YourWhatHurts

Reinsdorf's allowance of Billy Donovan is the outlier here as I can see it. And I just think that is evidence that he lets Michael handle the Bulls. But TLR, Ozzie, Phil Jackson, Thibs, were all first time managers/coaches on cheap contracts who worked out great. That same model he's followed forever and it has turned out terribly for the most part. He lucked into Michael Jordan, lucked into Frank Thomas. He finally won a W-S in 2005 while playing in what is usually the easiest division in the AL. For a guy who has owned the team since 1981 he's made the playoffs in 6 total seasons including last year's freebie which in normal circumstances probably is a near miss, and outside of 2005, he's never won a single playoff series in all of those years. I believe that dirtbag Loria re: the 2nd place comments. I mean the evidence is pretty clear what kind of dirtbag reinsdorf is also.

If the Sox didn't trade for Lynn, signed Tanaka and Paxton, and had Dunning as the 6th SP/depth in the bullpen, with Kopech penciled in as the 7th SP, that would have been terrific. This offseason was so easy on paper. The pandemic just brought down the price on the stop gaps. It's not like reinsdorf is broke. Fuck that guy so hard. Seriously just fuck that guy. I'm so sick of his shit. I really hope that I don't have to read more of the reinsdorf defense nonsense on this site ever again. For years the dorf has had his apologists on here -- and I know you DA have never been one -- but he's had several. Now not so much. Hopefully people stop forgiving this guy. It's just one thing after another with him. I can't wait for the day he's gone.

That is an excellent allocation of resources. Sign another corner OF, sign a legitimate SP who is actually good now like as in this day and age, sign a quality bat (maybe same as corner OF) and that's a team that is still deep but also allows key prospects an open door. There's no excuse for the dorf having the kind of offseason he's had after pocketing so much money for so long, running out shit on the field. People will defend him (not so much here anymore thankfully, but certainly in the media) but he deserves total blame for this shit offseason. It's easy as pie to fill in the blanks for the 2021-22 Sox. All of the heavy lifting has been done. All they need to do is patch a few holes with short-term solutions, and they can't even do that. Fuck you reinsdorf.

This isn't rocket science. The Sox don't have a deep farm, but they have some quality at the top and some interesting potentially fast movers in the lower portions. They have enough for a potentially long contention window, provided they keep their pieces. All the fuck they ever had to do was sign quality stopgap solutions. That's it. The total failure and ineptitude of this organization and the cheap stubbornness of ownership should not make people think about trying to reinvent the wheel. Players like Vaughn are the ideal: young, cheap, truly excellent, under control for a very long time, fits his position, potential future All-Star and franchise piece. If you could load up an entire organization with one type of player, it is that type of player. The Sox are going to Bartolo Colon/D'Angelo Jimenez/Mat Latos/Jimmy Rollins this thing like they usually do. But let's still keep the best players because when the shit hits the fan we're still going to need to call up someone who is worth a shit. And the idea of trading a cheap asset and then signing someone more expensive -- exactly what precedent have you seen set by this organization anywhere at any level that says such a move is going to work out for the long haul? Eventually the old rat is going to croak. That's the one thing we can hope for. Until then, it is especially important to keep the Vaughns and Kopechs of the system.

If the Sox are going to add another bat, they should get a corner OF to 1) push Eloy to DH as much as possible and 2) guard against an Eaton injury, because it's easy to put a guy like that at DH. I believe the rumor that the Sox are reconsidering Mazara. For $2-3M I'm okay with that. I think he suffered from COVID, just like Moncada. Would I be happy about it? No, but he's better than Luis Gonzalez and whatever minor league garbage they have already signed or are planning to sign. And this whole offseason has already been a giant abortion anyway.

I think Q took a deal with a team where he would be easily guaranteed a rotation spot all year. The Sox would have had to offer actual money in order for him to forego a much better opportunity to reposition himself for the 2021-22 FA market.

1) Twins 2) General Bullshit 3) Hector's Bullshit

Even then, at his age, its still a bunch of 1 year offers anyway most likely.

I'm not even mad that the Sox aren't going to overpay Bauer, but it's absolutely pathetic they can't even put together a legitimate effort for Q, Paxton or Tanaka.

