YourWhatHurts

This really wasn't the issue. There are a lot of good baseball reasons for going with Eaton instead of Pederson, Bradley, etc. The issue was really Springer vs. 2nd Tier FA, and the Sox chose 2nd Tier FA, and yes, all because of the $$$$

No. I just think its stupid.

Overall I thought the Clevenger return was light, the Darvish deal okay but still light, the Lindor-Carrasco deal was a fucking steal and an embarrassment for Cleveland, and by those standards I think the price on Bryant is salary relief and 1 bag of balls. The Cubs will dump him but its going to bring nothing back IMO. Really the Snell deal and the Mariners deal for their late bloomer UT/C guy are the only deals I can immediately think of in ver recent history where I thought the selling team did great.

Order of integrity: Jake paul fake boxer guy > qanon shaman > fake sox twitter rumor guys > scientists and astronauts and shit

Don't challenge his encyclopedic knowledge of fake Sox rumor twitter account guys. There are a few posters here who follow these guys around like the national enquirer follows the royal family. Notcishek can't even take his top off at the beach and let his nips get some sun without some guy like adam maloney or orlando popping up from behind a push to snap a few photos for the next issue of the ragazine.

^What I'm saying above is that it's a "small sample size" or in Bauer's case a "small s"

You mean "Cy Y" I'd like to note that I actually tried to only spell 37% of the letters in "Cy Young" but I do not believe there is a character for half of a capital "Y" so I just rounded up and gave Bauer the whole "Y." But adding that full "Y" for Bauer is still rounding up very optimistically because that constitutes 43% of the number of the letters in "Cy Young" while Bauer's award was only good for 37% of a season.

Yeah when Pods was healthy he was a serious threat. It was fun as hell watching him on the bases for the first half or 2/3 of the 2005 season. I don't think even the staunchest Madrigal supporters can say they aren't overwhelmingly disappointed in his speed relative to the advertisements. Same with the raw tools defensively and intelligence on the basepaths.

We really only need a 1/2 season solution. These options have some appeal because if it doesn't work, it shouldn't kill us all year, and if it does work, it's excellent added depth. My favorite option here is Paxton given the value of a live-armed lefty in the pen, just in case things go south a bit as a SP. Actually, I am really hoping the Sox are in on Tanaka.

Of course Bauer would be in favor of getting paid for what he is expected to do in the future instead of what he has done in the past. Don't pitch like a true ace, then get paid like a true ace anyway because you are still young and you still plan on doing so in the future. I'm going to guess that players like Scherzer or Verlander as examples will not be requesting the services of Ms. Luba in the future, at least not any baseball-related ones...

It's a fundamental argument. We always need government, because we always need a higher entity with the authority to make and keep law, complete work projects, etc. One could always say we should have and deserve to have a government that works better, but you can't say we don't actually need a government. OTOH nobody ever needs a pyramid cap to sit in an office above them, just basically collecting profits from the process and acting as an unnecessary "overseer" of the lower operation, shooting down this or that proposal without even needing to make a case to any other person as to why, or even state a reason beyond "because I want to." There really is no special ability that the dorf has, for instance, that qualifies him to do any legitimate work inside in the Sox overall organization. He's a stubborn old rich guy lawyer, and even when you find that it is necessary to have a lawyer do some kind of work for you, you don't bring in someone like him. In terms of what is actually necessary in baseball, probably the highest necessary baseball operations office is the GM. It's debatable you even need a VP as the GM role could always be pared down in responsibility by adding extra executive positions. And that position could be appointed by some member of government, elected by the people, or appointed or elected by some larger body which governs the league, the members of which are either elected officials or appointed by the government.

I'm sure Bauer hired his agent based on her extraordinary negotiating skills and wealth of experience, doing something.... But regardless, he's the same guy who asked for an arb number that involved 420 and 69 in it, and likely lost his case and some extra money in large part because of it. And he turned around and threw the ball into the stands or towards the stands when getting pulled out of his last Indians appearance in a public hissy fit. For an overpaid #3 starter, I don't really think he's worth that much of a headache. Hoepfully Cease and Kopech develop as desired, because if they do, people will forget about all of this outside help stuff rather quickly.

Yes, that is it. Capitalism.

Just go the next logical step further. The federal govt owns and operates the sports leagues. Teams are portioned out such that all areas have 1 team and that 1 team represents a consistent population size. Players are government employees whose salaries are capped at a minimum and maximum, and bonuses are collected into a central fund and then portioned out at the end of the year equally based upon statistical performance. Players are well-paid patriots, all monies coming from al aspects of the enterprise including monies from private companies purchasing licensing rights, etc. are re-routed to fund educational structures and other necessary aspects of society such as infrastructure development and repair, etc. Why? Because when the Chicago White Sox play the Cleveland Indians in America before an audience of the people, Chicago and Cleveland, and their populaces and the country as well, are the ones who should "get rich" out of it, or profit out of it, if anyone does at all. The reality is that it is the reinsdorf White Sox vs. the dolan Indians, and the entire thing is funded by the workforce and predominantly the working class, and yet there's always this finger pointing between a bunch of overpaid players and a bunch of fat fuck owners as to who is broke / can't feed their family and who can. Etc. In reality you only need paying viewers and players, and there's no need for owners at all, and they are easily the most useless and unnecessary drains on society overall.

