Jake

Nothing too bad there. Don't know why they'd look into lowering the mound rather than making the strike zone the same size it was 10 years ago (considerably smaller, especially at the bottom part of the zone). I don't love the 3-batter rule, because it is a pretty direct change to the way the game has long been played. That being said, historically it would long have been extremely unusual to see a case in which managers would make moves that would violate the 3-batter rule. In some sense, it is taking the heavy hand of the rulebook and using it to enforce an older style of play. I suspect that much like the mound visits rule, it would change managers' strategy much more often than the number of fewer than three batter outings would suggest. I should also mention that the reporting on this has made clear that it would be 3 batters or finishing the inning. Many times, you could finish the inning with the guy at a pretty high percentage but managers may be overly afraid of what happens if (for instance) the lefty specialist doesn't get the lefty batter out and then is left dealing with righties. I think the 12 pitcher rule may be redundant with the 3-batter rule. Use one or the other. Defining what a pitcher is could get tricky. Too late in the game to implement DH in the NL this year, but it should happen as soon as possible. I like the idea of punishing tankers, but the only bit of specifics mentioned so far is probably not quite right. I think it makes the most sense to punish only repeat "offenders" and not to make any real allowance for market size.

Based on what the data tells us, I'd put one of my best 3 hitters at leadoff, provided that player isn't really slow, and then my best at 2.

I suspect the park and league adjustments are reducing the correlations in the case of wRC+. wRC+ beats OPS et al. in correlation with future performance without sacrificing the description of what happened in the past too much.

And it's worth remembering that home runs don't contribute to BABIP.

FWIW, PECOTA projects Harper to have over 10 more WAR over the next 10 seasons than Machado. Source: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/46232/pecota-projects-bryce-harper-and-manny-machado/

So basically Manny went into the offseason thinking he'd get 10 years $350 million and play for the team he's always dreamed of playing for. Now he's looking at 8 years $250 million for a team he's probably never thought much about one way or another and hasn't been to the playoffs in 10 years. You can see why he probably has the inclination to wait and see if his prospects improve.

I think the Padres are interested only insofar that it appears they might be able to get a discount (from initial expectations) and/or a deal structure that there may be a way out for them if things go badly (like a swell opt structure). And since they have big visions for their future, they don't like the idea of anyone else getting some kind of good deal on these guys.

Law is usually your best bet if you want to see someone go against the grain.

The thing I always think about is the fact the agent can always say there is a better offer and you need to match it whether or not there is one. Obviously, an agent who does this and ultimately never produces said higher offer (via a signing with a different team at a higher price) will get sniffed out by GMs who negotiate with that agent. But nobody knows when the GM gets nervous and bids against himself because he took the bait. It would be a slow learning process. I'm glad I don't have to do this negotiating. When we say the Sox may have the high offer but it's just not as high as Machado's camp wants, let's assume it's true. When Lozano shows up and says okay White Sox, we now have an offer that is $3M/year higher, he could be bluffing...or not. If you fall for the bluff, you overpay. If you call the bluff but there really was a higher offer, you lose the player that is supposed to turn your franchise around. The stakes are pretty high here...it's not hard to see why for so long players tended to get big contracts that in retrospect seemed to be big overpays.

It shouldn't be understated how much Harper has been the superior hitter. Harper has a career .900 OPS while Manny has just a single season that high playing his entire career in a hitters park. By wRC+, Harper has been about 17% more productive than Machado over their careers. And the raw hitting talent clearly favors Harper, which shows in his multiple 1.000 OPS seasons. As far as Harper's defense is concerned, he's obviously not generating a ton of value with his glove. But to say unequivocally that he's a bad defensive outfielder is very questionable. His defensive metrics *this past season* were very bad. Prior to this season, quite good! Had consistently been an above average defender in RF. There are some reasons to believe that his poor year defensively may have been driven by something besides his actual talent as some folks have documented a number of plays where he seemingly let up rather than go hard. I don't know if that's injury, an unseemly method of injury prevention, or what, but don't be shocked if Harper goes right back to the average to above average defensive numbers he has long had. My point isn't that Harper is clearly better/going to be better — there's a reason I said it wasn't clear who would be more valuable — but the comparison of these two players isn't "Harper slightly better hitter but Machado is defensive wizard and Harper is basically a DH." Harper has a history of being a solid defensive player and being by far the better hitter. When you start pricing in the risk, you start by acknowledging that any player that you're giving an 8-10 year deal to may lose so much mobility from age or injury that he becomes a 1B or DH. Harper would give much more confidence in terms of providing a bat that's definitely going to play at any position. Both players may get better with the bat, of course, but we've seen just how scary good Harper can be even at younger ages.

