Balta1701

Before we had #1 vs #2 mandated, it was pretty rare right? Let the first round be the traditional bowls, with traditional matchups - Big 12/SEC, Big 10/Pac 10, a couple wild cards for the Central Floridas/Boise States that break through. Just set the rule that the #1, #2, #3, and #4 teams coming out of the conference championships don't match up in the bowl round. Now you've got intriguing games for all the big bowls, you've got the top 10 teams all in action on New Years day, you get the classical historic matchups, and you get one last test before the final 4.

Colome got off to a rotten start last year with the Rays and was far better once he got to Seattle. His poor start had to play into his trade value and why the Rays even moved him at all.

You're welcome

Use the bowl games as prelims, pick a final 4 after the new years bowl games.

And just so it's done: Jim Boylen: Current Bulls interim coach. Jim Boylan: previous Bulls interim coach (after Skiles was fired).

I would agree that tarring and feathering those 2 remains appropriate, but I also hate the concept of a person from the front office coming down to coach.

I thought Hoiberg did as good of a job as possible of handling the mess he was handed last year. I haven't cared enough to watch any games this year but probably would have sat down for one over XMas break if one was on. I won't be overly upset but agree with others that this is cutting off a rotten branch from a tree dying at the roots.

If he was healthy enough to play but not 100%, then this was a calculated gamble that they could still win the division even with a loss today. With a 1.5 game lead, that's a gamble but it seems like a smart one.

I think there's a reasonable chance, because former steroid abusers in their late 30s do have a habit of hitting cliffs or getting hurt. But even if Cruz doesn't drop off next year - Palka at DH and a $10 million reliever >> Cruz at DH.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Insanity

If signing Adam Dunn and then signing Adam LaRoche afterwards does not teach us a lesson then we will never learn. Adam Dunn and Adam LaRoche seemed like good signings at the time. They were not. Learn the lesson from this about how bad money spent at the DH spot can be, and stop wasting money at the DH spot when we can cover it decently and cheaply!

Name a DH that we've signed as a free agent, because the answer as of now is literally "all of them".

Well that's something isn't it.

I can think of dumber - the signings we made at the DH position.

Don't forget thought that Robertson was paid roughly 2x as much as Colome and the price of relievers has continued to skyrocket since then. If his performance was "Robertson like" but he was cheaper, that wouldn't be worth a top 100 prospect, but it'd be worth something useful

Spending money stupidly though, like spending it on the position which in theory should be the easiest to fill, the White Sox have been totally willing to do that and it has been a disaster for the franchise.

Compared to spending $12 million a year on a "barely above replacement" DH and then having them fall apart because they're 32-36 years old, which is our description of the rest of the decade, I'll take a #5/6 platoon DH out of him. Out of position players, this decade, the 2 positions where the White Sox have spent the most money are, in order, 1b and DH. With where this league has evolved, that's just terrible usage of resources.

If they don't believe in Collins and Zavala, they might say that Grandal age 30-35 is the best they could do for their next competitive team.

Do you know how much we paid to sign guys like Bonifacio and Beckham as backups in '15 and '16 and they were terrible but we didn't understand the value of decent players?

And if that means trading him to the Dodgers or a better run franchise than ours in the NL that's fine, just get something with some talent in return.

Well yeah but that's a catcher. Catchers you have to think about differently because of the huge amount of additional info they're learning at each step on how to deal with the pitching staff. We see a ton of catchers who come up at 25, 26, 27, and even then grow over 2-3 years before they become reliable receivers these days, because they're spending so much time working on all the defensive things, playcalling things, scouting reports, etc., and then have to still figure out how to do batting practice despite all that other stuff. Yan Gomes put up a .527 OPS during Cleveland's WS season, they tried to replace him with Lucroy, and then last year he was an all star at age 30. Keep the catchers in the minors until they have little more they can learn in the minors, and I would have no problem if I didn't see either of the in the big leagues until 2020.

That looks like a torn Achilles for Tua. And now he's walking.

EE put up his first season with >2 WAR this year as a 29 year old. 2 years ago he was a 0 WAR player, and most other seasons he's been 2 at most. Yolmer is 26 and has put up ~2 WAR seasons each of the last 2 years. The only thing Escobar has done that Yolmer hasn't is put up a 3 WAR season, and he didn't do that until he was 29, and he's only done that once, and now he's paid more. These are roughly comparable value players. If the White Sox used their bench effectively, then Yolmer would be a very valuable piece.

Was that before Zavala was called up and struggled at Charlotte? Hopefully new information (.626 OPS at Charlotte) should cause a reassessment of that statement.

I would be quite disappointed in this franchise if they rushed one of these catchers up to the big leagues to be a backup before they were ready so that they could trade for a fairly expensive reliever.