caulfield12

RH is Rick Hahn, or Right-Handed, or both? Unfortunately, they lost mediocre as the standard this past April.

This feels like the script being utilised by ticket agents with disbelieving season renewals....and Pedro Grifol already has one full year under his belt, all the negative influences but two are gone, etc.

Mookie Betts signed an extension with LA. The one way to increase his value from SD’s perspective is find a team that’s willing to break the bank and give Soto an extension before the season starts. Maybe the Giants…if they fail on Ohtani and Yamamoto. Blue Jays and Cubs desperately need postseason breakthroughs. Yankees are always a possibility…but unwilling to give up 2-3 top pitching prospects so far.

What pitcher has the most trade value on the market? It’s Dylan Cease of the Chicago White Sox. Cease, who finished second in the AL Cy Young race two years ago, still has two years of control before he’s a free agent and earned just $5.7 million last season. He’s scheduled to earn $8.8 million in salary arbitration this year, according to MLB trade rumors. There’s a reason why the Dodgers, Atlanta, St. Louis and Baltimore are all clamoring for him. The White Sox are telling teams they are in no rush to move him until the free-agent picture comes into focus. https://www.yahoo.com/sports/nightengales-notebook-10-questions-heading-120356311.html

We’ve seen this song and dance before. The White Sox aren’t going to write a check of roughly $25-35 million to get rid of Benintendi. Like the Moncada deal, they’ll wait until the last year or so of the deal before cutting bait with an amount so daunting for them. The Leury’s of the world are one thing…but this is serious bank to JR. If Benintendi desperatelywants off the team, he’s going to need to put up 1.5-2.0 fWAR in the first half.

Has an undefeated P5 team ever been denied since they changed to four teams?

If Alabama wouldn't have lost at home to Texas...sure.

There's just no way FSU without Travis is a Top 4 team. But taking Alabama or Texas over an undefeated ACC team would still be unprecedented. It's going to have Texas and SEC (14 of last 17 winners) fans in general throwing a fit. 8 team playoff allows those two plus OSU and Oregon.

111 the highest yardage total from halftime of Michigan/Iowa FSU/Louisville. Snooze. A lot of college football fans are going to be angry next week...

What a mess now with the Texas vs. Alabama debate... Florida State losing would make things much easier...unless you're a Crimson Tide or Longhorns fan. UGA was just not the same without Bowers and McConkey at 100%. Milroe has really come a long way this season as a passer rather than run-first option.

By this argument, replacing 2B should be easy. Just move one of those 3B/SS types if it's not a "pure" 2B, right? But all Sox fans know it has been anything but. The reverse of TA. Benintendi averaged 1 fWAR per season from 2019-2021...which would have been worth just a $7/8 million contract...but his 2023 2.8 fWAR on the back of the NYY lineup earned him $75 million???

How many SS’s other than Bichette are out there? What’s his acquisition cost? Jean Segura, for example, got $17 million guaranteed at his advanced age…although he clearly became more of a 3b as opposed to pure SS.

All depends on what CLE is asking for. Seems like the Guardians are really trying to cut payroll more dramatically. Team in flux now. Big name but very questionable health and upside.

https://apnews.com/article/miami-marlins-gabe-kapler-0b4053a7a46478dd23c59b1fe18c1482 Kapler to Marlins as Asst GM

That's fine...but then you potentially have let's say Gilbert Bieber and Glasnow to consider, too.

We can't say that definitively because that means he will have played with four teams already the first 1/3rd of his career. Is he a National for the HoF because of the WS win there? Players do care about their long-term legacy. If he's 100% set on a destination and gets traded there...you just can't rule anything out in life 100% even with the likes of Scott Boras.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-legg-mason-miller-idUSKCN10M1DV/ This guy was the most famous stock pickers in the world, with the most credibility of anyone, even more than Warren Buffett even…he beat the S&P 500 Index a record 15 times in a row. Most of the Rick Hahns of the world could only accomplish this feat maybe once every decade…as 90% plus of actively managed funds don’t even beat their indices. But take a look at his track record from 2007-08-09 through today. He’s probably in the Bottom 5-10% overall during these past fifteen years.. Was he a success or failure? Were those who invested in him after that impeccable record of success idiots or merely unlucky? https://www.forbes.com/profile/stewart-horejsi/?sh=6db14a863aa3 Likewise, is this guy one of the smartest, luckiest or most credible to end up with $2.8 billion dollars from investing all his money with Berkshire Hathaway beginning in the 1980’s? Success and credibility are often times a product of sheer luck and being in the right place at the right time.

