Balta1701

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 04:18 PM) The whole thing is proceeding very much like ObamaCare. Except McCain's ok with it.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 05:20 PM) I'm thinking they sign Santana. That way they hold onto their last few chips and don't have to go over 4 years or sign Hosmer long-term. Santana's a good player but the Red Sox really could use more power than he provides.

Christine Pelosi (related) says that there are rapists in the California State Legislature and the legislators are covering up for them.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 03:42 PM) Assuming all of them are successful AND healthy? I wouldn't bet on it. Both Davidson and Cordell missed significant amounts of time last season. Unless you can pick 5 months in advance which one will be healthy, you clear the spots for them and then have backup plans like Matt Skole for when one of them does fail or get hurt.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 01:30 PM) Again, why can't the White Sox trade them now, and sign them later if there is a need and they are worth the money? It's pretty much a free look at how they will age, and you get some assets for assets you don't need while you aren't going to contend. You obviously will have competition, and their new teams will have some sort of say, but they save their current salaries for a couple of seasons, so if they are worth it later, they can pay them more then. If he was willing to sign a 4/$80 extension and he was moved to the Red Sox, why wouldn't they offer him such an extension to keep him off the market? the logic for other teams is the same, if they think he's a good player and will remain so until he's 35 then it makes good sense for them to lock him up rather than playing the 2019 free agent market for Smoak and Goldschmidt...and their teams might well lock those guys up too.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 01:06 PM) This was all over the thread on MLBTR. It was getting annoying to read. I ended up breaking it down very simple for someone on there: If Abreu is dealt, that means Rick Hahn received a great haul. It's that simple since the Sox don't have to just trade him away. He's not blocking anyone and they have no salary commitments next year (outside of Shields). I still think it could also mean "Abreu is not going to be here in 2020". If he's not going to be here in 2020, because he won't sign or because you know something else about his medicals, then I think you must move him now. His value is not likely to go up any farther - you can make a case (I think a wrong one) that Garcia's value is going to go up, but Abreu is coming off a great year and still has 2 years of control left. He's not going to raise his value even with a great first half. We cannot allow ourselves to be an 85+ win team led by the youngsters in 2019 and then lose our veteran 1b/DH. That is the worst case scenario, and we should do what is necessary to avoid it.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 12:41 PM) That would be fantastic for management, but what would the benefit be to Abreu? That represents $20M per year, which is not much more than he will get through arbitration, for the last 2 years of his pre-eligibility for free agency. I would guess that it would take at least $25M per year, starting this next season and covering 5 seasons total. That would not be a bad deal for the Sox. It avoids a huge long term commitment, and only obligates them through his age 35 season. Do you think that management could live with that? The benefit for Abreu is that it would guarantee him an extra $40 million beyond what he would get in arbitration - that's $40 million in insurance if he gets hurt or repeats his 2016 season in 2019. 5/$125? when he has 2 arb years left? No, I don't think management or I would go for that. Edwin Encarnacion's contract signed last year was 3/$60 - that was covering his age 34-36 seasons. He reached FA as a substantially better hitter than Abreu. Abreu will hit Free Agency before his age 33 season, so one year younger than Encarnacion, but Encarnaction being a better player should balance that out somewhat. So no, Abreu is not worth 2x as much as Encarnacion, and especially not when he has 2 years of arbitration remaining.

QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 11:30 AM) I think so. I think that's a bigger question to me. If Jose wouldn't sign such a deal right now, then that tells me he is insistent on hitting the free agent market after 2019, which means that rather than trying to get better between 2019-2020, the White Sox will instead be trying to tread water and replace a middle of the order bat. That would be unacceptable to me. We can't have a team seemingly ready to go in 2020 then suddenly be stuck in a scramble for Justin Smoak.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 12:21 PM) I’d give Abreu something like 4/$80M with a 5th year team option and call it a day. He can anchor the middle of the lineup for a big chunk of our window, serve as mentor for Moncada, Robert, & other young LatAm players, improve our sales pitch to free agents next offseason, & further establish our status as the team to sign with for future Cuban amateurs (which becomes important with capped spending). All those factors combined make him worth more to us than other teams IMO. QUOTE (soxfan2014 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 12:28 PM) That contract would be perfect. If you offered him that and he said no, would that make you ready to trade him for the best available offer? It would for me.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 12:21 PM) I’d give Abreu something like 4/$80M with a 5th year team option and call it a day. He can anchor the middle of the lineup for a big chunk of our window, serve as mentor for Moncada, Robert, & other young LatAm players, improve our sales pitch to free agents next offseason, & further establish our status as the team to sign with for future Cuban amateurs (which becomes important with capped spending). All those factors combined make him worth more to us than other teams IMO. I'm totally ok with a setup like this.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 10:59 AM) How am I being optimistic? He’s averaged 3.4 WAR/year in his career and is coming off a 4.1 WAR. Assuming 3 WAR/year over his next two seasons is not being optimistic it’s being realistic. That doesn’t mean it’s an automatic. s*** can happen, but when we’re talking about a one-off item, it should not be considered as part of the base forecast. A 4.5 WAR projection over the next two years is most definitely a downside case if you use any sort of logic & reasoning. I do financial modeling for a living and I can tell you the single biggest mistake people make is when they don’t challenge the output of these models and assume they are automatically accurate. Unfortunately models like these are limited/biased by one-time events and small sample sizes. As a result, there is no perfect model that works for every player/situation and as a result there will always be outliers. Anyone looking at Jose’s career and telling me the most likely outcome for him (even with some conservatism) is being a 2.2 WAR per year player is crazy to me. Either you’re taking what Steamer or some other projection system automatically spits out as gospel or you’re assuming he’s going to get injured. No standard aging curve should assume that type of fall-off in his age 31 & 32 seasons. Take a look at your own words. He was a 5 WAR player in his age 28-29 seasons. So if you saying "I expect him to be 2 wins better in his age 31-32 seasons than he was at age 28-29" isn't optimistic, I don't know what else to call it, and per your words his age 28-29 seasons "don't make sense". I think optimistic is a very fair description of your projection for him. It doesn't have to be wrong, but at age 29 Jose Abreu put up a 1.8 WAR season. You getting to 7 by assuming he repeats 2017 is you being optimistic as just a person saying he'll be at 3.6 or lower based on his 2016 season is being overly pessimistic. Either could be within the range of possibilities from what we have already seen from him.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 11:28 AM) The cosmic cube was in Captain America, they already knew where they were going This is the Tesseract sketched in Howard Stark's notes from Iron Man 2.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 10:37 AM) I gotta disagree with Balta’s logic on team building. Yes, developing your own talent (especially superstar talent) is critical, but there is nothing wrong with filling multiple holes with smart free agent signings if financially possible. The Astros are a perfect example. Yes, they developed their core, but they also went out and signed Beltran, Reddick, Gurriel, & Morton to play important roles. Those four guys earned a combined $50M in 2017. And they were able to add those guys plus some expensive vets via trade (McCann, Verlander) & some pricey relievers in past years (Gregerson & Sipp) because of how little their core guys made. The White Sox should be in a similar position come next season. We could extend Abreu at $20M/per and have a big chunk of our core in place for less than $50M in total commitments. Assuming guys develop as expected, we should be incredibly active in next year’s free agent class. And I’m not just talking about filling in that “one last piece” as Balta routinely calls it. I’m talking adding impact talent where possible (hopefully Machado & an elite reliever) and then buying yourself some time until your next wave of talent is ready by signing veterans to short-term deals at crucial spots. This idea that we can’t compete until all our talent is up and has proven itself is nonsense. The goal should be build a strong foundation, add some vets while you have the financial wiggle room, and gradually introduce more talent over time to help offset escalating costs. Hahn is not going to wait until our less seasoned prospects like Robert, Rutherford, Adolfo, Cease, Burger, & Sheets are ready to start trying to compete. The moment guys like Jimenez, Collins, Kopech, & Hansen are called up our window officially begins. It will likely take a year or two for those guys to fully develop, but Hahn will most definitely try to surround them with as much veteran talent as possible as early as next year, especially since there will be a very deep free agent class to leverage. You are completely misrepresenting everything I've said with the bolded. I pretty much agree with the rest - Free Agency is a supplement around a strong foundation. You just don't like the phrase "one last piece", but that's literally what you describe the Astros as doing. And Beltran wasn't particularly good for the money spent, but because they had a strong foundation that didn't matter.

So here's number 5 for Senator Franken: And apparently today was Russell Simmons's day to fall.