We're not even at our peak yet. This is like a late-run Cubs kind of move. Cease, Kopech, Crochet, etc. are just babies. Robert really has no idea what he is doing at the plate right now. Maybe Eloy is Manny Ramirez or Albert Belle even as another poster comped, etc., one day, but he's still getting there. Giolito hasn't even thrown 200IP in a season yet, etc. We're not at the part of our window where we need to be taking on multiyear deals where we just throw caution to the wind in years 3, 4, and so on because we have rationalized that it's all worth it on the back end if we win while we still have a chance. The "window" IMO isn't even "fully open" yet; it's just cracked. This team has a great shot at winning the ALC because the ALC is a pile of crap, but we're still growing, and we're not at the levels of the truly elite teams in the game right now. We're definitely lesser than the Yankees in the AL, maybe on par with the Rays, on par maybe with Oak and it's debatable, close with Min, and in the NL we're definitely not the Dodgers or Padres, and probably lesser than the Mets ATM as well.

I remember when that deal went through. There was a rumor of the deal on SoxTalk for like a week or more before it actually went down. I remember thinking that no matter how that trade turned out, I was in favor of it and I couldn't really criticize it. Erik Johnson was a change-of-scenery guy whose time here obviously was up, and Tatis was a wildcard / lottery ticket that was so far away it was very unlikely that anything all that great would ever happen. I saw then how quickly Tatis blew up, but I didn't feel like I could criticize it until I read Law say that the Sox never would have traded him if they actually saw him play. At that point I was pissed and felt they absolutely should be criticized, and severely. At that point I immediately thought about extending Sergio Santos and dumping him immediately for Nestor Molina who was a serious WTF?! move, and also, I remembered reading a Billy Beane statement after the Sox traded McCarthy for Danks (which turned out to be a great move) where Beane was very surprised the Sox made that deal, and Beane said he didn't even know McCarthy was available, and implied if McCarthy was available, that the A's would have made an offer. At that point I was pissed because it was obvious it was yet another total lack of due diligence kind of move which typifies the Sox, whether it is in teh realm of hiring managers, or in another example, giving the keys of the farm and the purse strings too to Dave Wilder and just letting him do whatever without any checks or balances. Stuff like this is what is maddening. So now looking back at the Tatis deal, they traded a guy they didn't even bother looking at. How the fuck do you spend $300K+ or whatever it is on asset with growth potential and then manage to deal it away without even taking a look at it? Probably the same kind of process that leads you to trade players without shopping them, let your friends run the show, hire people immediately out of a gut feeling instead of following a proper process, etc. That's how. And that's why the deal is shit, because the process was shit. If the process was different then you could either say that (a) the Sox missed on their evaluation of Tatis or (b) Tatis sincerely grew/developed beyond their fair, reasonable, and sesnible evaluations perhaps in some similarity to the same processes by which Albert Pujols or Mike Piazza blew up. But you can't say (a) or (b) because no evaluation was made. And then the cherry on the top is the salary relief factor. Bad contract James Shields for busted top-100 SP prospect Erik Johnson 1-for-1 is already a very fair deal on paper. But to get some more salary relief they threw in the asset which they never even took the time to properly evaluate. For savings for the dorf. This is added insult to injury. And even though the same process, were it to be repeated (sign INTL FA for $300K+, immediately deal him for some apparent MLB value blindly without even looking at him beforehand) more times than not will yield a positive result purely out of the fact that most prospects bust anyway, it does not mean that the process itself isn't a bad one. It's still a shit process, even if it works. Image putting a bullet in a gun that holds 6 rounds, and you spin it, and put it to your head and pull the trigger, and every time you do so and don't die, someone gives you a million dollars. Sure it is an extreme example, but regardless, maybe some people will try it believing the reward is worth the risk, but eventually that behavior is going to kill you. it's still a bad process that shouldn't be followed, even if sometimes it can/could/would/does work.

To me this Hendriks pursuit is like watching a bunch of kids having an easter egg hunt in the back yard, and you know there's a landmine in there because you just saw the dog take a dump in the grass this morning, and you're just sitting there watching and hoping that it's not your kid who ends up stepping into the pile of shit while trying to win a prize.

