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The food boys have been manipulating me by capitalizing on my affection for La Stella by acting like the sox are interested in him. I have been using the food boys in hopes that Tony LaRussa sees the tweets and calls up Jerry to sign him. It is a long shot, but I love Tommy La Stella. Let me count the ways: - Tommy La Stella strikes out less than Nick Madrigal but nobody calls him nellie fox because he actually hits for power as well. - Tommy La Stella plays multiple infield positions with 2nd, 3rd and first. He's not particularly fast, but whatever, how hard is LF if we need him in a pinch? Nobody cares. We have Robert. - Tommy La Stella is Left Handed and the last two years has had a 134 and 151 wRC+ vs right handed pitching - Tommy La Stella walked 12% of the time last year. Move him around and around, as long as he's in the lineup. He is my la stella, the star. Tony, please put him in my stocking this year.

A little info I was told is the Sox believe they will have Colas in 2022 and the league believes that too.

Here's what I know on Colas: He'll have a workout in January. There are some rumors that his team is desperate and they might take a shitty deal for this period but most people don't believe it. Nobody can even offer him $2 million on January 15. Nobody has it. If he waits 13 months, the White Sox are absolutely in. These kids got absolutely fucked by MLB and the PA though. Colas, Pino, Dyan Yamel etc are in a terrible spot. Cespedes would have signed this past July and been in the system. Yamel, Pino and Colas would've waited until J2 2021 and then entered systems. Now they have to wait until January 2022 and debut the following season. Really shitty situation overall.

There is but just recall how the Sox have really not played in the sixteen year old market. Those dudes are mostly committed at 14 and grossly younger. The rumor from BA last year was clubs are committed years and years out now, so this is where the Cuban exports have just been crushed. Sox have had a lot of flexibility which is often not great but in this case excellent.

For the record, we do realize he’s never been a full time player or received over 300 ab in a season... and he doesn’t have a better K rate than Madrigal is projected to have. Just wanted to put that all out there.

Really, the only way to find out who is better is to put both of them in the same system with the same developmental staff.

I really have to stress that there isn't anyone that actually has a good read on this. They both haven't played in a long time, Colas barely played in Japan and Cespedes apparently became a tank in the last 2 years. Nobody that could speak confidently on which one is better has much to go off on. We just need to see them.

That isn't how this works.

We’ll probably know where Colas is going regardless in January. If he commits to White Sox for 2022, he can go to DSL facility and play in Tricky League games as a member of org. Just not officially signed and can’t play at an affiliate. Probably not. Most teams probably have commitments for the following period as well. Sox usually have funds available due to how they play things.

I like this guy. He is now my pal.

This was asked in a fangraphs chat and they said the owners would make sure this would get punished very tough. This is also why that braves GM and the braves got punished more than the astros, owners are very strict against any rule violation that increases player player earnings because they don't want a precedent to be set that could cost owners money. The owners simply don't want an under the table bidding war. This is not about integrity and level playing field but about controlling owner expenses which is extremely important to owners. So if a team did it the owners would demand manfred to punish this.

The Sox are going to need all of these guys, and more. Face it, they only had 3 guys pitch 35 innings, and 4 guys pitch 30 innings and one of them, they traded away. To expect them all to ramp up to normal in 2021 would be shortsided. They need several more pitchers.

Colas and Pino for next signing period. Mas Cubanos. ??

Could the Sox theoretically sign Colas for whatever it is they have left, and then have a handshake agreement to extend him a few months later so he gets closer to what he'd normally get? Or would that trigger a bunch of tampering / INTL spending limit rules?

When someone fails for the exact reason people thought he'd fail for, I have to say draft failure. Maybe if he was out of high school I'd say development.

