caulfield12

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Feb 28, 2016 -> 12:36 AM) Second or third tier free agents: Jermaine Dye AJ Pierzynski Tadahito Iguchi Orlando Hernandez trash heap: Bobby Jenks You forgot Pods, Hermanson, Contreras, Vizcaino, etc. F. Garcia is the only one we really paid a seemingly "high" price at the time of acquisition...and Politte was yet another scrap heap deal. The problem is we've gone eight years without that combined amount of success that we had over those 18 months.

If the White Sox finish in 3rd place with between 81-84 wins and the team makes a $5-15 million profit, would that be considered a success? Or would it come down to disappointment with being told we have/had "VW resources" and can't afford to add that final player or two? Good thing KW didn't compare us to a Buick, Pontiac or Oldsmobile. I guess there are lots of different definitions of throwing money around...whether it's Cabrera, LaRoche and Dunn, or Bonifacio/Keppinger on the low side. Deliberately spending crazy money on Cespedes for one year wasn't a reasonable expectation for most fans coming into the offseason. Taking advantage of a buyer's market, especially to kill two birds with one throw, undoubtedly was...although the counterargument is that many didn't expect 3b, SS, catcher, 2b and the rotation depth to all be addressed. It's mostly frustration with, for now, stopping one player short when that one player theoretically improves offensive and defensive production in RF and offensive production at DH.

Maybe you will find out soon enough. Zobrist is no spring chicken. Baez might end up getting more playing time than anyone expects. Can he perform on a team expected to run away with the World Series? Can Soler? Can Schwarber keep from getting injured shuffling between left and catcher? How long before Arrieta breaks down? Can Lackey and Lester stay healthy in their mid 30's? Can they rely on Kendricks for another season?

Rodriguez was one of the first of the twitter crowd pushing Cespedes to the Sox rumors two months ago...

The Belle deal was unique and one of the biggest in baseball at the time...and it actually worked that one time to the team's favor. We'll see twenty years later if they're willing to give them out. It seems there's little interest in doing so for players on three year or less contracts with qualifying offers attached. We also don't know exactly what Cespedes was offered...if the Sox ever made a one year offer.

One wonders if Haley actually accepted VP spot under Trump if she would be forgiven by establishment faithful...whether they would try to influence her to turn it down? Or would she still be seen as a "good soldier" for trying to help Rubio in SC?

Duquette was outspoken about never giving opt-outs. I guess that can end up as another Sox "line in the sand" that makes it seem they're in on players and making legitimate offers when realistically the new market will leave the Sox and Orioles behind...unless they give out insane long-term deals like the Chris Davis one. One wonders why Casey Close even bothered, being as smart as he is, although obviously it ended up pushing the Cubs to finally make an offer.

Wonder why we didn't at least consider Span...three years for him must have been too much. Then again, no pick attached. I guess we should have an outfield tracker with all their results at the beginning of the season. Cespedes Gordon Upton Fowler Span Jackson Coghlan Parra Bruce Ethier Crawford Puig Reddick Guyer Rajai Davis Saunders Alex Rios Victorino Travis Snider B. Gardner Desmond Jennings Ian Desmond Trayce Thompson Van Slyke Guerrero Hernandez Marisnick Carlos Gomez Tucker Carlos Gonzalez Dickerson Blackmon

What would we have to give up for Michael Saunders?

Two year plan is going to be just as popular three year window...and it's quite consistent with recent offers to Fowler and likely Jackson as well.

QUOTE (Vance Law @ Feb 26, 2016 -> 11:42 AM) Exactly. 1 Anderson 2 Fulmer 3 2016 1st pick (#10) 4 Adams 5 2016 supp. pick (#27) Why would you trade your #5 prospect for one year of Dexter Fowler? You wouldn't. Which is why Hahn, a sane man, didn't. Yeah, but if he was in a deeper farm system, he might not even be Top Ten. The fact of the matter is looking at that long list, there aren't many high impact MLB careers. Of course, one area we can't easily prove is whether another player signed somewhere else in the draft because of the overall amount of money available.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles...#nt=oft03a-1la1 http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/orioles...5-42-story.html

