Eminor3rd

QUOTE (greg775 @ Feb 2, 2018 -> 01:28 PM) What about Manny Machado's stat line last season makes him worth all the money he's going to get? If he has an off year it should be interesting to see the excuses of fans still wanting to pay him 30 mill a year. Last year .259, 33, 95 RBI. His OBP .310 with 50 walks against 115 strikeouts. Since everybody's talking Avi's BABIP, what does Manny's suggest for this year? Decline? Or he's going to be great? I mean I like Machado's traditional stats OK enough. .259 is blah. But at a similar age, Avi hit .330 with 18 HRs, 80 RBI. 33 walks, 111 Ks. Avi's BA was much higher, Manny's HRs and RBIs greater. Manny had more than 100 more at bats. Hosmer, who is considered a god and about to make 20 mill or more year hit .318, 25 HRS, 94 RBI, 66 BBs, 104 Ks. He's about to enter his age 28 season and wants 8 years. Abreu hit .304 with 33 HR, 102 RBI and .354 OBP with 35 walks, 115 Ks and he's entering age 31 season. Arguably he's better production than Hosmer only 3 years older. Top two reasons: Unlike Avi, who is a bad defender in an outfield corner, Machado is an elite defender at third base and is now moving back to shortstop. Unlike Avi, who has one good year against four awful years, Machado has one mediocre year against three great years (and a good but injury-shortened fourth).

There's just so little upside to Matt Kemp. Giving more at bats to Davidson/Delmonico or signing an underpriced late-offseason free agent that got left behind by the market both seem like better alternatives to me.

Jeanmar Gomez #AgeGate 2018

QUOTE (JUSTgottaBELIEVE @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 02:09 PM) Law has the Sox as the #4 farm system. Seems low. He has Braves, Yankees and Padres as #1-3 in that order. I think that's pretty much consensus. Remember that we graduated Moncada, Giolito, and Lopez. Also, our 15 - 30 guys pretty much all had their stocks drop.

QUOTE (2005thxfrthmmrs @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 10:37 PM) No? There is a difference between the two. I am also pretty sure Law is not yet convinced Hansen would pan out as a TOR. What is that difference? Just because the guy is a TOR doesn't mean he's a top tier ace.

I'm extremely high on Lopez, and think he's the best SP prospect in the system (MLB included) outside of Kopech. I think his stuff is absolutely electric, and I think that his low K-rate last season was a result of him learning to use his change/two-seamer as an out-pitch as opposed to simply relying on his velocity. I was encouraged by the fact that his walk rate was entirely reasonable and much lower than it was with the Nationals as we was figuring this out. I think he simply needs reps with this approach, and that he's a step forward in command away from being a 2/3 that absolutely dominates on occasion. I know I'm probably the high guy on him, but I have more hope for Lopez than almost anyone else in the system right now.

I think De Sedas and Madrigal are my biggest wants. From what I've heard, I think Turang has been overrated.

I've moved this to SLaM. Warning to all: no personal attacks

Let's try not to be butthurt

Overdue.

QUOTE (WBWSF @ Jan 27, 2018 -> 07:29 AM) Both the Pirates and Marlins are going to have very low payrolls the next few years. Isn't that the same situation the White Sox are going to be in? After this season the White Sox will not have any long term contracts on the books and will probably have a lower payroll than either the Pirates or Marlins. I realize that people don't like to hear this but this White Sox franchise has become a goldmine for JR. Well, I mean I think the biggest difference is that the White Sox don’t receive revenue sharing dollars

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 04:23 PM) Or the extremely wealthy owners can stop crying poor and spend at higher levels of payroll? But this is a slippery slope, and the owners know it. Okay, let's say the owners all collectively stop crying and decide to put more into payroll. Does Boras and the MLBPA then start saying, "Okay, I think this is fair now. We aren't going to ask more than we're being paid now"? When it comes to finances, these sides are diametrically opposed. They have to constantly push against each other simply to avoid being swallowed up. If the owner's decide to give them 20% more, it doesn't erase the problem, it just means they now have to fight the exact same battle to avoid giving 25% more.

QUOTE (chitownsportsfan @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 02:01 PM) Not really. I don't think a single franchise has been "crippled" by any FA in the last decade. What teams are doing is in response to the economic incentives currently in place. Those incentives, for the most part, encourage teams not to spend on FA. I think that's a softer way of saying what I said. Boras has worked so hard to make free agents get paid MORE than they're worth, that he's essentially priced his clients out of teams' plans. He has made his own product so overpriced that the entire market has shifted to bypass him.

They're going to work pretty hard to trade SOMEONE for a pitcher or two.

