caulfield12

You do realize Tauchman is already 28...? I guess Hahn would like the local boy comes home angle...Fremd, Palatine, Bradley, but generally trading high upside, cost-controlled starting pitchers for more expensive veteran 4/5 starters doesn’t work out well. If we were making 3 big moves this offseason to go with it, maybe. By the time we actually need Happ, he’ll be yet one more year removed from his prime. And Tauchman was a low 700s OPS guy in 2015-16...it wasn’t until Albuquerque, a hitter’s paradise not unlike Charlotte, that he really took off. He might be a late bloomer, but he could just as easily be in a one year flash in the pan.

Well, we're always good to take another team's expendable veteran off their hands (with a salary subsidy) and send back prospects to save on payroll...

What I meant was if he ACTUALLY ends up with that $17.8 million one year salary, rather than the reported 2/$25-30 or 3/$40-45 million extensions that were being negotiated (and probably still are).

Does that $40 million include Abreu's raise if he ends up ultimately accepting the QO?

Didn’t the Call/Fisher draft represent their first attempt to go high OBP, more refined collegiate hitters...?

Seems the Cubs are looking at Akiyama for CF...

Unless we're willing to return to the Albert Belle contract, blowing the whole field out of the water before the battle begins....and there would have to be an "out" clause after 2023/2024 or something like that (insurance on the player's part if the rebuild fizzles), there's just zero point in doing this. The Samardzija Consequences, let's call it. Ending up with a low 80's win team and then losing Betts and at least ONE of our top 3-4 prospects (Cease, Madrigal, Vaughn) is just not worth it. Boston fanbase won't accept a deal with Collins and Stiever as the headliners, and, if they did, it would probably mean that Chaim knows something we don't and that Collins miraculously (or invariably) turns his career around and becomes Tyler Flowers Cubed, or Omar Narvaez at the very least. Or Collins blossoms (let's say Bummer goes out too), McCann and Colome struggle in 2020, we have to spend even more money in 2021 to fix both catcher (assuming we don't sign Grandal) and the back end of the bullpen. Trading away younger, cost-controlled players for more expensive/veteran ones hasn't worked for the White Sox for the last decade. Obviously, Betts is a superstar, but the odds of him staying in Chicago couldn't be much more than 10-15%, at best (going on EVERYTHING we know about how JR conducts business.)

Richard Justice predicted Yankees would sign him in his article today. He loves Sox, but had us listed as destination for none of the top ten guys.

In the end, they should be thankful that Moncada struggled his first time in the big leagues and Benintendi looked like a RoY/perennial All-Star candidate...pushing up his value, to the point where he was close to untradeable at that precise moment.

Rafael Devers Prospect Rankings[BA] 2015-MLB-#99 ... 2015-BOS-#6 ... 2016-MLB-#18 ... 2016-BOS-#2 ... 2017-MLB-#18 ... 2017-BOS-#3 [PIPE] 2016-MLB-#17 ... 2016-BOS-#2 ... 2017-MLB-#17 ... 2017-BOS-#2 from thebaseballcube.com

Now it's Burrow, Herbert and Tua...with the first two obviously advantaged by the Tua injury...doubt he slips out of the first round, though.

Who is the Ron Washington of "catching gurus"?

Well, it doesn't help that Betances, Will Harris and Daniel Hudson all have major concerns associated with them.

Sure, but why would the White Sox not give him more than 30+ at-bats the first time he came up...or at least regular playing time? And, most interestingly/controversially, WHY not let him play everyday when he came back late in the season after having an impressive run at Charlotte? There was nothing on the line by then. McCann was wearing down. To help Castillo find a FA landing spot? We don't "owe" the players on the roster anything more than a paycheck, other than exceptions like Abreu, Konerko and Buehrle that JR has made in the past.

Braves' GM, and also Chris Correa of the Cardinals prior to that...

Clearly $20-25 million per year isn’t your idea of a big salary. The Red Sox knew he was a terrible defender and would eventually have to be moved over. Stanton, btw, makes $26 million, then you’ve got Choo and Carlos Santana at over $20 million. Khris Davis makes almost $17 million for the A’s. Jimenez is basically a DH playing LF but was still awarded a huge (certainly not a tremendous bargain by WAR) extension to basically rake.

I think trading that kind of talent is going to require Giolito showing he can sustain his success for at least 2-3 months...in which case Hahn couldn’t trade him. The Astros need to dump Reddick’s contract to take on another bigger deal...essentially, making it Tucker, Whitley and Reddick for Giolito and the financial flexibility to lock in Wheeler or perhaps even Cole (that last eventuality seems highly unlikely) for the Astros.

But he’s also had TJ, was the worst pitcher in baseball in 2018 and will get more and more expensive from 2021-23. It’s obviously a bold and unusual move, but if you got back Alvarez/Tucker AND a pitcher (Whitley had a really rough year, and Houston normally doesn’t part with their best prospects), and the staff was 100% confident on Whitley’s prognosis, they’d be foolish to at least not consider it. For all we know, Lopez could be the ace of the rotation or relegated to the pen/traded by the end of the year, young pitching is so volatile these days. It’s also impossible to make this move unless you start convincing a Moncada or Robert to sign an extension, knowing that after 2023, nothing is certain with this roster. We push hard now...keep pushing the rebuild back indefinitely.

I have posted his name approximately 3-4 times this entire offseason. Obviously, I’d rather have Tucker...but Astros probably wouldn’t deal him straight up for Giolito. Or maybe they’re acknowledging Cole is gone, Verlander/Greinke will be declining and Wheeler might leave their price range.

It’s like USC football...when they vacated titles, it’s not like Oklahoma got an extra for getting to the NC game. That said, the Dodgers’ fans and anyone the Astros beat the in the postseason must be up in arms. The Royals were especially lucky to escape the Luhnow Curse, they were dead to rights against Houston in 2015 and somehow escaped.

Between Ozuna, Brady Aiken (low balling after MRI), trying to force their young players into disadvantageous extension terms, sign stealing...they’ve gone from the Patriots to something even more insidious, crossing the line one too many times. Maybe it’s actually a good thing for baseball...to have another team join the Yankees and Red Sox as a team we can all unite behind cheering against.

That’s true, but it isn’t like elite hitters like JD Martinez or EE five years ago haven’t gotten paid extremely well. We’re willing to give Abreu $18 million. And it’s difficult to imagine in this analytics-driven environment even an average fielding LF getting the Harper, Betts, Springer or Kris Bryant type of money.

Sure, for Alvarez and Tucker...if we didn’t have so much uncertainty in the pitching staff, it would be something to consider. Obviously, they wouldn’t be getting both those guys. Reddick and Alvarez for Giolito would be at least interesting to consider...if the White Sox were determined to sign Wheeler and one other legit FA starting pitcher.

Sure, Sox fans have become conditioned to expect the worst, I guess. Stockholm Syndrome, or something. When I created this thread, the odds on Wheeler from an acquisition standpoint felt at least 50/50. They could still shock the world and sign him for $100+ million and at least five years, but I’m certainly not counting on it at this point.

You act like one Fegan article mitigates every long-standing concern with Cooper. It doesn’t work that way. If Lopez, Cease, Kopech and Giolito...if two of those guys consistently pitch like Cy Young candidates throughout the next three seasons, I’ll more than happily say I was wrong about Don Cooper. You can go back to this thread and keep reposting it at the top of the site as we make the playoffs for at least three consecutive years. Time will tell. About Cooper’s health, and that of the pitching staff.