RTC

Yep. Goose Island is good at making mediocre beers. Outside of Bourbon Cty, and frankly Rev is kicking BCty's ass right now. If anyone is looking for a year-round local to replace honkers there's WAY better offerings from Rev, Pipeworks, and Half Acre Lots of sours beyond the Belgians. Upland is getting good distro and check out Off Color if you haven't. They make great Gose's and Berliner Weisse's. For you lager folks, I'd skip Cross of Gold. It's a more hoppy American lager. Look to Metropolitan as they're bucking the trend and their whole lineup is lagers. And even more so look at Dovetail. Dovetail's helles lager is killer.

Yeah, I'm not sure what to think. On one hand, Slate is not know for being a stalwart of great journalism, but on the other hand cops in local Florida jurisdictions haven't exactly shown to be unbiased when it comes to athletes.

I keep wondering if DBo is going to get any uncomfortable questions about that Slate/Mets article or if the Sox will even have him there.

The truth will eventually come out, but I agree with Joe Posnanski, I'm just struggling to connect the dots on Hinch's role: https://joeposnanski.substack.com/p/hinch-and-hof-part-deux

He called him “a leader of men” ....

I would have had a fit if he was one of their big signings but at this point of the winter, and with what they’ve already done, Pillar makes so damn much sense for this roster.

and the White Sox ....

What's even worse is when the media does it. Reporters will make some comment about handedness when a guy has reverse splits, or they'll make completely inaccurate statements relative to the Sox payroll, or they'll have no clue when a players' contract runs out. Crap like that. Do your friggin' job. There are Sox bloggers that are significantly better than a lot of media types because they actually do their homework. Hawk also used to make blanket statements like player X "is one of the greatest clutch hitters of all time" and then you go and actually look up his clutch stats and, no, he wan't.

Like all the LH batters that have a .229 BAA in Cishek’s career? (.216 last season)

To not come within 100 yards of the Sox roster

Props to Passan as well for giving credit where it's due. There's a whole lot of crusty old baseball guys out there that will only acknowledge info that comes from their cronies.

Totally agree. I just think NC/Boras are waiting as long as they can to see if the Cubs free up some cash

Unfortunately, I think my edit above of your post is probably closer to the truth.

You mean the guy that had a higher OPS+ last year than anyone else on the current roster other than Moncada?

Even this offseason: sign Grandal, getting Abreu for a 1-yr QO, non-tender Yolmer. It looked like they were starting to behave like an intelligent, winning organization. But that quickly turned into “you paid Abreu HOW MUCH?!?” and now we’ve gotten to “what the hell now?” I’m still holding out some hope because there‘s still some useful FA’s out there, but this whole thing just smells a little like they had no plan beyond Wheeler.

Pretty much that the Sox didn't know what to do with him. There's a link there to an article in the Athletic if you're a subscriber.

This dovetails with some of the comments that Giolito made on the pitching side. It made it sound like guys like him and Cease are dragging Coop kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

FIFY

Huh?

Yasmani Grandal just called and he wants his free agency back.

Dallas Kuechel is White Sox for "Carlos Boozer"

- I was thrilled when Hawk finally left the booth - I am happy for him and thinks he deserves this Those 2 things are not mutually exclusive.

Similar at Cots. They have them at $84M, which includes Mazara and est. $8.6M for the pre-arb guys. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQvElKAgm9uyseKLJEGXetnIxljCwEixOmMhSzhEXUan5IOuYnLcJG-bjolPjCtc6q0x6HPrNXJ7Zv7/pubhtml #unprecedentedfinancialflexibility

Look on the bright side- our payroll is over $80M now ....

You’re looking at it backwards. No one is saying signing a player to a big contract is a guarantee. But what percentage of the teams that even make it to the LCS do so without taking at least one big gamble?