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And with the removal of shifts, which everyone seems to have forgotten about, good LH handed hitters should be priorities. Fletcher does seem to have a good BAA RHP. Can't hit LHP and K's a lot but OK walk rate. He isn't even close to being fast but we've heard he has great jumps, reads, routes.Maybe his strengths are good enough to be a solid strong side of a platoon guy. Remember the Sox franchise has the worst or least productive LH hitters in the history of baseball. Left handed savages are still needed but hopefully both teams benefit from this trade .

That would suck. Sox just got a comp pick and 2 players for Santos.

Future Sox podcast live now talking about the recent trades with James Fox and Ian Eskridge on YouTube.

Cutting off your nose to spite your face isn't a good look for a GM. You have to be dispassionate and practical.

https://www.lookoutlanding.com/2024/2/1/24055811/2024-seattle-mariners-farm-system-overview-tier-4-emerson-hancock-ryan-bliss-samad-taylor DeLoach is 17 and Berroa 15 in Mariners farm rankings by Lookout Landing. Article written Feb 1,2024 with decent writeups on both.

Yes the Sox definitely need more pitching but I also think you will see that addressed more too. A lot more . The Cease trade probably will prove it.

Does bag of balls ring a bell ?

I haven't seen anything in either trade thread about it but it's looking less and less likely with every trade that Whit Merrifield will be coming to the Sox.

Not quite that simple. This trade could work out well for both teams, either team or neither team. All we have right now are some good discussions from those who see it different ways.

It doesn't necessarily contradict JR when JR is full s%*# or perhaps by quickly he meant show a decent amount of progress in 2-3 years. Jerry's budget for this year is obviously low. Maybe next year without the Moncada , Cease and Eloy contracts we see a little more money and mid level deals. We won't get a read on Getz until then . But he's always going to be restricted by JR.

It's a trade to solve RF now and OF depth , future 4th OF, backup CF and another LH bat with enough hitting, pop, defense and OBP potential because the Sox were woefully short on all those things. That's a lot of things the Sox needed immediately and for the next 6 years. I don't know if you are overestimating Mena or underestimating just how little talent and money Getz has to work with now.

So what . The Sox are going to suck anyway. Do you expect Getz to be able to find power hitting prospects who are generally the highest ranked prospects in baseball for the crap thats on his 40 right now ? At the stage the Sox and the farm system are at right now you're incrementally building . Cease and Robert are the only 2 guys who can give you the high upside prospects. Apparently teams are hugging those guys for some odd reason . Oh yeah I forgot, those guys are prize possessions. You need to be a lot more patient. Rome was not built in a day. There's not a whole lot we can glean from these early deals that points to a longer term strategy except for wanting better defense. Right now he's doing what he thinks is best to make his pitching staff more valuable and tradable while giving prospects more minor league development time. He's also working under some strict financially constraints which severely limits his moves. Cheap gloves who can't hit and Bannister magic to fix short term pitching assets and trade them is pretty much the only short term plan they could come up with given financial constraints. You'll get a power hitting prospect when Cease is traded unless he gets hurt or can't at least find a strong middle ground between his 2022 and 2023 seasons.

Terrifies you ? A bit of hyperbole , yes? Doesn't seem as complicated or mystifying as you're making it out to be. You traded a young fast rising pitching prospect who rose fast because he can pitch beyond his years in a bad farm system so pretty easy to advance. Is he talented ? Sure young enough to gain more command, maybe throw a little harder but hardly a surefire MLB SP. It is the 135 innings he's already pitching at his age that's most impressive. But this is a slow process of trying to build the MLB team and farm system at the same time. Your perception of Mena makes you strongly dislike the trade but he could end up a nothing. A lot of people didn't like trading that kid for Mazara either. Much ado about nothing as it turned out. Dominic Fletcher appears to be an MLB hitter. Sox don't have many of those in the OF who can also field. He's likely a minimum 2 War guy with 500 ABs . He has 6 years of control so that's pretty valuable. Getz had to get an OFer that fit his mold of defense. If you wanted a power hitting LH OF who plays good defense you weren't going to find one for Mena. That was supposed to come in a Cease trade. Maybe it still will along with a pitcher to replace Mena. But in the meantime you got the most talented hitter plus defense 4th OF guy for 6 more yrs. But right now he will be the starter. I'll guess if he gets 500 ABs and he's 2nd or 3rd among Sox position players with around 2.5 War. Getz likes doing multiplier trades. Bummer, Mena, Santos got back how many guys ? 9 and a draft pick right ? The 2024 and beyond Sox did get better with this trade and the coming Cease trade will perhaps fill the need for higher upside guys and a pitcher to replace Mena.

Sound guess . That's about on the high of what to expect. I'm thinking lucky to reach a combined 2 fWar. We talking bWar or fWar here ? Which one seems to give players more WAR for defense b or f ?

I think pitchers on the Sox are all glad to see some decent gloves out there and veteran catchers. Your most likely tradable assets will come from the pitching staff since pitching is always more tradable at the deadline. So you try to keep the pitchers happy, create a good environment around them and with Bannister's magic pixie it will pay off (that's sarcasm). Not much of a plan but it is a plan. No reason to play the young guys just to play them. They want them to earn it . No free passes. Be better and show me you want it. And do it in the minors. No sense wasting valuable service time. ANd that service time is sadly more precious than anything to the farm system and their worth as prospects. Maybe others like Montgomery, Ramos Colas Sosa Quero all crack the lineup in 2025. Buying time for all that , Moncada and Eloy salary gone. Spend a little more (wisely). A long and arduous path that will likely be some very bad baseball.