The bolded part in that last section sounds very far from "changing american life". The post is literally writing it as "scary big number sounds scary aren't you scared". How many taxpayers are expected to be in the 40-50k band? Right now that's something like 10% of taxpayers. a $5 billion tax increase on ~12 million people is an increase of $500/year. That's not pleasant, but not going to "Change American Life". If it's phased in over several years which it would be, most of the posters here wouldn't even realize their federal taxes went up.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 09:51 AM) Are you referring to a specific comic plotline? The entire Thanos plotline is sort of that, yeah.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 09:44 AM) The Cubs got Arrieta because Jesse Crain got hurt. The White Sox got a top 50 prospect at the time out of Yency Almonte. They'll never get that lucky again.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 10:37 AM) Why? It's overcrowded. Do we really need to tie in a bunch of low-powered Earthly heroes into a storyline about a villain who can destroy half the universe? That's kind of the point of the plotline. On paper the earthly heroes are actually outmatched.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 10:12 AM) The Cubs A. got very lucky. If Houston drafts Bryant, they are over a century without a title. Theo was second to SD signing Sheilds. He was second to Detroit for Sanchez. Arrieta trade was lucky. Rizzo trade was curious. Hendricks as a throw in worked. B. Spent a heck of a lot of money. The White Sox can't have a payroll anywhere near them. Unlike these other teams, the White Sox won't be able to spend $200 million a year "filling holes". Some luck is going to be needed, and the development team is going to have to do something it has struggled to do for years. Hopefully, it works, but eventually, they are going to have to sign expensive free agents, who may or may not work out. But the Cubs also got very unlucky. Heyward fell apart as soon as they signed him, and there was an "Edwin Jackson" thing that amazingly worked out worse than Edwin Jackson did for the White Sox. The trick remains - you make your own luck. The Cubs got Arrietta because they had playing time to give to pitchers other teams hadgiven up on and one of them broke out. The White Sox are in that position right now with our lineup. The Cubs got Bryant because the Stros didn't pick him, but if they hadn't gotten big offense from Bryant, they could have waited a year or two and had the thing in BHam on its way as a gigantic offensive force. In baseball you make your own luck. If you follow the right path, then you will have some things go lucky for you. That's how it goes - make a bunch of decisions with a long term plan and some decisions will overperform. Put yourself in a position where the decisions that are likely to underperform do not cripple you. If you follow a path of buying free agents where there is a 33% bust rate, then you can't be surprised when you wind up with a 33% bust rate. You need to have a roster that can overcome that, and even the Dodgers and Red Sox and Yankees have been unable to spend themselves around this rule.

QUOTE (Chicago White Sox @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 07:44 AM) Where the hell does a 4.5 WAR projection come from exactly? He’s put up 14.5 WAR over four seasons (3.6 avg). He’s coming off a 4.1 WAR season and has exactly one season below 3.2. To expect him to suddenly drop to a 2.2 WAR in his age 31 & 32 seasons is crazy to me. I would question any projection system that is predicting that type of fall off. To me, I don’t see how anything below 6 WAR makes any sense and I would expect him to be closer to a 7 WAR player. So combine that surplus value with the draft pick he’ll get you when/if he leaves in free agency and he should be plenty valuable. If I wanted to be as pessimistic as you are optimistic, over his age 28 and 29 seasons he put up 5 WAR, so your statement that "nothing below 6 WAR makes sense" for his age 31 and 32 years is undercut by him doing exactly that 2 years ago. The reality is probably somewhere in-between. I think one of the reasons his age 29 season was so bad probably was that he had some leg problems in the first half that he played through. If he stays healthy your 6 is probably pretty close, if that flares back up then the projections could be pretty good.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 06:35 AM) Cubs. Half their line up was free agents. A quarter of it was trades and a quarter was the draft, int. signings. half their lineup so 4.5 players? Contreras, Rizzo, Bryant, Happ, Schwarber, Almora, Russell, Baez. Which of those are free agent signings? Zobrist and Heyward were, but they have been poor signings, and John Jay was a backup. Out of their lineup please tell me where the major contributing free agents are, because I don't believe you.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 01:22 AM) Yankees, Dodgers, Boston, Cubs, yes Cubs, have all done fine spending moolah and getting free agents. Not everybody doing the rebuild thing has won big. Cubs rebuilt, yes, but also bought some players. I personally think 3 starting pitchers we trotted out there last year were an embarrassment to baseball. So you dare to add the Cubs who went through several last in their division finishes in their rebuilding process? You dare to tell me we need to spend big in free agency and then name Boston who spent big money on Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez - literally the only reason Boston is competitive right now is because they stopped that route. The Yankees kept trotting out $200 million payrolls and then started missing the playoffs. They backed off and rebuilt around Judge, Sanchez, and Severino, and look what happened. The Dodgers are insanely good at the draft. Corey Seager, Bellinger, their outfielders, they're developing talent and that's why they're on top. These teams are spending money but it is not their main strategy. They are spending money to fill holes, and even then they are winding up with busts. The Cubs have a contract that is Adam LaRoche quality. You have cited him several times as the kind of thing we shouldn't do. Adam LaRoche is far cheaper than Jayson Heyward and Heyward imploded. You still haven't answered why you're ok with giving money to bums like Heyward and Sandoval?

