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Nobody wants to hear what you two do in your private time. Keep it to yourself.

Feel free to take a hiatus until then. The quality of the board would improve drastically.

Um... uh. 1. Didi played 82 games. 2. The year prior he had a WAR of 4.7 and the year before that it was 4.1. Teams amazingly don't only judge you based on one half season coming off injury. If you think a guy who averaged 4.4 WAR over the two year period is going to sign for 9-10 million, you crazy. Are you willingly ignorant?

I thought Damaso.

Puig is a bigger whackjob than Parkman. Not needed here.

Or just learn to deal with disappointments in life instead of being a walking cloud of negativity. If you can’t deal with disappointments in sport you really shouldn’t invest heavily in it.

Of course the players care about money first, but if the money is close other factors come into play. If I was a player I'd much rather play for Tampa than the Sox because I'd be more likely to get another contract after playing with the Rays. Tampa will help me maximize my talent and idk wtf the Sox are doing.

Didi will be fortunate to get half that.

OK, How about this for a “realistic offseason:” 1. Madison Bumgarner 5/$110MM. He’s a LHP with championship experience. The SFG are salary-fucked, what with their Samardzia/Cueto/Longoria/Posey contracts. Their team is getting old, bad, and won’t sniff the top of that division for years. Their local media are assuming he’d be OK with 3/$60MM or 4/$80MM; Spotrac has his market value at 5/$105MM. 2. Yasiel Puig 4/$72MM. Yes, he’s RH. Yes, he’s had his differences with Bumgarner and Abreu. Yes, he’s had his effort questioned at times. He’s also 28, and an actual RFer. Spotrac has his market value at 3/$53MM, but there simply aren't any other RFers available in FA this year. 3. Yoshitomo Tsutsugo 2/$4MM. Here, the Chicago Reinsdorfs get to exercise their “thrifty” side, and bring in a LH DH on the cheap. I would have preferred Yanagita, but it doesn’t look like he’ll be posted. 4. Jose Abreu 2/$30MM. He’s going to be here anyway, whether Ron likes it or not. 5. Shelby Miller or some other veteran bum 1/$2MM + an option. [Shrugs.] Eat them innings until Kopech shows up, I guess. I’m guessing the salaries add up to: $70MM existing + $22MM + $18MM + $2MM + $15MM + $2MM = $129MM-ish on OD. My working hypothesis is that no Boras client will come here. I also think that Wheeler's market will be too rich for the Reinsdorfs. I also think that with a top-heavy/shallow system, any trades to spruce up the roster, and/or close any holes, and/or repair any underperformances by the five so mentioned above will have to come AFTER the injured/underperforming pieces in MiLB get healthy and re-establish their prospect value. [Edit] Carry on...

I wouldn’t be a fan, but to say that wouldn’t help the Sox is neglecting to remember how awful the 2019 team was at those positions

Then maybe stop coming here and speaking in absolutes you fucking Sith.

THE WHITE SOX ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE A $65M PAYROLL. I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY THIS IS SO COMPLICATED FOR SOME TO UNDERSTAND.

There are only 3 teams in the MLB that reach more TVs. There are only two markets where player x's face on a highway billboard or a subway commercial would be seen by more people. That's not getting into the fact that all but like 4 players get endorsement money in the hundreds of thousands.

Grandal, an ace, and a second tier sp is my wish list sets us up huge for contending this year and being a monster in 2021+

For the Cubs, sure. Not for the Sox.

All hope is lost. Looks like Sox should just fold the organization.

Yep. It's hard to see how they're going to improve much this winter. I'll be pleasantly surprised if they land any top or mid tier FA. Just too many teams out there that actually have a current valuation of players.

This post reflects a lack of understanding of the overall situation. It is a great play for the Sox, and it proves they aren't willing to make an emotional decision and overpay Abreu on a multi-year deal. Clearly there is a divide between what the Sox are offering and what Jose wants, or this would not have happened.

Didi will get $14M if not more. He's a high risk high reward compared to Moustakas.

Jose must be retained at all costs. For Machado and Bryce Hyper money if necessary. Next year is balls out for wild card blackout one n done.

One mans opinion. He was as good an announcer as he was a GM.