The strategy is the same as it was once they hired Bannister which I identified shortly thereafter. Getz knows that not being able to get a top 10 draft choice in consecutive years is now impossible thanks to that ridiculous anti-tanking rule.That strategy is to create tradable assets from thin air, rejects. That's why I knew Kopech would be put in the starting rotation and not the pen. Maldonado although apparently useless defensively and offensively still has a reputation for calling a good game. That's why they got defensive guys like DeJong and Lopez.It's highly unlikely to create more than a couple of guys who can be traded for anything useful in the future. Now you can question signing these guys and actually paying them millions of dollars all you want. It's ugly that's for sure. You can actually scout AAA for a lot of guys around 27 or 28 with good gloves and some decent hitting stats and offer teams cash considerations (let's say no more than $1M) for some of those guys. Some teams might actually bite on that. All this talk about once they knew about the anti-tanking draft rule that they should have committed to spending more is crazy talk (Cease thread). That was never going to happen, not this year anyway. The Sox idea of spending would be $5-10 million for 1 year for old washed up vets (Duvall, Michael A. Taylor, Kiermaier,Ryu Clevinger etc.) hoping to flip them like Hahn always did and getting nothing from it. That plan is far worse.

yikes not even worth looking him up.

I'm creating an over/under on number of times the Sox get shut out this year. The line is 10.

Keep dreaming. Once Hicks signed with the Angels that was the last shot we had of getting a decent OBP out of a minimum wage guy. Now the Sox have to pay $3M if Pillar makes the team. He sucks. Maybe he can still run well enough and throw well enough at 35 to simulate a decent glove in RF but he has nothing left in his bat except for a few bombs. Your 2024 White Sox, Last in OBP in baseball, runs scored, wins, largest gap between runs scored and runs allowed, 2 straight 100 loss seasons but 1st in signing negative WAR players for millions of dollars and in your hearts ! Let's hear it for Glove Love !

1st of all the scenario presented that I responded to was the Sox were 3 games up in July and would the Sox then decide not to trade Cease. No one said anything about actually winning the division and making the playoffs like you said. The question was do you think the Sox would still trade Cease or not ? In that scenario that would mean that besides Cease other players likely to be Free Agents this year or next year like Fedde, Soroka, Kopech, Flexen ,Moncada, Dejong, Nicky Lopez, Eloy and a few relievers would also be playing well . Why do you think the Sox signed most of these guys this off season ? They have 2 very tradable assets in Cease and Robert. They hired Bannister and got some of these guys to make the defense better and hope Bannister could perform multiple miracles and help some of the pitchers regain former glory. The whole point of doing this was to create more tradable assets because in the new rebuild tanking will not get you high draft picks anymore. Fix them and flip them . That was the whole point of getting them in the 1st place not to actually pretend you could win the division. Being 3 games ahead in the division means that plan was a rousing success ! Against all odds Bannister created something out of a lot of nothings. Then you want to abandon an epic win for the future of the franchise and not trade anyone, give up that epic win all in the name of making a few fans happy in 2024 If the miracle continues in the 2nd half of the season ? Make plan, plan is a success. You now have other guys you might be able to get a few prospects for, abandon that plan all while hoping to cling to that mirage of a 3 game lead . Getz would win Bozo of The Year for making a plan that has very long odds of actually working, having it actually work then deciding ,yeah, I'd rather try to win the division now and give up on the future. Let's just keep picking up rejects on the cheap and perform this miracle year after year !

That's a scenario that is 99.8 % unlikely but just to indulge you, 3 games up in the least likely to go far in the playoffs division is pretender status not contender. The whole off season has been to try to create tradable assets from unlikely sources through good defense and a new pitching guru. Getz would not deviate from that path since a 3 game lead would mean some level of success. The acquired assets were all meant to be short term tradable if possible assets. The better the Sox do the more trades they make at the deadline and would prove that Getz had a very good start to his GM career.

I could be wrong here but maybe Harold was talking about the Brewers trading for Cease? I know Brewers feel they need to hold onto minor league talent and trade away expiring contracts to compete. That's why it isn't surprising they moved Burnes. What's more surprising to me is that the O's haven't traded Santander yet. Maybe they were waiting to get a top starter like Burnes before pulling the trigger on Santander. Upgrade starting pitching to make up for potential downgrade in hitting from Kjerstad or Cowser struggling replacing Santander.

Remember that Cease still could be a member of the Sox after the trade deadline if he is hurt. You have to understand that risk entails that right now might be the highest value we see for Cease. He has to pitch much better than he did in 2023 and stay healthy to be worth more than he is now.

There are late bloomers who have turned into quality players . It actually happens fairly frequently. You need scouting and development people to sometimes reach a player to unlock their potential. Sometimes it's just a matter of paying close enough attention to grab a guy who is finally healthy. Getz in one of his latest interviews talked about how important it is to have "diversity of thought" among his new staff members. I'm not sure what the Sox are going to end up with for Cease. It better not be nothing or significantly less than could be had uptil opening day. They need a strong return not a great return. I'll take the best 3 guys you can get . If those are 2 guys from the Orioles top 5-10 and 1 from their 10-15 so be it. I don't want it thinned out by the last 2 guys being 40 FV guys. I'd prefer 3 position players including at least one LH OF. I figure 3 position players has better odds of one of them being good. I 100 % expect 1 pitcher though when/ if it goes down.

Yes. Tell me the last controversial thing you posted. You and some of your cohorts love to jump on the guys who think and post anything that is different from your own ultra -conservative baseball viewpoints. You wait to see which direction the wind is blowing then you just go with the flow and bust balls. So brave of you. Vaughn at many points was viewed as a high quality bat. When he was put in the OF his defensive stats looked adequate. You wouldn't dare use your own eyes and say anything controversial like he has no future in the OF while the majority was saying he looked OK out there. Basically you post like a coward. You'd be a yes man if you worked for JR.