caulfield12

Buxton could definitely have one year he really puts it all together, but there’s as much uncertainty there as with our pitching...

You're trading him in 2023?

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/if-pete-rose-is-out-of-baseball-forever-then-so-should-alex-cora-230843168.html Rose/Shoeless Joe should be reinstated or Alex Cora should get a lifetime ban

Because he's asking for $150-175 million, lol...and our largest contract in team history is roughly half that. And the fact Moncada (and Giolito) haven't backed up those stellar seasons (yet) in 2020.

https://www.mlb.com/news/jose-abreu-extension-white-sox The evidence seems to suggest that the Grandal signing and Abreu extension were very closely aligned. The Robert extension would be the "cherry on top of the whipped cream" in this scenario. So we have two players that arguably were influenced to sign deals with the White Sox...with one correlated almost exactly with the timing of the Abreu qualifying offer being torn up. How much is that worth to the franchise??

Well, there's never going to be CONCLUSIVE evidence or proof of whatever you want to term it as linking Abreu and Robert. At SOME point, Robert and his agent will publicly something complimentary towards Hahn and how the organization's treatment of Cuban players going back to Minnie Minoso, Jose Contreras and Alexei Ramirez, and how that was a key factor in both him signing originally and then inking an extension. It's probably already out there. Has anyone asked Robert directly if he would have wavered in his commitment to the organization with Abreu only being guaranteed one more year versus three?

Logic says it has to be an important factor...otherwise, it wouldn't have happened in the order it did. Robert and his agent would have approached the White Sox first, negotiated a deal...then Hahn/JR would have just awarded a three-year extension as a "gift" to Abreu. That really makes less sense, doesn't it?

So you would prefer they would have signed Cron to a one-year deal? What happens if you then lose Robert and Moncada (which could go either way, but it certainly more likely with Robert and Abreu and Grandal in the fold now) when they're unwilling to sign extensions?

But those are totally different situations. Abreu was nearing the end of his career. We can compare Anderson, Jimenez and Robert extensions to Miguel Sano a lot more accurately.

But that's like saying Mazara is even more of a bargain if he puts up similar offensive numbers in RF (to Sano at 1B). Granted, historically, Sano has put up the more impressive fWAR numbers over time, despite all Sano's off-the-field/injury/weight issues. We'll see. Sano's defense is going to be tested over and over again by their middle infielders. It's better with Donaldson and Sano on the corners than Sano/Cron, but how much remains to be seen.

The only way we can say that about the Abreu deal is...well, it's impossible, because we don't know how much that signing influenced Robert to commit long-term to an extension. So even if we're overpaying Abreu in 2021-22, we're also getting a positive return on investment from Luis Robert (in the very prime of his career) on the back end of that contract.

It's a pretty even battle. Is Ramirez an MVP candidate, or his first half 2019 version, or, more likely, something in-between? Can Garver, Polanco, Rosario, Kepler and Arraez keep it up? Donaldson and Cruz's health? The Twins had a lot of career seasons, offensively. You can never 100% count out the Indians, they're so resilient in the face of all the disadvantages they face each and every season, it's almost like repeating

Talking about Cubs’ Fest But the one to go to is the business operations panel. Crane Kenney has had the Saturday of this convention circled on his calendar for years, like a bride and her wedding day. It was going to be the crowning achievement of the Ricketts family era of his never-ending Cubs employment. It is, after all, the last big event before the launch of his TV network. The Cubs should be introducing their on-air talent, but there’s a fairly good chance that instead they’ll be left introducing their key advertisers. A panel featuring Peter Francis Geraci, the My Pillow guy, Howard Ankin, Jeff Vukovich and Jillian Michaels would be must-see, and Jillian can entertain the crowd by telling Rizzo he needs to lose some weight. “Fans can later reminisce with Cubs alumni Darwin Barney, Reed Johnson, Miguel Montero, Geovany Soto and Travis Wood during the Welcome Back panel, hosted by Ron Coomer.” And, we should take bets on which one of the panelists makes the first joke about Soto finally coming back to the Convention the year Illinois legalizes marijuana. “Cubs fans can vote on their favorite designs for the Wintrust Crosstown Series Cup, which will be redesigned and unveiled ahead of the start of the Cubs-White Sox series July 7-8. Post-Convention, the designs also will be available for fans to vote on online through the end of March.” https://theathletic.com/1530492/2020/01/13/cub-o-coffee-which-cubs-convention-panel-will-you-attend-and-will-kevin-rizzo-be-there/?source=dailyemail

