Balta1701

QUOTE (iWin4Ron @ Jan 30, 2018 -> 12:24 PM) Anyone have interest in Carlos Gonzalez? It's extremely unlikely that the W'Sox or Gonzalez have any interest in each other. I'm just asking politely here. I like Gonzalez as a bounce-back candidate and on a one year small deal could be useful at the trade deadline and putting seats into stands (I know I'd be interested in following him). Although he'd take PA's from youngsters. He would have been a better fit last year before we gathered up extra young OFs to play.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 06:28 PM) I mean, I think the Yankees would disagree. They nearly made the World Series last year behind some young stars and still have a top system. Some of guys need to develop first before we can make that kind of claim IMO. Fine, technical term we have more potential than any other org has talent. Yankees and Dodgers included. Everyone hits their "potential" and this team is an unstoppable 120 win menace in 2020, counting a free agent or two. 100 wins is the "a normal amount of guys struggle" level.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 04:31 PM) I hope Cousins comes back. Love that guy and really was hoping he'd be a Bull. Now we'll just go all in on AD instead 2 and a half seasons from now? That's a long wait to keep cap space available. They'll have to let guys like Lavine and Dunn go.

QUOTE (hi8is @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 07:05 PM) I sure hope he's wrong and players as well as agents adjust their expectations within the market. The exact opposite market will happen next year and we'll be back to asking how on Earth Bryce Harper got $400 million from the Dodgers and Machado got $350 from the White Sox to play a kid's game.

Burdi making progress in throwing sessions

QUOTE (Quin @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 10:55 AM) Whatever punishment comes down is going to be baffling in size at this rate. Baffling as in "Bafflingly weak"? Because like it was said a few posts ago, you've got enough of a pattern of behavior to warrant a death penalty for their athletic department here, and I don't think anyone expects that.

QUOTE (WBWSF @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 07:29 AM) Both the Pirates and Marlins are going to have very low payrolls the next few years. Isn't that the same situation the White Sox are going to be in? After this season the White Sox will not have any long term contracts on the books and will probably have a lower payroll than either the Pirates or Marlins. I realize that people don't like to hear this but this White Sox franchise has become a goldmine for JR. "The next few years" = 2018. I'm half hoping we see a franchise record payroll in 2019. If not then, then definitely 2020 when we have to deal with Garcia/Abreu, and we have all that playoff revenue coming in.

Anyway, former executive of the Red Cross, multiple allegations, rape included, he left the red cross with praise from it's board, went over to Save the Children, they didn't tell the new org or mention any of that.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 03:57 PM) GOP Tweet from October, The Weinstein scandal put Hollywood’s hypocrisy in broad daylight. RT if you agree the DNC should return his donations. 7:45 AM - 9 Oct 2017 Will Trump return Wynn's money? Hypocrites.Every.Single. Time. So, just to make sure, you do realize that in a few months the next one, or the one after that, or the one after that, or the one after that, will be a big Democrat right? That's the world we've lived in. That's the world we need to clean up.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 02:20 PM) I worship Biden. I know why he didn't run last time, but it's a shame. He would have defeated Trump and we'd all be loving life so to speak. We were stuck in Hillary mania and there was no way of knowing America would for sure veto Hillary. If Joe is healthy at 80, I still hope he runs if all we have are the usual lousy candidates. Of course I love Bernie as well but he's a bit more radical than Biden. With the way he treated Anita Hill I can understand why you like him.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 04:23 PM) Or the extremely wealthy owners can stop crying poor and spend at higher levels of payroll? They will only do that if it gives them a chance to put a team in the playoffs. Take another example - Detroit. Detroit spent like it was going out of style the last couple years. They started last year with the 4th highest payroll in MLB on opening day. Was Detroit's spending a wise investment? God no. They wound up dumping their best players midseason because they were a 4th place team, after missing the playoffs the last 2 years. Why would I want my franchise to be like Detroit? They tried to do that and it was a crappy plan.

QUOTE (GermanSock @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 04:00 PM) But it still less money than it used to be in an industry that is making more money. That is not acceptable. The owners should make profit but they can't cut player salaries while making more profit. No team ever was crippled by an albtratros contract. I'm not saying teams should continue to sign pujols deals but they need to give the money they save back to the players in some way. It is really not about the players getting more, it just is about keeping their share of baseball revenue stable. I think a 50/50 revenue share between players and teams would be fair (like it is in nba). Maybe even 60/40 for the owners but players can't put up with any less. Then the league needs to take actions to make it possible for teams to compete at mid-levels of payroll. Teams may not be badly damaged by huge contracts in the modern league, but if spending $70 million in one offseason in new payroll like the 2015 White Sox did takes you from 73 wins to 76 wins, then that money was basically wasted. Teams will not spend money if spending money does not give them a chance to earn more. Right now the league is staring up at the Yankees and Dodgers who are spending huge money and developing talent, and saying "The only way we can keep up with them is to do what the Indians and Astros and Cubs and Royals did - amass an overwhelming amount of young talent". And they're not wrong! That's the current path open to a title, either be the Yankees and Dodgers or do a full rebuild. Until that dynamic is changed, then this is going to be the setup in the league. A sub .500 team isn't going to buy its way to competing for a wild card, let alone a championship; their only route to success is to rebuild. Throw in an occasional disaster like the Marlins on top of that and you've got the current league struccture.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 03:06 PM) Story just came out that Betsy Devos met with Lou Anna Simon on September 20th, and two days later she rolled back Title IX protections for sexual assault victims. Am I allowed to take a disappointed and sad but totally expected version of here?

