caulfield12

If they bring back Shields, they deserve every attendance woe and 0.1 broadcast rating they receive. It would be just...not sure if there are words to describe the apathy that his reappearance would engender. Yet you could just imagine Don Cooper pushing for exactly such a move behind the scenes.

Oops! Not so fast. I think Trump now has to hoping someone like Tim Cook, Howard Schultz or Jeffrey Bezos is “kidnapped” by the Chinese while travelling to a business meeting in Asia in a reprisal after the same just was done to the Huawei CTO in Vancouver. Since that transpired over the weekend while Trump was simultaneously blathering on about the supposed concessions that the Chinese made at G-20...it’s going to really piss off the Chinese, not to mention the whole tech sector is getting massacred. Bye bye, Mnuchin!

Well, if you trade off Fry, Boone Logan is still out there lurking SOMEWHERE. Plus, maybe they can convince Buehrle to return if they sign Harper, lol. Thome's ready to suit up, too.

KW is just itching to pull the trigger on Adam Jones.

Unless we are also bringing in the children of Joe DeSa and Ivan Calderon...? In all seriousness, Carlos was one of my favorite White Sox players growing up, and I liked him as a prospect before the injuries took over his career, but his son's not going to be a "plus" hitter in his early to mid 30's, when the White Sox legitimately need a DH. Of course, neither is Nelson Cruz, but at least he wouldn't cost anything and it might boost the attendance by a bit...plus it would be pretty cool to have both Nellie, Thome and Abreu all mentoring young Mr. Jimenez.

It would be a bit weird to shore up the bullpen with Familia AND Colome when we've let go of a number of our top offensive contributors from last season (granted, that's not saying MUCH). I guess it's that whole Harper/Machado OR BUST line of thinking that's out there right now...but normally, the bullpen is the last element a contending team will fix before their window of contention opens up. This would be a bit backwards, unless we're just intending to trade them before 2020/2021.

Familiarity breeds contempt? Utility infielders are not quite like back-up QB's, although McEwing was incredibly popular in StL during his playing days, just like Jose Oquendo before him.

Leury or Yolmer?

Just to put this in perspective, Eovaldi's deal for $68 million/4 years (proposed) would be essentially a tie with Abreu's original deal and just a tick ahead of John Danks' 5 year, $65 million contract.

Only if you could keep Goldschimdt long-term, and even then, there were signs of a decline last year in terms of elite bat speed. This would have been the equivalent of dealing Collins, Dunning and one of 4 minor league outfielders not named Robert for a one year, all-in attempt without first having secured Machado or Harper. Plus the whole NL to AL adjustment. The Cardinals have no choice if they want to compete with the Brewers and Cubs.

The odds are stacked against starting pitchers with 2 TJ surgeries...especially with max velocity styles. I tried to find it, but there aren’t more than a handful of starters who have thrown 250 or more total innings after a second surgery. Something like 2 or 3. They would be better off finding a solid 2/3 guy with a repeatable delivery or going all-in on someone like Cole when the timing is better. I get the point, would you rather have two Eeovaldi’s or one Corbin, for example...spread out your risk...but it’s those $45-60 million contracts that all added up over the last decade to hamstring the club financially. If we’re going to fail, at least do it swinging for the fences on the caliber of players who are not lightning in a bottle, everything has to go exactly right...maybe if we didn’t have so many young pitchers already in the “high risk” category it would be a different story, or if we could easily afford an eventual $160+ million payroll.

I was actually surprised Baez was so low...he still would have topped the Sox, but he was hyped like the second coming of sliced bread and a surefire MVP winner in July and August. I get it, his defense and base-running are big factors, but he wasn’t anywhere close to the MLB leaders for this specific metric.

Narvaez was the highest ranked at 109, Abreu at 106 and Palka at 99. Kevan Smith 97 Avi 91, Davidson 92 Castillo 88 Moncada/Rondon/Delmonico 87, Anderson 85 David Bote 79, Yolmer 78 Tilson 75, Leury 72 LaMarre 67, Engel 63

Maybe Trump can rail against the "rise of the computers" instead of Powell...that might play better with his base, the idea that algorithms are deciding their futures with little to no human input. Railing against the inverted yield curve and its predictive reliability for forecasting a recession might not go over quite so well. Or we can just default back to "it's Mnuchin's DAMN fault!!!" Some attributed the dramatic declines to a lack of buyers, but Cramer already knew the culprits: complex algorithmic programs set up by professional money managers to sell when the odds of future market losses increase. In other words, when an event that often precedes a recession occurs — in Tuesday's case, short-term interest rates trading above long-term rates in a so-called yield curve inversion — some trading algorithms will automatically begin selling securities because the chances of an economic slowdown just got higher. Cramer, host of "Mad Money," drew a comparison with football. Some plays can seem very risky, but when you consider the percentage chances of them going right, there's no choice but to implement them in the field. These programs make the same kind of calculation. So, when the two-year and the five-year yield curves inverted on Tuesday, some hedge funds' programs automatically sold the S&P 500, which tends to fall in times of economic weakness, and others automatically sold shares of the big banks, which suffer when long-term rates are lower, Cramer said. "Why? Because historically, this situation has produced negative results for the bank stocks and these hedge funds are trying to get out ahead of others who fear those negative results but just don't know they're going to fear them. It's a footrace," he explained. "This curve, as they call it, overrides whatever you hear about good employment or consumer balance sheets or robust lending. It's predictive." Worse, the charts are signaling more pain ahead: based on Cramer's analysis, many hedge funds likely sold the S&P 500 when it dipped below its 200-day moving average because, in the past, that move tended to bring more downside. "Here's the problem: there are now so many hedge funds using the same algorithm, same programs [that] there simply aren't enough investors willing to take the other side of the trade. If we all know that stocks go down on certain triggers, then who the heck would want to buy stocks?" Cramer said. "That's how you get a day like today, where the market goes into free-fall," the "Mad Money" host continued. "When the percentages are against you and the algorithms are in charge, ... nobody wants to try to be a hero and bet against them." https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/04/cramer-this-sell-off-was-caused-by-a-computer-driven-footrace.html?__source=yahoo|finance|headline|story|&par=yahoo&yptr=yahoo

They're likely to wait on Voit/Bird/Sanchez...don't see them being desperate to make a big move at this point unless they miss out on all their off-season targets first.

