Eminor3rd

Whatever the White Sox would have had to give up to beat the SD package would have been a mistake. Plenty of other options still available for just money, and not all that much of it.

I know man and I'm actually pumped about it because I'm a huge Rakuten fan and I just can't believe he would end up anywhere other than Rakuten and good LORD do they need him right now. Tanaka/Norimoto/Kishi/Wakui/Shiomi/Takinaka with Ishibashi/Yuge on the outside-looking-in is all of a sudden a LEGIT rotation, especially considering that Hayakawa could be ready sooner or later and could jump in when Shiomi gets hurt or Wakui/Takinaka turn back into pumpkins. But my point is that what the Sox need is a reliable veteran #3 on a market-rate 1 year deal, whether that's Tanaka or not.

Tanaka or similar @ 1/$15mm or similar is PRECISELY what this team needs. In the current era/meta, good teams simply do not ever find success when they have exactly 5 SPs that need to work out all year. The fact that our back-end is promising but raw prospects is perfect. There will be plenty of opportunities for them to pitch their way into a spot, but they won't be REQUIRED to do so for the team to succeed. They should be deployed as depth with upside, the BEST kind of depth.

My thing is, based on everything I've read, Vaughn is ready to "take his lumps" to make the transition, and I think the best time to have an important player go through that is when the offense is already amazing and doesn't need to put pressure on him to produce. Also, with Yermin/Collins are almost aging out of being prospects without ever being given a shot -- they are the perfect dup to sink or swim as the 30-60 day service time bridge they need to find for Vaughn anyway. And then again with such an obvious need to spend the money on in SP, idk, it just seems really obvious that splurging on a veteran rental DH is almost literally the last thing the roster needs.

No I'm with you. Not because I don't think Cruz is better than EE (he is), and not because I don't think he'd make the team better (he would), but because goddammit they need pitching so bad so bad so bad and we all know the money is about to dry up, meaning if they are still gonna get SP, they're going to burn even more of the future in a trade whilst also burning the future in not getting Vaughn/Yermin/Collins ABs that they absolutely need. #sustainablesuccess #multiplechampionships

For sure. Jasson Dominguez, Deivi Garcia, etc.

I would consider $3mm and "~$4mm" to be pretty much the same thing in this context. EDIT: Like, I assume RH can ask JR for an extra million bucks if he needs it somewhere.

Well the Yankees are up against the luxury tax wall and have decreed they will be under it this year, so it's safe to say they were on SOME kind of budget for this rotation spot. If they had been bid up to $13-15mm I'd be surprised if they'd have gone there with Tanaka still out there and motivated to stay. Unless they just like Kluber a lot more at this point, which is possible. But I'm guessing Tanaka is asking for 2/$30mm or something and this was a cheaper alternative.

In other news, this basically guarantees that Tanaka isn't coming back. Would be a fantastic pickup for either the White Sox or the Golden Eagles, so I'm all for it.

So obviously, we don't know the Sox interest in him after the showcase or the ultimate budget, but this is where the extra ~$4m overpay on Adam Eaton very well might have hurt.

Every available dollar should go into SP from this point on. Collins/Yermin get a shot to win the job out of ST and subsequently establish themselves. If they don't then either Vaughn earns his chance by midseason, or you rent someone at the deadline.

It’s the first time the FO has successfully found a creative way to win a hotly contested free agent despite JR miserly ways. They should definitely be commended, and I hope it a a sign of good things to come, because we need it to be.

This should essentially be seen as 4/54 but if he’s so bad aftert third year that the Sox want to cut him and eat the contract, they get to defer the money to make it hurt less.

"Overpaid #3 starter"

Overpaid #3 starter =\= reigning Cy Young Award winner

What this article makes most clear, to me, is that this was an overdue change.

Go to Kuma's Corner. It may change your entire life.

This team could absolutely use 180+ innings of high 3-ERA starting pitching.

Looks like both OF Haruki Nishikawa and SP Tomoyuki Sugano have decided to pass on whatever offers they had, and return to NPB. Too bad, I think Sugano was a real difference-maker. Apparently he was asking for pretty big money, though.

That's part of why it was a bad move to trade 5 years of a #4 for 1 year of a #2. Not only is it a bad time for JR to extend a veteran pitcher, but why would Lynn want to extend now? He's in his thirties, has made good money, so the team has no leverage -- and next year's FA situation is almost certainly going to be better because there will be more clarity on revenue streams around the league. No one knows whatthis season is going to start like, but EVERYONE expects fans in the seats by the end of it. Don't try too hard to make it make more sense. The FO has not been given the resources to "do it right," so they're "doing the best they can," and that's gonna make a lot of moves they make seem weird because we can all see that there were better alternatives available.

I don't see any extensions happening for established players at the moment, given JR and the economic climate. Now, something low where the team has all the leverage on a guy like Madrigal, perhaps.

There was never any chance that the white Sox were going to sign Trevor Bauer

I imagine that’s possible assuming all of his visa-related paperwork is ready, but (again just my opinion) I imagine that he has more to lose with a mediocre showing in the indie leagues than he has to gain by getting his reps in at a higher level.

It’s certainly possible, but based on how things ended up with Colas and the Hawks, I would be absolutely shocked if we ever plays in Japan again. From what I’ve gathered, the controversy boiled down to Colas misunderstanding the terms of his developmental contract: he thought he was becoming a free agent, but the contracted stipulated substantially more control left for the team. Whether or not it was an honest mistake depends which side of the fence you fall on — it’s possible the hawks were intentionally deceptive, or at least negligent in properly translating the contract (they have a history of service time manipulation with their domestic stars and are a ruthlessly competitive organization), and it’s also possible that Colas and his reps dropped the ball, or even that they just “played dumb” when they realized how hard it was going to be for him to break into the top team roster and he could get a bigger payday and opportunity in the US. Regardless, the Hawks were publicly adamant that he owed them service, that they had invested in his development and it was a breach for him to take his services elsewhere before his obligation ended. It seems that the matter was settled behind closed doors, so it isn’t clear if they lost a suit or merely cut bait because it was going to be hard to have a productive relationship with the player after the ordeal. Both sides publicly cried foul play. The NPB is way, way more conservative and old-school in how it operates when compared the to MLB, which is already very conservative in how it operates. This is my opinion, but for a player to have run afoul of a high-powered franchise like this (justified or not) and end up with another team would be scandalous, and the Hawks would likely have leverage to complain anyway. Also, if it really is true that Colas was unfairly manipulated, I wouldn’t be shocked if he never wants to set foot in Japan again. KBO is a different story, of course, perhaps. But my guess is he’s gonna hang out in Latin America somewhere and work out at an academy until the right time to sign.

Late take: I actually don’t mind the idea of Eaton as a bounceback flyer, but... That’s because with I think the team needs pitching so badly that it needs to allot every available resource to it, and high-floor bounceback flyers come pretty cheap and can be great as role fillers. The problem with this deal is that $7-8mm is real money in this market, and I have no doubt that it’s enough to take them out of the market on some of the better pitchers available. I think this contract is a poor use of limited resources. This, combined with the fact that they decided to use a current rotation piece to buy their only rotation upgrade, and this looks to me like really bad, inefficient, amateurish roster building so far this offseason. A deal can make sense in a vacuum but be completely wrong in context. I like Eaton at $2-3mm this year — the price Hahn paid treats him like there’s no risk to his performance/health, and the wasted margin, I think, is really gonna hurt.