Quin

"Ok Rick, you can get your pick of basically any major leaguer for Kopech and Vaughn." "Ed Howard." Wait, what?" "Ed. Howard." "The kid doesn't have any professional at bats yet. You don't want, like, Snell? Castillo?" "ACE program for life." "I mean, if you're dead set on the Cubs, at least toss in Darvish?" "You're right. I better give them Crochet as well."

Yup. Maybe we could have gotten Colas today — or Dyan Jorge. Next year this may cost us Luis Piño. We might still sign both, we are after all landing both Cespedes and Vera this year. It still handicaps the ability to sign players.

At some point we're going to just see a photo of Abreu, Robert, Moncada, Grandal, Cespedes, and Vera having dinner with Colas.

We have plenty of Colas/Cespedes threads active. Let's keep it in those.

Ok - let's run this back. Teams agree to deals YEARS out. The Sox, because JR hates committing to 14 year old prospects (make of that what you will), usually have money in their coffers for big ticket signees - the more advanced Veras, Yolberts, and Cespedeses of the world. Yes, these are handshake deals, but these prospects are working out at team facilities. Norge Vera has all but "officially" been a White Sox prospect for months now. For the Sox to sign Colas - who they've no doubtedly been in contact with if you look at his social media - they'd have to renege on deals with some of Yoelki Cespedes, Norge Vera, and the other six prospects they've already committed to sign. That will probably reflect poorly on the team in the future when negotiating with prospects in the future. Oscar Colas is likely going to be asking for $2M+, which he would have been getting in the 2021-2022 period (previously July 2021 until MLB decided to change the rules). Barring extreme negligence on other teams parts, no one can offer that. So now he'll wait until January 2022. As James has repeatedly explained, he can make a handshake agreement with a team to accept a $2M+ offer and workout/play backfield games at DSL facilities - like Vera. The Sox just have to call him and say "hey, we know that no one can offer you what you want. You're friends with Moncada. You share an agent with him and Vera. You know we have a Cuban culture. If you wait until the next signing period, we've got you." These aren't extenuating circumstances either - Cespedes has been a free agent, but he waited to sign for more. Yolbert Sanchez did the same.

It's how pretty much all of the deals work.

If that's the case, then we can safely cross the Yankees off.

Those are all fansided/BR articles saying their teams should pursue him. Some of them — the Mets one in particular — seem to be unaware that many, many free agent deals are already done deals. That or they don't think the Mets have committed any of their salary. Which is a possibility, but would be awful baseball operations. The Yankees are intriguing because Jesus Galiz left the Yankees, which will likely free up cap space for them. At the same time, their space is severely limited because of signing Cole - so if the Yankees were already maxed out, it's doubtful that Galiz alone would free up enough to fulfill Colas' $2M price tag.

In case anyone missed the tag on the post - this was split off from the Reds' Fire Sale thread, because the discussion around Moncada's value had derailed it.

Less weak leadership and more the MLBPA doesn't care about non-MLB players. The MLBPA might be the most powerful union in the nation when it comes to getting what they want.

This whole system is so dumb.

I mean, the real fish here is Castillo while not giving up Kopech-Vaughn-Crochet. Your rotation is stacked 1-4 with Kopech ready to slot in at #5 and all the young guns (Crochet, Kelley, Dalquist, Thompson, Vera) kept in house. The lineup becomes Anderson - Moncada (S) - Abreu - Jimenez - Grandal (S) - Robert - Moustakas (L) - Vaughn - Eaton (L). Maybe you play around, but everyone in that lineup has power aside from Eaton. Moustakas' contract sucks, but you deal with it. If the Sox (8th best bullpen last season) do sign Hendriks and get a full season out of Bummer, in conjunction with the other moves, you're looking at the likely AL favorite. You worry about the longterm solution at 2B down the road.

I like to imagine Marco Paddy and Rick Hahn were flustered while in a meeting one day, talking to one another about how JR won't sign 14-16 year olds. Then Jose Abreu entered the room in this fashion:

Really, the only way to find out who is better is to put both of them in the same system with the same developmental staff.

Yeah ... no. I can only use Missouri's School of Journalism as an example, but you won't get the same learning experience school-to-school, let alone the built in networking (which is a big problem in and of itself). Most schools don't have journalism schools (they often bundle them with communications), let alone the robust curriculum. I got my first job because I was working for Mizzou at a journalism conference and made a connection there to an employer, so it wasn't networking, but I know several people who it has helped. I've got friends/classmates from Mizzou working at: ABC News, CNN, NASA, CBS, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Kansas City Star, ESPN, The Athletic, The Chicago Tribune, Reuters, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC News, NowThis, Fox News, Bleacher Report, The Daily Mail, The Associated Press, Newsy, Bloomberg News, and Cheddar. I was at two of those outlets in my short career (got hit by layoffs in the summer) and currently interviewing with a couple now that the job market is settling. I obviously have industry friends who went to other schools - Arizona State, USC, NYU, Indiana, Northwestern, Syracuse - but the route you suggest is a path rarely seen. I've had friends who tried to take it but found they lacked skills out of college. My fiancee went to a small college (her family mostly went to Penn State, but she didn't want to go to a large school) and her comms department still cut video on physical tape - she couldn't get a job in her desired field, book publishing, and has since gone into medical editing. She has the skills, but publishers take note of where your degree is from, which sucks. It's an industry problem. Edit: It's worth noting that as far as big schools go, when I went that Missouri is more affordable than most if you establish in-state residency. And I still had friends incurring massive debt.

Now (based on reporting from yesterday), seems like there's a good chance he waits?

Storm Throne and Taylore Cherry are the two biggest failures the White Sox development system have ever had.

No, but I cancelled my MLB.TV subscription and wrote TLR's hire as why. I didn't make grandiose declarations that I had no intention of keeping like some people like to do.

I think a big development is both the establishment and evolution of Abreu into and elder statesman and All-Star, along with Yoan and Robert joining up. Add in Grandal and suddenly you have a strong landing spot for Cuban signees. Yes, before the Sox had both Abreu and Alexei, but it wasn't the same. At all.

It's his off day.

If the Cuban stars align, Yolbert will click and Cespedes gets up here quickly, allowing the Sox to roll out this line up: SS - Anderson 3B - Moncada 1B - Abreu LF - Eloy C - Grandal CF - Robert DH - Vaughn RF - Cespedes 2B - Yolbert P - Vera (who for the sake of this scenario, quickly ascended through the Sox farm system in a way no one saw coming).

Forgot realize Ohtani signed after Robert (i.e. the cap put in place, Robert was the last big fish before the new system). I thought the posting system is what kept Ohtani's price tag low, not the prospect status. Ohtani was definitely the last mega-hype international prospect in that case. Before him it was Robert, before him, Moncada. Side note: Anyone remember Rusney Castillo? He's finally free from Boston's AAA team.

I was going specifically with prospects, not international free agents. If we included international free agents, then we have to include Abreu and Ohtani.

That's encouraging.