QUOTE (Tony @ Nov 30, 2017 -> 12:28 AM) If the Sox can't find a taker for Garcia this offseason, they think the value is too low, I don't want them signing him to an extension just because his value is too low on the trade market. I, like many others, aren't sold on who the real Avi is. I would think by July of 2018, we'll have a much better idea. If the Sox want to make a decision on the future of Avi then, I'm all for it, and I would actually prefer it than this offseason. You're trading an unknown commodity right now. So here's my problem with that - we're talking 250 or 300 PAs in the first half. A guy who is a decent player can have a bad 200 PAs just by random chance. Hell, we've seen Garcia while he was a bad hitter have a good 200 PAs before. How much are you willing to bet on those couple hundred PAs? If you don't believe in him enough to sign him right now, then move him for the best offer you get. If you don't believe in him enough to sign him then you should move him and clear space for someone with a good chance of being a 2020 contributor.

QUOTE (Tony @ Nov 29, 2017 -> 11:14 PM) This should be a lot different than Sale/Eaton/Q. It was clear those 3 were identified as the ammo to start this rebuild. Those were the core pieces to use for the future of the franchise. Abreu and Garcia could be used in the same way, but they could also stick around. To me, it's a win either way. Honestly, if Garcia or Abreu is kept around, I don't want either of them kept around on their current deals. We're all sort of circling 2020 in this thread and these guys will be free agents before the season I'm circling. I don't want us having to spend money to keep these guys during the offseason when we should be spending to fill the last bullpen hole to get better. I don't want us saying "we're one player away" and then having Garcia walk just because someone outbids us when we were counting on him for offense from the RF spot. I don't want us not being able to spend in 2019 because we have to worry about whether or not we have a replacement for Abreu on the way. If 2020 is our year, we should know this offseason whether these guys will be here then. Give us certainty before the 2019 FA class hits. If they're going to be let go, move them now so we have time to find a replacement from Cordell or Gillaspie, and see if they can hold the spot. If we're not trading them, tear up their deals and get something done in January. I don't want us giving playing time next year to guys who have a chance of not being here in 2020. Maybe someone picked up as a reliever fine, but give me guys who will be here the year we are sketching a trophy on the calendar.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 29, 2017 -> 09:42 PM) Because we didn't execute it right. Sox have had miserable guys in Buddy Bell on the organizational level and Robin Ventura as manager. They've arguably made some of the most bonehead acquisitions ever in trying to bring in guys to win. The ONLY way to win is not trade everybody and rebuild. Some teams with cash have done just fine in adding guys to buy a pennant. I personally think our front office gets a free pass on almost everything on here. Name a team that has won a pennant dominantly through Free Agency. Literally the last one I've got is the 09 Yankees. That doesn't mean teams don't get some free agents, but literally everyone is using a path different from what you said. No team can make the method work that you keep saying we shoudl do. And if you would have read the post in the Avi thread only 2 or 3 posts before you talked about how "they should sign good free agents instead of bad ones", even the teams that are winning - they have free agent busts. How about your Royals, they have a pennant right? Wouldn't they prefer to no longer have Alex Gordon's contract on the books? The Cubs and that Heyward deal? If you sign 3 free agents, the odds are one of them will be a LaRoche level bust. That's how the Free Agency market works.