Ok so I will rephrase my statement. I won't say the Sox won the deal, but I also won't say they lost. Overall that deal was emotional but ultimately the Sox got performance out of the guy they acquired, but they had to trade him the following deadline because they fell out of contention. And then the DBacks thought they picked up a steal and an anchor of their future rotation only to end up paying the guy in arb to be hurt and suck for most of Hudson's tenure after. I get what you say about control. But there were rumors about the Sox believing Hudson was going to get hurt -- and they were correct, and you have to credit them for that part of the equation. In perfect hindsight as I said, we keep him and trade him over the next year's offseason for a bounty. It's different when we are talking about the price points in arb with starters vs. RPs however. Heuer is a RP and I bring that up because we are both arguing for keeping him. If Heuer gets hurt, his cost drops even more, and it's far easier to work in a RP coming back off of injury than a SP. If it's a RP making a small amount of money and there's no big threat of a big money increase in arb coming, then it's going to be a whole lot easier for a club to extract value in performance and value in $$$ from a guy like that than it is to extract value from a SP trying to make a comeback. And I think a huge difference between Hudson and Heuer obviously is trade value, because many people thought Hudson was a SP, meaning he had a lot more trade value, while nobody thinks Heuer is going to be more than a RP (albeit a very good one). So it's harder to make a Heuer deal where you feel like you are winning, whereas if you had another Hudson, it's a lot easier to make that kind of deal I think.

First pitch strike is still the best advice. For most pitchers, it's going to be the FB they will need to rely on when they need to get ahead or pick up a strike. What has changed is likely just an increased focus on scouting reports and data. If you know so much about the tendencies of a hitter, you don't necessarily have to throw a FB or throw the ball in the zone to pick up that first strike. And regardless, if the location is good enough, you can pretty much always throw a first pitch fastball for a strike because most hitters are not looking to take hit out the first pitch they see or even the first fastball they see when it's an 0-0 count and the pitch is in a cold zone part of the zone -- unless they are Luis Robert for example, unfortunately. The first pitch FB is still a great plan for most pitchers and most hitters, at least for most MLB starters and high-end RPs. Most hitters are not so impatient / overly aggressive on the first pitch. As far as Coop, he just seemed like an old crank. He couldn't put a mask on properly, couldn't wear a mask properly, couldn't make it through 1 minute in a radio interview without swearing and not through 3 minutes without airing grievances and/or challenging fans or something, etc. And then the lack of desire to show any enthusiasm for newer technology or even any desire to discuss it publicly even though other people not him claimed he was embracing it, was all just so embarrassing that it was time for him to go. But as far as wheat he was telling his pitchers, who knows, but I doubt it was anything all that bad. But he wasn't getting through to them obviously and that's the whole point.

2 different situations. Even if you want to believe that Hudson would have done the same thing here with pressure that he did in AZ for his first 2 seasons, the Sox ended up with a quality veteran in that period, and a guy they could have taken to the playoffs that year. Remember EJax won a WS with the Cards that year. Then the next year after, Hudson got hurt and his career was never the same again, while Jackson was a FA. For what we were trying to do, I think we won. We got a vet who played well. Had the Sox not fallen out of contention that year and had they taken EJax to the playoffs, they would have gotten what they had set out to do: replace the young guy the org isn't totally in love with, with a big-armed vet. Of course if it's pure hindsight, we keep Hudson, let him pitch great, then trade him for a haul right before he gets hurt ala the Miller deal to the DBacks. But whatever, we don't have that benefit.

If Heuer ends up getting TJ in the middle of this 6 years here then it will only bring down the back-end arb cost of his overall service. Even 4 years of this guy pitching like he has been is worth a whole lot. I mean, people on this forum want to give $13M+ X 4 years to a guy in his 30's with 1.375 excellent seasons in a row. That's $52M for 4 years and if Heuer got hurt how much would those years cost? Like $10M? Yeah this is elementary. And as usual the foodies don't know shit about shit. Sox won't dump Heuer off and if he's traded it'll be for a real difference maker. Marco Gonzales is good but he's not that.

There's zero logic in making a move like that. There are an abundance of FAs on the open market. The Sox are in position to be at least a quality fallback option for most of these guys. There is no reason not to sign a FA.

Re: the other comments about Daniel Hudson, he was a centerpiece for 1.5 years of Edwin Jackson. Edwin had more talent than Hudson ever had. While EJax didn't become the savior here, he was a quality SP, and Hudson was a future RP anyway who was at a very high point in trade value. That deal was a solid deal even though Sox fans acted like babies over it for years. There have been many more Sox deals which have been less logical/defensible which have not been b****ed about nearly half as much as the EJax deal. BTW remember all of the crying and whining about the secondary piece, the LHP we sent along and how terrible that deal was? And then remember when he came back and it was clear he was a 6th starter / garbage time guy? Yeah we really got hosed in that deal... (we actually won the Jackson trade but don't tell Sox fans that; and it would have turned out better if KW traded EJax at the following deadline for straight prospects instead of using him to dump Mark Teahen's deal, speaking of indefensible trades the Sox have made).

Well you should have no reason to be. The last couple of RHPs the Sox internally developed who became difference makers for their pen were Perticka and Nate Jones. And while both got hurt, both were difference makers, and if it was soooo easy to replace a Codi Heuer then that list would be a whole lot longer than it is. I've seen the food turds suggest Tyler Johnson as a replacement for Heuer. No. Heuer is a unique find. There aren't other guys in this system that are going to be replace him. The players we have just are not that good. And as always the general rule is that if there is anyone all that good in the system as a P he will be a SP first and only a RP after all else fails.

San Diego offered $300M dollars. That's $30M guaranteed every year for 10 straight years, regardless of player performance or health. Please re-examine your statement.