Colinski

This is the key point for me. Players are peaking earlier than ever and regressing earlier. You don’t see many age 35+ hitters still doing the business. You defo did in early/mid 2000s. Its simply I think Abreu will regress quicker. Having said that if he does have a 3 war season I would re-sign him, but more due to a thin free agent market elsewhere.

His at bats were better last night.

I seriously considered that but then Eloy got called up.

Found out it’s a US only product, which doesn’t seem fair

So after much consideration of not re-buying MLB.TV I’ve decided I just can’t be without White Sox baseball, in spite of my frustrations. I went to sign up today and noticed a new, cheaper one team option, allowing you to watch all games from that team only... except the link doesn’t work to follow it. Anyone know how to resolve this or is this a feature not yet available but stupidly seems to be ?

Is Moncada a natural baseball player or someone who has thought his way up the rungs of the ladder. clearly he performs best when working of natural instinct. 3 base is a more reaction/instinct position and therefore suits Moncada better I Feel. The madrigal and no other 3b prospect argument just confirms this is clearly the best move now we missed out on the whale.

Hansen is my favourite prospect, as if he does make it the road travelled will make him so easy to route for. Did he still sound a little depressed to you when he spoke. I think the ghosts of 2018 are still in his head sadly. I think he needs a good opening game or two and then he will fly. If he gets shelled in game one he may get into his head again.

If you make a mistake at the poker table (Machado negotiation) and you keep it thinking about that mistake you will go bust. before I comment on how I feel about this deal I want to give two opposition positions. Firstly this could be an over-adjust based on losing the first hand, which will result in a new mistake. secondly this could be we have forgotten about the first mistake and are not measuring decisions by it (like this board now do, with all decisions being X = Machado’s offer). Maybe this is our ONE AND ONLY SHOT to get more control years of Eloy and we know the moment he’s up and hitting 300ba the player will want to test free agency. Basically we are in my view sensibly doing whatever is necessary to get an extra Eloy year as that is how we win. In a vacuum, not measuring it against Machado I’d do this, simply as this could be our only shot to get more Eloy years, albeit I can see the counter points very clearly.

Hansen’s biggest strength causes his biggest weakness... his size. When his on the downward angle he produces makes him unhittable. When he gets out of sink he is too big to figure out what’s the problem, as there are so many moving parts that he can’t quickly adjust. at this stage I still have high hopes of him becoming a late developing ace, no reason why not, as what is wrong is easy to see, albeit hard to fix.

I disagree, velocity based pitchers as a they get older if they don’t learn how to pitch rather than throw end up having sharp declines. Keuchel’s of this world should project to age better. I’d want two years at 40 mil with a 3rd year if we want it at same price. That way if I am wrong we haven’t spent the world. It if he’s not up for something along those lines I’d keep our draft pick (3rd round pick I think). earlier in the off season I wanted him plus others, but Keuchel’s deal was de-escalating (20 mil, 18mil is etc) for five years so that if all our young pitchers hit we can deal him with a good return as he gets cheaper. We can steal him for an even lower prices now. mostly I want him for The beard!!!

Not against this at all, merely pointing out how Machado’s rareity is why he is worth MORE than the 300 mil we weren’t willing to play. Also I see Bogaerts as he ages at 3b which could also suit our needs.

Everyone knows the value of something is increase with rarity of the item. The fact that no other 26 year olds are hitting the free agents with HOF potential again makes Machado and Harper stupidly rare and thus value through the roof. Hahn misjudged this value massively and this has been double proven by the Arenado deal. The only younger person hitting the market soon is Bogaerts, nobody seems excited by him becoming a White Sox player.

I agree with both of you here. Losing Machado isn’t what has annoyed me, it’s the Jon Jay signing, the low by modern standards cost and the fact we didn’t lose out in a race we could never win (if Yankees had offered a tonne). my pre seasons plan had us getting the exact players Caufield mentioned. So I’m disappointed the FO seems to have miss-stepped the whole way though. wih regards to the article itself, it mentioned SAN Fran having some magical upside, which we all know doesn’t exist. Any other point made in the article therefore comes from someone I can’t trust the opinion of.

Enjoyable podcast as ever. Had enough About a certain 3b wifff to not ignore our pain but moved on to give hope.

Hahn has traded well in my opinion (Fraser for 3 fringe prospects, Eloy trade, Eaton trade, even the Sale trade could still end up good, Colome for a rule 5 catcher) free agents I gave him a pass on until now because until the rebuild he had to go bargain shopping. Yesterday was his chance to step up. to win a World Series in the current climate of super teams and tankers you need to put out a team better than ever. Now we’ve proven we won’t step up for free agents we will always struggle to be a super team and that is hard to swallow as a fan. Yesterday was the death of hope. Hope created by Hahn’s rhetoric during the re-build and then destroyed by him, KW and the old man.

Is he a better fielder there than Dahl or Tapia ?

I like this. Teams were clearly using the DL last year as a way of rotating arms to keep fresher instead of what it’s designed for.

Not that it will make him Engel or anything but Palka has lost weight and practiced in the outfield all winter with the aim of being our RF. my hope is it makes him serviceable enough whilst not effecting his bat at all. my overall view is I’d much rather have Avi if I was building a team from scratch due to the upside. But this isn’t from scratch, it’s to fill a specific hole with a side note of Manny perhaps.

I’m only in one league these days, a 12 team dynasty. No tough roster choices as you can keep everyone, so I’ll defo be holding and hoping for a rebound. He’s not a great K guy tho is he even when he is at his peak

I’m one of the minority that would happily pay the Keuchel price.(if we sign a whale) Lefty Control pitchers often age better and as a fellow bearded man it would just fill my with joy seeing that beard in our jerseys. ?

Last year was 68.5 i stupidly bet on the over

I’d have it in a slightly different order. This should be capable of producing enough runs to recover the 5 Giolitto gives up in the first innings ?

What you seem to be talking about here (please correct me if I am wrong) is wins in reference to WAR (or similar stat) I’m not claiming Herrera and Colome will be 5-10 win players. I’m suggesting the improved bullpen is the most efficient way of gaining more wins.

My number includes comebacks we couldn’t complete due to continued run loss late in innings. I prob could have wrote that better.

The number one reason for me that last season was a hard watch was the blown leads and ruined comebacks. The additions could help us save 5-10 more wins. clearly this was the most efficient way to improve the club. There is no downside in terms of blocked prospects or lost draft picks. Either he performs and we win more (yay), performs and we flip him (yay), fails and we only lose money we can afford (acceptable risk).