Another trade idea: Sox trade for Eovaldi from BOS, with BOS eating a lot of cash in the deal. BOS eats that contract down to about $6M per and the Sox give up "audition" type pieces like Collins, Mendick, Burdi, etc. who can get some playing time over there, and then maybe they give up Thompson or Dalquist and a guy who is kind of a longshot like Lenyn Sosa or something.

The Sox can only have so many pitchers around that they need to "fix" or "get right." Gray makes sense for a team like the Cubs or something, who have precious little to trade, need to catch lightning in a bottle to contend, and have so many holes which are so big that someone like Gray is actually an obvious upgrade. At least Wainwright doesn't have to be "fixed." If he sucks then he should only last into the first or second week of June tops. There are better options on the FA market but the Sox aren't going to sign any of them so whatever. If it's a trade, again, I would look at the Yankees. They have several tweener types who are going to get pushed out of the rotation and one of those guys could make sense as a LR oif things don't work out. I think they will look to keep Montgomery, Garcia, and Schmidt but the others like Loaisiga and Cessa should be available. I'm not sure what the issue on German is (I know it is domestic violence related) but if it's not too bad maybe he would be an option as well. Probably not. Regardless all of those guys have MLB experience as SPs and I do also believe Montgomery is gettable but he'd cost more. I'm also okay with a volume-of-quality deal for Marco Gonzales if the Mariners are willing to accept Madrigal as a centerpiece with Kelly (and hopefully Stiever also) left out of the deal.

The Marlins have exciting young pitching. Yes they played over their heads but the pitching is real. The hardest thing to add in FA or trade for at a value is quality young pitching. The Marlins already have that.

And also to catch a MLB pitching staff. Grandal is a hitter who puts on C equipment to make his bat play in a lineup. Realmuto is a C first and a hitter second. Out of all of the potential steals to be had this offseason, 5 years only and $23M AAV only for Realmuto is easily going to be the biggest steal of the offseason. Of course SoxTalk will worship at the feet of Melky Cabrera the catcher, but we'll see how these 2 compare over the lives of their deals.

If Lynn is a top-10 pitcher you're just looking at the last 2 years of his career. And he's still at the bottom of that list. I think you all have been duped. He's a mid-rotation starter and that is all. Keuchel is primed for regression IMO. Very primed and ready. With Kopech starting in the minors, they don't currently have a 5th starter. More than anything else, the lack of a 5th starter sank the Sox in their playoff hopes for much of the period that existed between the end of their last full rebuild which ended in 2000 and today. Still no 5th starter in 2021. Crochet will be in the pen if he's on the team at all. Lopez needs a personal assistant at this point; he won't be in the rotation unless the Sox just do nothing at all, and don't even add a half-warm body like Wainwright. I'm not sure about Q but Wainwright, if he wants to pitch, isn't going to be anybody's ideal option. He's in that stage where he will have to be prepared to play for his spot if he wants one. I can definitely see why Q didn't sign here though.

Sox went 18-2 combined vs. DET and KC. That won't happen again regardless, and those teams also will be better as their young pitching gets better. Sox will be better than 2-8 vs CLE but also went 5-5 vs MIN The Sox aren't going to be *that* much better than the Twins, and CLE will still give this team fits with their young pitching. Sure they lost Lindor and Carrasco but they will get a full year of MacKenzie, plus whoever else they'll call up. They'll still play us tough, This is not the makeup of a 100-win team IMO, nothing close to it. This is like a 88-93 win team in a quality division and maybe a 95-98 win team in this division. Maybe they can hit 100 wins but I doubt it. Not without serious growth from Cease and another SP addition. And that's still assuming the guys who have been good, stay good and do not implode, and also it assumes the team is mostly healthy all year. I won't laugh when the Keuchel/Lynn duo looks like 3/4 SPs instead of the top-end starters they are touted to be. If the Sox want to be a juggernaut then they need to add a true ace to this rotation, *and* they need to see their young pitching develop.

