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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.

Absolutely need more pitching.

I hate this deal. Rotation piece for rotation piece, this team needs just as much starting pitching as it did yesterday. The only difference is it now needs even more next year. Absolutely brutal roster building.

We'd need to add two more good prospects.

Stuff is probably similar in quality to Odirizzi, I think he's probably got similar upside but with more risk. To be honesty, I haven't seen a lot of the Cubs version of Quintana, but assuming it's a declined version of the one I knew and loved, Arihara's stuff is a tick or two better, but without the control.

I would just qualify that by saying that Arihara is clearly behind both Sugano and Tanaka. For example, Arihara's stuff/command profile pretty similarly to Yusei Kikuchi (handedness being the biggest difference), but Kikuchi put two really good seasons together in a row before he got posted. Arihara hasn't been able to have even one full year of dominance, due to less consistency of command.

I don't get this one at all. Gary Sanchez is an abysmal defensive catcher and he hasn't had an elite hitting season since 2017. At this point, there's a real question as to whether or not he is going to return to form AT the plate, and there isn't anything to suggest he is capable of improving BEHIND it. Isn't that pretty much what Zach Collins is? I don't know if either of these guys is going to hit going forward, and while I admit that the fact that Sanchez has in the past makes him more likely to do so, Collins younger, cheaper, and we wouldn't be giving up Nick Madrigal to get him. I like Tauchman just fine, but if we're creating a hole with a trade, we'd better also be filling one -- preferably on the mound, IMO.

Feels weird for me -- this is where I got my start in baseball. The GM is a good friend of mine. From what I understand, MLB was trying to get them an Atlantic League slot, but I'm not surprised they didn't want it, as it's a lot more expensive to operate an Independent team, and the market was already barely viable.