Eminor3rd

You're 100% right about this, and the landscape is terrifying right now for whoever is left. I will say, from what I understand the White Sox are one of the few teams to have made either no cuts or VERY limited cuts so far, and that is a credit to JR.

Yeah that's a narrative that is popular, but I'm not sure where it came from. Maybe it used to be that way decades ago before the media explosion in the 90's, not sure. First of all, tickets themselves are a MASSIVE revenue stream, despite what a lot of people think. For many teams it's actually still the largest single stream. It isn't just people like us on the board buying individual game or season tickets -- the group sales department is a substantial portion of the ticket revenue, as are the premium sales. Just think about how many luxury suites are in the stadium. Companies pay mid six figures to lease them for the season. and the sales department fills the rest of the inventory with group sales. When no one is allowed in the stadium, pick a number between $300 - 800k for each suite and multiply it by however many suites are there, and that's a ballpark of how much revenue is completely gone JUST from that source. And even if you think that there will be fans in the park in some number next year, smart money is the fact that enclosed spaces are going to be accessible LAST, so that money may not be back in 2021 at all. The other thing people don't understand is how much of the value of corporate sponsorship is tied to fans being in the park. Essentially every team has had to renegotiate EVERY corporate sponsorship contract based on how much value can be actually delivered. All of the value that is tied to tickets, in-park experiences (think batting practice viewing, dinners at bars/restaurants, which are commonly sweepstakes prizes passed along to consumer brands), all kiosks and concourse facing signage, retail co-branding, etc. is impossible to collect on. This year, the ONLY signage worth anything is TV visible signage, and even that is inarguably LESS valuable because it loses all of its impressions from in-park attendance. Also, you can't forget about concessions/merchandise. People forget about it because that stuff is typically low margin in most industries -- but remember how much a beer costs at a stadium. The margins are NOT small in event settings. When Ricketts was railed for publicly estimating their losses and everyone thought he was exaggerating -- I can tell you that the numbers he was throwing out passed the smell test. Basically, the extent to which these revenue streams return in 2021 is going to depend on what happens politically with regards to the virus over the next six months. And without that knowledge, it's a fool's errand to create a meaningful expense budget. Say what you want about the share of the revenue that you think players should get, but it's as high as it is nominally BECAUSE teams have expected to rely on these revenue streams for a long time. No one is going to know how much money they can actually expect to collect until the offseason is over, so I think it's going to be a lean one for free agency.

The lack of fans in attendance (which erases not only ticket and concession revenue, but the majority of merchandise revenue and nearly a majority of corporate revenue) absolutely brutalizes the bottom line, whether or not you include parking. Every team is hurting badly, every team is afraid of not being at full strength next year, nearly every team is afraid that "normal" will never again be realized (potential for a very different and permanent set of policies on entry procedures and capacity limits for public events) and I believe that will lead to a very risk-averse offseason in terms of spending.

My criticism applies equally to your proposal.

I don't think the team is in a position to trade starting pitching for a position player anywhere on the diamond, even if that position has to otherwise be filled by "Larry" Garcia.

I don't think it's cut-and-dried these days. As more and more pitchers run into UCL issues, it seems to me that we've seen both (1) an increasing number of pitchers able to get back to 100% using platelet-rich injections and related therapies as an alternative, and (2) an increasing numbers of pitchers fail to get back to effectiveness post-Tommy John, either at all or within a short-enough time frame to avoid significantly lowering their ceilings. The cost of losing six months to waiting and finding out you need TJS anyway seems like a significant cost to us in the short-term, but when you compare it to the risks of the procedure and the built-in costs of loss of physical-prime development time that comes with the rehab, and try to put yourself in the shoes of the person who is taking those risks -- all of a sudden six months can seem like a reasonable or even barely significant price to pay for more information/certainty.

I love Abreu and understand his aversion to the DH, but the right thing for the team in the short and long term is to agree to a 50% job share. Everyone has got to make adjustments in their game as they age (including learning to be comfortable with different routines), and the sooner he learns to do it, the longer his career can be.

I do

After seeing how Sandy Alomar managed their elimination game the other night, I am way off the Alomar train.

No

Tomoyuki Sugano finally bullies the Yomiuri Giants into posting him, on the backs of an undefeated Sawamura Award season and a Japan Series championship. His gaudy numbers make people compare him to Masahiro Tanaka. Scouts of teams that do well in Japan know that he is, in fact, NOT Masahiro Tanaka, and they let other teams bid him up instead. The White Sox, who are are always eager to pay medium money for what the fans perceive to big a superstar, and who never think twice when no one around them seems to be seeing the same thing as they do, end up getting him. And he ends up being a solid #3 command and control guy, which is fine at what they paid. If he learns that he won't get away with high breaking balls in the States.

Utter dogshit performance all around the diamond.

f baseball

Been playing every day for like 6 weeks

Yolmer is gonna get the 7th at this rate.

lol @ literally every ball in play going to Laureano. Hope they don't mic our guys up, haha

Had the same thought when the ball landed. Canha got it in quick

He would have been toast. Relay began the moment he pivoted.

yes

Wait wat

This team can score 5+ runs easily, and they are too young to get precious about the moment, which is good. But Keuchel needs to gtfo right now.

Sometimes her analysis is really poignant, actually -- like with her talking about Giolito's transformation yesterday. You can tell when she doesn't actually know anything about the player she's talking about when she starts to resort to hyperbole -- like how Leury Garcia "doesn't need timing to be succesful" and how Bassit just threw "the best tailing change-up I've ever seen".

lmao at what Mendoza is saying right now.

Tough play; shoulda made it.

Great stop by TA