The Ultimate Champion

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 03:51 PM) I still don't believe anything I am reading coming out, but I'm just kind of piecing together the information coming out that I either know is not BS (or am pretty sure is not BS) while weeding out the BS. -Even the Dodgers have to have a limit to their spending at some point, and really, is spending $20 million a year worth such a marginal upgrade over a guy like Beckett, Billingsley, or Haren? -The Mariners seem to be out of money, or at least don't have the amount necessary to bring in Tanaka. -The DBacks don't seem to be a serious suitor, basically doing due diligence. -The Angels are similar to the DBacks -I don't believe the Cubs have the necessary funds to get it done, despite the rumors and quotes that have been coming out. That team is bleeding money right now and I don't believe that s That leaves the Yankees and White Sox, and both teams need him very badly. The Sox have all kinds of room to add to the payroll with quite a few commitments done after this season, while the Yankees will be in worse shape next year, especially with ARod back. I also think Hahn gets creative and offers the opt out after like 3-4 years, which will be attractive to Tanaka - if he's doing well, he can opt out and get like $25+ mill a year. If not, he stays on and still makes a buttload. Maybe favorite is the wrong word, but I really do think the stars are kind of aligning and he could easily end up with the Sox. I wouldn't go as far as saying we're front-runners, but let's say Tanaka has decided he wants an opt-out clause after 3 or 4 seasons. If every team that is serious is going to give him that, given his desire to win and given where the Cubs sit right now, the Cubs price probably just went way up.

There isn't a meal for which beer cannot serve as an equal replacement. Breakfast? Lunch? Brunch? Dinner? Snack? It comes in a bottle or a can you guys. I mean just think about that for a second. Really, think about it.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 01:12 PM) I was one of those. Flowers was playing with a torn up shoulder though. I'm still not conceding. My worst rant was on WSI. I was irate when we traded Reed and Olivo for Garcia. I thought Reed and Olivo were future All Stars. I must have called Garcia a "fat drunk" 5 times in that thread. I'm actually surprised they didn't ban me. IIRC I was banned for helping lead that Brian Anderson bandwagon. The Owens/Erstad/Mackowiak/etc. days were absolute hell on my psyche as a Brian Anderson supporter. I actually just went back into an old pictures folder & found a sig on my computer that I made when I was at WSI in relation to that. The mods were like "why do you have Hitler in your sig?" and I explained it was BA, not Hitler. But they made me take it down anyway. Now, who's being Hitler in this situation. This was my sig, it really wasn't that bad.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 01:05 PM) I'll take our rotation and MLB talent over their farm EVERY day. Sale, Quintana, Johnson, Garcia, Semien, Abreu, Davidson, Eaton, Dayan, Jones, Webb >>> Rizzo, Castro, Baez, Soler, Bryant, Alcantara, Almora, and Olt. Remember when Josh Vitters was a can't miss? Or when Castro was the best thing ever? Or Soto? Rizzo is basically Viciedo on the North Side. My guess is two of Baez/Soler/Bryant/Almora either never make the majors or never amount to anything. Basically you're saying Sale, Quintana > Rizzo & Castro IMO, because none of those other players have established themselves as indispensable core pieces. And I would agree with saying that we'd have the better outlook because we have the pitching, and this game is built on pitching. I'm not sure about Rizzo being like Viciedo either. Viciedo has a ton of ability and may become an All-Star caliber player, but Rizzo is a 1B who walks and fits somewhere, Viciedo just took a big step back OTOH & we might want him out of the OF at some point here. I'd trade Viciedo straight-up for Rizzo, Cubs wouldn't though.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 01:06 PM) Not according to Paul Sullivan on M&H yesterday. He said the team is leveraged to the gills, and really doesnt have a lot of wiggle room. He also mentioned that the team is asking front office people and scouts to carpool in order to save money, as well as other weird cost cutting measures. Seriously? That's f***in great if true, ha. Although really, we should all be carpooling when appropriate. Let's all start being more sensible with our resource expenditures guys.

