caulfield12

Looks like the GOP is flooding the race in Nevada to support Heller (and oppose Jackie Rosen) with $22 million of soft money. Gotta love Citizens United.

Swarzak and Kahnle would quality as "nearly amazing" for the Sox, just like Fat Albers the first couple of months before the wheels fell off...think it was that game he pinch ran against the Mets.

Rondon needs to get the starting opportunity at 3B next year over Yolmer. Yolmer can be the supersub, his most suitable role...and Leury for OF/defense/PR, if you duct tape him up and he can still stand.

Heitkamp now has a 60% chance at losing, regardless of how she votes. I would argue Manchin's at 75-80% winning. Haven't seen anything recently on Donnelly and McCaskill/Tester, but the latter two SEEM safe for the moment (despite Trump waging a personal way out there in MT.) The Missouri situation has been a mess for the GOP for months now, between the governor and actual candidate.

Never in a million years would have predicted Mondesi would be outplaying Moncada by this much at the end of the year. That said, there's a lesson. Look at how many times Mondesi came up and failed (mostly, from an offensive standpoint) before he finally started to put it together the 2nd half of this season (of course, it seemed Buxton had turned a corner as well, and that didn't take.)

In the Woodward book, they talk about the RNC operation being revamped under Preibus (in light of the Obama dominance over two presidential elections) and how they had those strategic lists broken down into 90% likely to vote for Trump, 80% likely...and just hammered into them submission sending out all vote by mail/voter registration materials, calling pretty persistently until they got a commitment to get out and vote. As much as the story was the "independent/moderate" votes turning to Trump the last couple of weeks and minority voting being quiet or muted in terms of intensity for Clinton, the base REALLY turned out for Trump, and the Dems just took for granted a lot of voters in those Midwestern and Rust Belt states we keep coming back to over and over again (IA/WI/MI/OH/PA).

Any reason given for Moncada not playing, other than avoiding a LHP and the strikeout record? Haven't his RHH stats vs. lefties been significantly improved the last 4 weeks or so?

3/4ths of the way through now...scary stuff, a bit more on the military/foreign policy side, but that’s logical since tax reform was the only big legislation. Porter, Cohn, Tillerson and Mattis are the ones who come out best.

https://sports.yahoo.com/yoan-moncada-closes-200-strikeouts-022412845.html

If Eloy Jimenez doesn't come up and hit 800-850 the first three months next year, there will be a ton of fans jumping ship. This rebuild was largely predicated on Kopech, Moncada and Robert being superstars, and none of them are even close right now...so everything is basically riding on Eloy's knees and Cease's elbow at this point. It's pretty easy to imagine reactions on here to the typical Class B/C free agents we're going to roll out there. Watching these games with Detroit, Minnesota and KC are becoming almost unbearable with the "race of the bottom" mentality that we're currently witnessing. Otoh, having a #3 pick (instead of 4-6) will give us ANOTHER reason to get excited about next year. Jimenez is pretty much it, for now.

Ho hum, another called strike 3 on Moncada, way outside according to Pitch Track at MLB.com.

See Nats/Strasburg. Their recent legacy will be having all that talent on one roster, yet never winning a playoff series.

Lopez on the Royals...

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/10/politics/mia-love-campaign-funds/index.html Yet another Republican in trouble...this time Mia Love in Utah.

The Indians are losing Allen, Brantley, Miller and Kipnis...Encarnacion will be in the last year of his deal, as well. They have enough starting pitching to win 88-90 games, but that assumes full health and progressions from some of their younger guys like Bieber. It’s hard to imagine the White Sox being worse at any position next year...where would it be, other than catcher? Some combination of Davidson/Palka/Delmonico at DH will be fine. Moncada, CF, Abreu and Jimenez should put up much bigger numbers. Anderson, about the same, probably better than worse, especially from a defensive standpoint? Donaldson or Moustakas make sense depending on price. You can pretty much say for sure that Yolmer and Avi aren’t in the long-term plans at this point, same with Leury Garcia (too many nagging injuries.) Even without Kopech, difficult to imagine being worse. Hamilton might surprise as closer right off the bat, although I’m not sure they’re ready to anoint him until he has at least a half season under his belt.

