caulfield12

Right...in the postseason, TOR starters largely reign, or at least guys like McCullers. What works in the regular season inexorably falls apart without Glasgow. It's the cheapest, most coat efficient way for that particular market, of course. It's also not so much fun for fans, comparable to excessive shifting.

Let’s get through another full season before confirming that as a universal phenomenon…most teams still don’t follow the Rays’ path, and they have suffered a number of very high profile pitching injuries as well. Glasnow, McKay, Honeywell, etc.

That might be a more balanced trade if you consider that Glasnow was likely to miss all of 2022 while adding to payroll…

He’s got a much more extensive record of performance than, let’s say, Cesar Hernandez. If they want to dump him, the Sox should be quite interested. Plus, the AL Central isn’t nearly as competitive as the AL East. Solves the Conforto lineup balancing quandary without the 4-6 year commitment.

Invest that $30 million in SoxTalk SPAC and eventual take to market via IPO…everyone can be millionaires like BuzzFeed. Or to create the best analytics department in baseball, one that is the envy of all.

No way in H.E. double hockey sticks LL

Or post-season...the Rays' downfall.

He's now essentially on a four year, $79 million contract. The odds of an MVP for either Yoan or Buxton are approximately equal, as are their risk/reward scenarios financially. You could even argue Buxton financially has more of an incentive with those Top Ten MVP vote escalators built into his deal. Both top overall prospects in the game at similar career crossroads in terms of putting together one full totally dominant season. Moncada's 2019 is the closest...but then Covid and new baseballs.

It means we better not sign a cheap starter at under $6 million and expect a repeat of 2021 Rodon and Lynn…as they were paid a total of $11.5 million for a whopping 9.1 fWAR. It was an occurrence that’s usually only once or twice a decade with the White Sox, that a FA or acquired pitcher puts up those kind of numbers.

I guess he was pretty much the bottom of the barrel, due to his availability to the rest of MLB...and despite having a really decent fWAR one of those years. Maybe a case of misleading numbers, where the player doesn't equal the sum of all those parts in the clubhouse. Hasn't had a bWAR over 2+ since 2016 with the Brewers. Five different teams over the last five seasons. https://www.fangraphs.com/players/jonathan-villar/10071/stats?position=2B/SS Interestingly, Fangraphs had him at 3.9 fWAR (0.0 bWAR) after playing with Baltimore in 2019, they still didn't protect him on the roster. 2.1fWAR for 2021 with the Mets. Negative defensive ratings for 4 years in a row. Getting older.

They're really going to trust Suzuki as a starter but not Gallo, based on what?

Kimbrel…

Yuck. Another $7-9 million on this bullpen, would make it far and away the most expensive in MLB. And you are unlikely to get a repeat out of Tepera, but you're buying high on him, too.

They had seven shots inside the five in that quarter and couldn't score. Guess that was the high point of the Iowa effort against Michigan...oh, well.

Whatever they do, Georgia shouldn’t be able to play Alabama again until they at least win a playoff game first. Right now, it might be Michigan/GA and then Alabama/Cincy. From a competitiveness standpoint, though, Cincy/MI and UGA/Bama would be more compelling semi finals, I guess. Then again, Bama might overlook Cincy. Unlikely, but possible. OkState and OU definitely didn’t belong anywhere near the playoff. Notre Dame might/should be able to hang with Cincy or Michigan.

Looking like yet another title for Bama. Yawn.

Not sure how 1.4-1.6 fWARs the last two seasons are much of an upgrade. At best, you’re even with Madrigal’s projected production. Just at a much higher price point. If they’re going this route, would almost rather bet on Andrelton Simmons returning to a 5 fWAR player at age 32 after three consecutive disappointing seasons…where he could just concentrate on defense and have no pressure to do anything but hit 9th. That’s still not likely to beat Madrigal, either.

He’s referring to Rodon…

His rookie season was very solid before he hit a wall like Beckham, it was his second year that was much less so…

They won’t cross the picket lines if they are legit prospects…

Rodon earned a lot more than $3 million last year…same with Lynn’s deal, although duly rewarded with a nice extension. McCann before the Mets paid him off.