QUOTE (southside hitman @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 01:04 PM) Trying to be completely unbiased, I think I would rather have Baez, Almora, Bryant and Soler than Eaton, Garcia, Davidson, Hawkins. They are prospects, so sure anything can happen, but it's easy to make a case for both is my point. I'm sure everyone on this board would trade the Sox best 6-8 prospects/unproven players for the Cubs best 6-8 prospects/unproven players. They're all still unproven however. The Sox have Sale and Quintana under control, and Danks should at least be a decent back end guy with the ability to recover form as a top to mid-rotation starter. The Cubs OTOH don't seem to want to pony up enough cash to sign Samardzija, and the Sox have definitely a much better pitching staff even if they do. I can't see either Chicago team as favorites here, and if the Cubs and Sox are both in this thing for real then IMO it's likely because of special circumstances, i.e. Sox offering flexibility and so on, Cubs mainly offering money and status as the staff ace.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 12:18 PM) I think I was the biggest advocate of trading for ManRam. That Manny waiver claim was yet another one of the many major drawbacks to letting a egomaniac manager run part of your offseason. My God, $1M for Thome. Twins won the division over us because of that deal and we still had to spend like 5X Thome's cost on players who weren't anything but disappointments (Manny & Kotsay). 6 games the Twins won that divison by. Morneau got hurt that year & if they didn't have Thome ready to step in they wouldn't have won that thing. And if he had been ours we'd have probably taken that division by 2 games. Dumbest non-move in recent Sox history, cheap as hell, a no-brainer, and we listen to Ozzie. My God.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 12:17 PM) [missed the point of the thread] AJ's the point of this whole forum.

QUOTE (fathom @ Jan 17, 2014 -> 12:18 PM) Agreed, but now we're getting reports of other MLB owners that think the Cubs are in a great position to get him. They're not in position to win. They're not in position to even contend. They're in position to offer a s***load of money, that's all. Maybe they can offer so much money that the deal is bad the second it's signed. If so and they sign him to that, good for them: that means they're doing everything wrong. The DBacks can offer $$$ too and are in a much better spot to win. I'd argue the Sox are too, even with their position prospects these guys are still prospects. Sox have lots of pitching already in the Majors. The Yankees and Dodgers are definitely much further along than the Cubs are too. And even if the Cubs want to offer a massive deal, if Tanaka wants an opt-out to test FA before 30 - and if he demands it especially - he is going to get it. And if that is what he wants then why in the hell would he want to spend 3 years with the Cubs for example when he could spend that time with a winner? We don't know what Tanaka is exactly looking for but all the Cubs can offer is money and a rough idea of what they believe their future is going to look like. With so many suitors, especially if flexibility is an issue, the Cubs offer doesn't look so good. I think the Yankees get him because they are probably given the ability to match or beat whatever the best deals are. The Yankees will go beyond the tax if they have to in order to get this guy. They'll give him years, money, and an opt-out if they have to. JMO. Dodgers next in line.

"Once Tanaka signs, things should start sorting themselves out for top MLB free-agent pitchers, with Matt Garza, Ervin Santana, Ubaldo Jimenez and Bronson Arroyo four top-flight starters still available. " Not sure I'd go that far

Let's go back and remember all these "AJ's OPS is so easy to replace" arguments where posters put forth the idea that Flowers would be a better player than AJ and blah blah blah it would all happen so quick. I really want to point that one out because that was really dumb and lasted for a while. Not as bad as the Dan Hudson love fest though.

