Eminor3rd

Yes, and that change has come with a clear MO. Theyve been remarkably consistent since that change. And tying up all of their resources for the foreseeable future in two players, thus preventing them from filling out the rest of the roster when they need to and setting them up to need another rebuild when these two players contracts are under water and are making 40-50% of the whole payroll doesn’t line up with that MO. Its possible. We can’t know. But there aren’t any observable reasons to think they’ll do it.

What reasons? My point is that what he said lines up with logic and lines up with their past behavior, both recent and distant.

It’s possible, but I can’t think of an objective reason for them to actually sign both players. There’s no evidence to suggest the White Sox suddenly want to have payrolls in the top five in the league every year, which would be pretty much required if they’re going to roster two $30-35mm per year players for the next decade and still actually try to put a decent team on the field around them. So yeah, you COULD be right, but it would go against everything the team has ever done, and against everything the team has said, and runs counter to the long-term goal of sustained contention that has been implied both by the team’s actions and the team’s official remarks.

But if another team is only involved at a lower price than the player wants to accept, nothing has really changed. If the White Sox were TRULY never gonna go higher than 7/175, they were never gonna win in the first place. I remain convinced they’re just waiting for someone to force them to bid higher, which was always gonna happen. You don’t win the free agent unless you bid higher than every other team. We’re just waiting to see what that number looks like.

Hahn said they weren’t going to get both, and there’s no reason not to believe him. It’s pretty much zero.

Lol exactly. What a dumb tweet

Unfortunately, I just don’t think giolito has the stuff to be anything more than a 4/5 starter at this point. He did when he was drafted, but it just keeps going backwards. Even his “good starts” last year didn’t feature nearly enough missed bats to suggest that he could have that success consistently. If he’s going to stick, he needs to either find a way to get 3-4 mph back on his fastball, learn a new off speed pitch or cutter, or develop top-of-the-scale command and control. While all those things are possible, none are likely.

Hating Pavano is the one thing all baseball fans can agree on.

Man how about that Utley slide though? You see that and then watch the Pedroia incident and it's like -- come on, really?

Here's a fun one to take the edge off the snoozefest. And before you ask -- yes, ours IS in there, about halfway through.

Right but realistically, if Machado takes so long that the Pederson move can’t happen, the plan doesn’t really change. Maybe they find someone else or maybe we lose another game or two next year. That isn’t worth putting the larger picture in jeopardy.

You’re making assumptions about the White Sox contract offer and about Machado’s non-financial preferences that we simply do not know.

The only “leverage” the White Sox have is their ability to be the highest bidder. And in the current CBA, that is nothing to take lightly. But there are no hardline negotiation tricks the White Sox can pull that are going to change how this thing turns out. Everyone involved knows the score. Just follow the facts and logic. 1. The White Sox are in NO hurry. They have publicly expressed it, and everyone knew it anyway. They are on the up in a rebuild no matter who they sign this year. They do not expect to win in 2019, and therefore there is no reason they would ever put a hard deadline on an offer. Unlike contenders, the do not need to pivot. Any suggestion that their offer is limited or coming off the table would correctly be perceived as insubstantive, impatient bluster. 2. The White Sox have elected to give a “reasonable*” bid and have refused to move off of it until they are outbid. This is a rational course of action, even though it may frustrate Machado’s camp. Their current bid does not imply that they are not willing to go higher if necessary. Reported Mystery teams that are now interested because “the bidding is lower than expected” serve as no threat, so long as the White Sox are actually willing to win bidding up to a somewhat reasonable point. By definition, these mystery teams were not interested in the expected winning bid levels, and so the most they can do is force to White Sox to increase their bid — something they should have been willing to do from the start. 3. There is no reason for either Harper or Machado to expect that the others contract “precedent” will affect their own. This is basic economics. Whoever signs the first one will win the bidding by offering the highest amount of money that anyone was willing to offer. Therefore, there will by definition be no one left on the market that was willing to pay that amount. When you remove an asset from the market, you also remove a bidder. Each team values each asset based on their internal resources and needs, which are varied and myriad. They will not pay above the number, regardless of what other teams pay for other assets. 4. If there’s any reason for either player to worry about the other’s contract, it’s the fact that a signing effectively removes a bidder from the process. I said this a few weeks ago when the media was talking about things “getting wrapped up soon” and it remains true today: I don’t see any reason for this not to keep dragging out. Lozano knows the White Sox offer isn’t what he wants, but he also knows it isn’t going anywhere. There is no reason for him not to continue to try to find better offers all the way the wire. This remains true even if the White Sox DID decide to “bid against themselves” and increase their offer. The White Sox are still well positioned to get one of these guys, but there isn’t anything they can do to rush the process.

Fortunately, this isn’t how economics works. Granted, It IS how MLB salary arbitration works. But not free agency. It may make Lozano feel more justified at asking for a higher price, but at the end of the day, price is where supply meets demand. If anything, Harper’s deal may cause everyone who was in on both to pivot and get serious about pushing to the end game, but the price of the deal won’t affect the price teams are willing to pay. I guess it could increase the likelihood of a pillow deal.

Bill James has gone completely off the deep end at this point.

26 year old player that’s already amassed ~30WAR and can play SS, plus with how the dollar is inflated over time and the fact there is more money in the game than ever before, and you think 22nd largest contract ever should be giving teams pause? If this thing doesn’t end up in the top five, something is weird. ...and my analogy was great! You get out of town Greg Hibbard!

Right. Have you guys ever done an auction fantasy baseball league? Sometimes a good player falls through the cracks because the most of the league settled their guys at that position early, and so it looks like the team that waited is about to get a good deal. But then one or two other dudes in the league say, “I don’t need another second baseman, but if he’s going to go THAT low, I’m in.” And then what happens is the player ends up going for pretty much what the projected value was. San Diego is playing “price cop”

Seems possible/plausible to me that he reason this deal isn’t done yet is because it WON’T happen if the dodgers land realmuto instead. If the Realmuto package includes Verdugo, they suddenly kinda still need Pederson. Sounds like they felt comfortable signing Pollock once they knew they had the framework for a Joc deal done... that could be executed in the event that Realmuto didn’t get done.

Remains fine as long as the White Sox are still willing to be the highest offer. They’ve been (allegedly) saying and/or acting as if they won’t raise their offer until someone beats it. This is just the inevitable offer that beat it.

Ahh, ok. Thanks

Correct me if I’m wrong, as I might have missed something, but this “rumored” Fulmer/Bummer/Rivera return is something one of us just made up, right? Not actually “rumored” at all?

Politics has pretty much become wrestling, and that’s going super well. im sorry.

Very possible. Or they may have offered during the sales process. Either way, that’s a situation where both parties care about the same thing. The dodgers don’t care one bit about soxfest, and Machado doesn’t even care about the fact that his signing will be covered as news.

I don’t know man. Naming rights deals are the types of things where you want to take advantage of media being around. Historic free agent signings create their own fervor. In the former instance, the team wants you to call it news. In the latter, the media wants it because it is news.

I believe that the free agent timeline of Manny Machado and the event schedule of the White Sox’ fan fest are entirely, 100% independent and unrelated.