The M's are seemingly better off waiting for a potential rebound (obviously, this never happened with Shields, enough to find someone to assume the contract)...and that would save them quite a bit of money, if he could somehow put up 2-3 fWAR the first half of the season before the trade deadline. Right now, the "buyers" are going off his 2018 season and ignoring his overall solid performance record in terms of their financial demands. That said, compared to the money that Donaldson's getting for one year, it's not out of the realm of possibility that getting $20-25 million back from Seattle would make it more than a fair contract for the acquiring team. What type of prospects would have to be included would depend on the desperation of the acquiring team. At the very least, they should wait until Spring Training and see if there are any significant injuries to corner infielders on contending teams.

That was MONTHS ago, wasn't it?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/04/investing/stock-market-today-dow-jones/index.html

https://waitingfornextyear.com/2018/07/cleveland-indians-have-the-worst-outfield-in-baseball/ Let’s not forget the Indians pretty much had the worst OF (with Brantley) in baseball, not counting the Sox. While everyone is already counting on Jimenez for 4-5 war, the Indians should be getting Zimmer back, they can try Yandy Diaz...they can also get virtually any top OF prospect back for Kluber and also theoretically have the ability to sign a Brantley replacement (Pollock, McCutcheon, Adam Jones, Nelson Cruz, CarGo, Markakis, etc.) Yet another option would be putting Jason Kipnis out there.

Gordon Beckham.

If we're doing ALL that, you might as well go all out and add another name like Adam Jones or trade for someone like Mallex Smith...or bring in Billy Hamilton. The question is are we simply following the Twins' model of trying to jump start things a year or two prematurely (mostly, their acquisitions were on the veteran pitching side 4-5 years ago, then the bargain-basement diving in February/March last year, such as Lynn and Morrison).

Just between Allen and Miller slumping last year (ended up at 0.4 collectively)...the Indians lost roughly 3.5 - 4.0 fWAR. So we're not chasing the 2016-2018 Indians' pen, we're chasing a pen that was terrible and has lots of room for improvement. Whereas our pen, at best, is about even with they were (as it currently stands) at the beginning of last season. Colome SHOULD make a big difference, but Fry has to repeat, and we traded away a number of pretty solid veterans. Jones' health is always up in the air, Burdi has a LONG way to go to be a reliable back end option and our rookies took their lumps. Sure, it could all come together like the 2012 staff with 10+ rookie pitchers being used at various times...but anyone want to predict the odds of a repeat?

You're going to have a fall off in the bullpen from the Indians (but Allen wasn't that great last year)...sure, they trade one of their starters and then suffer from a rash of injuries, that's certainly possible (especially Santana). You could certainly argue that rolling the dice like the 2007 White Sox did in the bullpen with a bunch of inexperienced guys and two veterans (Hand, the best) and you either get an implosion or everything miraculously clicks like the 2005 White Sox. They're likely to get less out of Perez than Gomes at catcher, but Gomes has been inconsistent from year to year. That said, there's no reason to think that Kipnis won't rebound, because he was absolutely miserable last year. You lose Brantley, and his veteran presence will definitely be missed...you also can't be sure what Encarnacion has left in the tank at his age, but, no matter how you slice it, Lindor and Jose Ramirez alone can put up numbers close to the entire White Sox collective fWAR if you combine the two. Alonso's another veteran bat in that line-up. There's also the possibility of some of their young prospects making strides. They're going to do much better than Greg Allen for 100ish games in the outfield again this year, no matter what they come up with.

Right now, matching Kluber/Carrasco/Bauer/Clevinger/Bieber/Santana with our rotation isn’t fair. Even taking Kluber out doesn’t make it close if you match them up spot by spot. Look at the numbers of Clevinger, for example. He would be our #1 starter, arguably. Or a healthy Santana, who might not even make their rotation, but could easily end up a dominant back-end reliever.

That approach also led to today’s rather more modest deal. The M’s are sending Alex Colome to the White Sox in exchange for catcher Omar Narvaez. At first glance, this is simply great for the M’s. The M’s do not need a great set-up man or closer in Colome, and I remain somewhat skeptical that he’s great at all. He’s had a FIP in the mid 3’s 3 of the past 4 years, and he hasn’t shown a *persistent* ability to strand runners the way he did in 2016. He’s a good player, but not a transcendent one – not when the average reliever has a K% just 2 percentage points behind Colome’s 2018 mark. Narvaez is an intriguing guy. He’s 26, bats lefty, and draws a ton of walks. Coming into 2018, that was essentially the sum total of his attributes: he had zero power, and hadn’t shown consistent hitting ability in the minors beyond a good walk rate and low Ks. Worse, he didn’t have a classic catcher’s arm, a Zunino-grade cannon to control the running game – he was a bat-first catcher with half a bat. But 2018 showed a lot of promise. Narvaez hit 9 HRs, tripling the 3 he hit in 2016-17 combined. There’s a bit more whiffs now, but a high walk rate and mediocre power is pretty darn good, especially at that position. Here’s an M fan’s take, from USSMariner.com