caulfield12

The funny thing is that Leury had a really nice run there in 2017 where his fWAR was hugely inflated by his defensive numbers in CF. He's certainly no Engel, but then again, Jay's not the version from five years ago with the Cardinals, either.

People are beginning to actually, firmly believe that Bryce Harper will sign with someone else and not in Philadelphia because he doesn’t always want to be compared with Mike Trout. Now, it seems that our local heroes have also become infected.

There's no way that this gets done until Harper decides what to do with the Phillies' offer. And if you're Lozano, you're praying they can still up the White Sox bid to at least $275 million or so... If you're the White Sox, though, why would you NOW raise your $240-250 million unless/until you absolutely have to? The only pressure on the White Sox is time, but certainly not 24 vs. 48 vs. 72 hours. The Phillies are the team on the hot seat chasing Harper but they can't do so in a fashion that completely alienates the Machado camp (as your fallback option).

Did the $250 and 8 years come from Passan or Gomez? Gomez's tweet was the first one I saw an actual dollar figure attached to...

Because if they don't get Harper, they're going to be under tremendous pressure to reverse course and beat the White Sox out for Machado...

As long as it's Tuesday through Thursday night...that'll do.

Can we start a GoFundMe campaign and divert the "veterans building a wall" money to the Phillies' bank account so they can sign Harper ASAP before the rest of baseball wakes up and comes to their senses? This is theoretically the second occasion of "right time, right place" with Abreu and maybe even Luis Robert also qualifying.

For me, it was a game they were way ahead of the Royals...I went to bed that night in Colombia and woke up in pure shock they'd somehow blown it. Can't remember the final score, but it was really high scoring. Then Buehrle lost the next day. https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/KCA/KCA200509140.shtml Seems like it must have been this one.

Try quarter century.

Plus, he's from California...

Past tense? Obviously, he's not breaking a story of the signing, but the passive/past voice is a bit jarring here. It's almost too overconfident, or too detached, I'm not sure which. In all likelihood, he's describing the process that got us to think point in the middle of January in the driver's seat for one of the two whales.

The problem is we've never brought back a former player on a HUGE contract...just those "career twilight" or "retire as a White Sox" one year types. With all the bad blood with KW, it's almost impossible to imagine happening, unless JR orders Hahn to try to cut a deal with Sale. Of course, the big problem is it seems insane to offer a six year deal at this point in his career (at $30-35 million per year) because the risk of an injury just seems to be off the charts...and he's barely made it to the end of so many previous seasons.

The White Sox were actually 8th in MLB for quality starts with 74. Probably the only positive stat we were Top 15 in. The Brewers were 26th with 51. The scary part is James Shields had 19. Lopez had 19, Giolito 15, Rodon 11 and Covey 6. Fulmer had 2, Santiago 1 and there must have been a "team" QS that's not individually credited. The difference is the Brewers had at least 7 starters they could count on to hold the game close and get it to the bullpen. We had, at best, 3 reliables, at any given point in the season. Pretty much every week, there were 40% of the starts that were borderline disasters.

From a health standpoint, CF would be the wrong choice. But that's the position that maximizes his value to the team. That said, you'd have to play Palka in RF with our current roster construction, unless we added someone like Adam Jones or Markakis at the last minute.

I guess Gonzalez, Pomeranz or Miley make a lot more sense if we're trying to compete than anything else...that starting rotation has been the biggest weakness, there's Giolito, constant health concerns about Rodon, etc. Ottavino would be NICE, but there's got to be 3-5 other teams who need him more desperately than the White Sox. Marwin Gonzalez just seems like he has the potential to disappoint, but he's not as old as I previously imagined.

Depends on how close it is to a $300 million commitment. If it's closer to $250 (unlikely), they could think about adding another player like Pollock, Marwin Gonzalez, etc. Keuchel's going to be too expensive, unless his market shrinks, which is highly improbable after the big dominoes start to fall. Of course, there's the possibility they go after Harper as well, but the Phillies are certainly going to throw at least $350 million at him, and we already have almost a full team of outfield prospects in the minors.

