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@Jack Parkman @CWSpalehoseCWS @Ross Gload Fan There was an article about Eloy (which I cannot find) and in it his jersey number was discussed and he said he's going to wear 74 because, something to the effect of, no other player has made it famous and he wants to. Edit- @Sleepy Harold found it for us

Also weird is how a guy who joined December 13th is talking about what specific people were posting in October.

It isn't that clear cut. Harper's career OPS is eighty points higher. His career OBP is higher than Manny's best single season. There are arguments to be made both ways. Positionally Manny fits better. But as a LH hitter with exceptional OBP skills, Harper is a better fit in the lineup.

Because of ST? A guy is going to decide the fate of his baseball legacy and future bases on the location of the teams spring facility? My god, someone just make it end. The takes are getting so bad it hurts.

But if another team is only involved at a lower price than the player wants to accept, nothing has really changed. If the White Sox were TRULY never gonna go higher than 7/175, they were never gonna win in the first place. I remain convinced they’re just waiting for someone to force them to bid higher, which was always gonna happen. You don’t win the free agent unless you bid higher than every other team. We’re just waiting to see what that number looks like.

This thread

At this point I'm just hoping to wake up tomorrow and "I got you babe" isn't playing on the alarm clock.

Nope.

Moncada hasn't had a career yet. He's had 1 year. Calm down bud.

You could call this the “Moncada at the plate” of posts.

Amazing. I have no idea how anyone could argue it's not close. By the way, acquiring arguably a top 3 defensive 3rd baseman ever is probably a part of the sox thinking beyond a middle of the order bat. Just saying...

SD was out originally because Machado was too expensive. If they beat our bid, Lozano calls us right away and we beat it back, and then the Padres bow out. This is what Alonso, Jay, and a great pitch bought us - rights to the last bid. Unless NY comes sweeping in, I think the Sox are Machado's preferred destination. We have no incentive to bid against ourselves because we will always be given a chance to make a higher offer.

Good point. To me the difference is that the Sox were in on these guys from day one. The Sox had an idea of what it would take to get involved and are still in the mix. The Padres jumped in because they thought they thought they could get an all star player on blue light special. Trying to look at this objectively based on rumors and quotes from both teams, I do feel the Sox are willing to go higher than SD. SD is the perv that purposely shows up late to the party looking to score a drunk chick.

Reminds me of when college recruits post "i'm so confusssed" and fans go nuts and they were talking about ordering fast food.

Summertime Chicago cannot be beat. And if you have hundreds of millions of dollars in your bank account, why not work in Chicago during the summer, and live wherever your heart desires during the offseason?

I already have hakuna matata memorized... my 1.5 year old loves lion king right now (me too) and that's her favorite song... "its our prollum fweeeeee, fuhwasafeee"

If you don't want to believe them, don't, but lets not restart this.

And I completely agree with this, as well. Sox are in great shape right now.

LOL. Great analogy!

You missed the point. *IF* the Sox have offers on the table for both players there absolutely is some chance that both decide to deal with the Sox or even to accept their Offer. If the Sox have Offers on the table for both, they must at least be considering the possibility of signing both. So no, there is not a zero chance. Machado, Harper and the White Sox may want to do deals that would amount a shot heard 'round the world. Shock and Awe. For Jerry, this would be remindful of his signing of Fisk/Luzinski Money wise, the Michael Jordan contract with Pippen and supporting players indicate that Jerry will pay

The biggest point is that the market has stayed tepid because there were only two teams for two superstars involved. If you start getting another team involved, that balance is thrown off.

They're involved but quiet. In a word, provisional. Not much the teams can do. They're waiting the agents out. They agents are running out of time.

To see the Sox locking up somewhere around half of a future payroll in 2 players would be a pretty awful idea to start with, and it was also one of the very few things that Rick basically gave a straight answer to at Soxfest.

I have to think that Hahn has a wildest dream number that it could potentially happen but he knows that is extremely unlikely. But there is a scenario numbers wise.

Then we should all be very, very happy.