QUOTE (Jenksy Cat @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 02:15 PM) I just don't understand it when you have similar production in Santana for peanuts. Unless they have a deal locked up to trade Santana for pitching I don't really understand what they're doing. I'm assuming they're pretty far along on moving Santana for pitching, and they simply decided they'd rather pay Cain $80mm than pay Darvish $120mm if it's going to net a similar upgrade. But we'll see if that actually happens.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 26, 2018 -> 02:11 PM) Am I mistaken or is the Cain signing a pretty fair deal for the Brewers? I presume there is risk on the back-side (given age, etc) but early on, given his recent production (when he's healthy) he's been a 5 WAR+ guy which at $16M per year feels reasonable. That's my take as well. I'm not sure where the narrative of his decline is coming from -- dude's coming off a 4-win season in which he hit .300 and almost 20 homers. Seems to fit both the sabermetric and non-sabermetric standards for a good year.

Teams are tanking/rebuilding specifically BECAUSE of mega free agent deals, lol.

QUOTE (BrianAnderson @ Jan 24, 2018 -> 09:19 AM) True and not true. I get where you are coming from. However at the same time, at that point we didn't have Eloy, Robert, our whole draft class and our position in this years draft. Not to mention Rutherford, Cease, etc. etc. I definitely agree you don't give up a top 4 guy (Eloy, Hansen, Robert, kopech) but if you can get it done for the right pieces? I'd pull the trigger. We're not as far away from winning as we may think and getting a Yelich doesn't preclude us from going out and spending big on a FA next year which is the added bonus to me. Correct, but we DID have Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, David Robertson, Tommy Kahnle, etc. The system is no doubt better, but we don't have the MLB core anymore. The system has to first replenish the value we traded and THEN add more for us to be a contender. It only works out if the trades yield more guys than they cost us initially. I'm not saying it won't, but we have to let it do it's work to see what we "have" first -- and that part is a numbers game. Now, the reason Hahn is kicking tires is because you have to find out if the Marlins are going to trade him for less than he's worth, in which case of course we should get him. But given the sheer number of teams that have been connected, they're clearly not going to have to trade him for a discount.

Look at it this way: last year, we traded Adam Eaton (a young, cost-controlled OF) for three prospects. We did this beause we didn't have enough good players to compete, so we needed to take the chance to turn one good player into MORE THAN ONE good player. What good would it do, a year later, to trade 3-4 prospects for Christian Yelich (a different young, cost-controlled OF) when the MLB team is WORSE than before? Yelich is younger and better than Eaton, but not substantially. Does keeping Eaton throught the rebuild instead of trading him make sense? If the answer is no, then trading for Yelich doesn't really make sense either. There will be a time where trading for guys is the right move, but we have to have some of these prospects turn into MLB guys first, because until that happens, we still need the prospects.

QUOTE (2005thxfrthmmrs @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 12:20 PM) Law is really trolling hard here. If Hansen can continue to harness his control, I see the ingredients of a TOR starter. An above average starter that puts up 200 innings pretty much IS a TOR starter.

QUOTE (kwill @ Jan 23, 2018 -> 12:20 PM) I don’t get the Casey Gillespie love. Short arm swing, no hip rotation, no bat speed. Saw him barrel one to CF last year on a homerun launch angle but it landed 15 feet short of the warning track. To me, he's not a prospect unless he can rework his swing to generate more power. No idea why he hasn't yet -- he certainly seems like he has the size.

QUOTE (yesterday333 @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 06:38 PM) MLB.com had Burger as the number 16 player in the draft, so I wasn't that much of a reach. And he was the best bat available at that point, so I think he would've been the pick no matter what position he played. Everyone agrees that Mayo doesn't know what he's talking about.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 12:15 PM) You are arguing things no one has said. Right -- if you're worried about where Ellsbury would play if the White Sox acquired him, you're thinking about it wrong. If we get him, it's because of what comes with him.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 11:11 AM) If he were a free agent today, he'd still get a major league contract for sure. It wouldn't be a $20 million contract, but Ellsbury still brings positive value. He was around 2 war each of the last two years. There are a number of teams he would start for. Yes, a number of teams he could play for. But how many legitimate contenders would he START for? Because he's already on a contender and will get playing time.

QUOTE (GenericUserName @ Jan 22, 2018 -> 09:32 AM) That's why people bring up him accepting the trade contingent on being released so he can try to sign with a contender. No contenders want him now with his contract, but if he is released and you can get him for basically the minimum, then some of them would almost definitely do it. My thought was a way for him to get to the White Sox would be to promise starting time and that we would attempt to trade him to a contender at the deadline or next offseason, assuming the Yankees eat some of the contract and then we can eat more to entice another team. I guess maybe the Giants would give him league minimum and a real shot to start?