caulfield12

https://sports.yahoo.com/new-bears-coach-thomas-brown-preached-accountability-for-a-team-that-needed-it--then-he-went-a-step-further-222719357.html

Teams that lost 100+ games in the previous season should get 2 Golden Bats per game. Almost like they're trying to turn it into an e-sport to appeal to young people. Everyone over 40 or 50 would absolutely hate the idea. Traditionalists/purists.

What was a realistic expectation for the bullpen last year? He seeningly coached up guys like Santos and Scholtens...but every argument is related to expectations. Crochet and Fedde were his calling cards last year. Cannon. Not sure how much credit he gets for Burke at the tail end. Thorpe was lucky or he outpitched his peripherals or both? The team didn't just quit down the stretch...how much credit goes to coaches and how much simply to players' pride, like Benintendi? They didn't turn on each other like the two previous years of finger pointing. One thing is for sure. The Brewers, Royals and Guardians and even Mets got more from their pitchers last year than what "should" have happened on paper.

Between Kimbrel Hendriks Kelly Graveman Bummer they had to be over $33 million the second half of 2021...well, essentially they were forced into the Pollock contract because of the QO for Kimbrel instead of Rodon. I guess Kelly/Graveman were added going into 2022...but it feels like years ago. Then you had Lopez who was essentially in the pen for most of one of those seasons as well.

Greg775 has been on a roll recently.

AAA filler...most likely.

Gellinger has been with organization for most of his coaching career...probably gets reassigned to minors.

Can't believe Iowa State is one win away from the playoffs...but such is the state of NCAA football this year. Colorado would have drawn much better ratings with Deion and two of the top five picks, including the likely Heisman winner in next year's draft. At any rate, hopefully they provide better games than Iowa or Wisconsin in B10 championships recently. And maybe Boise State, Indiana, SMU or ISU can give it more of an NCAA bb tourney feel as cinderellas with unaligned fans getting behind them and not just cannon fodder.

Blue Light specials is more like it.

Giolito and Lopez had both struggled initially with Washington. Gore to the Nats as part of a package…and SD traded a boatload of starting pitching prospects for high leverage relievers last year. Pepiot in the Glasnow trade. Ragans for Chapman. The problem here is needing positional talent twice as much as the pitching side. And how depressing it is for fans to have a non-competitive offense.

“That move pushed the Dodgers’ estimated luxury tax payroll for next season to about $305 million, according to Cot’s Baseball Contract, which would have surpassed MLB’s highest threshold for tax penalties. Yet it didn’t stop the big-spending Dodgers from continuing to act aggressively. One month removed from their World Series championship, they’re already maneuvering to try to win again.“ latimes.com/sports

Bobby Jenks and Sergio Santos in past years...but challenging to find starters. Guys with diminished value such as Giolito Lopez Gavin Floyd that initially failed at the big league level. Jose Contreras...picking up part of unwanted vet salaries.

Looking back...drafting Bowers would have made more sense than Odunze. That guy is a generational TE talent with even O'Connell/Minshew and they also could have traded from their TE surplus if they so desired. But talent-wise, it's night and day with the White Sox or even the Bulls.

https://sports.yahoo.com/bears-players-were-reportedly-furious-at-matt-eberflus-inside-an-ugly-locker-room-following-disastrous-loss-to-lions-171115743.html

Jerry seemingly will value dumping the contract over the value of any prospects...in the past when taking subsidies for players like Thome and Shields (when we were actually competing), even then the priority was on saving money over talent return. Same with international draft money over recent seasons...

Does Indiana get in now...? After getting blown out by a team that just lost at home to a 6-5 Michigan team without a passing attack? Not even convinced PSU is all that great...but you can say the same thing about the SEC being down compared to prior years.

Does Ryan Day survive this? How?

"Then came the end-of-game situation against the Lions. If you have said you've never seen something like that before, you are right. OptaSTATS said that over the past 30 NFL seasons, in 1,501 instances, there was only one team that lost by three or fewer points and run a play inside the opponents' 30 on their final drive, but had the clock expire without trying a field goal or using all their timeouts. That was the Bears on Thursday. Eberflus had the worst record among all 221 coaches in NFL history with 20 or more games decided by seven or fewer points, according to Associated Press' Josh Dubow. Eberflus was 5-17 in those close games. It can't be chalked up to bad luck, either." yahoo.com/sports

I remember the last time we supposedly had leverage to acquire a pitcher that even the owner wanted gone. His name was Big Game James Shields.

Some Phillies websites have speculated on this after being disappointed by his end of season performance. He would then be replaced by a Bregman signing.

Kind of like how Hahn took credit for Tatis signing one of the biggest extensions in history with SD, which would now seem just like an average upper tier salary for LA. So we are excellent at finding or developing talent for other organizations at least. Crochet and Robert will join a LONG list of names from Sox lore.

https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/cots/nl-west/los-angeles-dodgers/ 7 contracts currently on the books for $74 million or more. Just eyeballing it...almost $2 billion in contracts for 7 biggest deals, and that's with Kershaw and Buehler off the books.

Based on Sox history...none of those last four players are even around in three years. Why would we expect non top prospects to suddenly develop under Getz when one of the best prospect groups in recent years crashed and burned? If one does miraculously become anything close to Crochet or Robert...the will to give them an extension won't be there.

Why would we want Bohm when we already have Ramos/Vargas?

https://www.mlb.com/news/2024-2025-mlb-free-agents-rebound-candidates?partnerId=it-20241129-11866364-mlb-1-B&utm_id=it-20241129-11866364-mlb-1-B&lctg=34656683 Even if they signed all five of these guys...well, we all know they likely won't even sign one of them.