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 03:02 PM) I dont think so, not this time. The feds are involved because they apparently lied on a response to a Title IX investigation last year and are still withholding documents. You can play god with the local PD in a college town, but that doesn't work with the Feds.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 10:52 AM) DH is the only spot I’m not overly excited about how we’re using at the moment. I am somewhat interested to see Davidson get more ABs after his season last year - the power we knew he had came through but in the minors he always was a better OBP guy than what we saw last year, and that's the thing preventing him from being a useful DH right now, doing what he did in the minors. And anyway, unless Garcia is traded, Delmonico or Cordell or whoever else will shift over to the DH spot when the mutant corner OF comes up from the minors mid-season.

QUOTE (GermanSock @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 10:17 AM) Of course it makes sense that teams don't want to overpay 30+ year olds as we all know the aging curves now. Any intern or hobby sabermetrist can now calculate aging curves and dollar per war. But you also have to see that 22-28 year old players are massively underpaid. If you want to stop overpaying the veterans you instead need to pay the young guys right. I can't recall who it was a few weeks ago (instincts saying Shack but I could be wrong, if it was someone else please remind me) who suggested that one way to help with this would be to bring the minimum salary up to $1 million or so rather than $500k. Raises the cost for going with the Marlins-style lineup and probably puts some veterans who would otherwise be out of work back on the table. That's the kind of thing I could see Boras starting to push for to help protect his big clients.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 10:40 AM) Balta has talked about using our playing time as an asset to find undervalued talent, that was the role the Brewers played. 2016 they picked up tons of near major talent and gave them playing time. This trade was also a great example of why to wait until you are closer to knowing. When brewers had a clear surplus they were able to trade for an elite, cost controlled talent, not just an upgrade. That's what I'd like us to do, use surplus for elite upgrades, not just filling 0 war with 2 war vets. Thanks!

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 08:45 PM) Never count Boras out, this is all part of the game. Maybe it doesn't all go in his favor, but all it takes is one team. It's not just him complaining about right now. Him putting this complaint out there is him speaking both on behalf of and to his clients and to his future clients. He's playing "public lobbying" right now. This is indirect pressure on the MLBPA, and that pressure eventually will turn up in the CBA talks. And right now, conveniently enough, MLBPA is negotiating with MLB on a way that both sides could agree to a pitch clock; MLB can do it on their own but if they want the players to agree to it they need to give something up to the players that is of value to them.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 25, 2018 -> 08:31 PM) Reading the Twitter responses to the Brewers announcement, brought back some great prospect names. Mat Gamel and Matt LaPorta. I think LaPorta was in the CC trade, he was supposed to be a beast, he did completely nothing. To directly quote the piece that popped up when I googled it because there was one name you're missing: "and throw-in center fielder, Michael Brantley."

I think this is exactly what I expect the opposing party's senate candidates to say.

This.

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Jan 24, 2018 -> 05:23 PM) Bad money: The worst contract investments on all 30 teams http://www.espn.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/...on-all-30-teams I do like how James Shields is the worst deal on 2 rosters.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Jan 24, 2018 -> 06:57 AM) The problem is even if you’re down in on Brinson a bit, he’s still a top 40 to 50 prospect. Rutherford has seen his stock plummet and Cease has huge question marks. Those two combined are worth far less than Yelich IMO are not headlining a trade for Yelich. Still think we’d have to add Hansen with those other two to have any shot and I don’t think that would be wise for us. We’re simply not as deep as we’d like to think we are. Let’s hold the prospects for one more year, try to sign some free agents to fill holes first, and then consider a move like this once we have a better idea what we have/need. If the White Sox "Aren't as deep as we'd like to think we are", that points to a much larger problem. There is a ton of 2nd tier talent in this organization: Cease, Collins, Rutherford, Burger, Adams, Adolfo, some of the other guys down in A-ball, the other catchers. I don't think all of these guys are going to have breakout years next year, but there's so much talent in that range that some of them should. If all of these guys flop, that's a sign of a much more serious issue - that we still haven't fixed either the player development or the player scouting issues that plagued us for the last decade.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 03:15 PM) And about half a billion in free agent spending... With the number of guys coming up from the minors, that's basically what the White Sox will have to play with 2018-2021 if all they do is push their payroll back to the $130 million level that they were at during the wonderfully successful 2015 campaign.