This an early-but-not-too-early projection of the 2020 White Sox based on the different scenarios of how free agency could unfold for the team. Point is, we have a good young core costing next to nothing and ample money to spend, so let's see how this could play out. First off, a baseline of how the 2019 White Sox stacked up against AL playoff teams, going by fWAR. I also added 2018 Twins in there as a case study of a team making significant improvements without marquee off season moves: Next comes free agency, and it could play out in a number of ways depending on how much confidence you have in this FO and JR's willingness (or unwillingness) to open his checkbook. I am taking some of the common names thrown around in different Soxtalk threads and projected contract value: Now projecting fWAR and win totals for each scenario: The fWAR projections may be optimistic for some and not aggressive enough for others. Basically this assumes: - Anderson and McCann will slightly regress - Bullpen is a wash between Colome, Marshall and/or a few others regressing but Herrera, Fry improving, as well as adding a high leverage arm - Abreu, Giolito, and Moncada producing at the same level, Robert and Madrigal producing at league average for 80% of the season - Eloy taking a step forward and two of ReyLo/Cease/Kopech giving you 180 innings at 4.50 ERA. Also, obviously, Sox would be making some trades, but it's too much of a reach to project any trades, but you could safely assume any trade will either have net neutral or positive affect on the WAR total, unless we have another Alonso-esque blunder. The result is surprising, but the Sox, on their current path, would be a better team than some folks are anticipating even with a sad but not out of the possibility free agency showing. How are we getting there? Between DH/RF we were at an awful -4.8 WAR. By replacing those positions with league average players, we're adding 7-8 wins to our 72 win season. On top of that, bench play should improve with Leury and Mendick anchoring. Adding 2 SP arms and with some natural progression from the group of ReyLo, Cease, Kopech and Eloy, this is suddenly an 85 win team, if not more. TLDR; even with a disappoint offseason (though seriously hoping Hahn would have more stones), with a couple of breaks going in Sox favor and some mid-season additions, this team could at least fight for a WC spot in 2020.

If a free agency season can’t motivate you, nothing will

Nice post Ron, I agree and hope they give Jose just a QO.

I still can't help but wonder if Abreu and Moncada could get him motivated.

Agreed. It is 2019, leaks happen. Don't use leaks as an excuse for not getting the job done.

I am amazed at the amount of discussion over Kiley mentioning “buzz” that the Sox are going to be active in veterans on short deals for low guarantees. That’s not even a source. And it’s what they did last year, so... yeah. He didn’t rule them out going for a big piece. Seems pretty close to a nothing burger to me.

This is a coaching loss through and through.

Jim Boylen decides to rest his starters majority of the 3rd and half the 4th quarter and the Lakers come back. Please fire this clown.

You can't run any NFL offense with a trash tier QB. Good thing Mitch is a sure fire HOF

He's not lying just for twitter love, someone is def feeding him info and he's not intentionally making anything up... but I have reason to believe he hasn't been very accurate of late. I haven't heard anything and won't for at least a few weeks I'd imagine. Free agency is a day old and Boras controls the market this winter, so I'm assuming it's going to be slow and torturous. I wouldn't publicize info even if I did have though unless I know the ink is dry, no offense to you guys. Last thing I want is to F up an opportunity for the Sox to get better. I think we are all happy with this offseason though and that doesn't mean Rendon/Stras/Cole, at least not right now. I skimmed the last few pages of this thread this afternoon and a lot of the acquisition combos you guys have thrown out seem totally plausible/doable to me. No excuses anymore. Can't have any Ervin Santana type signings anymore, it's go time. Also next year I would be ALL IN on signing Mookie. Give him a blank check and I'm not kidding

And I disagree with 90% of what Balta says, so now it’s all making sense ?

You sure that wasn't you PM'ing him nonstop to meet up?

Lmao. We don't do anything but that's hilarious Ron. I don't know why CWS can't stand me. We ran into each other at the Kopech game and he anyone who knows me knows I want than for the Sox to win, sign decent FA and finish this thing off. I just think Hahn and Kenny are buffoons. How come it's ok to rip GarPax to shreds but it's not ok to rip Hahn/KW? They're just 4 tits from the same cow.

Not saying they won't be in on Ryu but I will say that everyone should probably stop taking this kid's word as gospel at this point

If I could either take that right now or let the offseason play out and hope for the best, I think I’m taking that. But I’m still hopeful for a bit better than that.

Because we were rebuilding and it didn't matter. It actually really fucking matters now who is on the roster.

Our standards for this rebuild should be much higher than lets add a #4 starter, aging DH, stopgap RF and a reliever and expect to be relevant in 2020. We do not need to win the division next year, but we better make some damn noise and start turning the corner.