Jon Rauch is my favorite Sox player ever

They don't do tool grades. This is part of why I trust BA more, it's hard to get a read on Cespedes because he's apparantly transformed his body a lot since training, but also hasn't been able to do much the last year. Unfortunately we are just going to have to wait until this guy plays to really know more. Let's just hope he's not in the DR all year - PLEASE "Report: The 23-year-old brother Yoenis Cespedes, Yoelki looks to be ticketed to the White Sox for around $2 million, the latest in their run on Cuban players that includes righthander Norge Vera also in the class, following shortstop Yolbert Sanchez last year for $2.5 million, and outfielder Luis Robert and first baseman Jose Abreu before him. Cespedes played for Cuba in the 2017 World Baseball Classic, but it’s hard to relay an accurate, reliable report that’s up to date like we normally would. Cespedes has been training at his brother’s ranch in Port St. Lucie, Fla. and hasn’t been scouted much due in part to the coronavirus pandemic and MLB’s scouting ban on international players that ended in September. He played for Granma in Cuba’s Serie Nacional, batting .273/.353/.400 in 289 plate appearances with 17 walks, 42 strikeouts and six home runs in the 2017-18 season. The next year was his final season in Cuba and he hit .319/.355/.389 with two walks, 18 strikeouts and no home runs in 77 PAs as a 21-year-old. He has a shorter but strong, athletic frame with added bulk since leaving Cuba, showing good bat speed and a strong arm from the outfield. More depth will probably have to wait until Cespedes gets tested and scouted against more live pitching."

My daughter graduated from Urbana with a degree in advertising and had her choice of three job offers months before she left school. They have one of the top programs in the country and employers lined up and offered some nice packages to hire top talent. They didn't visit the Northeasterns of the world. She wouldn't have been earning six figures her second year out of college if she attended SIU. (Which I have great memories of) On to the practical side. I teach a class Senior Seminar with the focus of transitioning to college. I bring in about 25 to 30 recruiters each fall to talk to the classes. From private schools like Pepperdine to our local schools. After about five or six presentations the students start to realize dorms are dorms, they all have clubs and study abroad options. So why pay more? At Stanford or UT you will be surrounded by top students. Your class discussions will be deeper and richer. You will learn more. The recruiters that visit your campus will be more willing to hire you. Some universities have pipelines with certain companies. Is it always a good bet? No. When asked my personal advice I tell them if they are borrowing money for school to stay home, drive 15 minutes to our local community college, then 5 minutes to our local university that is in our shadow. Then go get a graduate degree from a name university. But this perpetuates the class structure in our society. The rich send their kids to top schools and then their children get hired by the top companies with top salaries.

And yet Paxton's strikeout % did not see declines that correspond to these metrics, he still struck out nearly 29% of his batters. In 2016 that was 22%. You can be worried that paxton will not stay healthy, because he probably will not stay healthy. If he was "topping out" at 94 in mid december after recovering I am not worried about that at all.

The answer is probably yes . But it should be noted that Colas' status hasn't been cleared up and MLB hasn't declared him a Free Agent so far. So as of now he is unsignable. It's pretty hard to gauge how the industry feels . Cespedes is the better known quantity with his appearance in the WBC and has loud tools but hasn't got much field action lately. Colas played in the minors in Japan so at least he's been on the field and got that Cuban Ohtani label put on him because he can pitch a little bit but didn't do it in Japan.

Just announced

I’m not sure what I’m missing here, but a player’s surplus value when it comes to trades is based on expected future performance and not on historical performance. There isn’t a magical formula to calculate future performance, which means projections are inherently subjective even if the models used are data driven. The flawed input in this case is the forecast model that thinks a 25 year old, former 70 grade prospect in Yoan Moncada is not going to provide $60M in value over the next four years after coming off what would have been a 4 fWAR season despite being negatively impacted by COVID-19. If their model is ignoring player context, then the tool is basically worthless.

I’d gladly trade Kopech for Castillo.

Not talking necessarily about power. After not even 60 games (he was injured a decent amount of that time, too), based on what I have seen here we have apparently surmised: 1. He will never have more power. 2. He will never have more pop in his bat. 3. He will always be a bad baserunner. 4. He will always think he is faster than he is. 5. More outfielders will play shallow every time now and thus, he will never get a base hit ever again. 6. He's short, so screw him. 7. Surely none of these things can ever change (being short is one he definitely can't but in all seriousness...), because God knows these things also always applied to his minor league career and his minor league career traits surely cannot ever apply to him growing as a major leage player. He will never improve. Probably because he's short. Damn midget. Does that cover all the bad takes? Everyone was writing off Moncada after less than 1 season here and look how that turned out. It's tiresome. No one has any damn patience. Need I remind people he hit .340 in his rookie season. And if you're gonna use "small sample size" as an excuse to discredit him then maybe you should... take your own advice with the criticisms of said sample size?

The players union is the ones who allowed this to happen.

Yeah longenhagen did believe that madrigal would eventually grow into about 15 homer power which might not be in play anymore. But otoh if madrigal becomes an elite defender and baserunner he might be a 3 win player even with a 95-100 wrc+ bat.