I don't know what the age rules will be. It seems silly to allow 16-year-old signings at that point. There should be camps and teams organized by MLB or something, like basically the DSL but better, a cross between the AZL and the DSL, where these kids play until they are draft-eligible. And they should also go to school, and be given an education like a US HS student, IMO. And re: the ages, I think if it will be a fair system, the NPB and Cuban age rules should go away. All foreign players are draft-eligible at 18 or 17 with a HS education, but maybe if a player is older then he can qualify for a higher contract value within the rules which doesn't count against the pool, and if he was with NPB or the Korean league then there can be an allowance for a paid fee to that club, which also doesn't count against the draft pool. I mean, we are talking about a draft "signing bonus" not a contract. The contract comes after. Jose Abreu or Tanaka or someone like that could still get drafted #1, get say a $5M bonus, and then because of age and/or affiliation, there is an MLB contract signed instead of a MiLB contract, and in a case like Tanaka the NPB club gets a signing fee. I really don't think all of this stuff has been thought of yet.

Then I will immediately counter that HS players stick around on lists much longer than college guys do (like Kopech for us vs. Vaughn, Madrigal, etc.) and also stick on far longer than advanced Cubans like Moncada and Robert. That should count against them but it doesn't when you're just counting the same names every year. How many top-100 lists did Casey Kelley appear on before he was officially known as a bust?

As I said earlier in another post, look at who the Sox take and the money they spend in rounds 2-5. They take value picks too early, RPs and bench guys too early, and not enough consensus top available players. The last 2 drafts they gave much larger bonuses out after the first: Kelly in 5 rounds in the 2nd and both Dalquist and Thompson got big bonuses in the 2nd and 3rd. They really do not regularly give out big bonuses in the 3rd. But still, they put money in dorf's pocket in last year's draft. They could have probably signed Bailey Horn as a FA if they wanted him and offered to spend all of their remaining funds in the 5th round to the best guy available who would take it. But they didn't do it, they just took Horn and stuffed the rest of the money back into jr's pocket.

We will most likely be worse. It's hard to take Luis Robert, Jose Abreu, Yoan Moncada (Red Sox), etc. in the INTL draft unless you are picking #1. It depends on what the rules will be re: age. But we just signed Cespedes and Vera. Vera may not fall to us where we are picking. Cespedes is gone before we picked. If the owner wasn't such a POS we may have had Colas this period too. Talk about a haul of an INTL draft, man! That shit doesn't happen if the process is equal for everyone. We are one of the teams who have a distinct advantage because of the Cuban relationship. That shit all goes away when the rules come in. Sure we'll get some better players out of the DR but we'll lose big in Cuba.

Not really. Top 100 Baseball Prospects (mlb.com) There's the MLB Pipeline Top 100 for 2020 (2021 isn't out yet). Those are the guys who are being valued highest at the moment. Tons of college guys on there. Also there are some HS guys and INTL FAs. I think what we are seeing with the Pirates specifically is a desire to dump salary and take the best they can get for 2 SPs with little value. They also dumped their 1B for very little. They are targeting far away types because that is the best they are getting. Cubs also dumped Darvish. The Rays did well with Snell but usually teams in salary dump mode don't do so well in deals.

They start the offseason behind everyone else, targeting the 2nd and 3rd and 4th tier options as their 1st tier options. This is how.

Yeah it's really easy to contend without a quality farm. Don't you have comments to make about the Padres farm depth?

We're not a championship organization. The same top guy who was here since the 70s or whenever is still here. And his little lackey has been the #2 guy since 2000. Same old same old. Championship teams in the Sox position sign out of the Bauer/Tanaka/Paxton group and give up nothing. They use their like $70M+ or whatever it is room under the luxury tax, whatever that figure is, instead of b****ing about spending too much when they've been pocketing monies during a rebuild for several years prior. The pandemic is an excuse for the dorf and nothing more.

This isn't the Corbin Burnes thread, this is the Jameson Taillon thread. Wrong thread.

Right. The Yankees are trying to "fix" a guy who the Pirates are dumping for low value before they even let him throw a pitch in the 2021 season. Shows how much confidence they have in extracting greater value out of this guy. This move is very uncharacteristic of the Yankees. Normally they sign at least 1 of Bauer/Tanaka/Paxton and go into the tax, not do this. This is typically a Sox-style move, but one I'm glad they didn't try very hard to make.