Balta1701

We don't know 100% for sure and it could play a role in his eventual destination. The general line of thought was that the reason he wanted to play SS this year was so that he could maximize his value when he hit free agency so that teams who need a SS could still go after him, but if a team wanted him to play 3b and that team paid him the most money he'd play 3b, but no one truly knows what's in his head.

I have no idea how these things are going behind the scenes, but if I were the White Sox and I were after Machado, I would have an offer on the table for him that was at least a competitive offer right now. He might not be ready to sign right now, but if there's a $300 million offer on the table for him right now, and better ones don't come around in the next week, he might well either accept or counter-offer with an acceptable total amount and we could walk away with this done in November. These 2 sides have to understand exactly what you said as well. Boras won't care because it's not his style, but Machado's agent might.

One article on the trade at ESPN noted that if there's ever a time for Butler to be on his best behavior it's right now. If that team implodes this year, even if it's not his fault, then what team is going to gamble a 4 year max on him next offseason? If he wants to get paid, and clearly he wants to get paid, he's now in a spot where he can show off all the way up to their loss in the NBA finals if he keeps his mouth shut and works hard.

I'd play him there on the White Sox but that's because I'm ok with us losing next year if it takes him a while to develop at the position. Cleveland won't be.

Andujar may not be a minor piece, but that doesn't mean he's a good fit for Cleveland. Trading away Kluber makes them a lot worse right now and Andujar isn't a good fit at either 1b or 3b for them next year with Ramirez and EE. Can he be moved to 2b? Anyway, if I was Cleveland, the conversation would start with Torres, and the Yankees won't do that.

He had the 3rd best ERA of his career last year, the 2nd best WHIP, and better numbers overall than he put up in 2016. I wish I could decline like that. There is zero chance I would do that deal if I was Cleveland.

No, players can talk about such things, the teams cannot. This was from April, literally during the regular season.

Honestly I'm going to be stunned if Corbin goes anywhere else. He was already talking about signing with the Yankees last May, and they need starting pitching. If they have to bid up to 5/$140 to beat everyone else, they'll do it. Machado...they may go all in on him, or they may not. Doing so makes sense given the lack of control on Didi, but I honestly believe that's going to be much more of a competitive bid. Yes the Yankees have money, but the Phillies and White Sox have far less money already committed, the White Sox have basically nothing of importance on the books next year. So for that, who knows. What on Earth are the Yankees going to trade to get Kluber? They've got 4 guys in MLB.com's top 100, but unless Cleveland is 100% committed to rebuilding (which they shouldn't be), I don't know that Cleveland even accepts Kluber for all 4 of those guys...which means that the Yankees would have to move Torres to do that.

Tony Kemp sort of came out of no where for the Astros in June and he's a lefty hitter, so the end result probably would have been some version of a platoon of Garcia and Kemp, with Garcia probably also taking up some time at DH - remember there was also an article about the Astros sniffing around Abreu at this time and they have Gurriel at 1b normally. With the amount of injuries they had this year, they could have figured it out if Garcia was healthy enough to be in the lineup. Gonzalez was also their primary backup SS when Correa went down and spent most of his days there.

The fact that so far the guys we got back when we traded those players are struggling and hurt is equally troubling.

That sure didn't sound like it was describing his 2017 season, I never woulda guessed that was what the post was referring to as it said "Before avi was hurt last year". The "last year" part was taken by me to mean "last year", not "2 seasons ago". I coulda read that wrong, but at least it wasn't clear to me.

Huh? No he didn't, on April 23 before he hit the disabled list for the first time he was hitting .233. He had a 12 game stretch right when he came back from the disabled list, from June 22 to July 4, where he hit .364 over that stretch, but his numbers withered again after that.

So who loses their job first, Cody Parkey or Todd Bowles?

You can't just list 10 key guys and assume "Everything goes right for every single key guy". We should have learned long ago that baseball doesn't go that way. That said, upper 70s wins would be reasonable for that...but since they blew all their FA spending, well they might not be that much better the next year either.

I know it's been a while and we're trained to think about other ways to sell tickets, but how about building a team that wins 99+ games and competes for a world series?

just tossing it out there - he might be much more available and reasonably priced as a bounce back candidate next offseason than this year maybe, if his shoulder really does have issues the Cubs could be much more willing to move on after another lost year?

Adam and Drake LaRoche #FamilyFirst

Just bid the extra $30 million you'd spend on Cruz on a higher contract for Machado and play Palka.

Oh yeah going for Harper and Manny are fine. I totally encourage that. I'm expecting a list like what we came up with in 2015 though, 3 or 4 overpriced guys including an older DH and a starting pitcher who will, overall, disappoint and not produce nearly as much as people hope...which conveniently is what every thread here other than the Harper and Machado threads sounds like.

I'd just like to point out that his first year with us Adam Dunn had 177 Ks and was awful and in 2015 Nelson Cruz maxed out at 164 Ks Anyway...yeah I have no confidence that RH won't screw this up. But...right now aside from Eloy I don't have confidence in the guys that Rick Hahn has traded for, and until someone earn's that...if he screws up free agency, then oh well the White Sox are terrible until he's gone, but there's a nonzero chance that's already true. So just run with it.

I've been wondering for a while whether Bryant made a mistake in not taking an extension pre-injury and this kinda does fit with that.

One other part - the White Sox had low big league payrolls the last couple years but they were also spending $25 million a year on Robert, in addition to Shields' bad contract. That money is now paid and gone, so our payroll to start the year is something like $35-40 million less than it was last year to start the season, even lower if they do dump Avi. Even if they don't land some of the big fish, it makes sense to use this money. They can offer a "floor" for everyone who hits the FA market - I don't think Brantley is a good fit either, but if he signed for 2/$20 wouldn't everyone take him? We saw the market collapse last year, we're in a better position to take advantage if that happens again this year.

We've been the worst team in baseball since 2013 and it isn't even close. That should annoy every White Sox fan.

I would agree with you, but to me that leads to the logic that Corbin makes little sense for this team and actually signing him would be a bad move. However, a thread on us offering him a contract is not us actually signing him to that contract, and if all RH is doing is putting in low bids on everyone out there so that every agent knows they're in the game or so that the Yankees actually have to pay full price for Corbin and that makes it harder for them to sign Machado...I certainly can't be mad about that. I'll get more annoyed if we actually sign one of the guys who are poor fits for us, but we'll see how that shakes out.

Well Dunning, I wouldn't count on until I know his arm isn't going to tear itself apart. I agree with you on all the other guys though, Cease and Kopech are in my ideal 2020 rotation. But, with that said - I don't have any need for Corbin if I am counting on Cease and Kopech hitting my rotation in 2020 and thinking about Dunning and the other guys you list, unless I'm totally throwing in the towel on Giolito already. Corbin is either: we are going to be ready in 2019 or we don't have confidence in any of the people you list filling roles for 2020. I don't think any of those are true personally, but then again I wouldn't be bidding on any of these guys, or at least I'd be putting in very low bids.