ChiSox59

Fan interest and revenues are a huge reason. Pretty strongly disagree with your take in general, but especially the CBB one, at least as it pertains to major conference basketball. Conference tourneys give everyone a chance. A chance at a new season. The games themselves (for the teams that are already going to be at large teams) really don't mean all that much. I know the networks and bracketologists like to play up that angle, but generally, teams that are well off the bubble aren't playing themselves on in conference tourneys, and the only way those bad teams are getting in is winning the whole conference tourney. It makes things interesting for teams and for fans. Now for smaller 1 bid leagues, I'd agree the conference tourneys suck. Sucks for a team to go 17-1 in a league, dominate everyone, and then have one bad night in early March and have to play in the NIT. But such is the reality for low and most mid majors.

Yawn. Dude served his time. Who cares.

Sure, but we have 7 legit SP plus Dunning and Flores should get emergency starts before Detwiler. Is Lambert fully healthy now? Shit, even throw Drew Anderson out there if need be. That's 9-11 guys before I'd throw out there before I got to Detwiler. I just don't see why Detwiler would ever be an option unless ALOT of thing go wrong, but the fact he made the initial 44 man roster probably indicates he'll be there at some point.

I'll be disappointed if Ross Detwiler makes another pitch for the Sox.

If I had to take a snab I'd go: Burdi, Foster, Flores, Adolfo, Gonzalez, Stiever, Crochet, Lingren, Palka, Meijia, Mitchell, Kelley, Thompson and Dalquist. 2 open spots.

So this looks like 40 man roster with these changes: Minus: Burdi, Flores, Foster, Zavala, Adolfo, and Rutherford. Plus: Drew Anderson, Ross Detwiler, Tayron Gurrerro, Cody Hueuer, Tyler Johnson, Cheslor Cuthburt, Nick Madrigal, Andrew Romine, Andrew Vaughn and Nicky Delmonico.

The advantage to including top prospects, even if they have no chance of playing in the big this season, is simply to get them reps and have them be around the team. What is the alternative? Sure seems to me it would be better than sitting at home playing video games? I do wonder what the O's and Red Sox logic behind it is, though I haven't personally scoured their 60 man rosters yet.

This team, quite obviously, is no longer the team it was the majority of the past decade. One of the best catchers in the league. All Star level players at 3B and 1B. Two of the best young players in the league in LF and CF (both top 5 prospects in the game within last 15 months). A top 30 type prospect at 2B. The guy who just won the AL batting title at SS. A pro's pro at DH. Only huge question mark is RF lineup wise. The pitching is a definite question mark, but plenty of talent there for it to be at least league average. I don't think calling the White Sox a fringy playoff team is overly optimistic in a normal season at all. The shortened season could hurt them a bit as the younger guys won't have much time to adapt, but let's play ball.

Sure. I mean, I could probably live of $8.5M for the rest of my life if I kept my job as steady income to pay for living expenses, and invested the majority of the $8.5M with the plan to retire early. But if $8.5M was my net after tax pay after the course of 5 years in the big leagues, even the ones that are smart about their money are spending a decent chunk of that. So my point is, you can't really run your modest return calculations off of after tax income. You need to run it on money you actually saved after living expenses. And chances are if you were a fairly modest earner in MLB, when you're out of the league, you're not turning that experience into a big pay checks in retirement. Your shelf life for making big money is pretty short. This isn't to say that $8.5 million isn't a lot of money. It obviously is. But if someone gifted me $8.5M, I quit my job with no intention of returning and lived like a millionaire for 4-5 years, the money would dry up pretty quick, even if I put 20% of the $8.5M into tax-exempt bonds paying 5% annual return. Then once my "nest egg" dried up, that $85k in tax exempt income off the $1.7M I put into bonds isn't going to support my lifestyle, my mortgage, etc, even though I am still technically a millionaire. Definitely a problem I hope to have someday, though!

A full year of service time is like ~150 games or so in a typical season (edit: exact calculation is 172 of 187 days. So 91.9%, or 149 games on the dot). So one usually needs to spend 90%+ of the season the MLB roster to get a full year of service. So it really shouldn't be that hard for the Sox to get an extra year out of Madrigal if the calculation is truly pro-rata as Jimmy suggests. Based on my math, it may be as few as 5 games. I think this season is so short and the Sox already are fringy as is, its a tough call on whether its worth it or not. Having thought more about it today, if its truly only 5-7 games for Madrigal, I'd just start the year with Leury at 2B. I don't think the difference between those two in Madrigal's first handful of MLB games will be a significant drop-off, if even a dropoff at all.

While I don't necessarily disagree with the point you're marking, if your after-tax take home pay from (say) age 25-30 playing in the MLB was a TOTAL of $8.5 million, your "nestegg" most definitely isn't $8.5m. Many (not all) of these guys are buying cars, million dollar houses, expensive clothes and jewelry, $1,000 meals, etc. While anyone should be able to live off $8.5m in cash handed to you at one time in your 20's if you live a relatively modest lifestyle in a not super high cost of living area, its most likely not enough for the lifestyle many pro athletes live.