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/pete-rose-chides-astros-for-signstealing-scandal-i-cant-imagine-doing-something-like-that-172224830.html

The whole Brady Aiken situation Trying to force all the young players to sign below fair value extensions early in their careers (which backfired with Singleton and Grossman) https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/23793/skewed-left-the-economics-of-the-singleton-extension/

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28482487/the-five-biggest-victims-astros-sign-stealing-scandal 3. Mike Fiers. Other players have privately complained about his decision to speak to The Athletic about the Astros' sign stealing and his criticism of the cheating. Maybe those unhappy teammates should consider the issue from his perspective. Their decision to break established rules put him and other players who wanted nothing to do with the sign stealing in a terrible position of either going along with the cheating, effectively condoning it -- which is why Hinch was suspended -- or speaking out against it. For the rest of Fiers' career, he'll have to deal with the whispers from some peers angrily complaining about him, when what they should do is reach out to apologize to him for how they compromised his experience. You could say the same for the other players on the '17 Astros who might not have shared in the sign stealing. Even if he had no involvement, Justin Verlander's one championship in a Hall of Fame career will be forever tarnished. Article for some reason left out Yu Darvish...

https://www.mlb.com/news/ronald-acuna-dunked-in-a-basketball-game

And let’s not forget the players, not one of whom, it seems, showed the courage to say, “this is wrong.” And if so, is this not symptomatic of a society that tends to view right and wrong as fluid and changeable, subject to one’s self-interest? “Everything’s relative dude, it’s all a social construct.” No, it was wrong. Other teams are doing it, maybe, is no excuse. I really thought these guys were better than this. Stupid me. Yes, other teams are doing it, and Alex Cora, at least, deserves the same punishment. But that doesn’t assuage my pain that these lovable underdogs stooped so low. Altuve? Really? The little kid “midget”* who came back to the tryout and said “give me another chance coach, please?” Springer? The boy who overcame stuttering and dedicates himself to helping other kids like him? You’re better than this. Correa, who as a child worked so hard at baseball despite desperate poverty that he fielded grounders near tree roots until his face was black and blue? Even Bregman, who got to #2 in MVP voting entirely by dint of an almost pathological work ethic? They all fell in with this hare-brained stunt. Didn’t someone have the guts to say, just once, “what are we doing? Why are we banging on garbage cans during a baseball game?” My mother used to say, “if everyone else jumps off a cliff, are you going to jump too?” Apparently so. The Astros just hit rock bottom. Does this mean I will not root for the Astros next season? I’m 62 years old and I have done my fair share of stupid things. But I have always tried to learn from those mistakes. Maybe from this humiliation the players will return to their humble roots. Yes, I really do believe everyone involved will learn and grow from this. I expect sincere contrition in the coming days, and if it is so, I will forgive them, as I have often needed forgiveness myself. https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2020/1/13/21064786/houston-astros-you-reap-what-you-sow

Or he had the same poor season statistically that players sitting out the season typically experience, see Lance Lynn.

https://www.city-journal.org/little-women Little Women Goes to War “Woke” critics express outrage that men stay away from a movie with little to offer them.

1995 Nebraska and 2001 Miami...maybe 1972 USC.

https://www.crawfishboxes.com/2020/1/13/21064786/houston-astros-you-reap-what-you-sow Great opinion piece by a Stros fan...and McCullers better hope Clevinger is traded out of the AL soon.

At the VERY least, Luhnow's going to be hired as a consultant to get those cellar-dwelling teams into the 21st century in terms of analytics and their proprietary database operations...which was the bone of contention when he took a lot of that with him from St. Louis to Houston in the first place. There's no clear rules about "work product" in MLB like there is in Silicon Valley.

One of the bottom 5-7 franchises is going to get desperate and hire them as a package deal. They might not hire Hinch to manage the big league team right away, he would probably start off with some front office or scouting/instructional title and then spend at least one or two years in the minors or as 3rd base or bench coach doing "penance" for their crimes.

Even though they claim it's a huge loss since Hinch and Luhnow are supposed to be Top 3 in baseball at their positions, they have the internal replacements and system in place in terms of the front office. Of course, the question then becomes do they keep all those who were "too close" to Luhnow and Hinch, or overlook that for continuity's sake? Is there an organization like the Marlins, Tigers, Pirates, Mariners, Orioles....that's ballsy enough to hire both those guys as a package, let them sit out their suspensions and say "f--- you" to the penalties, basically believing that building a winning team outweighs what they've done?