Leaderboard

My source told me Thome showed him around. Then they went to White Castle, and Harper said if Thome could down an entire crave case, he would sign with the Sox as long as each team employee took a bit of a paycut. Being the HOFer he is, Thome downed it in record time. They should be signing something today or tomorrow. It depends on when an acceptable marketing firm is found.

Are you seriously repeating what was said a few pages ago?

Just ban Peavy already. I'm sorry if he happens to have some sort of "condition" but let's get real. He's bringing down the quality of Harper convo.

Jerry better shut his mouth and open his chase app.

Just take a breath, compose all of your thoughts in one post then hit send.

The irony.

Not to be that guy so when I say take it FWIW, I mean TAKE IT FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH, but my coworker's sister works for the Sox and said that the Sox have told their office people to contact all of the Chicago teams to get jerseys ready for Harper and Machado and they were evidently all asked to take small pay cuts to make these moves...yes, MOVES... easier.

My source just wrote me an article and i'm posting it here, please don't post it anywhere else. https://theathletic.com/707254/2018/12/11/rosenthal-the-white-sox-have-the-resources-to-sign-bryce-harper-now-will-they-break-character-and-go-for-it/ Going to slowly move all the old posts to this. Enjoy your new Harper thread.

>mutually agreed to a deal

Can we hold a twitter embedding class?

Ok general in thread warning here - this discussion is falling apart and crossing the line into multiple personal attacks. We'll contact individual people as necessary right now but if all people are going to do is yell insults at each other we're going to consider this an appropriate reminder about the rules against personal insults at Soxtalk.com and suspend people who cross it without additional notes.

If the White Sox made people who are probably barely making a living wage take a cut to sign Harper and Machado, that would be one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard. I am pretty sure if that was true, my days of being a White Sox fan would be OVA.

To answer your question: 1) Because that's the way the owner likes the site run 2) Because not everyone can follow the news throughout the day, so megathreads can be daunting to wade through 60-70 posts like "cool" "i can't read it" "hell sign here if we pay", and this allows them to follow biggest new info

Can Peavy have his own thread?

Look at this tweet—YES! Oh, another one—we’re f***ed. Is “peavy” a bot?

Beginning to think we’re being used to drive the price up.

That's even worse than the stats indicated, which I provided in that post showing his ranking last year, in various offensive categories. The fact that Fangraphs' ranking is for the last 3 years is troubling. The question is; How much better than that can we realistically expect from him?

I'm not. Apparently the Pirates are one of the last teams really stressing two seamers down in the zone as the basis of pitching and making all of their guys do it. As soon as he went to the Rays his velo and spin rate spiked and his fastball location was much higher in the zone, which seems to indicate the Rays had him move to what most of the league is doing with high spin rate four seamers up in the zone. That change, and some others I can't remember, were quick fixes that an analytically inclined team like the Rays were able to easily identify as problems and things they could fix that would make him look better than what his numbers with the Pirates would suggest. This is actually why I have some hope about the Nova trade. The Pirates aren't just not good, they are actively making some of their pitchers worse by making them all use the same pitching strategy even if it doesn't play to their strengths.

I would be pro Grandal because it has really bothered me that a rebuild full of young pitchers has given them garbage defensive catchers and framers. I don't care if we pay an FA price for it.

People are acting like Grandal is garbage or ruins our shot at Harper. Grandal is a top Catcher and would be perfect to compliment a Harper move.

I say just offer him a billion with opt outs every year, and be done with it.

"Two down years" where he OPS'd over 1.000 in 1 and had an .393 OBP in the other.

Head over to the Cubs message board and find out.

Nah, Jerry acting like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost when she didn't want to hand the check over.

Sounds like type of guy who has his own picture as his avatar

He's a meathead with a source. Strange way to show support for his supposd favorite team when we all know free agency or the best offer doesn't necessarily guarantee anything.

Offer them 10/$350M each. 5/$240M then an opt out. Then 3/$90M then opt out. Then 2/$20M. Would be so neat. Effectively get both for 5 seasons and do everything you can to build a winner from 2020-2023.

But the other twitter dude had a sick Photoshop

Admittedly, I'm not very knowledgeable about WAR, so let me put this in "old school" baseball stats. If Harper cannot realistically be expected to hit .275 with an OBP of .400 + and a Slugging % of 500+, with 35 to 40 doubles and homers, while driving in 100+ runs, he is not worth the kind of money that we are anticipating. Oh, and he needs to play at least close to an average corner outfield. Isn't that reasonable? If he can do that for the first 5 years of the contract, and they give him an opt out, after 5 years, that might make him worth it.

Can you guys ban this dude already?

The Harper situation isn't hard to read. He expected to go to a big money club like the Yankees, Cubs, Dodgers, BoSox or wherever and make tons of money and win. The problem is that he is not worth the money to those teams. Either he takes less money and goes to a contender, or takes the most money to play for the White Sox who see intrinsic value on top of the stats, and might be good soon. I suspect the Sox and Phillies are just sitting on their offers while the other teams try to see if they can get close enough to make the choice easy for him. I doubt anyone is "out" at this point.

After 6 years..... I am not saying Collins is going to be the catcher for the White Sox for the next 2 decades. I am saying he can fill a role as a part-time catcher, part-time DH/1B for several seasons, with or without Grandal on the roster. You completely dismiss that as a possibility, because that is what you do.

I do

My God dude, give it a rest. You don't have a source.

My source tells me McCutchen to the Phils.

Just so you know and someone please correct me if I'm wrong. When you say "my source" shouldn't it means that you talk to someone directly who has connections in the White Sox organization and not a Facebook group ?

Reminds me of the day when I heard a similar story that they were shipping in Soriano White Sox jerseys. Sox ended up only trading for MacDougal that day.

That Spanish reporter replied to a tweet that Harper at GRF was last Thursday with Thome. Not today.

Thank god for the Nova news ... this Harper thread over the past three days has been one of the worst threads ever on SoxTalk. No talking about his defense, how to structure the contract, discussion about how his signing would affect future payroll constraints, what his signing would mean for our younger OF prospects, etc. etc. It's just back and forth of broken English discussing pretty poor and vague rumors and saying the same thing over and over. Every post is like 180 characters like twitter or something. Been an incredibly bad thread.

At Soxtalk we call that the Fathom effect.

I pretty much disagree with this entire post and am glad you are not GM.

Peavy44 created a new account?

It's true! That's why I included it. But it was a nice counterpoint to the confidence of his executives. But that he may be giving his execs this much freedom may just indicate he's not sure they can win but he did give them permission to get them to the finals to see what it takes.

You said it would be a "huge issue" which I think read to lots of us like you saying it would be a bad thing. I usually don't use the phrase huge issue for things that are supposed to benefit, so I think there was some language confusion.

I don't think people who insist Khalil Mack shouldn't be used in coverage know what they're talking about 90% of the time. DEs and OLBs go into coverage sometimes, that's part of playing the position. WRs block on running plays, CBs blitz. That's like saying if you have Randy Moss he should do nothing but run verticals all game. If the offense has been doubling Mack then it means they can overload the other side where there are fewer players. Yes, sometimes this doesn't work, just like every other defensive play. Whenever I say this I always get a crowd of people getting defensive and doubling down about this, then trying to get examples. "Mack got burned because he ended up having to cover (fast receiver)." Well yeah, I mean, if Fangio knew which specific players would be running specific routes the defensive playcalling would be pretty easy.

I have zero expectation that this man could figure out a two step plan, let alone something with the complexities of taxation and tariffs.

Updated for better accuracy.