Chicago White Sox

I don’t think Soto is going to Boston unfortunately. Mets or Yankees appear to be the leaders.

The more I think about it, the more that I feel like a Crochet for Mayer + Montgomery trade will happen. Just makes too much sense for both sides.

I think there were some clubhouse issues with him too.

That would help no doubt, but at least with Soto off the books the market for Burnes & Fried will actually start moving and that will help Crochet talks.

I mean, you have said this like 20 times over the past couple of weeks. You seem to be implying there is something wrong with sticking to the bargain bin at the very beginning of a rebuild.

What would be the point of signing a free agent like this right now?

Good. The more top free agents that sign ahead of the winter meetings, the more focus that will be placed on Crochet.

If Soto signs tomorrow, I think there is a good chance Crochet gets dealt at the Winter Meetings this week.

Yeah, no thanks on Walker.

I don’t think this true. Those Harper / Machado contracts were absolute steals at the time and large part due to market conditions. Literally none of the heavy hitters were involved that offseason and that greatly suppressed bidding. I also don’t think this Soto contract will ever be viewed as a steal. $730M is a fuckton of money and I’m not sure a cool billion will be seen as cheap when you look at the valuations of major league post the recent regional TV collapse for many clubs. Just my opinion though. I do agree that Jerry needs to go 🤜🏼🤛🏿

Exactly, patience is needed. And I won’t sugar coat it, Vargas legit looked bad when I watched him last year and the Statcast data backs that up. But at one point, this dude was considered a serious prospect and he put up very good numbers in AAA last year. It would be absolutely nuts to cut bait on him 157 plate appearances into his tenure with us after our scouts highlighted him as a kid the front office should pursue. And to do so to give a different post hype prospect an opportunity is the definition of insanity.

We are a year or two away from normal bad. Signing Soto a $700M+ contract right now doesn’t make much sense IMO and that contract will never be the steal that the Harper / Machado ones were. Don’t get me wrong, I’d be ecstatic if we signed him, but I can’t really fault Getz for not pursuing Soto right now even if we assume a theoretical Reinsdorf doesn’t exist world.

Crochet was on the team last year and we were the worst team in baseball history. Adding Dylan Cease to it doesn’t suddenly make us competitive. The damage Jerry, KW, & Hahn have done to the org is practically unfathomable and that’s not an understatement. The key to being successful in Major League baseball is having a continuous pipeline of controllable, young talent. Under this past regime, we basically decided we wouldn’t be serious about adding talent from the Dominican Republic and instead would overpay for whatever Cuban talent became available and sign what we could out of less impactful countries like Venezuela and Panama. This has essentially left us with a lack of young LatAm talent coming into our farm, which is a massive disadvantage. Beyond that, we have under-invested in key functional areas like Player Development and Analytics. For years, we have been so far behind the times in using technology and data to develop our prospects and it shows with our hit rates. The vast majority of players drafted come in and make little progress before eventually flaming out. The really high end prospects may reach the show but usually come up ill prepared for the major league game. When you combine this with an empty LatAm pipeline you end up with a consistently bad farm system. All that being said, the single biggest way to improve our long-term outlook is to destroy the insular nature of the org. I am not a big Getz fan, but to his credit, he is going outside to bring many key people and those additions will come with fresh ideas and best practices. And when your foundation is rotten to its core, there is so much low hanging fruit that even an unqualified GM hire can make material improvements. However, those changes will take some time to bare fruit and we can’t rush that process. What that means is accepting defeat these couple seasons and running out a really bad product. Spending a bunch of money right now would be an exercise in futility and would in another failed outcome. A year or two from now is when you start being serious in free agency and add some win now prices. Until then enjoy a bad team lose a lot of games and hope we can identify a few surprises who can be a part of the next core.

So his look is a 157 plate appearances after being traded from the eventual World Series winner to the worst team in baseball history?

Seems a bad trade for the Mariners.

Oh gotcha

That’s exactly what I’m saying. Again, SS’s can move anywhere, we all know this, but our OF talent in the system is atrocious. An elite CF or RF to headline a deal would be just as good IMO as a legit SS prospect given where we stand today.

Merkin keeps suggesting that Getz is targeting a SS in a Crochet return. While you can never have too many SS prospects, I do think it lends some credence to the Montgomery is a 3B talk.

He will once we trade Robert and prospects for him.

The only challenge there is we already a bounce-back guy we need to give a look in Vargas and another near major league prospect in Ramos. I’d rather target a post hype RF type or someone that can slot in at DH.

A curse?

This is old news and no longer relevant. The Sox have taken high schoolers with five of their last seven 2nd round picks. The other two picks were two higher ceiling SPs coming off TJS (one of which is Taylor). There is plenty to rip the White Sox for, an outdated draft strategy isn’t one of them.

Well yeah, I’d look to extend him if I were the acquiring team’s GM, but Getz doesn’t need to make a trade that’s conditional on an extension. There’s a ton of unnecessary risk in doing that. The reality is Crochet is a premium asset and he should be marketed like one. If I were Getz, I go into the Winter Meetings and tell everyone he will be dealt for the best package by the end of the event. I wouldn’t give the opposing GMs time to f*** around and play the slow game. Tell them they can either have a truly elite SP on the cheap for the next two years who is open to an extension or they can overpay for mid tier SP in free agency. The former will come at a high cost, but is far more likely to make a difference in October than other any pitcher available. You want the unicorn, you got to pay unicorn prices. It’s really that simple and Getz doesn’t need to over complicate things. This trade should be done on our timeline & terms. The only exception is maybe waiting for Burnes to sign, but honestly, I would take advantage of the Winter Meetings setting regardless. Having every GM in one spot and being able to commit 24 hours a day to negotiation is a huge plus as a seller and increases the chances of one GM doing something stupid as result of FOMO.

So was thinking about this further. The lack of bats in the system is highly problematic. Obviously BA hasn’t posted their full top 30 list yet, but if I had to guess there will be somewhere between 13 to 15 guys in there. The problem is isn’t necessarily the sheer number, but rather the limited upside they provide. I’m not sure that we end up with one single positional star out of the entire farm system as it stands. If Colson doesn’t return to form to some extent, then the odds are truly stacked against us. Our best hopes are Wolkow & Bonemer and both guys have a long road ahead before I’d give it even a 10% chance. It’s why Getz can’t afford to f*** up this Crochet trade and must target quality over quantity.

They also need a LatAm program that contributes anything. I asked the BA writer if there were any recent signings in the top 30 and he said no. It’s very possible the only one is Wilfred Veras who we signed in 2019. Thank god Paddy is finally gone because an org can’t survive long-term with one of its two key pipelines being completely devoid of talent.