caulfield12

Supposedly, that’s worth $9 million per war on the free agent market. Even his 1.7 fWAR (combining b and fWAR/2) would suggest he’s an $18 million value, but he would be pretty fortunate to get 1/3rd of that.

We’re exaggerating to say Giolito is going to end the year comparable to peak Sale, because that’s a surefire Hall of Fame pitcher prior to this season. Unless you just go by his consecutive games winning stretch. Quintana...sure.

McDougal always had the first round pedigree and college results...

You can at least put him into that machine in the museum that flattens and stretches him out into...well, anything that’s not Covey. I don’t see why they don’t try him as a 6th or 7th inning reliever, that’s the only place he can even theoretically succeed.

We’ll see if he finishes that well. Castellanos getting more exposure playing for the Cubs and into the postseason could give him a bump, too. I guess it’s THE position that we have those 4-5 minor leaguers that could (at least one of them) give you similar production in two year’s time, so that it would be understandable not to give out a long-term deal, or Abreu at DH. That said, even the biggest minor league cheerleaders would be hard pressed to make the case for any of those guys to reach a 4 or 5 fWAR season. They’d probably pick Adolfo, which is about a 1/8 or 1/10 shot right now. Grandal and quality veteran starting pitching are the biggest must have’s, unless Collins torches the majors somehow or McCann rallies to his April-June offensive numbers. Even then, you could see the beauty of having Grandal and Collins that could each play first...all three would fit together well on the roster. At at any rate, you can find a Corey Dickerson type for RF and put the money you saved on Ozuna into the bullpen instead, similar to the moves for Dotel and Linebrink that worked well for at least one playoff run.

Anderson was a lot closer to that raw high school basketball player than he was a polished SEC/ACC/PAC 12 junior or senior.

Ozuna’s struggling enough right now (1.6 fWAR) that he doesn’t warrant $20 million per season...he’s been above 4.5 twice but the rest of his career is just 9.8 over 4 1/2 seasons or so. Pretty inconsistent. He does have age on his side. On the other hand, had he put together another 4-5.5 free agency year, he wouldn’t be nearing our price range. But these are the decisions that GM’s, not fans, are paid to get right more often than not.

And yet most Minnesota fans or Red Sox fans the second to last time they won would be elated with their veteran free agent additions...just nearly impossible to get hits across the board like they both did.

This has to be said in the voice of voice of Val "Iceman" Kilmer to be truly effective.

Did Benetti or Stone go on about his "five tool talent" again? If he could just put it all together....words all Sox fans have heard a bazillion times about position prospects since and early 2000's. When we end up with a pick around 8, 9 or 10, we can blame the Tigers or Indians. Abreu probably owes 1/4th of his annual salary to the Detroit Tigers organization, or at least their pitching staffs since 2014. Doyle Alexander might be more effective out there than this dude.

I'm so used to it in China...especially with most important sports being on Sundays, you're waking up at like 2-3 a.m. to watch Tiger Woods at Augusta, and then you have all the day games, where there's exactly 12-13 hours' time difference, so the night games in the US are usually when I'm arriving at school. Summer vacation is almost over (my annual US trip)...no more Hostess powdered donuts and steak sandwiches for lunch, or Taco Bell, or Dr. Pepper. The hardest is not having a car or drive throughs (although everything in the world can be delivered quickly and inexpensively at least). Then you go back to the shock of a place where girls get ridiculed for weighing over 125-130 pounds, while the the average Iowan is 30-45 pounds overweight.

Is that the one from the LA area who was connected to Joc Pederson rumors this spring....someone's mom's twitter, if I recall?

So then we're left with Girardi (if he's not the new Cubs' manager), Scioscia or someone like Jeff Bannister...who was very effective with the Rangers when they had enough talent to work with. Vizquel and Thome are respected, but maybe not feared...Jirschele is so young still, and it would be ballsy to put a manager at that age behind the cockpit of a playoff-contending team, but we've definitely seen it recently in the NFL, which is 10X more difficult than MLB.

That's always the strangest feeling on the West Coast when you're visiting and games are starting at 9 or 10 a.m., something like the British Open or Wimbledon would be even crazier, or English Premier League football.

No clue why Anderson was breaking back to 2nd when there were two outs in the inning already. He got away with it, but those are the typical "baseball fundamentals" issues we have to clean up if we want to take a step forward. DJ and Farmer were saying the coaching staff definitely needs to step in after the road trip and "go back to basics" with drills/instruction before games, way too many sloppy plays out there that shouldn't be hapepning.