I called Lucas Harrell a #3 starter coming up in the organization & argued he was a far superior prospect than Broadway. Then Harrell came up here & was relentlessly shat upon, which made me even more proud when he went on to have success with the Astros. But now he still can't throw strikes. The biggest prospect I think I've ever really believed in here who busted hard was Josh Fields. I would have done whatever I had to do to get Crede out of here and keep Fields starting after his rookie year. But obviously that didn't work out. I've like a few lesser guys who didn't make it. I definitely thought Ehren Wassermann was going to be a valuable right specialist for us in the mold of a Chad Bradford. Nope. I also thought Zach Stewart was going to be a solid SP if not a #3, but he obviously took a major step back. I liked Stewart back then more than I like Johnson now, so I hope Johnson works out.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jan 16, 2014 -> 08:09 AM) I for one think that scouting of minor leaguers has swung too far towards physical tools. I think we're missing out on good baseball players in some cases by doing that. And before anyone launches into the obvious here, I'm aware of how all this works. Stats in the lower levels of the minors, for example, don't mean a lot. And obviously, some of the time at least, success in the minors may be an illusion. That all said, when you have players who put up big numbers in the upper levels of the minors, I think scouting types are sometimes too quick to write them off based on things like a lack of a single, flashy plus tool, or the fact that a guy is say 24 vs 22/23. Not that those factors aren't relevant, because they very much are - but for some, those perceived tools have been allowed to crowd out performance nearly entirely. My personal view is, that trend will start to reverse itself in the next few years, a bit. Actually I think the issue (at least with us) is overestimating our ability to encourage and develop mechanical changes in hitters now that I think about it. We can do these things with pitchers, but both at the MiLB & MLB level we can't seem to hold on to and then successfully implement any sort of real changes. Because of this we aren't clearing our margin of error, i.e. we'll say take Player A who needs X amount of work and we think we can pull it off which means the tools advantage that Player A has over Player B will translate into a better MLB player. But we've been too aggressive & have had too little results. We seem to be scaling back on our hitters a bit but still doing so without falling into the range of the offensive version of Broadway/McCulloch territory. At least I hope that's the case because we need ceiling but OTOH developing hitters hasn't exactly been a core competency of the organization.

If the Sox are in this and the DBacks are too I bet contract structure and flexibility are key elements that he and his agent are weighing equally with money. The Yankees are still my favorite to sign him though, followed by the Dodgers. I wouldn't mind Kenny swinging a Billingsley deal if the Dodgers get him or else do a deal like DeAza for Soriano or something with the Yankees where we supply value and take back a salary, gaining a prospect in the process. I think the Sox are swirling overhead and if they can't be first to Tanaka they'll at least be on the scraps.

I think it's cool that we may have another nice bullpen piece in a year or two.

Kenny thinks Rizzo smokes sausage so Hahn said to tell with it and smacked him with the beef.

There are no indications that Bobby is out of money. He should be back because he's one of us & because he could be a useful player should he make it back on the field. QUOTE (StRoostifer @ Jan 16, 2014 -> 02:21 PM) Exactly. I refuse to feel sorry for a multi-millionaire that didn't spend or invest their money wisely. There are people out there divorced and paying child support on a much smaller salary not to mension the people losing their jobs, their homes etc due to a tough economy, so Boof***inhoo. I wish bobby well but these we're decisions he made. I can't respect this argument at all, no offense Mr. Roostifer. It's a scale argument that negates context. If you're generally a good person and you make a bad choice that you end up suffering from because you lack knowledge and/or experience (perspective gained from age perhaps), or because you take something for granted, or because you woefully misinterpret or underestimate the repercussions of your actions, then why should empathy be withheld and reserved for only those in the poorest of circumstances? That makes no sense to me, at least not if you're trying to be fair. Athletes, sure, they make a lot of money, but people who based on genetics or upbringing or whatever are more likely develop dependency issues are also going to be likelier to become dependent as a consequence of the extremely special circumstances that athletes are surrounded by like lots of money to blow, lots of people offering you drugs/alcohol, lots of attention and fame, and tons of extra pressure to perform. And youth as well, and the pressure to make adult decisions with a potentially inebriated young mind. For example, I don't think it's fair to condemn Chris Farley for killing himself through drug and alcohol use while feeling empathetic for the guy down the street who does the same exact thing under different circumstances. Yes Chris Farley had lots of money, but he also couldn't (if I may quote Eminem here) take a s*** without someone standing by it. OTOH the guy down the street didn't have to deal with the pressures of groupies and fans sticking drugs in his face every time he went out in public, but pressures at home based on the figure in the bank account, which wasn't an issue with Farley, was motivation for him to abuse his body just the same.

