Balta1701

His life was ruined - so he’s bankrupt, the $68 million someone said he earned is gone? From the opening of this article he has a nice house in a tree lined community and multiple PR reps working for him other than just Nightengale. Calling that a ruined life seems like a big exaggeration.

You said earlier that this pleasant rehab article confirms “perpetrators will be punished.” That sure seems to disagree with your statement here.

I am unimpressed by any punishment that includes friendly profiles in USA Today.

Freedom of speech entitles everyone to a profile in USA Today? I want to read yours, when does it come out?

And we will certainly believe those guys as long as you get to tell Balta he’s wrong. After all; it’s not like any of them insisted that Cease was 90% likely to be moved this offseason and covering their precious reputation.

In other words you now realize there’s a real chance I’m right and Cease will not be going anywhere this offseason, but you need to move the goalposts so that you don’t have to admit I was right. “Sure he didn’t move but that’s because Jimmy said the Sox were stubborn so ha!” After all, the insiders have been completely right about the Cease negotiations so far, the leaks haven’t at all been self serving.

This is literally what I have been saying will happen since this thread started.

Naw, if they were in 2nd or 3rd place And around .500 they would absolutely declare that they had a wonderful offseason and their plans were a success. They’d add players.

I don’t know that I buy this part. It still seems to me that the idea of the Central being always pathetic is a new, recent phenomenon. Last year the Twins took an easy division, but they had the run differential of a 90 win team. They were held back by their poor performance in close games. 2022, the Guardians were a legit 90 win team. 2021 the White Sox were a legit 90 win team. 2019 you had a couple good years by the Twins. 2016-2017 was the peak of an Indians team that went to a WS game 7 and won 100 games the next year. Before that the Royals and Tigers had multi year runs including WS appearances for Detroit and a KC title. Mostly the Central has behaved like a normal division, a team plays well and wins 90+ games. What we saw last year, where no team could do that, seems like an anomaly. I don’t know which team it will be, but out of Cleveland, Minnesota, and Detroit, there are a couple teams that could definitely come together and push 90 wins.

Bears trade Fields for a 2nd rounder, trade their first for 3 more picks, and draft Penix with their 2nd pick.

I picked Giolito’s contract value. 2 years ago we thought he was a $200 million guy.

I promise to go out and be a well motivated professional for only 20% of his next contract.

Dylan Cease is at a spot in his career where a strong season is literally the difference between a $45 million contract and a $200+ million contract. If he can’t find the motivation to be a Cy Young candidate for 2 years in that amount of money, then you wouldn’t want to trade for him anyway.

He’s in that iffy range right now where one elite or one really bad game now also will really affect how his end of year stats look, and that’s a fair way to evaluate him too.

Exactly who I was thinking about. Would the Raiders do that? I dunno, they have a lot to figure out otherwise, but if they’re going to bring in a new coach and commit to a couple more down years to develop a QB, it makes some sense. Giving the city a star qb also seems to make some sense as well. Especially the QB from USC.

I’m not sure I’d want to pass on both Williams and Harrison, but if the Raiders wanted to come In with an offer like the Panthers did last year, 3 firsts or two firsts, a second, and a player I’d need, I’m listening intently.

While he was never elite, Tim Anderson in 2020-2021 was a solid, slightly above average fielder. No amazing tools but DRs, UZR, and OAA all Say the same thing those years. He collapsed in 2022 for reasons we still don’t understand. It all started right around the time where his “personal issues” started hitting Twitter - there was a game with the Guardians, Keuchel was on the mound, and all of a sudden the entire White Sox infield forgot how to infield. Anderson had 3 errors, Abreu had 1 and iirc there was another play by someone that could have been an error. Keuchel publicly commented on his defense after the game and the White Sox immediately started an 8 game losing streak - Anderson was terrible in the field for much of that, I think he had a couple more errors. I remember joking that the Mon-Starrs had stolen the infields baseball abilities, it was so bad and such a sudden collapse from those guys, Anderson in particular. There was probably more going on behind the scenes than just Anderson and an affair going public based on how the whole team flatlined, this was where you could really see that LaRussa was completely lost. That said, Anderson was a bloody mess in the field in 22-23, but was perfectly fine before that. Not elite, but fine. With Montgomery and Ramos coming up, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical about the White Sox needing a defense first SS right now. A SS who is adequate defensively and elite with the bat is fine by me and hopefully that’s Montgomery.

And the threat to do so isn’t unreasonable at all. Those teams have to know the Bears will be sizing up Fields vs. Williams and Maye also. If Poles were to decide to go with Williams I certainly wouldn’t call it a mistake on paper, so if Washington wants one of these two QBs they can’t low-ball any offer to the Bears.

If this doesn’t work and they won’t deal, fine. Take the QB and see who will trade for Fields. Washington will need a QB.

Right now I’m picturing Ryan Poles in 2028 with 9 first round picks.

IMO - if they decide to go with MHJ they also need to come out of this with a couple of extra picks again. E.G

Well yeah Getz hasn’t acquired any of those. The only guys he’s acquired are of a type.

Finally seeing the light? Dude, go back and read literally every comment I’ve made in this thread. I’ll wait.

Well first of all, if the offers at the trade deadline are crap, then it’s probably long past time to fire that pitching coach as a guy with Cease’s stuff should not continue being as mediocre as last season. If you don’t have good trade deadline offers, the balance becomes - the offers you do get vs. the draft pick compensation you’d get the next year. An offer that returns something like what the Sox got for Lynn or Giolito would be disappointing, but if that’s the best you can do it probably helps more than waiting until the 2026 draft.