They'll get one more year from Reinsdorf...the 2020-21 cycle. The problem is that a lot of their buying opportunities have disappeared into thin air with so many under 25-26 players signing long-term contract extensions. This upcoming offseason looked entirely different 6-8 months ago. Now it's going to be a case where the agents/players have a huge advantage, at least for the premium players on the market. The main opportunities will be sorting through those veterans in their 30's and finding the ones that still have life (like a Nelson Cruz or Cole Hamels). And even then there's the downside risk...Lester, for example, has been great (most of the time) for the Cubs, and has certainly been worth every penny...but you can start to see him REALLY falling off now.

Not even the Cubs are going to be able to do that. There's always going to be a natural cycle of rising and falling for even the best organizations unless they have absolute perfect drafting/scouting when their picks are lower. If you look at the Red Sox, even with their 4 World Series wins in 15 years, they have a number of down years mixed in as well. Only the Braves have that decade plus stretch (14 years)...everyone else has been limited to 4-6 years, pretty much. The Dodgers also have gotten to 7, as of this postseason.

Of course, from 2006-2013. A few seasons in top 5, mostly averaging somewhere between 8th-12th, which is actually where the value of the franchise was at the time. I think the absolute peak for franchise value was #8, I think currently we're down to the #14-16 range, which is certainly to be expected with the losing/retooling/rebuilding stretch from 2013 until today.

He's actually in kind of a rut now, I think a big part of it's because the Padres are 100% out of the wild card race. While he has a consecutive hit streak going, they're usually just one hit per game, granted, there's 2-3 homers mixed in there. His K rate is 8% and strikeout rate has been hovering around 30% for the last couple of months. If you just looked at it superficially, you could see that Jimenez has 26 xb hits in 286 at-bats and Tatis has 37 in 339 at-bats...or that Tatis' error totals have crept up quite a bit in the last six weeks 1) due to forcing throws he shouldn't make, to go for a DP instead of taking out at first, for example, 2) Hosmer's having a bad year defensively, 3) he's waiting too long to make throws to show off his arm or going a little too much 3/4's sometimes and the ball will sail. 75% of the mistakes are throwing, rather than fielding. The 975 ops doesn't seem sustainable due to the BABIP, but he gets SO many hits on balls in the infield...similar to those seasons Eaton and Avi had for the Sox. I think he's made 5-6 outs in the last couple of weeks that were balls that were blistered right at fielders, it all evens out. That said, he's also made two amazing plays...one was a ball with the infield at medium depth and he cut down the runner at the plate with a laser that he couldn't have replicated if he was given 100 tries to do it again. Last night, there was a wild pitch and the ball got away from Narvaez...you could just see that he was determined to get to third from the start, and he REALLY accelerated between 2nd and 3rd, it's pretty incredible for a guy of his size. Of course, he also had a game where he got thrown out two consecutive innings at 3B, but they were errors of aggressiveness, and Andy Green wasn't too upset. I don't think I've ever seen a player since the statcast era began that has been involved in more instant replay decisions on the basepaths. So far, the only two comps for hitting this many homers from the SS position at age 20 are A-Rod and Carlos Correa. And he's accumulated a 3.5 fWAR in just 77 games and headed for at least 20/20 and maybe 25/25 if he decides to steal more bases. Like most Latin Americans, he's probably most vulnerable to sliders low and off the plate, but he's also gone through stretches where almost every hit was to RF because they didn't want him to get extended and pull the ball for homer or double.

You realistically expect payroll will be $120-140 million next year, which is still below average? The top 6-8 teams now are really pulling that average payroll number up, compared to a few teams like the Marlins, Rays and Pirates.

The only pitcher sure to get over that is Cole, and Strasburg (if available.) Bumgarner, Wheeler, Ryu, Odorizzi, etc., should all be in that $45-70 million range, depending on years given.

Is big three signings like Robertson/Cabrera/LaRoche or JUST one for a starting pitcher in the $50-75 million range? Two for under $100 million? For example, Wood and Grandal? Ozuna and Odorizzi? Ryu and Puig/Castellanos? I can just imagine it now...if/when they do bring back Abreu, hearing how they DID spend X amount of dollars defending their offseason. Because we managed to bring in over $30 million of new contracts this year and we all know how well most of those (other than McCann, the cheapest of all) worked out. So our definition should be bringing in players with 3 year contracts and beyond, then?

This just got more interesting...the White Sox play three games in Atlanta at the end of the month against Swarzak’s Braves,

He’s no doubt the most self-reflective player on the team, and his wife will be a doctor in three years. https://www.nj.com/mets/2018/02/mets_anthony_swarzak_shaken_by_school_shooting_in.html For what it’s worth, Swarzak’s sister and cousins graduated from Parkland.

It will get picked up sooner or later by the Chicago or national press...I guess until then we wait. Nothing is divided from politics, anymore, unfortunately. The SunTimes has had the story up for five hours. Just enter Ariana Giolito Swarzak Anderson I guess.