I don't think it is at all obvious which of Machado or Harper is the better player going forward.

What makes someone a threat (or not) for Davis?

I suspect part of Lozano slow-walking is that he knows/believes that Hahn is under serious pressure to bring Manny in due to the way we've publicized our interest. He wants Hahn to get nervous about the blowback and bid against himself (or perhaps others) to avoid the embarrassment of not getting him.

Of course the new-aged stuff is decidedly anti-sinker, in which case not teaching him a sinker makes Coop new school!

Just relax people, jeez. It's too hard to know how serious people are and it's too hard to know what the motives of the agent/player in waiting are. Don't forget there's a pissing contest between Lozano and Boras that makes both of them really want the other to sign first.

Oh yes, I remember how the Mariotti incident stopped Ozzie from working with the Sox or getting hired by the Marlins

I've always been a Hawk fan but due to some mixture of his old age and the lighter workload, his performance was dropping fast. He's made his mark but it was time for him to go. I like Jason — Steve, not so much.

I don't think Hahn is going to have the public position that we will pay whatever it takes to get our targets, so whether he is optimistic or pessimistic he has to acknowledge the possibility they miss out and be prepared to put a positive (if lame) spin on it.

U.S. Cellular may have asked them to announce it that way during negotiations in order to get a little attention boost.

I've been assuming that the Sox's approach to this is that if they can announce something at Soxfest, they'll try to. They wouldn't ever be sitting on some big news for weeks or make a bigger offer to make sure it was accepted, but they might do something like expedite the physicals or try to keep something under wraps for a couple days so they could have it break at Soxfest.

Last week (I think), BJ Upton was a guest on a number of MLB Network shows. I found it interesting that he said for him having close friends and family on the team would be a big deal and play into his decisionmaking quite a bit when choosing a team. It was the first I'd heard a player take much of a position on the issue one way or another.

To evaluate the rumored return, you have to consider the fact that not everyone is a White Sox fan who hates every young player that has had an unsuccessful run in the majors. First-round picks who are in good health but with control problems have been the centerpiece of many a deal. And Bummer at this point shouldn't be considered a player without any value. Sox jerked him around last year just to get a non-return for Xavier Cedeno but Bummer pitched well in MLB and AAA. Lefty relievers that aren't horrible always have value and in this case he still has minor league options, which would be of interest to the Dodgers. Laz Rivera is pretty good for the third piece of a deal like this. I would like this trade for the Sox but it's not hard at all to imagine the Dodgers winning it. Pederson isn't far removed from a bust of a season and there are questions about whether he can play defensively in CF or every day as a hitter (needs platooned). Fulmer putting it together at all makes it very plausible that he alone is more valuable than Pederson over the period of time that the teams control the players. 6 years of solid relieving from Bummer could make it close as well. Rivera isn't likely to be some kind of star but also seems to have a good shot to come up and be a nice roleplayer some day.

I'm saying the UZR/DRS metrics have a wide range of uncertainty (a guy with, say, a +5 UZR/150 may have been playing with a true talent of -3 UZR/150 and just got lucky/on a hot streak/benefited from errors in the metric). And if you take the longer view of the numbers for these two players, they aren't obviously different. For instance, Steamer projects Semien to be slightly worse defensively than Anderson in 2019. The reason I raise Anderson as a positive example of the White Sox's development is because Anderson was by most reports completely raw and bad in college and the low minors but as a major leaguer is somewhere between competent and good defensively. I'm looking at the value added by the White Sox coaching staff, who took a player with limited experience and at one point a sub-90% fielding percentage player in the minors and helped him become a legitimate MLB shortstop.

Players with more than 1 career WAR drafted by Jed and Theo with the Cubs: Bryant (21.6 in 559 games) Almora (3.5 in 331 games) David Bote (1.0 in 74 games) Zack Godley (traded for Miguel Montero) Kyle Schwarber (2.7 in 337 games) Ian Happ (2.3 in 257 games) After Bryant, who was obviously very important but was also the most obvious choice a team is going to get, we're not exactly looking at murderer's row here. Some of these guys may very well take on bigger roles in the coming years but weren't important for their World Series win. I think the bolded is an overstatement of where Semien's defense is. His numbers looked quite good last year, for the first time. Looking at the full body of work, I don't think it's even fair to say he's clearly better than Tim Anderson, whose defensive development is a feather in the cap for the White Sox.

I'm aware. My point is that there are going to be some guys who are not going hard on a larger proportion of their trips on the bases (see the drop in Yoan's speed last year as he nursed leg injuries). In those cases, the sprint speed metric won't be as informative as to how fast the guy could be when he's going all out.