Chicago White Sox

People are also failing to realize there are multiple ownership cohorts and each one has different interests. Manfred’s job is to find common ground that benefits everyone and instead he’s hoping he can just bully the MLBPA into solving his problems. Losing games is the result of his shitty leadership and long-term planning.

Manfred is absolute scum

I’d be for that as well.

I do wish / hope they let the best non bye team pick their opponent. I think adding some strategy to the mix would be cool as hell.

Honestly, send Keuchel to the pen to start the year and have him replace the first guy to go down. I get it’s not ideal from a salary perspective, but we’re an injury away from a 3-4-5 of Keuchel, Kopech, & Lopez. Too much uncertainty with those three guys not to add another starter.

Nightengale recently pointed out we were in on Ray. I really don’t think they want to rely on Keuchel providing quality innings or risk his option getting exercised. And that’s a problem when your #5 starter is going to be on a massive innings limit. I think they have higher ambitions for the rotation than just a role player.

Brad Miller makes the most sense to me.

Which free agent SP would you pursue? Unfortunately the market is pretty thin at the moment.

For example, Conforto at $20M and Bassitt would put you close to $29M alone. Even if you go cheap at 2B and with Kimbrel’s replacement you’d be hard press not to spend $35M on those combined positions.

Typo…see post above. This is what happens when you’re on four hours of sleep…lol.

Sorry, meant RF, 2B, SP, & RP.

But they could easily spend above what the luxury tax was going to be previously ($210M) as they are already at $195M. At a bare minimum, I expect the Sox to trade Kimbrel (freeing up $16M or so), while also adding a RF, 2B, SP, & RP. Those four will almost certainly cost more than $16M and perhaps as much as $40M. That could push our luxury tax payroll close to $220M, so even an extra $10M really helps here.

If so, I will be doing a lot of celebrating this weekend!

Agree. 40% of the league making the playoffs after a 162 game regular season is plenty.

This could make Grandal the most valuable hitter on the team:

Good news for us for at least the next couple of seasons:

Preferably around 3:00pm so I can be on Soxtalk and free of meetings. Might need to block my calendar just to be safe.

Our favorite fake insider is back and has been reading this thread for ideas: That being said, it does seem like there could be quite a few trades basically ready to go once a CBA is agreed to and we pair up pretty damn well with Oakland. I think it’s a semi decent chance we acquire one of the A’s starting pitching regardless of what NSC is guessing.

Assuming a deal gets done today, how quickly can we expect the Sox to sign Michael Conforto?

In isolation it’s good there are options for these items, but how does the CBT fit into this equation?

This is where not having a real commissioner really hurts baseball. If the small market teams want protection against Steve Cohen and other large market clubs, then they should concede something else to the large market teams (such as minimal payroll requirements in order to receive revenue sharing). There should be balance to what the owners are proposing to the players, but unfortunately Manfred has zero ability to bring the various ownership cohorts to a consensus and instead just hopes he can exploit the weakness that has historically been the MLBPA. And it’s going to be us fans who suffer as a result.

My beef is with you referring to the owners as “self made” men when in reality many of them are just the beneficiaries of rich families. It’s very pro owner rhetoric and along the same lines as you saying the Waltons are beloved for creating hundreds of thousands of low paying jobs. Let’s try to be objective here and not take clear sides in a fight between millionaires & billionaires for reasons that aren’t true or logical.

Also, I think the player’s “ghost win” concept is pretty cool for the expanded playoffs. Adding a bunch more teams takes away the importance of a 162 regular season, but if winning your division gets you a bye or a free win in a best of five series that would be absolutely huge. Honestly, the proposal probably helps the White Sox more than any other team in baseball in the short-term and I really hope it happens.

To be honest, the owners had zero reason to move on their positions before their self-imposed deadline, so today was always going to be a huge day. I’m hopefully we see some real movement and they find a way to come to a deal without impacting the length of the regular season.

Lol…wish I would have saw this before I typed up my post. But seriously, imagine hero worshipping these guys.