Jose Abreu

A few of those signings and the Charlotte Knights bullpen would be 2nd or 3rd best if it were in the AL Central

They'll sign a starting pitcher. Rick Hahn himself practically guaranteed it. If I had to guess, one of Wade Miley or Gio Gonzalez. There are still plenty of cheap #5 types available

Absolutely not the case

Only would make sense in the scenario in the post I quoted where the price on Joc gets much higher. I would rather have Joc but not if he ends up costing more than the relative value of that 2nd round pick

At some point, if our goal is to shore up CF until Robert is ready, it would just make more sense to sign Pollock for 2 years

My conspiracy is that Steverson told Anderson to change something and Anderson didn't like it. It would explain why Anderson liked (and then unliked) tweets in September that were trashing the hitting coaches

So we're still pretending that the Sox are gonna sign Manny to play shortstop?

It's a minor league deal, and he was a beast in AAA last year. Guessing he's more of an insurance policy

He liked a tweet that implied it was Machado/Harper related

I think you're getting too hung up on one statistic, though (with catch probability and outs above average essentially being the same stat). I'm not big on publicly available defensive metrics in the first place because there are so many extenuating factors that go into defense. For starters, Fangraphs isn't as down on Pederson defensively as Statcast seems to be. Perhaps he isn't making tough catches because he has the benefit of playing next to guys like Cody Bellinger, who Statcast had as a 6 outs above average outfielder. At the end of the day, I understand wanting to help our young pitching staff by minimizing mistakes in the outfield, but at some point, contributing to scoring runs also helps the young pitching staff, and Pederson is worlds ahead of Engel in that category. The only defensive stats that I really put a lot of weight in are framing stats for catchers and range stats for middle infielders, I simply don't trust the algorithms behind any others. Outs above average and catch probability are interesting new concepts but could also be better served by more time and data points to work with.

I wouldn’t talk myself into this. For as “bad” as Pederson is defensively (he isn’t), an improved Daniel Palka still doesn’t even belong in the same discussion as Joc defensively.

I would assume that we’re closing in on this trade

Correlation between speed and defensive prowess exists, but Joc Pederson is an average to good defensive center fielder. More speed would make him better but he isn’t bad. And honestly, given that Engel has a noodle arm, he might be more effective in our home outfield than Engel.

Because there’s no need to, they’re out and they’ve been out for ages.

Lozano sent out a release last week that pretty much guaranteed that there wouldn’t be any news or leaks about Machado until he signs.

Confused reaction

Not true, he followed Hosmer and Tatis months if not years ago

Didn't even realize he was a FA/not under team control for another year

Soxtalk: Palka is cool and all, but I’m tired of one dimensional guys with sub-.300 OBPs. White Sox: *acquire an outfielder whose bread and butter is OBP* Soxtalk: Daniel Palka is better!

I think it’s the other way around. I think this is a move that, if made, speaks to the FO’s confidence in executing on Machado