Eminor3rd

They shouldn't. If it isn't on Harper, there's no player that makes sense.

He actually did it. He is saying we should feel good that they made a losing offer.

Don't try to convince me you're angrier than I am, Rick, you fuck -- tell me how you're going to make it better.

It’s not about Machado, it’s about how the White Sox just proved that even in a literally ideal, all-planets-aligned situation, they will not pay market rate for the player they need. Even when the market is depressed. They will take your money while they rebuild, but they will not spend it to contend.

Killer ballpark in Nashville from what I’ve heard. They draw very well. Overall, the minor league ballpark experience is just so much better than the MLB anyway.

No, they just weren’t willing to win the bidding. KW literally said today that they couldn’t go to 300mm.

I know.

"The Phillies would not counter San Diego." If Lozano was not willing to take counter offers, then he left money on the table.

Of course they'd have to beat it. Are you saying the Sox shouldn't have gone to a, say, $31mm AAV? Less than what both Kershaw and Greinke make?

That's a lot of assumptions on how the process went, PAL, lol. Also runs directly counter to reports on the Phillies denying to match the offer when Lozano called Klentak.

If they failed to communicate/build enough rapport over the last six months to make sure they got a chance to beat any offer, they completely failed at negotiating properly. If they GOT the chance to match it but didn't, they cheaped out and were never willing to win the bidding. This is a huge failure for them. There's no other way to spin it.

No team had a cleaner payroll, and no team needed him more than the White Sox, yet the White Sox weren't willing to get it done -- despite the fact that there WASN'T some 10 team bidding war, which would drive the price up.

There was nothing even remotely insane about the offer. He's not even the highest paid player in the game.

The payroll is a hell of a lot lower than the Padres, that's for sure.

More bullshit, just without the silver lining of being able to sign good players.

A legit offer that missed the mark by fifty million dollars.

No, everyone’s been paying to watch the team lose on purpose under the specific understanding that it was part of a process where they’d invest when they needed to invest when the right opportunities arrived. They just proved they aren’t really going to do that. They may say they’ll “keep trying next time,” but there will never again be a free agent this risk-free, with a more perfect fit on the roster, in a historically depressed market, where the only team you have outbid is the FUCKING PADRES. The small market Padres. The Sox have $15 million dollars committed to contracts NEXT season. The Padres just beat the White Sox with a bid that doesn’t even make Machado the highest paid total contract OR average AV. When Harper signs, he won’t even be the highest contract in his own damn class. This, unfortunately, isn’t just about Machado. This is the best evidence we’ve ever seen that this regime will never sign a top free agent.

This team just explicitly told us they aren’t willing to pay a player $30mm per year under any circumstances. This was arguably the second best free agent opportunity ever, next to Alex Rodriguez. Im trying to resist hyperbole because this is all very hot and fresh, but I’ve never felt worse or more hopeless about this franchise than I do now. It would have been one thing to lose the bidding, but it’s entirely another to lose it when it was at a rate well below what established superstars are already making. If this is how they’re going to operate, the only way they’ll ever win again is through pure luck.

The only reason for anyone to tolerate a rebuild is so that they nail shit like this. There’ll never be a better opportunity to step up than this was. What a joke.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable

Right, no excuse for the Padres to outbid the White Sox. Our team remains in the driver’s seat, IMO. Really hope they don’t mess this up. When it comes to transactions, the post-rebuild Hahn regime has earned my trust by showing logic at every step. But they could lose it fast right here.

I live in NYC. I have colleagues and friends that live in Astoria. I have encountered literally no one that’s outraged. The LAST thing we need in this city is more people. Why would we want to use tax funds to make that happen? The last reported unemployment rate in NYC is 4.3%.

There’s really no reason at all to get excited about any “done deal” tweet that isn’t Rosenthal, Morosi, or Heyman at this point. It’s possible that some random will break it a day early, but there are so many random weirdos trying to guess correctly to earn their 15 minutes of fame, that every tweet you see must be treated as 100% meaningless. We won’t know who had it right until it’s already done, so there’s nothing to gain from speculating on these guys.

I’ve seen some of these deals. It’s significant money if you’re an arb/pre-arb star, but it’s chump change if you’ve signed a nine-figure free agent deal.