He’ll lose half of whatever he wins when Julia Chen divorces him...

KC’s starter acquired from Moustakas trade...

Is Lopez going to turn out to be a decent starter? Let’s wait and see how he does against a playoff-caliber roster...and it’s not like Walker is projected to be a Gold Glove level outfielder, he’s a better version of Call/Fisher from previous drafts, sure, but how much better and where does he play? For every “Walker was the best pure hitter in the draft” argument, there will be the retort that we said the same thing about Zach Collins, who isn’t currently listed on any Top 100 lists. You can make the argument we need a starting pitcher at the back end and a higher upside CFer a lot more over the next 2-3 seasons, unless we are going to completely write off 2020 as well. Before long, we will be arguing that we need to trade Moncada because we’ll only be competitive in his three most expensive arbitration years. Then, we’ll basically be the Pirates.

Why did we even trade Sale, Eaton and Q if that was the best fallback plan when things didn’t go according to plan? No, the next thing we’ll be hearing is “keeping the powder dry” and not allocating valuable resources for placeholders...or that we’ll really be able to sign some high quality players when the new tv contract begins (skipping over the fact that Moncada and Kopech excelling in 2019 was one of the biggest selling points for getting a better tv deal). Now you’re putting all your hopes in Jimenez and Machado/Harper are arguably the only two players who could move the bar significantly in terms of fan interest. Trade for Ohtani to shake up the franchise? They need to earn their money and reformulate something interesting, that’s for sure. More Shields, Yolmer, Engel, Delmonico and Davidson puts the Sox in the “they might as well relocate to Charlotte or San Antonio/Austin” conversations.

Collins, Zavala, Basabe, Hamilton, Burdi

Ptac, would you trade Rodon this offseason, try to hold on for next trade deadline...or just cross your fingers from here on out and roll the dice on Carlos staying healthy and productive through 2021?

There’s another obvious counterargument to Hahn and Company. The fate of the 2015-16 Mets’ super rotation. One possible Cy Younger winner left in de Grom, lots of “what could have been” with Syndergaard, Harvey, Matz, Wheeler, etc.

Ohtani was already a huge red flag with his elbow the day they signed him. I think he might have already even had that platelet injection. Just like expecting a starter who tries to throw 98-100 not to ever get hurt (other than Nolan Ryan or Randy Johnson.) The fact of the matter is that the Royals, Cubs, Astros...heck, even the Indians...most teams other than the Braves (who might have the best current talent in Acuna, Jr.) chose to rebuild more on the position player side and add free agents or via minor league depth trades. If there’s any fault, it’s thinking the Sox record of keeping pitchers healthy was going to miraculously hold up during an era of baseball where overuse and guys trying to throw the ball through a wall (think Bauer or Kopech) adds up to a long line of billable hours at the offices of Dr. Jobe, Andrews, etc.

Even Nolan Ryan was tuning in...

Other than John Danks and Rodon, and neither were TJ...what starters have gone down in the last decade? Burdi, but he’s a reliever. We cut bait on guys like Hudson and McCarthy well before they got hurt multiple times. Statistically, the rate should be much higher for the Sox. And, for all we know, some of the damage to Kopech was done while he was still in the Red Sox organization. The following article was from 2013, over five years ago, well before every other pitcher in baseball was throwing 95+. “One-third of current MLB pitchers have had Tommy John surgery. Of the about 360 who started the season, 124 share the all-too-familiar triangular scar. How surprising is this number? It stunned me! In recent talks with baseball officials, none guessed more than the one-in-nine number I had often seen quoted over the last decade (and quoted myself). Worse, none of us had any idea when this change had happened or noticed the acceleration. With the help of research assistants, I arrived at the number 124 by going through current rosters and searching news reports for each pitcher, looking to see if he had had Tommy John. The players are listed in this PDF, along with the year of their most recent surgery (players with italicized years have had more than one elbow reconstruction). For a different look at all the names, check out the illustration below.”