Thad Bosley

Also, it seems like there isn't necessarily one part of his game that will make you want to vomit uncontrollably game after game, like Engel's offense, or Nicky/Palka's defense. Nice contact/on-base guy, playing good defense at a critical defensive position, I'm good with that.

There has to be some crazy yet fun text messaging going back and forth between Machado, Alonzo, and now Jon Jay, as we speak!

I’m not that familiar with Jay. Is he at least decent defensively, if he’s to be a possibility in center?

Agreed, but I think there's a significantly higher percentage chance than just 1% that we acquire both players.

You could be right, but this appears to just be pure speculation on your part, as there isn't one story out there that corroborates this point of view. Unlike the many reports that have suggested the Sox are willing to bring both on.

That's not true, not with less than a handful of teams being seriously engaged for both players.

I hope this guy is right, actually. Because I still believe the Sox will have the highest offer on the table for both players (or else it was a complete waste of time to try and compete with the other major market teams in the mix), AND with coming to the Sox comes very lucrative endorsement opportunities and high possibility of success, given all of the top prospects. The Sox can easily compete with the other teams on those two attributes. So just throw in the “highest $”, and well, you still have to be hopeful about the team’s prospects on signing one or both. But they probably have zero chance if they don’t have the highest offer on the table, so it’ll ultimately come down to that.

The only thing on cue was your tired, predictable, and sanctimonious comment about the fan base. You never miss an opportunity to slide in your miscalculated view on the matter in threads like this one. Always the angry response from you when it comes to one of the most patient fan bases in all of professional sports. Why is that? Why so much hostility from you towards this fan base all of the time?

YAWN

How about we take option #1 out for a test drive and see how we like it before answering this question, since none of us has ever experienced seeing the Sox go on such a run at any point in our lives!

Which is one of the primary reasons the Sox don’t have the rabid fan base you’d otherwise expect from both a major market team and charter member of the American League.

I think it's more than wishful thinking. All of these national prognosticators acting as if this would be a slam dunk in the Yankees favor, well, maybe not. If it was such a foregone conclusion, then why the wait until the new year? Mayhaps we are in this more than we think or more than it seems publicly at the moment. But I definitely think this is at least a good sign for the Sox.

It ended up being settled out-of-court, with WFLD-Channel 32 fulfilling the end of the contract through the (putrid) '89 season. Unfortunately for WFLD, that contract coincided with one of the worst stretches in White Sox history, the '86 thru '89 seasons. Everything from Hawk's troublesome year as GM in '86, through the terrible baseball on the field during those four years, and of course, all of the negativity day in and day out related to Reinsdorf and Einhorn's threats to move the team to Florida if their demands for the state to build them a new ballpark AND provide them with a sweetheart lease deal weren't met. Needless to say, a black cloud hung over Comiskey Park each and every day as all of that was going on back then. As for the lawsuit itself, WFLD actually singled out Reinsdorf and Einhorn for essentially gutting the team during that time, which had an enormously crippling effect on ratings, and then ultimately resulted in some advertisers backing out. Channel 32 was definitely a victim of the owners' power game to get that new ballpark and sweetheart lease deal, no doubt about that.

Has there ever been a situation where a Boras client, particularly a premium free agent, ended up going to a team where destination trumped salary?

Then the whole thing will likely have been a fool's errand.

As long as the Sox offer the most money (which we’ve all known needed to happen all along), along with whatever bells & whistles were served to Machado today, if Machado ends up accepting an offer from someone else for less, then so be it. Nothing anyone can do at that point, and it would be a case of “it wasn’t meant to be”. That’s the glass is half empty reaction. The glass is (more than) half full one is that in addition to offering the most money to Manny, the FO was also able to sell him on the experience of being a key part in what should be a very promising time during the next decade as a member of this team.

Mark Teahen Jaime Navarro Claudell Washington Adam Dunn Bo Jackson

I actually enjoyed the article. It basically said the Sox are, or should be, a force to be reckoned with. Which is true, given the team plays in the 3rd largest market in the country.

If we signed BOTH, along with the introduction of one Eloy Jimenez into the fold, you’d have to expect an immediate jolt to the bare bones season ticket holders ranks the team currently has, both full and partial season packages. That’s a good start. Then hopefully, as the season progresses, the excitement builds upon itself, and more partial season packages are sold along the way, along with a pretty significant bump in single game ticket sales, both in advance and walk-up.

Brushing aside your predictable asinine comment, it just seems odd you think it “creative, out of the box thinking”, as you put it, to set aside a roster spot for someone primarily because it would be a feel good for a superstar on the team. Not sure I’ve ever heard this line of thinking before.

Is that how you construct an MLB 25 man roster now? By allocating one or two precious spots to friends or family members of the team’s superstars?

Bill Veeck signed Ron LeFlore right before he sold the team to Reinsdorf. And Reinsdorf made his fortune in real estate, not television. It was Eddie Einhorn who was the so-called “television pioneer”, although you would have never known it with his decision to take the Sox off of the superstation WGN during the early ‘80s and instead plopping the games on pay TV for what at that time would be the equivalent of around $60 a month in today’s dollars to watch White Sox baseball. Real tv genius, that guy

If you go in with the premise that we won’t be outbid by anyone else for either, which I happen to believe will be the case based on everything we’ve read to date, then I think there is a strong chance we could get both. With history as our guide, players usually go where they’re offered the most money. For me, and using the Torii Hunter signing of a few years ago as the example, where the Sox’ offer then was $75M, only to be blown out of the water by the $90M offer by the Angels, I think this offseason we are the $90M bid for both Harper and Machado. It doesn’t make sense otherwise to get this deep into the process without planning to have the highest bid for both on the table when all is said and done. So I think we’ll offer the most money to both, and at the end of the day, I think both will eventually go where they’ll make the most money - 35th & Shields!

The guy is going to turn 83 next year, so time is running out on his opportunity to enhance his legacy as owner of the Sox, which at the moment is not a very good one at all.

I don't think you hire Scott Boras to be your agent to take a four year contract instead of a ten year one.