caulfield12

I didn't say they would have a "problem with attendance," which is already masked by the official attendance numbers in NYC disguised as empty seats. I said no Yankees' fans were going to be particularly inspired by that type of off-season acquisition. Now the argument with the White Sox has been that "winning the offseason" doesn't really mean much anymore...that the only thing that really matters is not stars like Machado or Harper, but WINNING. Just win, baby! to quote Greg. Or to quote the Washington Nationals/Dave Martinez. Of course, recently, we haven't been either winning off-seasons or regular seasons. Baseball, is, after all, about entertainment. At a certain point, that means contract with a star or headliner...whether you're the Yankees, Twins or White Sox.

Let's talk on Opening Day when we see the state of the White Sox fanbase. For years, we heard they would abandon a rebuild in droves. That hasn't happened, yet. In fact, attendance grew a bit...at worst you could say stabilized, although pricing had to come down to a reasonable level from the early 2010's.

Sure, but which Yankees' fans are going to shell out thousands of money in December or January for season tickets because they traded for Matthew Boyd?

The point made was that the Yankees and Mets will never trade. Well, we said the exact same thing about the Cubs and White Sox for a decade...until it happened. The Yankees couldn't use EXACTLY 1 or 2 of those pitchers in 2020? You could argue they might even be better off giving away extra prospects than investing $300+ million of new money into Cole.

Unless they do like the Cubs did with Q and decide that Cano and Cespedes are shot and that reinjecting a bunch of new talent across 3-4 positions is the way to go...especially with the ticking time bomb of high velocity starters' elbows these days.

Unless they put Moncada in CF/RF...which is highly unlikely. I just can't imagine having to move two future studs around (that are cost-controlled) in order to accommodate what will likely be one of the biggest contracts in professional sports.

Unless they're convinced he can be a TOR starter with some tweaks, they'll need to do better than that. Thor or deGrom or Stroman would make more sense.

Salazar might be even worse than Santana...you need someone you can really count on for at least 100-120 innings.

The problem is once you get past Wheeler (and even Zack, too)....we can pick apart all the weaknesses and flaws of the next group, which is Bumgarner, Ryu, Odorizzi, Keuchel and Hamels (just for win-now teams). So then you're pretty much stuck with disappointment...especially if all the big dogs are going after Wheeler. We KNOW that Reinsdorf is highly unlikely to add a fifth year onto a potential Wheeler contract, which very might well end up being the dividing line between signing and not signing him. It's much easier to imagine them justifying 4/$80-90 than 5/$90-110 million. Then it REALLY gets tricky, because almost everyone's going to be going after that same list of 4-5 pitchers, warts and all.

Not if they're actually planning on competing this season...he's a 4th/5th outfielder there. Not even Engel can be turned into the next Semien, or Eaton, in this case.

Why would any sane person predict the Reds over the rest of the division?

Sigh. Here we go again, getting the hopes of the fanbase up. It's like being an Iowa football or basketball fan and thinking they MIGHT get a McDonald's/Parade All-American or 4-5 star recruit when going up against Kansas, Kentucky, Duke and Carolina.

Odorizzi certainly makes sense as one of the "fallback" 1A pitchers: 1) He won't break the bank 2) Already familiar with the division, and successful within it 3) Gives the Sox some more experience at the top of the rotation 4) Weakens Minnesota's rotation/depth chart (don't care much about the 2nd round draft pick at this point) If they do bring him into the fold, I wouldn't be totally shocked if he provided some insight about Gibson/Pineda/Martin Perez...as the second signing in that pitching class, assuming they get another "on the cheap" for the back end/Lopez-Kopech-Cease insurance.

LoL @ Merkin I guess he could cost himself his job by saying the exact opposite.

It's not like the Royals' system produced much from the time he was there...after that run of Top 3-5 draft picks, it has been about as productive as the White Sox system before the rebuild (or current status).

We used to have precisely two competitive advantages/niches, Cuban players and keeping the roster healthier than nearly anyone else. Now what are we known for, in terms of an identity...? Not spending on coaching staff, international market failure, drafting failure, lack of analytics driven approach, dearth of scouting/not investing efficiently, the Machado fiasco and loyalty to nearly everyone?

For who, though? Madrigal and Hoerner replicate each other....and they don’t need Vaughn w/ Rizzo. I suppose someone could make an argument about moving Baez off SS next year, but catchers near 30 always have a risk in terms of becoming 1B/DH. For example, Sal Perez’s value not catching is pretty negligible.

Does the “average” Sox post on a Sox related message board five to ten times a day...? No way.

Perception is 90% of reality...the casual Sox fan who has become completely disengaged quite possibly could reach such a conclusion without taking a deep dive.

He’s been successful at profit maximization...despite probably having the worst rate of return on FA spending as measured by $ per fWAR. Amazingly, it’s negative -1 for $188 million in spending outside of Abreu (who was a KW/Paddy signing). Even if you’re overpaying egregiously, you should at least get 10-15 bWAR or fWAR. That -1 shouldn’t even be possible, imagining that you took all the free agents each cycle, pinned balloons to the wall representing those players, and threw darts while blindfolded until you hit JR’s FA spending limit per year. We should just pay the Astros to let their proprietary AI/algorithm make decisions. Over the long term, that would save a ton of money that JR spends on KW and Hahn.

Helio Castroneves

The problem is that the hitting at 3rd wasn't tolerable, either. If he could just hit at a 725-750 ops clip at second base and get on base at a decent clip, he'd be quite valuable. Alas, not to be.

Which puts them back in first...Berrios, Odorizzi, Graterol, Pineda and their 40 man roster. Of course, a lot depends there on how well Pineda does off the juice. But that’s 12.3 of fWAR with Graterol at just 0.1 and lots of uncertainty between Smeltzer and Dobnak, one of the top recent candidates to have Rookie of the Year 2 greenlit by Disney. Dobnak put up 0.8 fWAR in under 30 innings, but got slaughtered against NY.

Guaranteeing a third year in his mid 30’s is completely unnecessary. So I guess we’re basically conditioned by now to expect it to happen...

Considering the Twins are down four starting pitchers, but the offseason hasn’t even started...just competing with Minny alone in the FA pitching market will be fascinating, as neither team likes to overspend but both have obvious needs on that front. The specter of losing so often to the Yankees is hanging over everything they do. Even having the regular season they did, they’re going to have to figure out how to convince season ticket holders it won’t end up being more of the same in 2020.