Balta1701

For the White Sox you're right he's probably a reliever if anything, but it still doesn't seem like "working as a reliever" is likely to solve the problems for a guy whose main problem is an inconsistent delivery that the White Sox already tinkered with. Making changes and then not having time to get used to them has a good chance of being one of the things that undermined him. For another team...maybe they think there's a simple change that the White Sox coaching staff doesn't see? If not that, then I'd guess you gotta work him as a starter to work on repeating the delivery. If you move him to the pen eventually fine, but how do you develop consistency coming out of the bullpen?

I gotta say, I like the idea of Rick Hahn going to great lengths to create a Machado signing ceremony surprise only to have it derailed by the government shutdown.

Good luck getting Manny to Chicago through that airport any time soon...

While it's possible to see the Dodgers getting more out of Fulmer than us, it's also entirely possible to see the White Sox putting Fulmer on waivers in a couple months. He has 1 minor league option remaining to cover this season, and if he doesn't show anything early this year he's wasting a roster spot.

They wouldn't.

Announced but not official. It could be "announced" and still fall apart even then, until everything is signed and filed it isn't a deal. Remember the NBA 3 way trade this year that was announced and then fell apart when one team realized the other team thought they were getting a different player with the same last name?

No, it's a twitter random anonymous account.

If he has this much power and he doesn't strike out then how is his batting average so low? Serious question, that must mean that a ton of things he hits are weak ground balls or something like that?

Sounds like he's getting him at a discount based on what, people's speculation here?

There are different levels of "solidified", you could have a general agreement set and have a schedule set for a physical and stuff like that. But I always come back to the story with Jermaine Dye, he had an agreement with the White Sox, he was in the middle of taking his Physical, and the Diamondbacks came through with a better offer during the exam. It was up to him whether to honor the original agreement or open the negotiations back up and he was the one who decided to honor the original agreement. If we're negotiating a huge deal with Machado and there's 4700 little details about the exact swellopt timing and who will get paid how much if there's a strike or whatever else, the last thing you would want is that deal sitting out there with teams able to get information about it. In this deal, you get the handshake done and you schedule the physical ASAP to get the paperwork complete and filed before anything goes wrong. Let's put it this way, if the Phillies agreed with Machado for something like 7/$180 tomorrow, wouldn't you want the White Sox to come in with 8/$220 and beat it? I would. Easily.

Honestly I'll probably take the strategy I took in 2016, which is to shut my mouth and let everyone else celebrate until it's May and we're sitting in 4th place wondering how our shiny new toys turned out to work so poorly. I will rip this org if they miss out on MM though and compliment them if they get it done. 100% promise.

It would be darn near criminal. A deal isn't complete until it's filed with the league office and it would show up in the papers if it was filed. If it hasn't been filed, then it's not complete and it's not an agreement. Machado's side could back out or receive a better offer elsewhere and demand to renegotiate the terms.

An OPS of .700 with elite CF defense is pretty good. Not great, but pretty good.

Probably not, it was pretty dead the last few days. Signing somewhere might get it there.

Really? Semien's defense was better than Anderson's substantially last year, Anderson's numbers last year were good following a really bad season, I said "he's one of the better defensive SS in the league", and that's not ok but saying that Anderson's defensive development is a feather in the cap for the White Sox is ok? Fine, Anderson's defensive development is a feather in the cap of the White Sox and the A's have the whole bleeping bird.

So in case people don't realize this, the idea that the White Sox would have an agreement with Manny and then keep it under wraps for even several days to do a Soxfest reveal - if they actually tried something that dumb that would be a fireable offense for Rick Hahn. I think he's a terrible GM and even I don't think he's this dumb. Guys get offered and take better offers all the time until things are official and signed. We almost lost Jermaine Dye during his physical with us, and it was only JD saying he wanted to honor the handshake agreement that gave us a World Series. Scenario. They have a handshake agreement last Monday. Tuesday, Manny accidentally butt-dials the GM of the Phillies while he is reading all the details of his contract out loud and casually wishing for an extra $20 million in the first 5 years. The contract is not signed and it is not submitted to the league office for approval, so the Phillies call and on Wednesday, Lozano comes in and says "look we have this far better offer from the Phillies will you match it". Either you pay an extra price or you lose the player, congrats I hope your big soxfest reveal plan was, um, worth it?

Everyone realizes we will be back to dumbfounded that this is still dragging on by Monday, right?

That’s not true if you use more numbers. He improved substantially from 1st half of 2015 to 2nd half (check his error totals once someone coached him), his UZR made him an average defensive SS in 2016 and 2017, he missed half of 2017 with injury, and then improved further in 2018. For a team that has struggled with guys doing anything when they come up, remarks about lack of basic drills followed by rapid improvement when they were done should have been an indictment, and that’s why this remark about Narvaez rings a bell.

Since no one remembers, the trick with Semien was that he put up like 40 errors his first year with the As as shortstop, and a couple months into the season they had to bring Rob Washington in to work with him. They made comments about how he’d just never done drills or worked on footwork as a shortstop. Those comments weren’t made as shots at the white Sox but instead they were explaining why he had so many terrible errors. but, from a white Sox perspective, how a guy could come up through their system playing SS more than any other position without doing basic footwork training, that was truly mind boggling. And out of that, the As developed one of the better fielding shortstops in the league, because they worked at it and the White Sox did not. thats not a commentary on how stupid the trade was, that was a look inside the white Sox development failures that the As gave us without meaning to.

This sounds disturbingly similar to the comments Marcus Semien and the A's were making after they acquired him.

Collins I can believe. Madrigal and Robert - neither one of them has really done what they need to do in A ball to earn a callup, so AA in 2019 is at least moderately aggressive even if somewhat justifiable. A normal path of AA and AAA - puts them arriving in late 2020. Pushing them upwards before they perform or before they stay healthy - then you're asking them to need time to develop at the big league level, so you better be ok with some struggles that year.

We have signed contracts worth over $70 million and traded for Alonso for another $9 million to find guys who could do exactly that this decade. We have spent more money on that than any other position except 1b. And the best thing that happened from those signings was one guy retiring.

Robert, Madrigal, and even Collins arriving in 2019 are all things we should be skeptical about. A 2019 arrival for the first 2 especially would be the classic Rick Hahn rush. But, at least if you think Robert is arriving in 2019 you have to think that the idea of trading for Joc is a terrible one because it removes the benefit of the guy being able to play CF.

Next year's OF free agents include Kemp, Puig, Castellanos, Marcell Ozuna, Corey Dickerson. Several 3+ WAR players in there.

Frankly something that really impacted 2020 already went horribly wrong - Kopech's elbow. Given how his 2018 went I think there's a good chance he struggles for a good portion of 2020 and even if he does, you'll have to pitch him anyway to get him through that. One or two more things like that, or miss out on both big FAs, and the White Sox aren't competitive in 2020.