Balta1701

I think he still has solid stuff, I think there's a good pitcher that can be built with his stuff if the player was coached and treated correctly, I think he will never reach that potential.

He got non-tendered? I'm totally ok with that. I thought they'd hold him and try to trade him.

That went well.

I would take him, but I don't want to give up anything of value for him. 1 year deal, will make probably $9 million or so in arbitration this year, at best you'll be getting a trade return for him at the deadline if he's any good as a 2 month rental. Basically name someone in our system who has no use to us in any way, and that's an ok thing to trade for him. Someone who didn't get picked up in the Rule 5 draft like Stephens I would probably do, but the Yankees already didn't grab a guy like that. If someone wants to give the Yanks something of use, fine I'll go sign Pomeranz for similar money.

But that sure as heckfire wasn't a big money free agent signing. It was a rebuilding move, trading away for a guy who had flopped on his current team. Totally go do that. That is slightly different from paying $140 million for a Patrick Corbin or $150 million for a Lester. Playing a bottom feeder, rebuilding, signing a handful of low dollar value free agents, making trades, and being better at development and drafting than other teams - that can build you a solid foundation. It doesn't have to be all at the draft. But if you think you're taking a 62 win team and turning it into a 90 win team on the free agent market in 1 season...you better have some huge breakout guys and a couple Kris Bryants already on your roster.

And that was the year they brought Bryant up and had Arrieta win the Cy Young. Bryant alone was a 6 fWAR player that year.

I defy you to name some. Even the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers are winning on the strength of guys they developed, not their free agent signings.

If they get 1 5-win season out of Corbin next year, or a couple of 3 win seasons, they should be overall content with the value they got. That's the FA market.

Most fair market value deals are terrible deals for people. That's why you can't win on the free agent market unless you already have a good team.

Is it really impossible to understand that a fair market value contract given by one team would be a much worse deal for a team with a different roster? Machado at $30 million a year would be a great buy for us. That would be a pretty terrible contract for the Astros.

No they wouldn't have been. They'd have been out if they were unwilling to pay the luxury tax, but they've clearly said they will pay it if they want to.

Well yeah, a move that is the right move for a team that has been in the wild card race and playoffs in recent years would be a bad move for a rebuilding team with a ton of young pitching on the way up over the next 2-3 years.

Technically it's $23.3 million, and if you're not prepared to pay prices like this then there's no one on the free agent market you really will actually want. This is fair value for him. Frankly it's less AAV than I thought he'd get.

If those guys are going to wait til January, don't the Phillies and Yankees have to give up and phil their other holes rather than waiting for them to sign? If those guys are waiting til January, the White Sox are ok with that since they don't need to make their team better this year, they need their team to be better in 2020 and 2021.

Give or take backloading, this puts them close to $195 million in payroll commitments next season. The luxury tax line is ~$209. Hell, they're now already around $180 million for 2020 and thats with Rendon walking. I think they're out of the Harper race.

But compared to the Yankees ducking out of the playoffs early last year and missing the playoffs in years before that - short playoff runs for the yankees are even sillier than spending that money.

Ok, the total money is a little more reasonable, but that's still under $25 mil per year. The Yanks and Phils wouldn't beat that why?

I'll admit, I'm stunned those 2 teams did not beat this price, especially the Yankees. For a mid-rotation pitcher this is easy money. Maybe they just really didn't like him and think he'll fall apart next year?

If they're not willing to beat this price for Corbin maybe that's because they're being more cost-conscious than we thought?

The White Sox were doing neither of those with Carson Fulmer. They had convinced themselves they had a competitive team in 2016, Petricka and Putnam went down with injuries and suddenly the team collapsed and was putting up the worst month of any team in the big leagues. Carson Fulmer's job was to stop learning and save Rick Hahn's fragile bullpen, and if anything bad happened so be it. That team was competitive for the AL Central and they knew it, so any cost was appropriate, even if it damaged prospects, created bad habits, or gave away something useful. They made similar moves when they called up Anderson (worked ok) and when they made a desperation trade for James Shields (did not work out so well).

I gotta admit, I did not expect the movie to be called "Official title and trailer".

Well here's #1 of the week... we may have several more in a couple days and I may be slightly more excited over those 2. Overall not hugely impressive or earth shattering, hopefully the movie's still good.

If the Bulls keep getting "good to very good players" in the draft, and they wind up in a position where they have 4 of them still on rookie deals - you're talking about a team with a ton of cap space and a ton of assets to trade, including its upcoming first round picks. Pair up 3 of those "very good" players with an elite trade/FA player and you've got a possibly workable plan. But, have just 1 of those draft picks bust, and now you're needing to replace him with another $15 million player, your cap space is gone, and you don't have the resources to go after at top flight player. It's a knife edge strategy that requires you to have no more Denzel Valentines.

So by this metric the 7th best offensive force in baseball history (currently tied with Mike Trout) is Frank Thomas?

What you haven't realized is that you did a number of gimmicks to make the White Sox look better. You compared Cleveland's "Yearly total last year" with a sum over the starting players, but that misses something important. I played the same game in the right hand column and Cleveland looks a couple WAR better, for a specific reason. Carson Fulmer isn't in your list. Josh Tomlin isn't in your list. You gave the White Sox's bench 1 WAR, but the White Sox's bench didn't produce that last year. You gave the White Sox's rotation 17.5, but if you counted the couple of spot starts for whoever comes up, the total rotation number won't be as high as you get to by only adding up the biggest guys. Guys like Tilson, Cordell - guys who came up and filled time, altogether they were worth -3 WAR. Yes, you'd have a little less of them playing if Sanchez was on the bench, but when people get hurt, it's those kind of guys who come up. Cleveland has some of them too - Roberto Perez, Eric Haase, Rajai Davis - if you only count the top producing guys you get to ignore those guys, and you artificially make your list look better. You did that for the White Sox, but not for the native American stereotypes. So when you compared the line by line with the "total Cleveland team", you made the White Sox look artificially better and Cleveland look worse. Similarly, the White Sox's bullpen was in the upper 1/2 of the league last year in WAR, but 1/3 of that was Soria, and the White Sox had a worse xFIP than Cleveland's bullpen last year, by a lot. So if you're granting the White Sox 4 fWAR, you should grant Cleveland the same thing, and that makes Cleveland look worse again. Finally, you do subtle things like give Engel 0.5 fWAR, when he was worth 0.2 fWAR last year, -0.8 fWAR the year before, and split time with guys like Cordell. You've pretty much assumed that literally every single guy on the White Sox's roster will be better next year than last - literally every one. No one gets hurt, nothing goes wrong. When you counted Cleveland's team total, you included all their injuries or guys who struggled, but you didn't include any of those things for the White Sox. Altogether, you've made this team look artificially better/Cleveland look artificially worse by about 5 fWAR, give or take again.