Jake

Matt still has a chance to make a living as a Mark Reynolds type. He was going to be really squeezed on this roster, especially if the Sox see Palka (as I do) as someone who is not an option anywhere defensively.

Is it no longer the case that you're basically barred from signing your non-tendered guys until after opening day?

I like this move. Who knows if Narvaez replicates his last season at the plate and at this point he has established a track record of being so bad at framing that by some measures it completely negates the positives of his bat. If the Sox buy into that, they've done well to sell high on him.

I honestly find this to be nuts unless the Sox think his medicals are no good. You have at least 1 corner outfield spot that is a gaping hole at this point.

The contract sucks but I do wonder if he could man the hot corner for a few years.

To be clear, if your scouts thought he's going to be average or above average defensively at shortstop, that's a big plus for his value and I wouldn't advocate letting Tim Anderson stand in his way. But if your scouts think he's going to be hemorrhaging a win or two of value with his defense at SS and he doesn't want to go to 3B, then he's not as good of a value.

Single most important question with Machado is whether he wants to remain at shortstop and whether he should remain at shortstop. His value could be seriously diminished at shortstop if his defense is as bad as it often looked last year, but conversely if he really made strides toward the end of the year as some believe then his value increases tremendously.

What has happened thus far with Kahnle suggests the trade was smart.

To be clear, as far as I can tell she's not saying she was the victim of discrimination, she's just saying she witnessed a racist workplace and seems to be implying that she was fired for complaining about it

Who the hell is Diaz???

If you're really confident he's going to opt out, then it's easy to offer him a boat-load of money.

The trust you put in her statements shifts quite a bit if she was fired after making these complaints through internal channels. It wouldn't be rational to make these claims after you're fired in general, but sometimes people get pissed off when they're fired. But if she was fired because she tried to do this privately, it only makes sense she'd try to put them on blast now.

I haven't engaged with all of the bickering this thread so I'm not sure if we're still talking about baseball, but you should find it noteworthy that especially in the case of the Cubs, the winning roster they put together was based on mostly pieces that were not acquired via rebuilding and/or were not obviously good assets when acquired. Kris Bryant was basically the one major piece acquired via *tanking*, although they didn't do it all that well (only picked #3). A number of other key cogs came from trades, but some of them prior to the rebuild and some as guys that weren't exactly seen as valuable (Arrieta the most obvious example). Then you have free agent signings like Zobrist, Lester, Lackey. Astros were more obviously built from pieces acquired while rebuilding, but their rebuilding process was also very tortuous and a league-wide embarrassment. They also made a number of big mistakes along the way but managed to power through them. Best strategy is to just get as many good assets as you can and see what shakes out. Use your big market resources to add good assets at possibly high prices as needed but still look for the good values.

I'd hope we'd have the cajones to front-load the deal so we can take advantage of our payroll flexibility now and retain some going into the future

I won't assign a number to anyone, but I feel really good about Lopez. He has really developed this year and I see what he's doing now as something that it was always clear he could do. In aggregate, I see this season as a floor (thinking in terms of ~4.50 FIP moreso than the mid-3 ERA). Giolito has at least pitched himself into a comfortable slot into the rotation, but I'm seeing him as more of a backend guy once we have a deeper group. I hope he does better, I think it's possible, but my expectations are low. No idea what to think of Rodon. Maybe a regular offseason and spring training is all he needs. He hasn't had his slider all year and I wouldn't expect him to be good without it.

I think Reinsdorf as an owner sticks out not for a refusal to spend, but a major reluctance to repeat bad expenditures. For instance, I think he probably walked away from Albert Belle's tenure here thinking we lucked out when he opted out of a deal that would have been an albatross by its end. He also saw that the deal didn't bring us to the promised land like we hoped. Later, we set records by drafting and signing Joe Borchard. That really didn't work out and then Jerry goes back to wanting to stick to the spending norms in the draft, which had served us well in the past before a number of other organizations started profiting greatly in the draft by overpaying kids who weren't quite 1st rounders but wanted to be paid as such. When our season fell apart in 2016 after a couple years of signing and trading for veterans, I think Jerry became convinced that this strategy wasn't working anymore like it had 10 years before. So it won't surprise me if we make a bold move or two in FA this offseason, but I also expect us not to do it again if it blows up in our face.

Minnesota looked like they were going to be a pretty good team when they got Jimmy but now it's a pretty sad situation over there. It's become clear that Wiggins just isn't going to be that good, KAT's defense is a question, and they now have to ship out Jimmy because nobody gets along.

I do think Palka has played himself into being the priority between himself and Davidson, but what to do with Davidson isn't so clear. At this point, Davidson is a very similar player to Mark Reynolds, who has had himself a long career but has never been a particularly valuable piece. I'm not sure how much defensive ability Davidson has at 3B at this point since he's played so little there and he has clearly put on some weight since he last played there on an everyday basis. Matt took a huge step forward this year, so for the Sox you have to ask whether you think he has it in him to take any more steps forward. It would make things easier if Palka could play the outfield, but he's just been so bad out there I feel like it may not be fair to our pitchers (or our fans for that matter) to play him on defense.

Part of Moncada's recent change has been effectively eliminating — for the time being — his problem with making contact with pitches in the zone. Note that he hasn't improved his contact rate by just taking more pitches in the zone. His contact rate has gone up along with this swing rate and pitches in the zone. As of right now, he's having the best 15-game run of in-zone contact of his career. Over that span, he's made contact at a rate well above league average. We'll see if he can keep it up. The flip side is that we can see his terrible run in late July/early August was driven in part by a shocking drop in his contact rate at that time. You have to wonder what was going on physically/mentally during that period of about 3 weeks when he struck out in nearly half of his plate appearances. Note also that Moncada has been making more contact on pitches outside the zone while retaining his elite selectivity on those pitches: He hasn't changed overnight, but these are fairly positive trends.

If a team was offering me Dylan Cease for Nick Madrigal, I'd do it.

If you haven't seen a pretty significant change in Moncada's approach over the past month-ish, you've had your eyes closed. It hasn't turned him into superman, but he has definitely been working on things.

FWIW, Anderson somewhat recently emerged from a rather deep slump and is now hitting pretty much like his typical self...which isn't great, but is good enough for someone playing shortstop and doing it quite well defensively.

Reynaldo has been absolutely pitching his ass off.

Don't forget to watch the baseball games and appreciate the many ways you can end up at the same season statistics

There's basically no way he returns to the minors outside of a possible (but unlikely) rehab assignment. Only persistent ass-kickings in MLB would get him sent down, in which case you won't care about his service time.