Eminor3rd

Well, ok, I guess I should qualify more. These are all guys who have gained velocity moving into a relief role, right? I’m talking about adding velo to a starter via Driveline-style strength trading and kinetic chain work, like the aforementioned Beuhler or nearly every Yankees prospect.

At this point, literally no one should be questioning whether or not the White Sox will be “going for” Machado/Harper, especially the former. The question is are they ACTUALLY ready to outbid every MLB team. They’re consistently willing to offer what consensus seems a reasonable, median contract for even big money players - the types of offers that we fans say we are “comfortable with.” Thus far, they have not been willing to say “this is too much for this guy, but I need this guy and so I’m spending it.”

Well, sure -- but I doubt they thinking is "I'm going screw up and blow all of my money" is the plan on the day they sign.

Wow. What a different time. That entire article essentially just acknowledges ownership collusion around the league lol

I think it’s the latter. Poor guy

Aww

This is true. Go check out Twitter right now. There are hundreds of meat heads retweeting Morosi with “LET’S GOOO!!!!$&)” If you have no intention of getting one of these guys, you should be pounding these interviews with messages supporting patience, reminding them that we are a couple years through this thing and to go in prematurely will just make it longer.

FWIW, because a lot of posters are bringing it up — I do not think that this tweet implied at all that the White Sox are considering signing both of them at the same time. They are Pursuing both to sign one

Ron, make a ban bet with Jon Morosi that the Sox won’t get both Harper and Machado

But I don’t think we should be afraid of the deal being inefficient with this type of a player. Because being inefficient is the only way you win the bidding. You don’t get the young superstar on free agency if you aren’t willing to be the highest and thus most inefficient bidder. Food metaphor! The Sox have done so well at stripping all the fat from the payroll, getting lean and healthy. This is cheat day. You get to eat cake today because you’ve remained healthy and can handle it without becoming obese. If you want to stay lean, that’s fine, but you don’t get to eat cake then. You’ll never eat cake. Ever again. What kind of life is that?

A front loaded deal would absolutely mean more money for the player. That’s why you so rarely see them. The team knows this, and the players, I think, are typically more driven by the optics of their salary than actually maximizing it. To them, being rich isn’t much different than being a little more rich. It’s what makes the pop culture meme of the Bonilla deal so hilarious. It’s seen as a quintessential “LOLMets” move that gets brought up every year to denigrate the franchise, when in reality it’s one of the smartest things they ever did, economically. Basically, someone outbid them for a player they wanted. Instead of spending more than they could afford, they deferred the hell out of their return offer. If they hadn’t done that, they just would have had to pay him way more initially than they really did (or miss out on him). The Scherzer deal is going to turn into the same thing. Fans are going to make fun of the nationals for paying him ten million bucks a year not to play for him, when in reality the Lerners got the man they wanted while paying probably $30M less than the sticker price appeared simply by gaming inflation.

The whole point of us wanting the team to spend wisely is so that they can break the bank later when it really makes sense. If a 26-year old 5-win position player doesn’t constitute that, I don’t know what will.

Same!

Which is six times more than one. Also Gavin Sheets being bad doesn’t make Justin Yurchak better.

I think it's going to be more like $70-80M total.

You forgot the .326 SLG/1 homerun part, lol. Oh and he's a first baseman.

Nah, he's 27. He'll be the first one to go through the post-Ohtani posting system.

I'm not saying I agree with it, just that it acknowledges reality and is consistent. He explains that he disagrees with consensus. That's a lot of context for a greg post.

The greg-aroo’s most logical, reasonable post?

Don’t forget, when he was asked what they need this offseason, the first thing again said was pitching. I think they’ll seriously pursue Kikuchi. Though I think he’ll get more money than MLBTR predicted.

Giolito has a big asterisk, which is that his stuff has drastically diminished over the last several years. It’s definitely took early to write him off. But I don’t know if it’s FAR too early.

Did we? If so, that’s a good sign. I was under the impression that we helped go add horizontal movement to the fastball, but I knew basically nothing about him before he was called up to us, let alone before we acquired him, so I could be wrong.

I am also disappointed that several teams now seem to have figured out how to reliably add velocity to pitching prospects, and we do not seem to be one of them. I think Don Cooper and company know how to clean up mechanics to noticeably improve control, which is great, but they can not add power at this juncture. For example, it’s been popular to think about why we didn’t draft Walker Buehler. But he added 3-5 mph to his fastball in the minors. Would he have done that in our system? I don’t know but I tend to think he wouldn’t have. And that is frustrating.

Positive: 1. I remain convinced that the trades we made were good. I think we did well in selling assets for legitimate high end talent. Negative: 2. I’m concerned about player development organization-wide. I’m not sure they know what to look for to determine if a player is truly ready to go. I wonder if they are effective at diagnosing issues that need corrected. I’m not worried about Moncada’s numbers or “where he is” relative to his age and experience, for example, but I am concerned that he didn’t seem to make much progress over the course of the year, especially given that much of his struggles seem to be related to very coachable issues. 3. I do not blame the rash of injuries on coaching or training, but it still concerns me, because they could all be long-term issues whether or not they could have been avoided. Overall: I think that it just isn’t realistic to expect this process to be one of linear growth, even if it has gone that way before for other organizations. I think we look at the Astros and Cubs and find it hard to recall the bumps in the road, but they were there. Even though this was a disappointing year overall, I’m not convinced that it means we are “off track” necessarily. I remain cautiously optimistic and will continue to preach patience. The next 12 months will be important and telling.

Where did you see that? Everything I thought I saw at Longehagens chats said the opposite.