Check out what Theo’s wife posted https://mobile.twitter.com/prince___28/status/1091041366874996737

The fact that 2 reporters broke the meeting time at the same time meant someone wanted the story out. We see you Boras. You're better than that.

Even if the Padres are serious and can spend, that park is just too huge a hurdle. Manny might go for playing there, but Harper is looking at where he's going to be statistically when he retires and how he'll be viewed among the all-time best hitters. Dude is going to get paid over $300 million anywhere he goes. I can't see him agreeing to play in San Diego where he'd be extremely lucky to hit 15 HR at home a season.

CC: Lozano & Machado

Weird how you would let a guy you called a piece of shit and a scumbag during the NLCS get into your head so much. You would think someone with such strong negative feelings towards a player wouldn’t want them near their team

Both Lozano and Boras know that its beneficial for their clients to have at least three teams seriously involved in the bidding. Its the only way they can really maximize each deal. They were both going to make sure that this happened before they sign anything. Its getting closer to an end in the life cycle of all of this.

But those teams are all at or near the tax and penalty threshold. The problem here is that the PA agreed to the current system which for all intents are purposes is a salary cap, but without getting the benefit of revenue sharing. They can't blame the huge market teams for not breaking rules they agreed upon.

If they double the Hosmer contract, it would still be below the deal that Harper turned down from the Nats.

https://www.gaslampball.com/2019/1/22/18192839/a-look-into-the-padres-finances-has-opened-a-rats-nest-of-questions-ron-fowler-please-dont-be-evil Ummmm...not really. Almost 10% of their budget each year goes to paying down debt and stadium renovations. $144 million to Hosmer, big salary for Myers and $27.5 still this year on paying off bad deals from 2024-15 cycle. Their franchise is worth roughly $800 million less than the Sox. I would venture to say that any SoxTalk poster would have a difficult time arguing how the Padres could be in a better position financially than the White Sox...at least with Philly, we KNOW they have the ability to meet or exceed our spending on just one huge contract. SD, not so much.

Sorry gotcha. I get caught up in re-enforcing that the best teams in the league have redundancies that they aren't scared of. There is consistent discussion here about trading a guy because someone else is there, when these teams would just keep both. It may not guarantee a World Series as we've seen, but it pushes odds in your favor for competing for division by not seeing big dropoffs from injuries and slumps.

The counterpoint is they've dealt with "overload" like this every year and made it work. What you are pointing out isn't terribly different than last year, and Verdugo having options to go back and forth makes it easier.

My hope and focus isn't so much on numbers. I'd like to see him go out there and CONSISTENTLY pitch well. He needs to lower the blow up innings. He needs to be able to go out there and log 180+ innings. He needs to give us a chance to win as a 4/5 type starter. I think Coop is kind of the perfect coach for him. Coop seems to like to simplify things ... more of the mindset of "get it and throw it" while Gio is a student of the game. Gio seems like the guy who would have a nice career as a pitching coach and who can identify issues, however I think that's to his detriment more times than not. Gio reminds me of Gavin Floyd a lot. So I guess that's my ultimate goal for him. A guy who can be a 3/4/5 type starter but also have stretches where he's a 1/2 type guy for months at a time. I think my goal is for him to be more consistent, log innings, and become a solid rotation option in 2019. I don't think he'll ever hit that "top prospect in MLB" ceiling, or frankly ever come close to it, however I think he has a chance to be a solid contributor on a contending team.

On Groundhog Day, if Manny sees his shadow, he won't sign for another six weeks.

I recommend trying to memorize the words to hakunamatata or reading the book of Isaiah.

4-3 without him in the lineup. ?

Also, it's almost impossible to play a 9 inning game in 4 plus hours. It's embarrassing and it happens. The length of the postseason games were embarrassing. So many problems in the game, but one of them is the proliferation of the relief pitcher and it's only going to get worse. I think baseball is over when the teams copy the Rays and have guys pitch two innings max. These "reliever" starters are going to be throwing 100 mph and blowing away the hitters. There will be little action and games are still gonna take forever. I agree with the poster who said there was glamor in starting pitchers who could go deep into games. Now unless you are a nasty veteran like Sale or Verlander who refuse to come out of games, you go 5 innings max, or 6 innings max. I personally feel very very few starters will be going through lineups more than 2 times in the future. Analytics is not going to allow pitchers face hitters a third time in a game IMO.

