Balta1701

If someone said that it makes no sense. He played 1/2 a season for the DBacks and only Rafael Palmeiro is good enough to win a gold glove like that. He also spent only about 40% of last season in RF, and only Torii Hunter can win a gold glove like that. He had positive UZR in RF and CF last year, negative in CF in 2016 and 2017, negative in RF in 2017, but not hugely either way. He's an ok defender out there who can be put in all 3 spots and a substantial defensive downgrade in CF.

Worth noting that the Royals were so thrilled about Luciano that they allowed him to be picked by the Blue Jays in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 draft last month.

It probably makes this team a little better and does so without blocking anyone major, but given the choice I'd probably rather have thrown Engel out there for one more season just in case. Engel suddenly learning how to hit isn't likely, but Jay suddenly turning into a guy we could trade for anything of value isn't likely either, and there's 0 chance of Jay being on the next good White Sox team. Outside the notable implication of Machado, It's sorta "feel good" spending, make the defense a little worse, make the offense a little better, give your team some more veteran guys to feel good about. It's hard to be mad about, but that's only because it's hard to believe Engel would take a major step forward, but it's not hard to see Jay taking a minor step backwards and being a downgrade from Engel.

The reason why he has a .359 OBP in the #2 hole is that 93% of the time he spent in the 2 hole, 992 of those 1068 plate appearances, came with the Cardinals from years 2010-2014. During that time period his overall OBP was .359 - so his performance in the 2 hole just matched the hitter that he was over those seasons. He has only 76 PAs in that spot since 2015 started. He is not likely to somehow be a magically better hitter in the 2 hole just because he likes hitting 2nd, he would be more likely to be "some version of the recent Jon Jay" if he were put in that position.

If the body gets loose it will float up to the surface and it won't get carried out to sea, it'll get carried alongshore and deposited at an accumulating beach. That's the big problem, you need the body to stay submerged until there's nothing left but bones, and along the shoreline there's no current that would carry it out to sea. The gulf stream is way too far away, the waters from the Hudson and the Delaware get caught up in eddies and circulate back to shore. You can see that in this supercomputer animation of current ocean currents. You gotta go for a lake on this one, the ocean is too active, as is the East River/Hudson River/Delaware River.

We have a lake. Philly and New York both have rivers, those would have much stronger currents and also can be exposed to strong noreasters and hurricanes that could dislodge something buoyant if you went to the effort of going all the way out to the ocean. Cement shoes and a boat out into the lake, then let the mussels eat the remains.

What was Ozzie and Freddie Garcia's relationship?

The Suns also acquired a future first round pick (IIRC with limited protections), so they were taking a bet that the Bulls would continue to be bad the next year. They wouldn't just save money, they also were betting on the rebuild continuing. The baby bulls made the playoffs that year, making it a pretty weak 1st round pick in return.

They allowed the most inherited runners to score because they inherited the most runners by an even larger number. They inherited 372 runners, the next closest team inherited 318 runners. The Royals - who had Herrera btw - had a higher %age of their inherited runners score than the White Sox. The reason that number is so large is either that their starters were terrible (yes) or their manager put them in particularly awful situations by letting the starters get in too much trouble (maybe ok for a young staff?). 220 times last year a pitcher entered with a runner already on - The Cubs were 2nd worst at 188. That's a LOT of extra runners inherited.

But then his velocity fell apart in September. If he can't do it consistently, then he's not back.

I'm not certain the "Stuff is back". His velocity chart last year tracks extremely well with his performance - his velocity was close to 91 in his earliest starts and during August when he suddenly looked like a competent starter he was averaging 94-95 per game. It took him 3 months to develop that velocity, then in September it fell off again - whether that was just a dead arm from the number of innings he threw or not I don't know. But, if having that strong fastball is that important for him, he's only got his stuff "back" if he can sustain what he did 1 month of last season for 6 months. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I would not say "the stuff is back".

No, I'm saying the White Sox deserved to be a low-60s win team last year and adding a tiny bit to the bullpen will not push them upwards by 5 games on its own. Unless your bullpen is incredible or terrible, it doesn't make a 10 game difference. It probably cost Cleveland <5 games total and their bullpen was truly terrible. These guys will not make our bullpen incredible, and last year's bullpen was not terrible, so it'll make us a couple games better, but 5 games better requires an awful lot of bullpen improvement.

Our bullpen wasn't good last year, but it was a good amount better than Cleveland's for example. Unless we're going to suddenly flash into the Royals bullpen of 2014 (Herrera something something) it's not going to add 10 games. 5 win boost from the bullpen is an awful lot of luck.

well it does include Soria's time with the team and we didn't have a lot of leads either, but we had only 19 blown saves last year compared to 53 saves. That # of blown saves was in the bottom 1/2 of the league. Our save %age wasn't great, but it basically matched the Dodgers - they just had a lot more leads late in games. 10 extra games is a lot more - we only had 5 more blown saves than the Rangers and they had the fewest in baseball and one of the highest save %ages.

Not the worst deal ever, definitely obvious that his velocity is slowly trending down year by year.

Anyone else thinking that these reports of "Teams won't go past 7/210" are some team leaking to try to suppress bids from other squads?

Aside from the kick, I'm still wondering where Khalil Mack was.

NOT. A. DIFFICULT. PREDICTION.

Time for that defense to act like the Bears defense.

That's better. Not sure at all where that came from.

All the other 3 playoff games, when you have started saying "This team is losing this game", that team lost. The Bears are losing this game right now. And I don't just mean in the score, the Eagles are outplaying them on both sides of the ball.

That was bizarre and somehow worked out the way I thought was the most fair.

I still will not believe that Bryce Harper would have Boras as his agent for his entire career, refuse to negotiate any sort of extension so that he hits FA as early as possible, and then do anything other than take the highest, most record breaking offer he receives. You don't use Boras as your agent to go to the place that interests you.

Well obviously the problem with that is Rick Renteria insisting on 13 pitchers. Shame there's no one higher ranking than him in the organization who can overrule him?

Assuming they land 1 and not both...then for this team to be really good, >> 90 win good, we're talking 2021 and there's no way around it after Kopech's arm. If they're ok with mid 80s wins being good enough, with some upside and maybe a legit shot at a wild card run, 2020 is possible, but they're not going to be loaded like the real good teams unless everything suddenly goes right with player development, as you note. The real danger is that they'll land one of them, wind up with a team that in 2019 and 2020 on paper should produce wins in the 70's, and then decide to sacrifice the future because they have to win with one of those guys, and wind up peaking at something like 80-82 wins because they traded away guys they shouldn't and signed guys from the terrible part of the free agent market. That's pulling the classic Rick Hahn Special and convincing themselves they are ready to win because they have one or two big names, while ignoring or trying to paper over the weaknesses on their roster. Or in other words, the real danger is that they'll do what the White Sox constantly have done before.