dasox24

Agreed. My biggest concern if the power structure stays the exact same is that GMs and coaches make short-sighted, bad decisions when they're trying to save their jobs. We're in salary cap hell and I'm tired of kicking the can down the road. The team is going to be worse next year regardless, so I'd rather take our lumps and put ourselves in better cap position in 2022. But I'm afraid Pace will mortgage the future to save his job - e.g. restructuring deals to have bigger cap hits in future years and handing out big contracts to aging veterans (i.e. like he did last year with Robert Quinn). I'm also afraid he'll continue his ways of trading future drafts picks (and/or multiple draft picks) to move up in the draft to get "his guy," which has consistently not worked out. When he's forced to just keep the pick we have, he's actually drafted really well (outside of Round 1, which is a major problem itself that he screwed up 3 top 10 picks, but I won't go down that path right now).

Those were exactly my first two thoughts as well. Hendricks would be very interesting, though if something like Cease, Madrigal, Heuer and good prospect (as you mentioned in another post) could actually get Woodruff, I think long and hard about making that move. Sign a FA to replace Madrigal, and the Sox do so well with findings relievers, I would feel confident in filling Heuer's spot with an in-house candidate (albeit I do love Heuer and don't expect we'd find an exact match for him - but surely we can find someone who can reasonably get the job done).

LET'S GOOOOO! Love it. Didn't think the Sox would do it.

Haha, I went to high school with Logan. I had high hopes after those 2015-2016 seasons, and even though he hasn't been good recently, it was still cool to see him have some success in the big leagues, though he clearly didn't help bmags' fantasy team.

Wow. Did not expect him to be the next man up, but definitely excited to see him pitch. Bad news on Marshall, though. I'm weary of any shoulder injuries, but hopefully Hahn is being truthful when he says he expects to have him back by the Cubs series.

Yeah, but if people want to determine a winner/loser on the trade (which I'll admit is nearly impossible b/c of the factors you stated - but I got sucked in, so now here I am), then how else do you do it? It gets too hypothetical guessing who we may or may not have drafted with picks, or not trading other picks. And Pace's 1st round track record is terrible anyway - he's 1 for 4. It's difficult to be that bad when you're drafting in the Top 10 all four of those years. I'd feel safer with Mack than either of those 2 first round picks we gave up. The other picks are small in terms of draft capital. Plus we got the 2nd rounder back.

Who knows what will happen with the salary cap next year, but Mack only accounts for 12% of our cap space this year. We can manage that. Even if the cap stays flat or goes down next year, I expect it will jump again in 2022 and beyond.

I wouldn't worry too much about Mack yet. Even if he has another year like last year, that's still one of the best pass rushers in the league. I can't say that we'll ever live to regret that deal. The trade ended up being: Bears receive: Khalil Mack Cole Kmet Arlington Hambright Raiders receive: Josh Jacobs Blessuan Austin (this pick was traded to NYJ) Damon Arnette Bryan Edwards Jacobs is a very good RB , but I'll take Mack over him any day. And obviously it's too early on Arnette and Edwards, but neither of those guys concern me right now. Guess we can revisit this in a year or two, but I still like our end of the deal.

The 2000 Sox team is the first I ever followed for an entire season from start to finish - I lived in Tennessee, so I had to follow the team by either 1) reading the box scores in the paper every morning; 2) watching the rare game on TV; or 3) catching highlights on ESPN and/or seeing the score on the ESPN bottom line. I was in 6th grade. That's the team who got me totally hooked on the Sox, so I'll also appreciate them.

Not concerned in the slightest with Mitch. Training camp discussion filler. Let's see what happens during the regular season.

Eh, she was definitely more reliable in that she didn't skip work anymore and didn't send me Facebook messages as a means of work communication. Lol. But she wasn't a very good worker.