QUOTE (Rowand44 @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 06:22 PM) Ya, once again we can all make excuses why this team still hasn't signed an outfielder. Every outfielder ever just wanted to stay with their current team, Upton would have been an overpay but the fact remains that Avi is still a starting outfielder on this team. If they really wanted all of these guys they should have been able to land one of them and if they actually want Garcia as our starting rf then there's more wrong with this organization than I thought. This is the first time I can remember that a team has been able to grab that many guys on discount whether they're the favorites or not. It's not just that they're the favorite, it has a lot to do with the culture that Maddon, Theo and Jed have created. Which makes Zobrist the one clear outlier/overpay. Guess they thought it was worth it with his comfort level with Maddon and the trust to take care of him with playing time at this point in his career...veteran leadership/clubhouse presence...positional versatility, etc. You'd have to think though, with Zobrist originally being from the area and the possibility of returning to the Royals not a realistic one (they prioritized Gordon), that the Cubs wouldn't have had to give him so much money. Does anyone know the closest bid? It happened so quickly there wasn't much information out there on the process with him.

QUOTE (Hatchetman @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 08:12 PM) If you are trying to take an employee from a competitor you don't offer them the same salary they can get where they already are. This is, unless they're complete unhappy where they are and might even be willing to take a salary cut to change their environment. But yeah, coming off a productive season, the point still stands.

Well, right now, there's arguably two guys in Stephens and Hickman that a lot of scouts are very high on. Of course, the same types of things were said about Beck when he was drafted, that he was once viewed as fairly high first round draft pick. At any rate, with Danish/Guerrero and then Stephens and eventually Hickman pushing up...that helps to rebalance the system pretty quick if any of those four guys along with Adams can make it.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Feb 25, 2016 -> 05:40 PM) Or maybe the White sox are just that content with their outfield. At this point that hypothesis is currently consistent with the available evidence. And/or waiting for a deal that brings the the likes of Carl Crawford (since we're collecting these types now), Ethier or Austin Jackson yet only adds $7 million or less to the payroll, capping it at around $130 before Opening Day. (Obviously Crawford would be less...ala Josh Hamilton.) At any rate, if going with Avi and LaRoche does blow up, do you think JR blames Ventura, Hahn/KW or his own payroll limitations?

But they still don't necessarily want to help us to earn a wild card, either. I would imagine Hahn just wasn't willing to part with the player Hoyer asked for...and/or they targeted Brooks a long time before he ended up with the A's last year, kind of like the Nestor Molina/Santos deal.

The Cubs have zero reason to help the Sox unless we seriously overpaid as 1) could make them look bad if he outperformed Fowler 2) the Cubs want to create a quasi-monopoly competing with us on media rights in 2019 3) any success we have is highly unlikely to force "spillover" customers to the Cubs since they're already maximizing ticket revenues Who's willing to trade Adams for Coghlan?

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Feb 24, 2016 -> 10:05 PM) Condi Rice could become the most powerful person in politics if she earned to. She'd be an obvious choice if she ever wants to get back into politics, but it doesn't seem like it. She did give a great speech at the 2012 convention. No way would Trump go back to Hadley after their war of words. Kelly Ayotte seems to want the job. But she probably has to worry about her own campaign first. Scott Brown is the name that keeps coming up over and over again, but I don't see it after he's lost twice in a row. Susana Martinez would check off a few boxes if that's the goal. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is another possible candidate. Knowing Trump, it will probably be Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham, haha.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016...at-Donald-Trump Are Republicans finally coming up with a plan to beat Donald Trump? Good article.

