caulfield12

Would you just take on his existing contract like the White Sox did with Alex Rios....?

Great, the Dodgers again...

Hicks should be back 100%. The Cardinals usually don't like to pay non-elite closers top of the market salaries. Too many lingering questions about Kimbrel to assert he's still a Top 3-5 guy.

All.FA.pitching.is.inherently.risky.

But Lynn isn’t exactly a non-zero risk at his age and weight/conditioning level. Keuchel wasn’t supposed to be risky, either.

If nothing else, it would completely run contrary to typical White Sox free agency form…sort of a breath of fresh air. Have never understood our lack of open-mindedness the last 15+ years on Pacific Rim players. Seems we only signed maybe one South Korean and one Taiwanese pitcher that entire time frame. Finally, the marketing angle in a city where we are always going to trail the Cubs unless Ricketts starts contributing to Putin directly or something similarly outlandish.

He earned that money almost based on his 2021 performance alone. And we have no way of knowing about his medicals. Look what the SFG did last offseason, they were 3/3 on Gausman, DeSclafini and Alex Wood. Faidi might be wrong on Carlos, but he has also been one of the brightest young GM’s in the game since taking the reigns in SF. To summarize, pretty similar risk profile to Eeovaldi…similar dollars. That said, a lot of those numbers were put up against the AL Central.

Suzuki also opens up marketing opportunities as well as starting a pipeline to Japan like we had with Iguchi and Takatsu.

Do they still print tickets in the digital age?

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/03/bryan-reynolds-rumors-turned-down-extension-pirates.html White Sox name mentioned in connection with the highly-coveted Reynolds. Trade cost would likely be prohibitive…but, then again, Pirates have made some head scratchers.

Well, except for TA having all the raw tools in the world to play SS, vs. Vaughn’s quite obvious physical limitations.

Sure, but Shields wasn't even a TOR starter at the end of his Royals' career, let alone with the Padres, and his stuff had clearly eroded from his Big Game James days in Tampa...you were never going to get Verlander-Esque results from him in a million years.

https://www.startribune.com/baseball-lockout-jim-souhan-the-never-going-back-crowd-will-be-soon-buying-13-ballpark-beers/600154818/

https://www.si.com/mlb/phillies/around-mlb/who-favorites-land-seiya-suzuki-after-mlb-lockout-trade-rumors-gossip From this article, seems the Red Sox, Rangers and Mariners are three of the favorites. Specifically for those bored with Conforto, Bryant, Castellanos and Eddie Rosario rumors. But the ZiPS translations for Suzuki put him in the .280 to .290 range in batting average — almost Wade Boggs in 2020s MLB — with 20-30 homers per year and an OBP somewhere around .350. Translations for NPB aren’t going to be quite as accurate as the ones for organized baseball over here, but at this point, we have a great deal of data from the players coming back and forth from Japan, considerably more than we have for Korea. Projected in a neutral park, ZiPS has Suzuki as a better-than-league-average corner outfielder but one who projects below All-Star levels without another step forward: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/projecting-seiya-suzuki/ Giants, Padres, Cubs also mentioned https://www.mlb.com/news/seiya-suzuki-rumors March 10: Suzuki among top remaining free agents The 27-year-old Japanese outfielder is one of the most intriguing free agents left on the market, and a whole lot of teams are reported to be interested. The Mariners and Giants look like they're frontrunners, and Suzuki fits well with both clubs. The Red Sox could be a landing spot, too, since they have a need for a righty slugging corner outfielder -- Suzuki hit 38 home runs for the NPB's Hiroshima Carp in 2021. Japan's Nikkan Sports also reported in January that the Padres and Cubs could be among the finalists once Suzuki's negotiations resume. Whoever signs him could be getting a 20-plus home run hitter.

Craig Grebeck, Jr., Esteban Beltre, Jr., and Norberto Paco Martin, Jr., all expected to get looks at second base.

You forgot to include our annual obsession with Joc Pederson.

Jay and Alonso (aka Family and Friends Plan) should have stopped the sane ones. Those three ESPN imminent signing headlines that offseason really took a lot out of many that live and die with the Sox.

I am November 3, but 1969, haha. My mom is April 3rd, and son is March 3rd, 2015. 45 years apart again (for a grandchild) would be a bad trend because that would make me 90. Putin or a junk food and soda-fueled diet will get me before then...although my mom is almost 93 now. And a White Sox WS is STILL much more likely than Iowa winning an NCAA championship in basketball or football. Which reminds me I now have to resubscribe to MLB Extra Innings again.

I'm just happy Passan has a new baseball-related topic to write about finally.

Al, is that you?

Eric Hosmer will finish Top 10 in 2022 ML MVP voting.?

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2022/03/free-agent-notes-rodon-kikuchi-correa-soler.html Yankees and Twins in on Rodon and Kikuchi...

One can easily imagine lady luck turning against the Sox and Giolito, Kopech or Lynn (especially with such an abbreviated spring training) struggling with conditioning injuries out of the gate, leading to some type of season-altering impact on the rotation. And that's with our #30 rated farm as our back-up plan/support system for filling in and/or trades. Eventually, the Tigers are going to jump up and bite the Sox, perhaps not this year yet, but it's not that far off if they are willing to spend more liberally in FA.

There does seem to be a rule of Sox karma that bringing back someone like a Montas or Bassitt or fill-in-the-blank name (what's his name we traded for Lynn, for example...from UF via the Nationals)...scares the H.E.L.L. out of everyone. When's the last time that Billy Beane was actually in charge of day-to-day decision making for the A's? He's rent free in our heads at this point. It's like Michael Lewis' Moneyball is still embedded in the Sox fan psyche. The irony there is that Miguel Olivo led to Freddy Garcia, and that Cotts eventually became one of the most important members of the 2005 bullpen.

Look at the track record of teams like the Braves, Brewers, Indians and Rays developing starters over the last decade. White Sox have had almost no successes internally except relievers, and almost all of their pitching staff was imported from elsewhere, so it's natural to be just a little bit skeptical when you compare organizational track records head to head. (Not to mention the most recent "wave" of young pitching in A ball pretty much all ran into a brick wall last year.) Giolito gives most of the credit to an outsider, Lopez was almost a lost cause before the second half of last year and we all know about Kopech's travails.