Balta1701

So great, be smart, up it to 10-$330, you’ve increased the overal total with a very small hit to your future payroll and it’s like you’ve gotten them to defer money a couple years, or you’ve pushed more money past the opt out, plus you’ve made it so the luxury tax hit is smaller which would make his contract easier to trade. All good things.

You ask them if that’s an offer of a contract they will offer a handshake agreement on. If they don’t say yes then you don’t answer. If they say yes, you congratulate him on joining the white Sox.

Signing Pollock is a great way for Engel to get 350 ABs as the starting CF too.

Godwin’s law in real life.

So you've got no better examples than a deal that happened mid-season, 3.5 years ago, for a guy who was 1 full year out of being a first round pick and who as a 19 year old in high-A ball had an ERA of 4.83? I think this is a strong argument that these deals are extremely rare and don't return much.

That's assuming Moncada could be an average CF which I dunno, maybe, that's an awful lot of work. Eloy/Robert/Moncada seems likely to be a better defensive OF for me, assuming all the guys stay healthy. But Eloy Robert Rutherford is probably better defensively than that, maybe better on both sides unless Moncada makes big upgrades with the bat this year, and moving Moncada to a new position - means he has less time to work on his offense.

I still struggle to find any example of a team successfully doing this.

Frankly, yes, there's only so much time for him to work on stuff and we called him up when he was very raw. He's not an experienced USA collegiate player who has been well coached since he was 12, and we are making a mistake if we treat him that way. He's getting good at one thing, defense, and desperately needs to work on the second thing - pitch recognition. His approach with the bat is the priority this year, 110%. He's comfortable and good at defense at 2b, but if his approach at the plate doesn't improve then even if we move him to 3b we're going to be talking about how we need a new 3b next offseason too. One move, once Madrigal forces the issue - fine. Let Moncada develop at the plate this yeear.

I can't say how much I hate the idea of moving Moncada from position to position over and over right when his defense is starting to develop at the spot AND when what we really want him doing is developing as a hitter. I literally don't have the words for it. Yeah kid you need to cut the strikeouts, but here go spend your entire spring training learning a new position, and no one sees a problem with that? If Madrigal comes out and destroys our minor leagues this year I will understand one move, but we have a guy who needs a TON of work with his approach at the plate, and we want to casually ask him to learn a new position full time? That seems like a recipe for Moncada to just flop with the bat for another year and for us to be wondering what happened.

I will be far less mad about moving Moncada next offseason if Madrigal has come out at WS and BHam and actually forced the issue with his bat. I promise. I don't care how developed he was supposed to be when he was drafted, one injury or a slow development of power and then we're talking about having to sign a 2nd baseman next offseason when the best FA on the market is a 3b.

While we have "Several talented arms", I still hesitate to give up pitching until these guys are established big leaguers. I don't want to block them, but I hate giving them up. Just one way it could go - if Dunning and Kopech and Cease aren't ready for full seasons through mid-2020, moving Rodon could create a need for all of them.

I wonder, historically, how many examples he can give of players taking less money for this reason - especially in baseball. Basketball sure, where they've gone into superteam mode and the salary cap was rapidly going up - we saw Lebron and Durant do that, but I can remember few cases of it happening obviously in baseball.

Right now from the player's side here's the setup. This is not a functioning market. It's becoming a race to the bottom.

I wouldn't have minded him, but yeah that's an awful lot of money for this particular pitcher.

Like the week before Christmas when he suddenly followed Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley and one of the other Phils right after his visit there and we saw posts about how that meant he was going to Philly and someone actually convinced me to scroll through who he follows on Instagram to see if it was unusual and I still want that time back?

If the Cubs were really going for him it's because they would think teaming him with bryant gives them an advantage over teams with higher dollar value offers. I still don't believe a word of it, because you don't keep Scott Boras as your agent to take less money to play with your buddies.

Dick Allen suggested this - you sign a player before the Thursday of the Winter Meetings you don't lose a draft pick. Brilliant idea, positive feedback, both GMs and players would push to meet that deadline. 90% of the people given QOs would sign that week.

Several of us here at soxtalk.com probably including me. If the cubs were willing to move him for any price, I'd consider that a turrible sign for their assessment of his health.

The difference between a 100 loss season and anything worth talking about is not Dallas Keuchel. It's development out of Giolito, Lopez, Rodon, and others.

Fulmer is probably finished in this org, but I'd much rather spend $1 million on Covey + Giolito than go to a 5 year nearly $100 m deal for Keuchel.

Like 2 months ago we were half wondering if Bryant would ever be the same player again after that shoulder injury.

One benefit of someone like Shields is that he's at least likely to give 150+ innings, which should help both the bullpen and the other starters in the rotation because we won't be as desperate for innings from them and they won't be pushed as much if they're having an off day. That said, Nova pretty much satisfies me on that role.

Me too, but at some point someone's gonna see more official updates and I'm kinda watchin' for em.

Just so someone points this out - against one of the top 5 defenses in the league this week, 0 TO from the defense and the offense still puts up 24. That's positive too.