mmmmmbeeer

I'd only sign him if Abreu signs off on it and only after Abreu has an in-person one-on-one with Puig. May sound ridiculous but I think Jose knows the personalities and clubhouse hierarchy better than even Renteria and would be able to properly evaluate the risk/reward of signing him. No offense to Grandal but dude should probably spend at least a week in the clubhouse before his endorsement counts for shit.

We have some control over Mazara...JP is a rental and will cost us another prospect or two. I'm actually pretty excited to see what Mazara can do; I think he'll have a surprisingly good season.

I would be livid if the Sox gave him anything in the neighborhood of what Trout is making. He's great, but he's not exactly defining a generation of baseball like Trout is. His 2018 season was unreal, and 2016 was pretty damn impressive, too. His other seasons were very, very good but not 'break the bank' good, imo.

Based on his minor league performance and his 'hot' month in MLB, I'm surprised so many folks have him hitting .280 or under. He's Miggy. I expect him to hit over .300 with at least 35 bombs. Seems with Moncada making HUGE strides last season and Robert on the horizon, the numbers Eloy put up in the minors and late 2019 are being ignored and we're instead focusing on his middling performance when he first came up. The dude is an absolute stud. Same as Moncada and Robert, he was a top 3 prospect in all of MLB. The kid is going to shine brightly.

Reading through the board, I can't help but get the feeling that many people actually expected the Sox to compete for a ring this season. Be it the idea of overpaying for starting pitching, dropping a record contract on a player not fitting a position of need, comfort with trading young prospects, or just getting upset that Hahn hasn't "spent the money". 2020 should have never been the season we Sox fans expected a truly competitive team. We're going to be several weeks without Madrigal and/or Robert, and then likely have to wait for them to adjust to ML pitching. A month or several months without Rodon and Kopech. Cease and Lopez need to find consistency. Collins is still learning how to hit in the majors. This was a 72 win team last season. I don't blame Hahn or Jerry for not going all in this offseason. We may be competitive for a WC slot this season or, best case scenario, everyone performs as we hope, win the division, and get shellacked by the Yankees or Astros in the playoffs. This would be the case even if we'd gotten Wheeler or Rendon. If Hahn fills RF with a Mazara platoon partner and can get a decent stopgap SP, I'd call this offseason a success. Give us this season to win more games, let guys mature, let Kopech and Rodon get healthy and back in form, and see what happens. Next offseason is when we go all in, imo.

The AAVs on this offseason's contracts are fucking insane.

Which is precisely my point; your calculations are flawed because they're unable to account for non-quantifiable contributions and benefits. So you truly believe if you can't measure something, it just doesn't matter? Really? And let me be clear, this contract is an overpay. That said, the difference between SABR value and contract value is not so great that it cannot be justified by these intangible benefits. It's not like they gave him a 4/100 deal or something completely unjustifiable.

The Cubs had a mediocre, old catcher who many players credited as a key figure in their run to the 2016 championship. They found so much value in his 2016 contributions (beyond the numbers), that they're now bringing him back to manage the club. Abreu performs at a MUCH higher level than David Ross ever did. How about we recognize that rewarding a VITAL clubhouse piece and a player who still puts up positive WAR deserves a deal that may be a year too long. More difficult to quantify, quality leadership shouldn't be underestimated. Those of you worried about dollars, imo, have never had the privilege of working with/for a great leader, person, and mentor. Any game involving human beings can't be neatly reduced to an advanced mathematical equation. Nuance exists.

So their defense is, "yeah, we were cheating big time but, obviously, we weren't very good at it"? Nah, screw that. An 8 WAR player is worth tens of millions of dollars. Would you trade a future 1st and 2nd for Mike Trout right now? Potentially picking up 8 games by stealing signs electronically is obviously worth the risk if this is the route MLB goes. Manfred needs to really make an example of them, especially as electronic surveillance and communications devices become less and less conspicuous every year. What's next, film with ear pieces?

If you review that season and find consistent proof of this cheating both during the regular season and throughout the playoffs, their championship should be vacated, imo. If I'm a team with a strong roster and we can pick up 10-15 home wins by literally filming signs and relaying to hitters, and the only punishment is losing a few draft picks, sign me up!