No doubt. I said back when the Sox acquired Thome, that while I like the trade and he will help the team, I really disliked his style of hitting because it was walk, strikeout or HR. It takes away much of the game.

I really think putting Collins in Charlotte is a mistake. Splitting playing time between Collins and Zavala slows both their development for one thing. Also Collins had major issues with AA pitching as it is - why throw him into a league with more mature pitchers? And nearly everyone feels Collins is not nearly ready to be a catcher full time, and they want to rush him up? Makes no sense to me. Feels like someone trying to protect their reputation by advancing a high pick even if they aren't ready.

Verlander made a huge mechanical adjustment after joining the Astros raising his arm slot almost half a foot, which like Giolito after he did the same, resulted in his fastball picking up another 2-3 mph. As for Giolito, there was talk in 2017 about the Sox changing his mechanics, but I see no evidence of it. His 2016 and 2017 video looks very similar. I think all the WSox were working on at that point was trying to get him to develop consistency in his mechanics, which he never did. He finally made some pretty major changes starting around July 2018.

Looking at 1985, the top 5 guys in complete games were Bert Blylevn (22 year career in MLB), Doc Gooden (16 years), John Tudor (11 years), Charlie Hough (knuckleballer so you can throw him out, 24 years), Mike Moore (19 years), Fernando Mania (17 years). Looking at 1990, Ramon Martinez (13 year career), Jack Morris (18 years), Dave Stewart (16 years), Bruce Hurst (15 years), Doug Drabek (16 years). As far as memory serves, none of those guys above had their career end due to injury. They just got old. At least back then, there doesn't appear to be a correlation between # if innings pitched and injury. One thing I'm not sure how to account for is today's reliance on velocity. I'm not sure other than Doc and Jack Morris and maybe Dave Stewart, any of those guys would compare to todays upper-90's max effort guys. It does seem like every pitcher today has a upper 90's fastball and a 90's hard slider. I don't think there's any doubt that today's harder throwers are more susceptible to injury. But that goes back to having them learn to use multiple pitches through 6-7 innings, rather than just throw 99 for 4-5. The way we develop pitchers these days is almost like their disposable. Throw hard until your arm blows out, and we find another one. Guys like Aaron Nola, Kershaw, Verlander who have a well developed arsenal of pitches don't have to throw 99 to be effective. But the guys who develop like that seem to take a backseat to guys who's only asset is velocity. I'd love to see a graph of injury vs velocity - how many guys are more likely to get hurt living at 91 mph, 95mph, 99mph? We all love Kopech right, but who didn't see that coming?

Would it shorten the life on their arms though? Take the top 10 guys in innings pitched in 1985, and it's 270 average. Take the top 10 in 1990 and it's 240. Looking at the leaderboard from 1990 has guys like Frank Viola, Dave Stewart, Bob Welch in the top 10. I'm not sure these guys are "freaks of the generation". Take the top 10 in 2018 and they average 209. No one in 2018 threw more than 2 complete games. In 1990, 2 CG would have ranked you 84th in baseball. And I don't know if I buy that guys back then, in the era of booze in the clubhouse, cocaine, and greenies, were better and more durable athletes than the guys today who are trained by sports science from the time they can walk to throw a baseball. Granted, we are seeing an era where velocity trumps all, but that in itself may be one of the biggest problems. Guys are max effort guys for 4-5 innings. Why develop a second, third or even fourth plus pitch when all you have to do to make the big leagues is throw 101mph to 15 batters and your day is done.

I am really surprised Iglesias, Marwin, Jones, and Harrison are still hanging around. I guess teams are waiting for the big boys to fall.

Hole-ee shit.