All we can do it speculate that they're currently somewhere in the $240 to $280 range (probably closer to $240 as their initial offer). Anything less than $30 million per year is simply not going to work, unless the Phillies were to sign Harper for an A-Rod contract in the next couple of weeks. Even then, other teams would probably be attracted to jump back in on Machado if the Phillies were already eliminated as a suitor (which a $340-360 million contract would likely do).

It's too dangerous NOT to. With the new broadcasting rights deal expiring after the 2024 season, the last thing they'd want is to be locked into a Heyward-like contract for another 5 years if the rebuild fails to lead to a consistent winner and their financial flexibility is dramatically decreased at that point. The ideal situation would actually be for Harper or Machado to lead the charge into the post-season, play well enough to opt out but then for the homegrown prospects to also be excelling and to get long-term extensions (around 2021-2022) to replace that singular large contract on the payroll. It also gives them more flexibility about a possible sale of the team in the future.

Pulling their offer to show they're 100% onboard the Harper/Boras train? That sounds like perhaps not the wisest decision...

An opt out after 3 would make a LOT more sense to the Phillies, especially if they fail to get Nola to extend into his 1st free agency year. For the White Sox, 4 is much more critical. That's ONE big advantage the Phillies have here, they really need him THIS year and NEXT, but they might not want to be tied into that contract if things don't go as well as planned or the Braves become a mini-dynasty.

https://www.thegoodphight.com/2019/1/9/18176222/phillies-manny-machado-bryce-harper-this-needs-to-be-over "This needs to be OVAH" (changed for Hawkism) Pretty decent article describing the roller coaster of emotions for Phillies' fans throughout the process...not unlike the situation for Sox fans the past 2 1/2 months.

What is the current status of AI/autonomous piloting? I imagine very few people in the next decade would feel comfortable getting onto a plane without a pilot, but it's quite possible that this will be a realistic option in the future, as long as there's a back-up mechanism for someone on the ground to land a plane with some type of catastrophic technological/communication failure.

The only thing I will say about the Machado market is that the Phillies simply can't afford to around wait forever for Machado to make a decision. They're trying to compete THIS year and NEXT year. They only have Nola for 3 more years, and Arrieta's getting long in the tooth as well. If they don't take advantage of their window (if there is one) now, then the Braves and Nationals will be ahead of them with the Marlins eventually rising on the rebuild and god knows what the Mets are doing (they're at least theoretically INTERESTING). But they're eventually going to have to turn to Plan B if it seems like Machado's not even going to be swayed by a 10-15% premium on what the White Sox are willing to pay. If the Phillies posture like they're going after Moustakas/Gonzalez and Pollock, it might be enough to keep either the White Sox or Phillies from paying north of $300 million...because if the Phillies feel that Machado is solidly in the White Sox camp, they might decide it's much wiser to spread that money around and still reserve their powder for the trade deadline, depending on how things break this season. They also run the risk of making Machado feel like a back-up or secondary option to Harper. Finally, the Nationals have a compelling interest here in retaining Harper, but if the Nationals do pull that off (bringing him back)...it's not a sure thing there will be enough time to react if Philly keeps waiting on the Machado camp to make a firm decision. It's pretty easy to imagine them going from "two birds in the hand" to nothing at all.

The one thing bringing Machado on board (even for just three years) would do is provide some needed credibility in the baseball world...it makes bringing in another stud Free Agent (there's a LONG list) that much easier, if they can just manage to land the first one and create a positive impression. Like most Sox fans though, anything less than 4 doesn't seem ideal...because there's so much uncertainty about 2020 being a competitive year or not, and it's also dependent to an extent on what the Indians and Twins do.

“The Phillies, according to a source, remain optimistic that they will end the offseason with either Harper or Machado on their roster.” I could swear they changed the headline from signing both to at least one at the Philadelphia Enquirer.