Balta1701

So, more importantly - Jackson and Robinson both good to go next week?

If Houston is early Saturday I think that puts the Bears on Sunday because they usually mix up the 3-6 and 4-5 games.

That didn't look fine at all. If he's playing next week against that Bears defense he may not live through it. 24-0 now. Bears pick their next week opponent, win and it's Philly.

Nick Foles is out for the Iggles, chest injury, hunching over in pain in the tunnel, former Indiana Hoosier QB Nate Sudfeld is now in. They're up 17-0 on Washington, if Minnesota loses, Philadelphia gets that playoff spot and the Bears in the first round.

You want to be lazy, fine, here's the middle part of the free agent market last year. Here's guys who got $10-20 million AAV. note, I'm being nice because Darvish got $21 million annual. Santana - Already dumped by the Phillies Hosmer .720 OPS, 1.4 rWAR. Wade Davis - ERA of 4.13 but led the NL in saves so not awful! Lorenzo Cain - Congratulations you won the lottery Alex Cobb 5-15, 4.90 ERA. Greg Holland - 4.66 ERA, congrats you only signed him for 1 year so the debacle was limited Jay Bruce - you still owe $26 million to a guy who put up a .680 OPS. Tyler Chatwood - 5.30 ERA for the Cubs Zack Cozart - .658 OPS, missed half the year. Lance Lynn - pitched 54 innings for your $12 million Brandon Morrow - good first half, missed the entire 2nd half. CC Sabathia - you know what? Not bad. Jaime Garcia - 5.82 ERA. That is everyone last year who signed 10-20 million average annual value, roughly the middle part of the free agent market. Out of 13 guys, there's 2 to 3 you're actually happy with. The middle part of the free agent market is a plague to baseball. It is a way to destroy your franchise.

By "against Minny" I meant against Minny if they make the playoffs and the bears play them again next week, which is possible. They're the only defense in the NFC anywhere close to the quality of the Bears on the teams making the playoffs. I'd only go for 2 against them if I had to.

You know what? Go do it then. Go look at the performance of guys who sign $15-$20 million a year, multi-year contracts the last few years. How many of them outperform? How many underperform. The last time I did that exercise was after 2016 and the results of these guys made me sick to my stomach. That part of the market was something like $13 million/WAR because so many of them underperformed. You had better luck signing the really big names or signing the value guys.

I don't know that I've ever offered a ban bet before, but if you offered me a bet that Bryce Harper will take the largest dollar amount he is offered I would probably take that bet.

I have no problem with honesty as long as there's some reasonable chance of success. The problem is that they've been the worst franchise in baseball under Rick Hahn, and its not really close, and they're the ones to blame for that. If they want to pass off blame to the fans for not showing up - f*** give us a product worth showing up for you abject failures.

Because they'd feel better about hahn and KW if they didn't say anything while doing their usual thing perhaps?

I wouldn't do it against Minny, but basically everyone else in the NFC I'd think about it.

I hope they were honest about it because they should be doing everything they can to draw the attention of those players. I also hope they have come forward with the kind of unbeatable offer necessary to win one of them. I'm not confident in the latter.

I have no urge to try to sign 3 WAR players. They are, IMO, the guys that are the most likely to underperform. 3-WAR players are guys that their teams could always sign if they wanted to keep them, and their team has decided that player isn't worth that money to them. They're they guys where a team may not even offer them a QO because they don't want them back. If you've got to sign 1 of them to fill a role at the end, fine. But we've played this game before. We know how that game goes. That's the Todd Frazier, Jeff Samardzija game - we expect more out of those guys than we actually get, and they don't make a big difference in the end.

If you're moving the ball early in the game against one of those weaker defenses like the Rams or Saints, maybe you start systematically going for 2.

I'm not sure that such a deal is legal per the collective bargaining agreement.

If Eloy was willing to sign an extension like that, they would have come to some sort of deal last season and he'd have been called up already.

And you're going to be interested in watching Dozier, Ervin Santana, and Engel who is starting with Pollock on the DL?

I think there's a good chance they could spend the $50 million you just outlined, have 1 or 2 injuries, and wind up in the bottom of the league again.

The lineups and signings that were posted in your post and the previous one are gag-worthy. Classic Rick Hahn specials - overpaying in the middle range of the free agent market, for guys who aren't going to make a difference long term, so that we can win 73 games and declare loudly that we're going to be right there.

Tar and feather Rick Hahn.

@Chicago White Sox posted this link of the Dodgers tax accounting earlier this week in this post . There is a $14.04 million "team benefit costs" line item. Here are more details on it. I was unaware of this until that post by CWS either and credit him for educating.

I think their number is currently much closer to the $180-$195 million range, but I don't think avoiding the tax would be a reason that they would not sign either of these guys. I think you have to be willing to pay more for the player than they are.

B-R puts their arb totals at something close to $55 million and I think their numbers are reasonable. Gregorius, Betances, Gray, Romine, Hicks are all arb year 3, Paxton is arb 2, Severino, Kahnle, Bird, Lavarnaway are Arb 1. A couple of their contracts have buy outs or inflate over time, those amounts are added into the guaranteed dollars while trying to calculate the luxury tax, that's another $5 million or so. So right there, we're over $180 million luxury tax number compared to the raw salary total. We also had a discussion with the Dodgers luxury tax a couple days ago where there's an extra $15 million in teams luxury tax numbers to pay for pensions and retirement plans and health coverage, I'm less certain about this line item but someone (was it DA?) clearly showed a calculation for the Dodgers where that was mandatory and included. I'm less certain about how to deal with that, but it seems like a real thing.

Once their arb numbers come in, counting the fact that a few guys have ballooning contracts that will still average out this year and the $15 million in fixed retirement and health care costs we were talking about with the Dodgers, their luxury tax total has to be close to $200 million right now.

That performance is better than anything the White Sox have gotten from their free agent spending this decade. I'd like to see better than that obviously, but at the very least if he's doing that then we have added a force to the middle of the lineup.