the Padres were in at a higher number than them last week.

Ah, ok my bad, i misunderstood, ty.

This statement is simply inconsistent with what we've heard over the past 2 days. We heard that the White Sox were plainly told the Padres were at $280 million and we heard the White Sox were given an offer on Monday of $300 million that they rejected.

That's not how it works, if there's an option year, for the luxury tax purposes they assume the option will be picked up unless it isn't. There can't be more than 1 dollar amount for the option year, the text of the CBA doesn't allow that. If he has a 10/$300 deal, then the luxury tax amount must be $30 million. It can't suddenly balloon to $350 over the same time period because it would be a way around the luxury tax level in the first seasons, you could have the Dodgers last year sign someone, then have them bring in an option that brings up the total value, but it still kept the dodgers under the tax line last year. You could have an opt-out that becomes available if a player isn't a top 3 salary player, because you can still calculate a total value by assuming the whole contract is played for.

I actually don't know that such a structure would be allowable under the current CBA because the contract needs to have a fixed amount in the option years for them to calculate a luxury tax number.

That isn't some remarkable deal, the Phillies would stand a good chance of beating that, and frankly they should beat that.

The version from Bruce and Olney was 7/$175, with Bruce going on about extra ways to make it worth more on the radio that could be consistent with some version of the vesting options we heard about at the end.

Well, it's pretty clear at this point that was close to a real offer based on everything we've heard in the last 2 days. Ask yourself about the motivation of it. Lozano would benefit from leaking that offer because it could draw in other interest, but it's a risky strategy as maybe it convinces the Phillies not to go above $200. That said though... Lozano then put out that angry statement alleging it was a collective bargaining agreement violation. If Lozano's side leaked that offer and then put out that statement....and it ever got out that he leaked that offer, even in private, that's a huge risk. He set up something there that the whole Union might look into at some point in the future. The union will probably ask him questions about that leak while preparing for the next CBA. That's a huge potential cost to pay to draw in other offers - that could destroy his relationship with the union permanently. So either Lozano took a HUGE risk, one that might still backfire in the future, or the leak came from the White Sox's side. Who seemed to have a fairly decent account of it? Bruce Levine.

So I've been churning all this over to try to make a story as I like telling stories and I think there is one to tell here. Let's start with 1 given point; that the White Sox's player evaluations are totally, completely, broken. Let's go from there. The White Sox put together their budgets and put Machado at $175 and Harper at $225. They realize they can afford both of them at those values. In December they meet with Boras and put an offer similar to that on the table, they meet with Machado in late December and put that offer on the table. Boras doesn't give much of a response but they hear out the White Sox's presentation. Machado's side starts negotiating. They bring in the "Much more experienced" negotiator at some point, and sometime in January they start adding vesting options. By mid-January the White Sox have a 7/$175 offer on the table to Machado and they've added 3 vesting options that could bring the value to $250, but they don't understand how those vesting options are viewed or how low that dollar amount is. They think that is a huge dollar amount, so they leak their offer to Bruce Levine thinking that it's so big it will scare away the competition, and Bruce doesn't get all the details but he also hears that the amount could go up to $250, so he's on the radio giving that classic interview about how the contract could be worth more. The White Sox think the $175 million offer will scare teams away, instead suddenly teams realize that this isn't going to go well over $300 million and they start sniffing around. Other offers start appearing, so Lozano's side goes to the White Sox and says they're going to have to guarantee that money just to get into the conversation. The White Sox gradually increase their guarantee, including right before Soxfest where they think they've done what Lozano asked and they think they're going to get it wrapped up at $200 million or so. Lozano still understands that's no where close to the final total, but every time the White Sox up their offer they think they're doing Machado a favor and bidding against themselves. Meanwhile, the White Sox keep leaking that they think they have a shot at both of them because they could do both for $225 million deals, but Scott Boras has stopped taking their calls because they're so far out of the race they're not worth hearing from, so they haven't talked in weeks. Over the last few weeks the Padres get more serious, realize that this isn't going to break their bank, their GM works with ownership to get ownership on board, and they come in with a strong $280 million guarantee last week. The White Sox up their bid to $250 million guaranteed. They think "They've done everything Lozano asked them to do" because that was something he asked them to do in January - Rick Hahn's words. When the $280 million offer comes through, the White Sox go ahead and add in 2 vesting options that they are convinced are valuable to the player, failing to understand how weak those are from the player's side. When Lozano comes around and says "I'll sign at $300", the White Sox don't even think it's worth talking about because they're convinced they've been bidding against themselves. That pushes the Phillies out, the Padres say yes, and he's a Padre. Meanwhile, everything the insiders heard was true - that the White Sox had a budget for Harper and Machado, that Machado's budget was less, and that they didn't want Machado's money to get into the Harper range, but they thought they were doing Machado a favor by going into that range. Meanwhile, they don't realize nearly how far away they are, and when other teams realize they're scooping up good deals, the White Sox go into "We've got to pay for the rest of our roster" excuse mode. So, we still hear some of the "They have a budget for Harper that was higher than Machado" stuff, but that's because they never realized that the budgets they had for both of them were laughably low. They thought that a $175 million offer would scare teams away, but it did the exact opposite, and they thought they were bidding against themselves as they went through their own ceiling to put that $250 million offer on the table for Machado. I don't know if it's right, but that's basically every single leak this offseason fit into one tidy picture.

He might very well be 100% the best player available to us, but it's SUCH a White Sox move that I can't believe they'll do anything else.

You saw the part about the "long term contract extensions" right? That was the part of that paragraph I was trying to show you. We don't know when it ends, but Hahn is only gone after 2019 if he's fired, he's under contract "long-term".

I don't know whether to laugh or cry but you missed this in late 2017.

Based on the amount the White Sox have been paying for performance of free agents since about 2010, there is a good chance that Machado at $400 million over 10 years would produce more wins per dollar than any free agent contract we signed other than Swarzak and Abreu, and Abreu's market was weird due to it being an international FA. Machado just has to stay mostly healthy and be on a normal aging curve for a 26 year old who has played to his level, and Machado at 10/$400 million would be a better contract than almost any the White Sox have signed. If he's paid more than he's worth, then there should never be any free agent signings at all. I would rather have Machado at $40 million this season than Abreu at $16 million, and that's 33% more than Machado is actually getting.

Because they truly did not understand modern baseball contracts or player valuations. They thought that 8/$250 was doing him a favor and that no one else was going to even come close to that. The Phillies were somewhere around that level, willing to go higher, but not to $300, but the White Sox didn't understand that. In their eyes, why would they need to offer an opt-out when their offer was so superior to everyone else's and a team would have to be crazy to pay any guy that much?

SAS at this point might still have good insights into basketball, I dunno, but ESPN has him doing so many different things that it's impossible for him to stay informed about most of the things he's talking about. For example, has he had to talk about San Diego since he was listing players that could help the Chargers in a game and added TE Hunter Henry to the list when the guy hadn't played a snap all year?

And obviously, when our top prospect is writing articles in the Players Tribune titled "I'm ready" to try to force management to call him up, we can judge that no one in the organization is going to send these top prospects good messages, so the only people left to do so are the 10 fans in the ballpark, right?

Holy S*** Zion tore up his knee after his foot ripped through the side of his shoe

This is not fair at all to Gavin. He was a solid pitcher. He never could turn into the consistent ace that his stuff might have allowed, but he was absolutely a good quality pitcher for us for a number of years. He was a solid middle of the order pitcher.