WestEddy

Other teams have leaked to the media (or Getz called reporters imitating a couple other GMs) that they fully believe that Cease's issues are not physical, don't look like an injury or age, and are most probably a mechanical issue that their staff can work on. I imagine teams that consider themselves contenders have faith in their coaching and training staffs to make the correct adjustments. You, yourself, even said that if Cease has another 2023, the pitching coaches should be fired, because he has the talent. (Or something to that effect.) I'm not sure where the disconnect is. I'm sure GMs posture about a player's floor and ceiling, but at some point, we all realize that a stats department can map out best and worst case scenarios, and if the worst case scenario is still an effective, durable pitcher, as Cease is, then the acquisition is a go.

He won't make the major league team, because he's blocked. But he's a perennial All-Star who will have to ride the bench because every player on that team is so much greater. It's really sad that Baltimore has advanced all of their prospects to a point where they can't even trade them. It's like wanting to buy a sandwich, but all you have is $1 million gold pieces. Oh well.

And I'm wondering if the definition of "good" has changed. It seems our Baltimore friends are using good to mean barely adequate. We're all acting like GMs bank on a pitcher having a Cy Young season, and are sadly surprised when they don't. A player has a floor and a ceiling. Cease's ceiling is a CY contender. His floor is an above-average durable innings eater, one whose projections put him at the front of Baltimore's rotation. Seriously, if we're so stuck on the most recent season as the harbinger going forward, I'm not sure why the Orioles aren't signing Blake Snell, because he will surely win the Cy Young every season going forward, since he just won one.

https://theathletic.com/5180684/2024/01/05/dylan-cease-trade-market/

Bannister should probably be first on my list. It's a clear step in the right direction for the organization. While some of the AAA signings and bullpen guys are yawners, I think Maldonado is the only signing I don't like.

1) Fedde 2) Bannister as director of pitching 3) Soroka 4) shuster 5) stassi 6) drohan 7) Lopez ? deJong 9) flexin 10) Drew Butera, catching coach

Fedde and Soroka, for sure. I think I'm more hyped on Drohan, and Maldonado could drop off the list.

He'll close out game 7 of the WS for the Astros, won't he?

At this point, teams in the lottery are pretty much all rebuilding teams. Perhaps a team bereft of prospects might trade their first rounder for a package of guys who might represent "quantity".

Which might have meant more post-season appearances for the White Sox. It's really not like the White Sox did much of anything with their drafts.

I think the only way they avoid the bidding war is to overpay up front. Getz is waiting on Snell and Monty to sign. He's manufactured this, making the counter-offers that currently have Orioles and Reds fans lying on the ground, weeping themselves to dehydration. The fact that the only leaks we've seen are "White Sox are mean and asking too much" and "All baseball teams are resolved to go into the season with their one-armed grand-mother as their 5th starter" say to me that everything's stalled.

The White Sox are such a primitive organization that if one of their highly rated prospects hit the Sox' system, they'd achieve instant singularity, becoming one with time and space. Their career would have already happened, and they'd be enshrined in the HOF back in the 1930s. On the Orioles, they'd just play baseball.

Both are within the realm of possibility. I'd like to think Gavin Sheets is bringing back AJSS from Atlanta.

Understand that a #30 prospect in the elite Orioles' system is like any other organization's #1. Maybe even better. They're the only fanbase that truly understands the value of players and prospects.

Maybe some "Colas for rookie-level catcher" deal, or Eloy, or Santos? Matt Foster, Jimmy Lambert, or Tanner Banks for a pair of red boots?

I think we just got saddled with an owner who was going to show everybody how it's done, didn't do that, got pouty, broke things, lucked into a championship, and is now insufferably obstinate in his old age. While I may be very cynical about the economics around the game, and in our economy, in general, as a Sox fan, all I have to root for is for Getz to sneak a couple of hires past the old man, and maybe they'll work.

And, aren't the White Sox still hanging onto an announcement? Like Maldonado? That says to me they're close on something, and will do the moves together to offset the 40-man spots.

Isn't Bannister supposed to be a step in that direction?

Rewatch the movie Wall Street, then pretend they're saying "Baseball team" instead of "Airlines". These guys' hobby is making money, or furthering their chances of making money. We have this fantasy of some dude who has a dream of sticking a winning baseball team in everybody's faces, but what they want to do is stick another $10 billion of wealth in everybody's faces. A million fans cheering at a Championship parade doesn't put $10 billion in somebody's pocket. It doesn't get Saudi Arabia to loan them money. It's like if you make a few 100k a year, have 2 houses, are set up for your kids to go to Michigan, or whatnot, and somebody comes to you asking you to buy the corner grocery store in a poor neighborhood and invest in a salad bar so that it's the best corner grocer in that hood. Maybe you know somebody who wants to shove being the best grocer in everyone's faces. Nobody takes that seriously until they seek out city investment zones, and see how much free property they can get around that grocery store so they can knock everything down and build 40 prime units with 4 low-cost housing units, and a little community mall that will all max out their investment at at 500% of their initial seed money. That's how baseball teams work, now. I don't really believe anybody with money has some primordial need to win a world series. They've done that many times over by installing their own king somewhere in the middle east. Baseball is about developing land, and the development has to be free land, government money and private control. Throw in the promise to rewrite some laws at the state level, and tax breaks, and now the billionaires stop laughing.

When EinsDorf took over the White Sox, they kind of did "spend like crazy". Fisk, Luzinski and Floyd Bannister were the kind of moves that would have put the 2020-2021 teams over the top. But somehow, they grew cheap and less adventurous.

It was worth millions to Vizquel on the HOF circuit. The price of his signature just plummeted. (I know, big whoop.) Vizquel was being groomed as an ambassador for the game. He was on some inside managerial track, and would have had lifetime positions with the Guardians or White Sox (most probably the White Sox), doing the glad-handing in the Venezuelan market that Miñoso was called in to do with Cubans. Looking at B-R, it looks like Aparicio is the only Venezuelan in the HOF. Vizquel would have been #2, and Miggy #3. I think that Aparicio and the White Sox letting Vizquel wear #11, with the White Sox on top of that, was a huge anointment.

Well, Vizquel being an enduring part of baseball and getting into the HOF would have probably been huge for Venezuelan baseball culture, and an extension of Aparicio, and all that. And the White Sox were certainly trying to help him get to that place. Too bad Vizquel had to be a clown. Vizquel messed all that up, and took himself out an historical place in Venezuelan baseball lore. I don't know how he comes back from that. Nightengale sure ain't the path. And tagging on...He was audacious enough to ask Aparicio to wear #11 with the White Sox, and both Aparicio and the White Sox assented. He had been anointed. Jose Abreu wasn't that presumptuous to ask Miñoso if he could wear #9.

Baseball-Reference shows Vizquel having made $63 million in his career. Is he crying poor, now?

Sorry. I am joking. This whole conversation has gone on and on.