35thstreetswarm

I hate the Cubs and their fans as much as anybody, but yes--it was.

According to BaseballReference he had a 6.1 WAR season in 2017 -- two seasons ago.

Really hoping this happens. Also surprised folks aren't more pumped about the possibility of Ozuna. He's a masher still in his 20s with a 6 WAR ceiling and a gold glove. It seems like his stock has fallen around here over the last year for some reason (maybe it's the shoulder), and I don't get it.

Takeaway: Sox plan to do good things that make sense. If things make sense when taking many factors into account, they’ll do them.

It would be beyond disappointing—it would be a concession that even in the best of circumstances we are a second rate franchise. That said, I’m not ready to give up on the Sox being in on Strasburg.

That makes more sense—the offers were pretty close.

Agreed. It's not like he's Stephen Strasburg for example.

OK - good end point to this argument.

Will be fun to see Barrett/Pierzynski part II with Bumgarner/Contreras. ...or Portis/Mirotic part II with Puig/Bumgarner?

The Sox have been a top 5 payroll team before, and if they sniff real contention they will be again.

Cole or Strasburg. Go ahead with your little laugh emoji

Bingo. The whole rebuild set this up as our time to splurge. Saying “we couldn’t do that, that would be a splurge” misses the point. Too many freaking Tiny Tims on this Board. “I don’t even want the Turkey Fathahh...The scrawny duck you bought us is splendid! God bless us every one!” This is only Zack Wheeler we’re talking about ffs, and people seem happy not only with settling for him, but settling for losing out on him but trying really hard in doing so.

I’ll eat crow if it turns out that he absolutely, unequivocally turned down real money to go play somewhere else. I know I’ve been a broken record around here that that almost never happens with mlb free agents. I am still guessing when more details come out it will be more complicated—whether “extra” money was on the table will be arguable, it will turn out they were roughly equivalent offers (ala Heyward and the Cardinals). We’ll see. Oh well, I was not that wrapped up emotionally in landing the third prize in the free agent pitching sweepstakes.

I understand that from a fan's perspective. It's perfectly understandable to say, in retrospect, that you'd change absolutely nothing about the formula that led to a WS since you never know if it might have altered the trajectory that led to the ultimate prize. If I had a time machine I wouldn't trade Juan Uribe straight up for A-Rod at the beginning of the 2005 season lest it somehow disrupt the space time continuum and cost us the precious. I wouldn't even magically cause Frank to come back from his injury for the playoffs because...who knows? As a non-Cub fan I'm not burdened by all that, though. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation and I do sometimes wonder if Chapman IN FACT was strictly necessary to the championship and if there was any way for them to win it while hanging on to Torres. We'll never know.

I wish there was a way to automatically block all posts suggesting players regularly refuse millions from teams because they don’t “like” them.

Strasburg and it's not even close. Who would choose Wheeler?

Yep - losing the consolation prize means there is no prize.

Obviously didn't keep his head on a swivel: that's what you gotta do when you find yourself thrust into the middle of vicious cockfight.

I get it: everybody has written off the possibility of the Sox getting the nicest thing, or even the second nicest. We're thrilled we made a signing to get our payroll up to, what, the 30th percentile in MLB? It's just strange everyone is so cheerful about these constraints we seem to have accepted. The FO gets slammed unnecessarily (in my view) all the time on this board, but they've really put a spell on us here for some reason. For the record, I don't think we need to accept it. I am a broken record on this, but the *Sox have been a top 5 payroll team* in recent memory. Don't know if they'll get there again, but at this point I see no reason to build a 120 million salary cap into all thinking and expectations about this team.

As negative as people are on this board about so many things, I’m kind of amazed at how jacked everybody is about the possibility the Sox could sign the third best pitcher on the free agent market (maybe) when we easily have payroll room for #s 1 and 2. (...Debbie Downer—wamp wah)

I suspect Yolmer is the kind of player some folks on this board will fall back in love with when they seem him in another uniform.

Obviously. But it's kind of obtuse to treat (a) spending money on baseball players (whose "win" contribution can be calculated) and (b) building a winning baseball team as if they're two completely separate things. Foregoing opportunities to add multi-win players to your roster when you have the resources to do so is a bad thing to do when trying to build a winning roster.

I'd be furious, too. The pressure's on as far as I'm concerned. This is the first offseason where there's truly no excuse not to sign premium free agents: we have clear needs, there are elite players available to fill them, we have a surplus of payroll room, and we're coming into our supposed contention window. If we don't get it done and other clubs do it's just a clear concession we're not serious. (Last offseason was damn close to "no excuse" as well, but I guess they could say it was a year or two early, and they also just got "surprised" on Machado, who they thought they had in hand. )

"Fortunately, Cole or Strasburg IS going to happen." There -- the baseless speculation ledger is back to even and we can concentrate on waiting to see what actually happens.

Were they? Neither even made it to the Series.