That trade is a no brainer for the Sox to make. Reds would want more.

This whole system is so dumb.

So you're basically Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire yelling for La Stellaaaaaa.

I mean, the real fish here is Castillo while not giving up Kopech-Vaughn-Crochet. Your rotation is stacked 1-4 with Kopech ready to slot in at #5 and all the young guns (Crochet, Kelley, Dalquist, Thompson, Vera) kept in house. The lineup becomes Anderson - Moncada (S) - Abreu - Jimenez - Grandal (S) - Robert - Moustakas (L) - Vaughn - Eaton (L). Maybe you play around, but everyone in that lineup has power aside from Eaton. Moustakas' contract sucks, but you deal with it. If the Sox (8th best bullpen last season) do sign Hendriks and get a full season out of Bummer, in conjunction with the other moves, you're looking at the likely AL favorite. You worry about the longterm solution at 2B down the road.

No one has money left for scenario 1, so maybe, but we are talking about hundreds of thousands and not millions, so it wouldn't be a large difference. In scenario 2, the Sox probably have more room than most or all because they aren't as deep into Latin American signings as other teams and probably have money left over like they did for 2021 until they agreed with Cespedes.

Fuck the MLB man. Fans want to see these players ASAP. Just a disheartening situation.

I don't think so. I can't point to a specific thing, but this was a big discussion when Ohtani came over even after the new CBA was seemingly written to screw him over. The consensus was if any team did it, MLB would bring down the hammer.

This is what it looks like in the bill, they are using 2019 data to get checks out now, but you can get the rebate in your 2020 filing.

I believe there may be a way for you to get the money you deserve based on 2020 income. I will try and post it here when I have it. Most likely the money won't be available until after you file 2020 return.

au contraire...White Sox package = 57.9 Surplus Value (Cease 22.4, Madrigal 29.5, Rutherford 6 and Lopez 0) Reds = 95.2 (Castillo 114.8, Moose minus 19.6) I understand many here do not subscribe to Surplus Value as a proxy for actual market value but, in this case, its not even close. Plus, Moose' contract is arguably expensive but the guy can mash and play multiple IF positions. I'd happily swap out Madrigal for Moose and Cease for Castillo. Lopez and Rutherford are superfluous in this deal. But, like I said, unlikely to be anywhere near enough...especially in an auction scenario.

So you wouldn't buy this one? Much like marshmallow peeps and Cadbury creme eggs, egg nog has suddenly expanded the number of holidays it shows up for.

It has to be thick and sweet but not sugary sweet tea sweet. It also seems to need a Christmas image on the label and the brand I've been buying forever. I want to believe I'm buying Christmas joy and keeping traditions.

From what I can tell, they seem pretty evenly ranked.

No, but I cancelled my MLB.TV subscription and wrote TLR's hire as why. I didn't make grandiose declarations that I had no intention of keeping like some people like to do.

I'm very excited for cespedes but I have to say that mlb pipelines international rankings mean less than nothing to me.

No, that wasn't my intention. My point was that situations like this are hard to come by, and so, instead, people are left with incredible debt. My real point was that a person has to have some kind of training or education post-high school to get decent employment. Despite Trump's promises, blue-collar jobs are not coming back. So, as a society, how do we make education and or training accessible to people who don't have a great deal of money? A high school diploma alone just isn't going to cut it. By the way, I do remember when candy was just a nickel. Ah, those were the days.

You want to see something funny? How about a scouting report on Jose Abreu from the day the Sox first signed him. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1815375-jose-abreu-reportedly-signs-6-year-deal-with-chicago-white-sox

5'9" and 205, thats a strong little guy

Landing Cespedes is a big move in and of itself. If Hamburger is right, than Marco Paddy is making big time moves.

I thought I said don’t ask. Anyway, since you did, social science says you’re right, people are more likely to spend the small amounts. But there’s a couple problems. First, the effect is small, a few percent at most. But then, the other part is the politics. People don’t notice those small changes - that’s how the Trump administration was able to pass a huge middle class tax increase, it is phased in slowly over the next 4 years. In 2010 after that bill passed (and the economy had struggled for 2 years), the Republicans took back Congress, and we immediately had multiple government shutdowns and a debt ceiling and default crisis that all negatively impacted growth at a scale larger than that tiny percent difference, let alone the fact that they would not tolerate any additional stimulus.