Chicago White Sox

I don’t follow.

Even if we’re the highest bidder he may not sign with us, this move is all about getting any edge you can get. And quite frankly it’s an incredibly smart gamble to take with very little downside risk.

Dude, you really don’t get this. Alonso is a strong-side platoon hitter. Not only will it be easy to limit him to 500 PAs, he’s actually more valuable to us when used in that fashion.

I’m convinced you’re just playing board contrarian at this point.

Lol...are you actually suggesting we are a revenue sharing recipient? Do you just make stuff up?

Cue the “hero worshipping” rants in 3...2...1...

Well now that he’s a member of the White Sox, there’s like a 50% he’ll get a coaching job with the organization.

Lol...I refuse to accept that’s a possibility, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Alright, so here are my thoughts. First & foremost, the question of whether or not this can happen comes down to money. Trying to be objective here, I’m going to consider a couple of pieces of information. Let’s start with Forbes’ valuation after the 2017 season: https://www.forbes.com/teams/chicago-white-sox/ This article suggests we made $30M in operating profit after the 2017 season. While this shows player expenses of $119M, our major league payroll was only $98M according to BP: https://legacy.baseballprospectus.com/compensation/?team=CHA For this analysis, the $98M of payroll and the $30M of operating profit are the key numbers to focus on. All other items (draft & LatAm spending, minor league spending, etc) will be held constant. What this immediately suggests is we could have afforded a $130M payroll last year. And that’s with pretty pathetic gate receipts. So what has changed since then? The MLB has renewed it’s contract with Fox, resulting in an additional $7M/year in revenue per team. For sake of math, let’s say that our payroll potential at $140M. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thewrap.com/fox-extends-its-tv-deal-with-major-league-baseball-through-2028/amp/ But in the grand scheme of things that is pretty insignificant. The real potential comes with our next TV deal with should go into effect after the 2019 season. Right now, we earn somewhere between $50M to $55M for our broadcast rights. https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/estimated-tv-revenues-for-all-30-mlb-teams/ I can’t find the source, but there is some speculation our revenue could double as a result of this new TV deal. But given this is simply speculation, let’s be conservative and say our next deal will pay us $25M more, which would be an50% increase. That would put our payroll potential around $165M and that again is with our current gate receipts. So what would it take to pay both Harper & Machado? Let’s be aggressive and say they earn a combined $85M in the early years. That’s about half of our potential payroll. But that’s at current gate receipt levels and adding two mega stars would definitey change that. Even at just 2M in attendance (2011 levels), we should see a $12M increase in gate receipts plus a decent amount in parking, concessions, etc. Let’s call it $20M all-in, putting a conservative payroll estimate for the near-term at $185M. That allows us to spend $100M on top of Harper & Machado. TLDR - Yes, we can afford to add both Harper & Machado and still have enough payroll flexibility to build a competitive roster.

So there have been several insiders suggesting the Sox want to add both Harper & Machado this offseason. The latest was good ole’ Bob Nightengale: What does the board think? Is there is any chance of this happening? Can this even financially work? If we somehow add them both, where does the team go from here? Look, I’m one of the more optimistic posters on this board and even I think the idea is crazy, but I do think it’s a fun exercise to think through.

I wasn’t accusing you of being the same person, you clearly understand what a comma is. I was referring your recent string of completely irrational posts.

It’s interesting that Peavy44 stops posting for the night and Caulfield comes right in to take his place.

What? Who said anything about DHing him?

So who platoons with Alonso? Seems like the only RH bench option we have right now is Rondon.

You’re a better man than me fathom, I can’t deal with Caulfield when he’s on one of his irrational Negative Nancy rolls.

There is just so much stupid in this post that’s it’s not even worth responding to with a rational response.

Dude, you have no fucking clue if that’s true.

Someone else already mentioned it, but Hahn’s comments on this trade are going to be hilarious as fuck.

Caulfield, what don’t you get about this move. This is all about the whales and not Alonso.

Oh gotcha.

Exactly, I really think this move serves two functions.

Idiotic? If we have the highest offer on the table right now for Harper, you don’t think Boras would be nervous as fuck that we just traded for Manny’s brother in law? Us being out of the Harper sweepstakes is a huge blow to Boras’ negotiationing leverage. And this is a sport in which agents & teams leak shit all the time to create misdirection or improve their negotiationing position. Trading for Alonso is a tangible move that makes zero sense outside of a potential Machado signing. If you’re Boras, how else do you process this trade?

The other thing this trade does is potentially spook Boras & Harper into thinking we’re moving forward with Machado.

I had to try to sneak him in there! But in all seriousness, the addition of Machado means Yoan in CF or Madrigal as a trade chip.

Alonso + biggest contract offer is a great way to differentiate us from the Yankees & Phillies.