QUOTE (ewokpelts @ Jan 15, 2014 -> 03:27 PM) Well, he's a recovering addict, divorced, and likely paying child support. As much as I was pissed about his attitude in 2009-2010, I'm not going to be a dick and say "you should be able to handle that check,bobby". Right, and besides, I imagine the MLBPA offers pretty good health insurance. Courts can take your money away fast, so can poor investments. The world is full of snakes and athletes with money are easy prey. Also I imagine it's easy to rack some pretty big interest payments when you're traveling 82 games per season & your "home" city isn't where your family lives. Players making that kind of change probably have some pretty incredible spending limits & I bet it's pretty easy to charge hotels, meals at upscale restaurants, gratuity, personal trainers and other services, etc. But I guess in wite's world athletes should just eat at Denny's more often instead of joining the team out, and tip like Scottie Pippen - who also had little trouble losing lots of money. Yeah. JR knows all this stuff & he looks after his guys. That's a wonderful thing & is the extreme other end of the Reinsdorf Loyalty Leash which keeps people like Ozzie, Wilder, and Krause around too long.

MLBTR suggests the Pirates would like a lefty 1B to platoon with Gaby Sanchez. I wonder what they would be willing to give us if we send them Dunn and $14M.

B & B = Bed & Breakfast I'm going to start calling them that from now on I think

If the Sox are indeed backing off then this thing is pretty well advanced anyway. The crazier this thing gets, the less likely the signing team is to benefit from the deal. I think we should all at least be happy the Sox looked into the option and made an effort. Nothing is set in stone & it's not like he's already decided, but if he picks someone else, watch us for a follow-up move. We apparently have at least some money available under the right circumstances and are willing to spend it to help maintain the current direction.

BTW I was just wondering why when a user (like moi) makes a s***load of posts in a relatively short period of time he is called a post whore? That doesn't make sense to me. I mean, I'm not spreading my internet legs and taking in somebody else's through the gap there, I'm actually more like thrusting my posts into the gaps of other internet users who are willing to be receptive. That would make me more of a post stud or post jammer or something. Unless of course you're the type of person who associates the term "whore" as acceptable for use on both men and women, because then I'd indeed be a post whore. But I don't and I don't know why anyone else would either.

^In my proposed deal above I'd look for 2 years plus a trade if we're not WS contenders. The nice thing about doing that is that in 2 years from now we're going to have some answers or at least pretty good feelings about a whole host of players, like Semien, both Johnsons, Beck, Danish, Davidson, Eaton, etc. We're going to have some clear-cut needs 2 seasons from now that we can't predict now, so buying Tanaka is buying a fit for a hole in 2 years time to keep us on track.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Jan 15, 2014 -> 04:54 PM) And if you're Rick Hahn and Co. what's the highest you go? If the Sox feel that a 7 year $140M deal probably turns into something more like a 7 year $100M deal after factoring in increased attendance & Japanese opportunities then it's not nearly as bad. But I'd still love some sort of out in there. If the Sox really feel they are going to have to go 7 years for this guy but will get good money back then I'd even get crazy: 2014: $25M 2015: $25M 2016: $25M 2017: $25M PO; player can opt to remain in the contract or can choose FA 2018: $25M MO; player can opt for FA at no buyout; team can opt out of deal but must pay $10M buyout 2019: $25M; no option, this is guaranteed Tanaka would be crazy to turn that down IMO. That's $110M guaranteed even if he gets both his arms caught in a woodchipper, and it leaves him the option of landing a mega-deal in FA after 3 seasons. The benefit for the Sox would be the added excitement & season ticket sales for 2 years with some of the salary offset by new revenue, and if Tanaka is really looking good after 2015 then you look to either re-work the deal after he & his family are comfortabale here and more amenable to staying OR you trade him to the highest bidder, essentially buying prospects without draft slots.

QUOTE (bmags @ Jan 15, 2014 -> 04:51 PM) Wow I did not remember Danks being included at all. I was following that whole last hour when it looked to be us vs. the Tigers... people running down hallways and so on during the GM meetings. But I've mentioned that offer here before when the topic has come up & I don't think anyone here knew about that... probably just the difference between information on WSI & SoxTalk. I definitely believe it though because KW wanted Cabrera badly, and if the Freddy Garcia deal is any indication I bet he'd have given away all his best pieces there if he had to. I just think the Marlins were in love with Maybin (lots of people were then) and there may have been something to the DTrain salary dump, although back then that was DTrain's first bad season, and obviously the Tigers weren't worried because they immediately extended him. Some people think that DTrain's inclusion got the deal done because it was a dump... I'm not in that camp, I think the Marlins could have dumped him if they wanted to in another deal. I just think the Marlins liked that 6-for-2 deal better than our guys.