By "good" SP, I mean a #3 reliable innings eater. Sure, it won't be cheap but I don't think we need to target a TOR guy with Kopech, Gio, and Cease. RF, we just need to acquire someone better than what's available on the FA market which, apparently, shouldn't be too hard to do. I think this is especially true given we're in a position to eat salary. While Heyward wouldn't be my choice, he's a good example from earlier in the thread of a guy who could be snagged easily as long as we absorb the contract.

I think we'll see a lot more action via trade than we will FA. I think Hahn is more comfortable working with trading personnel than he is working with Jerry on money when it comes to a big splash. Which isn't to say we won't sign any FA, there are going to be some decent, economically sound pickups to be made for the pen, backup C, and maybe a 5th starter. RF and a good SP will likely come via trade.

Outside of Gio and Lopez, we're seeing what we want to see...production from the guys who will be in our lineup for the next several years. Those guys (TA7, YoYo and Eloy) know that W/L this year isn't incredibly important. Our W/L will improve as the ML team is augmented by other core pieces coming up from the minors. In the interim? Who cares.

Who are they going to call up or trade for in the next month to bolster that awful rotation? Oh, and if they fix the rotation, what are they going to do about the pen? If I'm a Cub fan, I see no positives to latch onto when looking at that pitching staff. The offense is going to have to carry that team and I'm not sure they can do it.

Really baffling.

McCann will be a strong veteran presence in the locker room. You need vets like him when you're dealing with a such a young roster. I would suspect his leadership and presence is half the reason they decided to sign him. From all accounts, McCann is a helluva teammate.

I used Eloy as an example. Look up on the northside as an example of what one bad contract can do to a team of homegrown, competitive talent.

Do you really want to commit 10 years of big money to a single player, be it Machado or Harper? And if you do, which player are you most willing to break the bank for? Channeling my inner-Hahn, there's no way in hell I'm giving either of these guys $35M+ every year for the next 10. They're both impact players, and Machado is a perfect fit for this current roster, but that's A LOT of money that is sure to hamstring this franchise in 5 years' time. If any of our up and coming players, say Eloy, hits FA and we can't sign him due to over-the-hill Machado or Harper contracts, how do you not second-guess the decision to sign those guys? I'd rather give things another year to shake out and learn what we really have with our young guys before committing big money to any player, Harper especially due to our glut of OF prospects. Our farm is SO loaded that the potential is there to create a homegrown contender without big FA signings. If this proves to be the case and only midrange FAs are required to help round out super-talented homegrown rosters, you can extend the reach of any potential dynasty by retaining that homegrown talent using the money you saved by not signing marquis FA. I'd rather take that $35-40M annually to build badass bullpens during our early, cost-controlled contending years than waste it on a single player.

If Bohm is there, he should be the pick.

This new Tim Anderson is a damn good ballplayer. The emotion he's shown is totally new.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Apr 5, 2018 -> 02:37 PM) Hawk was nice for a batter or two. Now he's rambling. Yes, in that half inning we learned that Avi should be an MVP candidate, Matt Davidson can hit 50 dongs, and Yolmer is the smartest guy on the team and most dangerous hitter against good pitching.

This is about as bad as Danks starting the home opener a couple of years ago.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Apr 5, 2018 -> 07:37 AM) I heard that the Sox lead the majors in home runs after yesterday's game. That's pretty cool. Not a stat that will last, but it's nice to see the power. They may not finish #1 in the category but don't go thinking this lineup doesn't have plenty of pop, especially as Anderson and Moncada continue to gain experience. Davidson looks completely different at the plate. And we've got Eloy likely to come up and contribute this season. What's most interesting to me is that we've played fewer games than most teams, have had very few cheap home runs, and still lead the league? That's a promising stat.

Jason is hilarious. I know that his extremely dry wit isn't everyone's cup o' tea but, personally, I love it. He also gets Stone to play along...another guy with a pretty damn good dry sense of humor. Only complaint I have with him is late reactions on bombs. I want excitement from him from the crack of the bat until we know whether it's a dong or not. Jason doesn't seem all that interested/excited until the ball is almost to the wall. Hawk was the master of calling dongs basically on contact. Even if the ball came up short of being a HR, he got your juices flowing for a brief second.

It's easy forget this kid was a stud prospect just a few years ago. Scouts saw the talent back in those days and he inexplicably regressed as a hitter. Age 27 is a magical age in MLB...I wouldn't be surprised at all if he puts up a pretty damn decent stat line this season and starts to find the skill and confidence that had him thought of so highly back in the day. You can't underestimate how beneficial the MLB opportunity the Sox have given him is to his psyche.