Oh I agree, now isn't really the time to mess around, and I said as much in my OP. Still curious how the math works though. Glad that @Y2Jimmy0 says it will be straight pro-rata.

I think Kopech would need to spent like 20-25 games not on the MLB roster, so his call is a little tougher than Madrigal if its only like 10 games. But with 7 legit starting pitchers on the roster and the fact he's only going every 5 days and those may even be abbreviated starts, it still may be worth it.

Has it been clarified how exactly service time is going to work in 2020? I know that the 60 game season is considered a full year of service time. However - take Madrigal for example. He needed to spend~3 weeks in the minors for the Sox to get that extra year of control with a full 162 game season. How long would he need to stay now that its 60 games? Is it pro-rated on a 60/162 (37% basis), so basically he'd only need to spent like 10 days in the minors in that case? This is also very important for Kopech. He needed to be optioned and be in the minors until ~mid June for the Sox to get a year of service back. So now they'd have to get extra cute with him to recoup a year. I doubt we see them do that. To be clear, and I was one of the biggest proponents of getting that extra year for Madrigal, and the year back on Kopech, but I would just start them both on the MLB roster at this point. But I am curious how this is going work. This will obviously affect other guys that may spent a portion but not all of the season in the big leagues (Collins, Burdi, Mercedes, Mendick, etc.). Obviously its also a bit of a dagger to the org for the pre-arb guys and non-extended guys like Cease, Giolito, and Lopez who are extremely likely to spend the whole year in the bigs, but the club will lose a full year of service. But I guess every team has that problem, and Sox may be less affected than most since they've extended a lot of their young elite talent. I did read that those on the taxi-squads will NOT accrue MLB service time, if anyone is wondering about that.

Thanks - missed that. Edit - though, upon further review, neither of the other 2 guys appear to be anything worth mentioning. Obviously it was always going to be tough to convince an interesting high schooler to sign, and tough when you're competing with 29 other clubs all offering the same thing for the older guys, but it would have been nice to get a few interesting guys in the org.

So let me get this straight - the only two UDFA the Sox signed are Madrigal's brother and Bossard's kid, neither of which are prospects? Yikes.

It will indeed be interesting, and definitely depends on roster size. I would expect the following: No sight of Vaughn. Already too many guys in the 1B/DH/bad catcher or corner OF mold to fit another dude in for a limited number of games. Then there is also blowing a full year of service time. HIGHLY doubt we see him. I think Kopech starts in the rotation from the get-go. Should get in 8-10 starts, depending on how they handle the rotation. Sucks for Rodon, but I think he's one of the easier guys to throw in the pen. Can't role out seven starters for 60 games - can you? Maybe he slides back into the rotation if needed due to injuries or ineffectiveness. Madrigal at 2B from opening day. Punts a year of service, obviously, but no time for games now. I think the Sox will monitor Crochet, but I'd be surprised to see him throw a major league pitch in 2020. Burdi will be in the bullpen mix. If there is essentially a taxi squad, I think he'll be on it. If not, depends on injuries. I'd say we most likely see him pitch at least a little in the bigs. Mendick will be on the roster and get limited time with Madrigal entrenched at 2B. Encarrnacion will be the primary DH and play most days.

The answer to that is a pretty obvious no, IMO. Already ton me of dudes for 1B and DH at bats.

They’ll both be on the roster.

Honest question tho - why didn’t anyone else do this? And how did the Sox know he’s fall to 37? It’s not like Kelly can reject being drafted by someone else.

Thanks - yeah I read the article. I guess I just figured if the arm was that great, someone would have taken him yesterday and tried to figure the financials outs. Here's to hoping to falls 11 more spots. Looks like a great kid to have in the system. Built like a horse.

Why has he dropped so far? Based on that article, he was an option for the Sox at 11.

How many rounds do we get today? Sounds like Sox likely to take a pitcher - that accurate?

I don't see how any of the guys you listed besides Trout and Cole would make any sense to sit out. I know your argument is going to be why risk injury for reduced pay if you're an impending FA like Betts or Springer. But sitting out isn't going to do them favors either. The other dudes make no sense.

Yeah, I mean the bolded is absolute worst case scenario - as noted. Trout is perhaps a guy that would make sense to sit out. But he's signed long term and makes more money that he'll ever need, so he's not a great example. He can afford to walk away from $8-15M, or whatever it ends up being if the parties can come to an agreement. But the vast majority of players are not in that position. I don't know the accuracy, but Kevin Pillar tweeted yesterday that 65% of the MLB players make $1M or less, which sounds about right. Plenty of the guys that make between $1M-$5M annually are of course making a ton of money, but most of them probably live a lifestyle expecting those kinds of pay checks (mortgages, cars, etc.). I think the VAST majority of players are going to come back, even if they're making something like 30-50 cents on the dollar. I think its far more likely that the league and players association can't come to an agreement at all than anything more than ~5% of players just sitting out and forfeiting their pro-rated salaries. I hope its something we get to find out, because a full season of no baseball would suck.