Major League Baseball’s first lockout in 26 years is already off to a weird start — players aren’t officially listed on any team site, just faceless mugshots where smiling faces should be. The only question remaining is how long the lockout will last. Negotiations are ongoing. I turned to our stellar MLB writers to gauge the temperature: Levi Weaver, Rangers: Feb. 1 Jake Kaplan, Astros: Feb. 10 Dan Connolly, Orioles: Feb. 14 Chris Strauss, MLB managing editor: Feb. 14 Tim Britton, Mets: Feb. 16 Jayson Stark, senior writer: Feb. 23 Nick Groke, Rockies: March 1 Andy McCullough, senior writer: May 15 (“I'm laughing to myself, thinking about how bad Twitter will be if it lasts until May 15. Put me down for that. It won't last until May 15.”) Consensus average: Nobody believes in some pre-January breakthrough. February it is. I’ll enter the fray and say this gets done quickly: Pencil me in for Jan. 20. Feel free to reply to this email with your prediction and, if you get it right, we’ll figure out a fun prize. theathletic.com

KW/White Sox Don’t Always Get Their Man A couple of months ago, in breaking down where the Twins' 2021 season went wrong, President of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey offered this assessment of the pitching staff he assembled in concert with Thad Levine and other key decisionmakers: "Our pitching in aggregate, early on, guys didn't throw the ball. … When you're talking about the one-year pitching market that's in that range of cost, there's a lot of outcomes there, and sometimes, they do line up that way without getting great outcomes. I would say that we have to come back and evaluate that because we didn't hit on those for sure. Those guys didn't pitch as well as we thought they could have." J.A. Happ and Matt Shoemaker were one-year deal guys who delivered a 6.77 and 8.06 ERA, respectively, for a combined $10 million — an average of $5 million .… As I talked about on Thursday's Daily Delivery podcast, Bundy has upside. He finished ninth in the Cy Young voting in the shortened 2020 season. But in his other three most recent seasons, he posted ERAs of 5.45, 4.79 and — just last year — 6.06. The Twins seem inclined to believe they can either fix Bundy or that the pitcher they are getting is magically the one who was very good in 11 starts two seasons ago and not the one who largely struggled in his other 74 starts since the start of 2018. "Our hope is that we can get him healthy and pitching, and we can see a lot more of the 2020 version of Dylan over the course of a full season," Falvey said on Wednesday. They can hope. But hope is not a plan. Maybe it will work out, and certainly this isn't the final pitching move the Twins will make even if it's the last one for a while. But for now, we're left to wonder: Did they learn anything from 2021? [email protected] 612-673-7564 “No need to read the comments, here is what they will say: Pohlads are cheap. (JR is cheap) The front office are stat nerds, not real baseball men. (Well, I’m not sure about stat nerds, just nerds.) They pretend to make offers for top players to save face while low balling them. (See Parkman) They signed Buxton because they had to, but what they need is pitching, pitching, pitching. (See adding Kimbrel but not addressing RF.) Another last place finish for the Twins. (Well, not going that far, lol.) They will never win anything unless they fire everybody and kidnap Garrett Cole.” (LoL) Don't worry, they have had discussions with every good pitcher on the market! ? And likely made offers low enough to guarantee they won’t sign them. I still believe at heart we are closest to a combination of Twins and Mariners fans. We lack the organizational efficiency, gritty underdog spirit and small market sizes of TB, Oakland, Milwaukee, Cleveland, etc.

2011 was all about Adam Dunn, and that was a doozy. He did “okay” after that season, but it almost singlehandedly handedly destroyed the post 2005 Sox. Guillen going AWOL and JR cutting ties with Buehrle, KW soon thereafter got his promotion upstairs and the lost Robin Ventura wandering in the wilderness years of 2013-2016. Using the popular Robin as cover with the fans for their own ineptitude. Shark and Shields trades, among others…as well as Cabrera/LaRoche/Robertson and Sale destroying the ‘83 throwback jerseys due to lack of stretchiness. The only positive was pretty much Abreu and individual seasons of Eaton and Avi. Danks imploding into a ball of fire.

https://www.fool.com/taxes/2020/09/25/why-does-billionaire-warren-buffett-pay-a-lower-ta/ This is not rocket science, here. Or simply look at the net taxes paid by corporations like Amazon/FB by domiciling in Ireland or the Caribbean. Or a certain former president the past 10-15 years. Not something any middle class taxpayer can do, exactly. Even the billionaires know it’s a joke. “A 70% marginal tax rate. A 77% estate tax. A 3% tax on every dollar over $1 billion of net worth. As various plans to tax the ultra-rich gain steam in American political discourse—and after a recent bombshell report that the 400 richest Americans paid a lower tax rate than other income groups last year—many billionaires have been challenged to address their very existence amid growing income inequality. At least a dozen billionaires have made public statements that call for the super-rich to pay more in taxes. On Monday, Salesforce chairman and cofounder Marc Benioff penned the latest in a string of billionaire op-eds calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. The California software entrepreneur, who ranked No. 93 on The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans released earlier this month, wrote that “increasing taxes on high-income individuals like myself would help generate the trillions of dollars that we desperately need to improve education and health care and fight climate change.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/2019/10/15/billionaires-more-taxes-gates-buffett-bloomberg/?sh=7cfe5bf57792 Even Forbes of all publications is sympathetic. In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes. Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row. ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits. Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each and every year. https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax