caulfield12

Surely someone has at least tracked the Top 30 intl. players over the last decade plus, their signing bonuses and total return on investment. Even hitting on just one (Tatis) for under $1 million in terms of the future fWAR created on a 6-7 year contract, it really doesn’t take more than a couple successes to easily pay for itself. It’s just infuriating when you look back on how much money has been spent unsuccessfully on Tier B/C/D Free Agent talent since 2002-2003, compared to pretty much every other organization in baseball. (2004-2005 being the lone exception, obviously.) I don’t even know the cause...maybe the Borchard and Viciedo contracts, but it’s not like they invested $100’s of millions like the long-term Cabrera or Pujols deals.

We’re basically a much less successful version of the Twins, minus the Mauer contract weighing down the franchise for a half-decade. And that deal likely would have been avoided were he not a “hometown hero.” But even the Twins aren’t afraid to change managers or GM’s.

They also changed managers late in 2018 and went from worst to first in defense. Goldschmidt didn’t even have that strong a season by his usual standards.

I just don't think Kopech can be protected from his own worst impulses and not end up getting hurt again trying to fire baseballs through the wall...right now, so much is hinging on him, until FA spending on pitching proves otherwise.

Not without two the addition of 3-4 fWAR veteran starters and some certainty at the back of that bullpen. Betts has a lot more tools than Harper, who also put up a 10 season, but there’s a huge problem. Let’s put down Betts for 30.6/4 seasons, you get 7.65 fWAR as a reasonable projection. The Red Sox will have at least 8-10 teams who desperately need a player like that to put them over the top for a single season run at it but can’t dream of signing him to a $400+ million extension. Yet those teams have a lot more prospect capital to work with. Think of all those teams like the Rays, Twins, A’s, Indians, Padres...the list goes on and on. The White Sox aren’t going to build their future around Madrigal, for example, then turn around and burn it all down. Even if Betts gets you to .500, on top of his 2020 salary, you’re still having to spend at least $125-175 million on pitching. You don’t have a 2B (trading Madrigal+), so now you need to identify a Gennett/Schoop type correctly, you can’t rely on Collins to succeed and you’re also spending more to get a veteran DH in the Smoak/Adams mold and you’re still relying on McCann’s season not being a historical anomaly. As much as we believe in the potential of the young starters, we’re a second TJ from Giolito, Cease or Kopech from pushing back the rebuild yet another year...even with two veteran starters, because one of those guys will fall back from historical performance and god only knows what we’ll get from Lopez. We can’t begin to count on Rodon or Dunning, either.

Trading significant future assets for a one year shot at the playoffs (without an extension) is how you lose a fanbase and end up in a perpetual rebuild. And Hahn is not going to stick his neck out on the chopping block, anyway. He's all about risk mitigation.

Moncada, Giolito, Colome, Abreu, McCann, Anderson are all going to repeat their numbers? With those 400+ babip numbers? If White Sox history proves anything, it is never to project or forecast expected results with a pen. Always write with a pencil (see Palka, Alonso, Herrera and Castillo this year.)

The White Sox would have to absorb Turner’s $19 million for 2020 at age 35. We never take on salaries like that, historically. So essentially you’re trading an in his prime superstar in Moncada for Lux and Verdugo, who’s a pretty nice player but not a power hitter. Lux is better suited for 2B than SS, so you’re also giving up a bit on defense there. At any rate, that means both (Lux/Verdugo) those guys have to succeed. It’s always risky. If you look back at those 3 big franchise-altering trades, you’re only winning long-term if two or three of those players make it. Right now, it’s only Moncada, Giolito and Jimenez, with the jury still out on everyone else. Most baseball scouts would take May over Lopez at this point, but Lopez probably turns things around in another organization. There’s also breaking up the Cuban Connection synergy and why we even need Abreu and Renteria...just to babysit/mentor Luis Robert? The Dodgers continue to pile up assets for their “super team”...the White Sox always another 2-3 players away, because the practice of trading guys like Yelich, Gerrit Cole or Moncada from small or mid market teams doesn’t usually work out well.

How do they quantify or measure that? In a superficial, sourcing way...Alex Ramirez, Abreu, Tatis, Jr., and Luis Robert would stack up against any organization over a ten year period. Of course, crediting JR, KW, Hahn or Paddy is the trickiest part there. And Robert is the only one to spend significant time in our system. And there’s a huge gap from those four to Mickey Adolfo.

If the same thing happened to the Cardinals, Astros or Braves in the Dominican...and there’s some obvious parallels...would it take them over a decade to recover? It’s not like we had a strong operation there in the first place. I think there was a long period where Jesus Pena was the best player we developed to come out of there. Ordonez and CLee came out of other countries in the 90s. We’ve made zero effort in Asia since Takatsu and Iguchi over a decade ago.

I’m not sure which is worse, being a Twins’ fan and losing to the Yankees 11 times in a row in the post-season...and something like 15 consecutive post-season losses, or the irrelevance of being a White Sox fan today and seeing that purported JR quote and realizing the odds of getting past Houston, the Yankees or just our own division is maybe 3-5% at best. I mean, we’re not even close to the Indians, Twins, Rays and A’s in a major market with the Cubs’ so-called dynasty self-immolating itself (we just gave Ricketts a 2-3 week window away from media criticism.) The further irony is those Samson-led Marlins quickly winning two World Series championships over the course of seven seasons...something it took the White Sox 88 years to accomplish. Meanwhile, Hahn continues to lead the 2010’s in “won the MLB offseason” yet record the worst winning percentage as a GM (5+ years of tenure) in modern history.

It’s embarrassing to be a White Sox fan and miss the playoffs for a longer period of time than 27 other franchises. Or to actually be Charlie Brown trying to kick the football for an entire offseason of hoping and believing that we’re actually going to sign two superstars in one offseason. But yeah, I’ll happily go back to watching/listening to “real” baseball right about now.

Wow, he averaged 14 missed games per season over a three year period (2016-2018). Hate to see what Moncada would be called compared to that, because the odds of Yoan playing 162 games...well, I will take those odds. Correa isn’t even averaging 100 games played (294) over the last three seasons. Okay, I’m convinced.

Go through all the threads. Find one single time I said anything negative about any of those three players...from well before Madrigal was drafted. You won’t be able to do it. And if I was wrong about Tatis at any point in the last three years, you’re welcome to point it out. Frankly, if the White Sox got 18 fWAR out of anyone that Hahn signed...it would be a huge cause for celebration. Statistically, Abreu has almost the exact same career numbers as Puig, 0.3 ahead of Puig now but five years older. But that was Paddy and KW.

Nobody thinks Gardner will get more than two years or one and an option. Hahn would rather sign just about anyone than actually take the risk of losing his job by giving Ozuna $80-90 million and having it blow up in his face. Until he spends over $68.5 million on ONE player, Hahn apologists will always argue he was financially handcuffed by JR.

It will be if they get taken off the market. Both those guys are core leaders. The Astros will keep Springer (Altuve/Bregman) over Correa if they have to choose one to let go. Correa simply can’t stay on the field consistently.

Chris Sale didn’t even sell many extra tickets. Right now, they’re hyper profitable. Until they spend $100+ million on a player (almost 50% more than any contract in club history), this will be hanging over their heads. Which is why we will never even get Gardner, it will inevitably be someone like Dickerson or Matt Joyce. Just the way it is. We get Carson Fulmer, a franchise that has been to the playoffs for seven consecutive years gets Walker Buehler. They get Max Muncy, Chris Taylor, Turner and Kiki Gonzalez...we get Palka, Tilson, Engel and Cordell. They have a Rookie of the Year candidate nearly every season, we get Collins and Burger.

Not really. The two most expensive arbitration years of Schwarber, then he’s a free agent in 2022 right in the heart of their competitive window. Generally, that’s the opposite of what teams like the Astros do, which is keep adding quality pre-arbitration players to their young core that is extended into free agency at going rates.

In the minds of the marketing department, maybe. I guess they also believed the perception of “being in on” Harper and Machado was beneficial, too, right? Having been a Sox fan since 1979, I can think of literally 50 former All-Stars we brought into the fold 3-7 years too late in their careers. There’s such a track record of doing exactly this that Cole, Rendon, Springer (next year) seem far-fetched to all but the most optimistic Sox fans.

The Cubs can’t do a complete teardown with a new broadcast network starting. Worst case scenario is Heyward is a 725ish OPS RFer in the NL who wipes out a lot of financial flexibility. You could imagine Schwarber at DH, but why would the Cubs just give him away, knowing they have to replace Zobrist and not 100% confident in Happ or Almora, either...

Corey Dickerson put up 2.6 and 2.7 when he was healthy, and feels like a White Sox special coming off an injury-plagued year. It will be interesting to see where Gardner ends up for 1-2 years. If I were him, I would wait to see what other moves (see pitching) a team like the White Sox makes. The guys wired a bit like Paul O’Neill, super-competitive. Minnesota and the Indians would be just as likely options within our own division. You know JR isn’t going to get into a bidding war for an older player like that...but who knows, maybe he thinks the name and Yankees’ ties would be enough to increase attendance in a stop gap year that could be competitive if they allocated the money wisely enough.

Or just watch “Ballplayer: Pelotero,” great documentary about the Dominican market for 14-16 year olds, changing ages, corruption, stars Sano and the former White Sox pitcher Ynoa.

Yet Wacha and Wood seems more likely, going by our track record on pitcher spending. Wish they would go after one war horse like Odorizzi or even Gibson (back end innings filler like Nova) who’s at least familiar with the division and has a more proven track record.

Except he’s going to expect #2 starter money.

There’s your game unless Verlander gets homer happy again. Terrible defensive breakdown, Meadows should have called everyone off, even if he was playing a relatively deep RF, it hung up there forever.