I can buy that. The hard thing I keep going back to, is the structure of the offense, how we are running it, just strategically don't lend itself to the type of team and the type of QB we had (or thought we had). None of it made sense to me. I also go back to last year when we started out of the gate with this complex offense and than simplified it and saw Mitch take off (not saying he was great, but in terms of 2nd year QB's, he was pretty solid). For him to spiral so quickly out of control is crazy and I wish there was an ability to hit a reset button. If I reset this thing, I would have ran a much more conservative offense that protected the QB and put him in a position to more slowly grow and develop vs. straight up throwing him to the wolves. That is my big thing. What is done is done and maybe in the long run it was the best case scenario because it more quickly showed that Mitch can't do this...at the same time, it could be one of those things that broke a young QB and put them past the point of no return (I truly believe there is a lot of fragility and mental aspects to what allows young QB's to develop into good to great QB's vs. not so great QB's...even more so in this world of instant analysis and twittersphere OC's and QB Doctors). I also don't think Mitch's ability to throw accurately (throughout college and shown early in his NFL career...albeit issues certainly cropped up in his 1st year with Nagy) and to make plays with his feet (again in college and shown at the NFL level). How a confident QB broke down has a lot of blame to go a lot of ways. Just like I wonder what happens if Pineiro makes that kick and Mitch is talking about a good game and mentally its just a win that gets things headed in the right direction. I mean...look at Cousins...not saying he was a great QB, but 4 weeks into the season he was viewed as the worst QB in the league and than all of a sudden bam...he's back to looking like a borderline top 10 QB. Things can change really fast in the NFL. Unfortunately for Mitch, he's psychologically broken and no reset button will happen for him this year and at that point, he'll have shown too many major issues for any team to rely on him (in full) next year. Mitch will still be on the roster and who knows...maybe he'll show some absurd resiliency and come back an entirely new QB in a year (crazier things have happened) but he's going to have to win a gig over a legitimate veteran.

From Kiley McDaniel The above quote is what I was talking about. It doesn't look like they're doing anything outside of 1-2 year deals, which makes one want to commit seppuku. They might get lucky and land Keuchel on a 2 year deal, but I wouldn't expect much more than players in the EE, Wood, Pineda, Roark tier. idk what Dickerson would get but he might be an option.

This thread is an abortion.

National reporting. From what I heard, 2/3 of the teams in the league are expected to be active participants this year. They want to get Tony Clark to STFU a bit. Really, only the hard rebuilders are going to be out. (KC/Detroit/Seattle/Miami/Toronto/Pittsburgh)

LOL. They legitimately rebuild to avoid doing this very thing. You're just ignoring what is clearly in front of your eyes because it fits your narrative, and you love being negative.

The Sox may have whiffed, but they're not in a meaningfully worse position for doing so. One could argue they're in a better position with a budding superstar in Moncada at 3B and not owing Manny Macho $270M over the next 9 seasons. And they still have the $250M they offered to Machado to spend. The Sox are not suddenly going to operate as one of the lowest payrolls in the league moving forward. The negative nancys continually disregard that. They could sign Wheeler, Grandal, Abreu and Encarnacion and still be below average.

Why were the Sox offering the most money for Machado? Because all of his desirable destinations didn't sit at the table. If you take the Padres deal out of it and add the Yankees and Red Sox in at 250 million, like our deal, who would he sign with?

No one is blindly pessimistic. As you said, the Sox have earned it. I don't see any reason to expect the Sox to act like a big boy franchise. It was nothing but optimism last year. Then not only did they miss, but they ran around spewing the nonsense that they thought they had the best offer, which smacked of incompetence. That does not inspire confidence. All I know to expect this offseason is the Sox trading more bonus pool money away to teams that want to build a better organization.

He said the Sox, not Chicago itself, and he is right. The fact that we are even compared to the Rays and Royals speaks volumes. I think his point is that if money is almost equal, top players will not be picking us. We'd essentially have to force players to pick us by overpaying.

That too. The Sox have a sorted recent history of players who have had productive careers signing here and their careers just die.

It's not the city, it's the organization, i.e. the Chicago Bulls.

You also have to take into account the fact that the Sox are one of the least desirable places to play from a players perspective in baseball. Players would rather play almost anywhere else. The Sox are right there with Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati on the "worst places to play in MLB" list. I'm sure that people would rather play for the Rays or Marlins because at least it's Florida.