Haha. Good stuff. Some people do strange things. I once had an intern who did not show up to work on the Friday of her 1st week. Around 11am, I was starting to get concerned. No one at the company knew where she was. About an hour later, her hiring manager gets her on the phone - she's fine. It turns out she sent me a Facebook message at like 7:30am that morning and said she wasn't going to come into work because I hadn't assigned her any work... what?? Sure enough, I log into Facebook (which I never check) and I have a friend request from this girl, along with that message saying she won't be coming in to work. I was floored. Keep in mind she has a company laptop and email, as well as access to my phone # in the company directory. But nah, she decided Facebook was the proper way to contact me. We had a good discussion the next Monday about work etiquette and expectations.

Excellent. I was planning to go watch the Knights this weekend since they're playing outside of Atlanta. Now I really need to make it happen with Madrigal getting called up.

That's a cool trip idea. Compared to the others, I can understand why Luxembourg would seem the least exciting. That said, I liked it when I went. It was in July, so the weather was nice, warm, sunny. That always helps. I'm glad I went, but I never felt the need to go back even though it was about 2 hours from where I lived. Also, this would be unrelated to the idea of your trip... but if you have any interest in WWII, or Band of Brothers, Bastogne is very close to Luxembourg. It's maybe a 45 minute drive.

Yep, there seems to be a higher-than-normal contingent of Sox fans in Nashville (over the age of 30 anyway) due to that old affiliation we had. The Braves dominate the south, but I know some guys who are Sox fans because they grew up going to those minor league games and saw future White Sox players all the time.

Same. I've been thinking about moving to Nashville for years. If I ever leave Atlanta, Nashville (along with Austin) is at the top of my list.

Well said. The stars aligned for this to be our one chance get that type of free agent. The typical big money teams (Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, Dodgers) weren't in on it, and we still couldn't get it done. I'm disgusted and embarrassed to be a Sox fan.

So it ended up being the same amount of years and dollars that has been expected for like a year... Glad we wasted an entire off-season to get to that point. And what's the point of having tons of payroll flexibility if we aren't going to spend it? If we won't pay for Machado now, we will never get a big time free agent with the current ownership group.

Damn. What a joke.

Good stuff. Always cool when y'all get the players to guest-write.

Absolutely. And I feel this way even more now that I'm living in Europe. Games start at 7pm here. So it's like Sunday Night Football every week. I struggled the first 2 weeks of the year. The next day at work was awful. I was going to bed at 6am, sleeping for 2 hours, and then going into work.

Yep, it was Bonnaroo. Interesting to hear that his normal tour shows can be hit or miss. I sort of understand the festival mishap. Some artists try a little less when in the festival setting. But I wouldn't expect that as much when you're paying full price for his show specifically. Speaking of Kendrick, I've heard the same with him. I saw him play and he was fantastic. But I've heard people who weren't impressed with his show. Generally, I think rap is tougher to perform in a live setting.

I'm a bit envious that Kanye is in your best performances. He's among my worst. Dude stopped performing and talked for over 20 minutes about a bunch of nonsense and got boo'd. He chanted "Fuck the press. Write what you want" for probably 3 minutes straight at one point. Just over and over. Half the venue was gone less than an hour into the set, including myself, because he wouldn't perform. But I feel like that's so Kanye. He just does whatever he wants. Fortunately, this was at a music festival, so we just went to get good spots up front for a late night show.

First concert was The Wallflowers. For the life of me, I cannot remember my first album. DMB's Under the Table & Dreaming, if not my 1st album, was one of my first, so I'll go with that. I had a lot more mixtapes and/or burned CDs once those came about. I preferred making my own so I could choose what I wanted.

I'm with you. We don't have any reason to blame GarPax on Nwaba yet. Though the key word is "yet" - I still have zero faith in them until they start making moves that prove they are capable of building a winner. But we'll see. I'll judge the move once we have any idea of what kind of money Nwaba is asking for. I'm assuming it's more than any of us would like.