Chicago White Sox

Even one of my friends who is a diehard Cubs fans thinks this cat is a fraud. It really seems like the Darvish was either a lucky guess or one time leak.

Depends on his medicals, but I’d probably trade Walker for him.

Would the Sox do it? Yes, for sure. Would the Rays? No way in hell IMO.

Of course, but plenty of guys hit for power in college but not in professional ball. At the end of day, you don’t take a 1B prospect with a day one pick unless you’re confident in his ability to hit. Way too early to right Sheets off, but the pick will look like a disaster if the power doesn’t come to fruition.

I think you’re exaggerating a bit here. Lambert & Flores are both interesting, especially Jimmy IMO. Puckett is still technically a thing. McClure is pretty interesting and was doing very well pre-injury. Pilkington & Steiver head a wave of interesting college arms we just took as well. Not great by any means, but these guys are all way better prospects than what we gave up for Nova.

I’m not sure the overall drafting has been atrocious (there have been some nice finds under Hosterler), but we need to get more out of our day one picks. So far Nick has selected Collins, Burdi, Hansen, Burger, Sheets, Madrigal, & Walker in the first two rounds. None of those first five guys are busts yet, but none of them look like sure fire major leaguers either. I know injuries can be blamed to some extent, but all five of those guys’ stock is down vs last year and that isn’t a good sign. Also, that Sheets pick is a complete disaster until he shows some real in game power. Not writing him off just yet, but going over-slot for a 1B prospect that doesn’t hit HR’s is questionable across the board. Also wasn’t a huge fan of the Walker pick, but am willing to give Hostetlet the benefit of the doubt there for now.

I think this ranking is absurd and don’t agree with his assessment with our depth. There is no doubt in my mind that we have much less depth than the elite farm systems like the Padres & Braves, but I’m not sure I agree that there are that many other systems that are substantially deeper than us. At least not enough so to outweigh the value of our top 15 guys and move us to a middle of a pack system.

Is the Barons’ park the one that has the terrible camera view? Honestly, I’m probably assuming a lot of those pitches he took were borderline when in reality some were down the middle.

How much do you think catching has impacted the development of his bat? My view on catching prospects is the bat typically lags behind a bit as these guys spend so much time focused on their defense & game calling. If that’s the case, I’m actually fairy optimistic about Collins’ future offensively. Whether you like wRC+ as a predictor of success, it does depict a path forward with the bat (on base ability + power) that could be plenty valuable. Based on what I’ve seen though, I do think there is room for growth in terms of contact ability. Much like Moncada, Collins needs to find a way to be a bit more protective on balls close to the zone. He has an elite batter’s eye but he seems to K looking on borderline pitches far too much. It’s much easier to change one’s aggressiveness in certain counts than it is to recognize balls from strikes. I really think Zack will improve in that regard in time.

What does this mean?

Other than trying to cleat guys’ ankles, what has Machado done that makes him so bad? Like the “Johnny Hustle” comment was stupid, but that doesn’t make him a jerk.

Ask the Giants trainer who A.J. punched in the balls for no reason.

I think you got this completely backwards. By all accounts, A.J. was a legitimate asshole and was hated by many of his own teammates. I have yet to hear that Machado’s own teammates dislike him.

Look, I’m not panicking over this and I can totally see this just being a Boras plant. That being said, all I’m saying is this represents the risk of slow playing the market too much. I said it earlier this offseason, but with Harper it’s not that crazy envisioning one ego-maniac billionaire owner entering the sweepstakes late and deciding to say “fuck the budget” and do whatever it takes to land Bryce because he can be a transformative signing for the franchise. Again, maybe the Padres aren’t really that type of threat here, but it reflects why utilizing the Red Sox’s strategy with J.D. Martinez may be a dangerous game to play.

Well if you beleive the tweet, why are they suddenly getting involved now? My fear has always been a team decides to make a late run at Harper and once a billionaire owner gets involved it’s possible they refuse to lose. We really need to the Phillies to land Bryce, because I truly believe they’re our only real threat for Machado.

This is exactly what I was concerned about. Boras convinces some owner that Harper is worth well beyond his on-field contributions and now we have a last minute entry to the Harper sweepstakes. Hopefully the Padres have financial restrictions and aren’t a real threat here.

?...let’s see here, the Sox have little to no debt and have a sweet lease arrangement with the IFSA to pay for stadium improvements. Meanwhile, the Cubs’ ownership group has financed the purchased one of the team, ancillary assets, and significant maintance CAPEX via debt. Yet you continue to use operating income as the be all end all. And regardless, the ability to absorb a significant salary is far more dependent on a team’s long-term financial commitments relative to their theoretical payroll ceiling. I can’t say this enough, but the Sox have zero long-term commitments and likely have a ~$150M payroll ceiling without a big jump in revenue. The Cubs are more or less up against the luxury tax and their ownership group (a family trust and not a random billionaire owner willing to throw endless cash at his team) has shown zero willingness to blow out the 2nd or 3rd tier luxury tax threshold for the foreseeable future. You can keep talking about all these revenue streams & “appreciating assets”, but if the Cubs doesn’t want to pay a luxury tax like most ownership groups (even ignoring their debt load) then it doesn’t really matter. Your argument is flawed from both a business standpoint and a practicality standpoint.

I’ll take this response as a victory.

No, we can bro, because we know the Sox have basically zero long-term financial commitments while the Cubs have a ton of young players that are suddenly getting expensive plus potential albatross contracts in Heyward, Darvish, & Chatwood. Why are you still arguing this?

100% agreed Caulfield.

This is one of my favorite posts of all time. You literally rip on me for using the “limited data Forbes has access to” (which I’m not doing) and then you proceed to use Forbes’ operating income estimates to make your entire argument. Second, I must question your business acumen when you only use operating profit and claim financing doesn’t matter. See when you have this thing called debt, you also have this thing called interest. Servicing their debt load eats always at their earnings / cash flow from operations. And how do you think the Cubs have been paying for the Wrigley renovations, their new spring training facility, all the rooftops, their boutique hotel, their triangle building, etc. Yeah, that shit isn’t free bro and how the Cubs finance those expenditures is extremely fucking important and impacts their cash flow position.

Which part isn’t true, that the Cubs are owned by a family trust or that the Cubs aren’t paying down their debt via their earnings? I’ll hang up & listen now.

Selling high means you sold an asset at peak value, not that you necessarily got a great return. I seriously doubt Omar’s value will ever be higher and the time to move him was now. Also, I said in my previous post that it’s more than fair to debate the return. I like Colome but he isn’t coming at much of a discount vs comparable arms on the market. But again, that’s completely separate of whether we sold high on Narvaez.

Just a terrible post and it borderlines on trolling. The Sox probably have the most financial flexibility of any team in baseball. The Cubs are owned by a trust fund, are paying down their debt load via the earnings of the business, and would need to blow out the luxury tax threshold to add a big contact (something much more liquid ownerships are afraid to do). There isn’t even a debate here who can more easily absorb a whale contract.

Your lack of watching White Sox games is ever apparent if you think Omar Narvaez has a decent shot of being a good big league player. He is one of the worst defensive catchers I have seen in Sox history and has very little hopes of getting better IMO. His 2018 offensive season was a huge fluke and his xWOBA last year supports that. For a team that will be developing a lot of young arms over the next couple seasons, they were smart to sell high on him. Debating the return is fair, but my guess is Omar had little to no value across the league and the Sox like Colome more than others.