Brantley's an MVP-caliber player, when healthy. You also have Kipnis, Carlos Santana, Lindor and Gomes, so those five players alone comprise a very nice and youngish core (Gomes missed most of last season). Obviously, Santana and Kipnis have been a bit up and down, but they're both talented guys, especially Kipnis. Then you have the veterans in Napoli and Uribe, who can be very effective, IF HEALTHY. Almonte shows a lot of promise and the Indians have some really nice looking prospects not that far away. The biggest questions are going to be 3B and RF. Joey Butler and Cowgill are expected to battle for time as back-ups. Barring a late addition – the Indians are still looking to add at least one more hitter – the three outfielders with job security headed into spring training are Rajai Davis, Abraham Almonte and Lonnie Chisenhall. Davis can play all three positions, but is expected to spend most of his time in left while Brantley heals. The switch-hitting Almonte will play center and Chisenhall, who flashed Gold Glove moves when he made the move from third base at midseason last year, will be in right field. The outfielders that win the last two spots are going to have to be versatile so Francona can use them in matchup situations. Take Almonte for instance. Last year he hit .250 (15-for-60) against lefties and .250 (43-for-172) against righties, but the .250 he hit against righties included five homers and 20 RBI. Against lefties, he had no homers and four RBI. So Francona could slide Davis from left field to center when the Indians face a tough left hander, while going to his bench to find a left fielder. http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/index.ssf/2...or_clevela.html

One strategy would be for Trump to bring in a female on the ticket...that would mitigate some of the misogynist attacks from Hillary, which would of course be countered by attacking Bill Clinton's proclivities and their partnership/marriage, which might not be the best ground for her to defend since it's so "Washington/Inside the Beltway." Not sure the traditional "abortion rights" tack will work well either, simply because Trump can turn around and moderate his position on a dime and come across as at least fairly reasonable compared to the "fire and brimstone" must have an abortion even in the cases of rape/incest/health threat to the mother religious right. It has to be a lot more credible choice than Sarah Palin, however. A younger, more moderate/centrist candidate might do the trick. Nikki Haley is the obvious choice, but she's already aligned with Rubio. Then again, push comes to shove, it would be quite difficult to imagine her turning it down. It would be a huge opportunity to elevate her national profile and continue to position for 2020 were this general election to go south for whatever reason.

Toronto, Boston/NYY/Baltimore/TB (hard to differentiate, probably that order) KC, Cleve/DET/CHW (any order), Minnesota Houston, Texas, SEA, LAA/Oak All three divisions are incredibly deep and tons of parity. At this point, Houston would be the slight favorite, because there are so many questions about the starting pitching for TOR and KC

Marcus Semien is terrible defensively and made lots of errors...being 6th in WAR for qualified MLB shortstops is meaningless.

These Sox fans that are upset with not signing Cespedes/Upton/Gordon are likely the same fans that were happy with the signings from last year who now hate the front office because they all flopped. To me, it's more the narrative throughout last off-season that none of those moves were going to impact our ability to sign players for 2016. And it's not even whiffing on Cabrera and LaRoche, it was those smaller deals like Duke and Bonifacio and even Beckham that would now be quite useful in being able to afford the likes of Austin Jackson. And not trading Samardzija at the deadline in a way forced Hahn's hand to hold onto that pick, at least that's one of the main justifications or rationalizations now. At this point, we're not even able to afford "second tier" options like Fowler, Jackson, Span, Desmond...so we keep bouncing back and forth and are so afraid to commit and make one huge mistake with an Upton or Gordon that we're ending up with much higher bust rates on the second and third tier guys. This isn't just a single year complaint, either, it's been standard operating procedure for the White Sox for many years, with the exceptions of Belle, Abreu, Dunn and Robertson being the only "top tier" players we've signed as FA's. While all of our moves look good in isolation (especially Rollins and Latos), we would need a LOT of things to go right in order to make the playoffs and anomalously good health again. http://www.redreporter.com/2016/2/24/11105...-the-2016-white http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2016/2/16/1101...0975.1456422238 Pirates/White Sox/DBacks three most confusing teams In retrospect, why were we all so excited about the offseason the White Sox had last year? They got a closer, a 35-year-old DH and an aging PED bust, and because we were all hopped up and freebasing transactions, it was easy to mistake activity for effectiveness. And those three players are still key components of the 2016 White Sox roster. Last year, Melky Cabrera, Adam LaRoche and David Robertson combined to make $35 million. They also combined for a win over replacement, according to Baseball-Reference. That's a brutal combination, and everyone's a year older. Those three players might have been a part of the problem, but they weren't the reason the White Sox were so disappointing, Crumbling defense, especially in the infield, combined with hundreds and hundreds of at-bats given to low-upside young players, hamstrung the White Sox far more than the offseason mini-spending spree helped. That's why this offseason, the team addressed the most immediate, unmistakable concerns.