Who here has been right more than 50% of the time? Hahn was running around a 15-20% success rate in FA. Heck, any serious mutual fund’s proprietary trading system/algorithm could be taught to double or triple that success rate in a matter of weeks. Or ChatGPT…for that matter. Despite his education, Hahn was never smart about either evaluating players or what it takes to put together a winning team and/or organization. Either that, or he was completely inept at convincing JR to buy into his vision…which we still really don’t know what that vision was (collecting top-rated minor league talent and just throwing it together with veterans, utility guys and theoretically dominant pen?). ASB 2021-2023 teams were so lacking in an actual identity or defining characteristics other than “they simply beat themselves.”

Pretty telling you have three Central teams…White Sox spending frivolously, Twins and Tigers pushing chips in but pushing limits of what ownership is willing to spend and the the Guardians a profit machine due to a minuscule payroll and 2022 playoff/ticket sales…and finally the Royals turning a typical small market profit due to perennially low payrolls since 2016-17 and the current subsidy system. The fact that the White Sox didn’t get hurt by the RSN/Bally fiasco tells you everything you need to know…that there’s not even a pretense of attempting to compete anymore at this point when rivals are basically tapped out and subtracting in Minnesota and Cleveland (Bieber, Quantrill, new manager) and Tigers only ones actually intent on improving their team for 2024.

That was the most critical error, in retrospect…but especially at his age, to give that many years. Choosing hometown hero Musgrove and Darvish for extensions wasn’t that great either, or Cronenworth. Like Benintendi, reports his wrist wasn’t right the first 4 1/2 months of the season. Red Sox lost two stars and then basically doubled down on and cost Bloom his job…that was equally bad because he seems like the quintessential won’t age well guy, obviously he’s such a good hitter, albeit not a complete player unless combined with Moncada on the defensive side. If there’s one player outside their #9 minor league system (Padres) I’d take a shot to rebuild in value…it would definitely be Trent Grisham because of his GG defense or Cronenworth if they ate a big chunk of his salary…Gary Sanchez would be another to at least kick the tires on, he put up excellent power numbers in limited action, and that#’s what the Sox need a lot of. Finally Profar out of Colorado, same as Cronenworth, but would need a ton of money/subsidy back again. One of the worst in baseball after a strong 2022 overall. Imo, If they hadn’t made the Clevinger, Nola and Soto trades…this franchise would be 50% better off than their current financial predicament…having to cut back to roughly $200 million losing at least 20-25% of their newly-activated fanbase in the process.

Losing 700 innings from the pitching staff looks even worse. The complementary guys like Grisham, Nola, whoever they threw out at DH, Cronenworth were just not good enough...statistically they looked like an 85-88 win team all season long. But always lesser than the sum for all their individual parts, which was Preller's fault more than the numerous managers he's employed. Basically, they were just terrible in tight and close games...extras...the majority of the bullpen other than Hader was just bad enough to make them a sub 500 team until the very bitter end of the season. Kim and Tatis won GG's...it's just that Bogaerts and Machado weren't nearly as good as their 2022 levels and even Tatis offensively wasn't close to his 959 career average coming off all the downtime and injuries/corrective surgeries. He did at least pretty very he could stay on the field for a full season...not unlike Luis Robert.

So much for unprecedented financial flexibility....even Bryan Shaw was too pricey thanks to Benintendi and Moncada.

https://theathletic.com/5102002/2023/11/30/will-the-padres-trade-juan-soto-plus-how-to-hire-a-manager/?source=freedailyemail&campaign=601983

https://theathletic.com/5103372/2023/12/01/shohei-ohtani-brand-free-agent-business/?source=freedailyemail&campaign=601983

We saved the Braves a lot of money and avoided their having to make difficult roster calls on Shuster and Lopez...