Balta1701

He finished 2023 in the bullpen.

I'll give you the bet that he signs a minor league deal here with a ST invite. What team is going to have a better chance of getting him back in the big leagues during the year?

If...hypothetically they were able to move Bergman for a return of some value, I wonder if they might be willing to gamble on Moncada, at least with taking on a portion of his contract.

But he also showed substantial weakening of his stuff last year, to the point that people were complaining about it in April and I was defending him saying "His fastball usually improves as the year goes on". Turned out in 2023 it didn't.

Technically, they really don't have anyone of value DHing or batting behind Robert right now either. I'd pitch around Robert if the guy behind him had a .758 OPS too.

Back in my day we called those sandwich picks.

Ok, wait, the first round has 38+ picks in it???

After watching the last couple years I can’t say it is unlikely that next offseason Eloy will have his option declined and lost for nothing. Thats the obvious result of him repeating his last season. No one is giving up a top 65 player for him after basically a 0 win season when he will probably be available as a FA next offseason. If you want to think more creatively, is there any other prospect in a similar situation - a lot of promise, a couple years of control remaining, but a big disappointment and an obvious change of scenery candidate? Getting Eloy away from the hitting coaches telling him to hit the ball on the ground might well be the best thing for him. Is there a matchup like that?

Dylan Cease puts up an ERA of four and a half. Cease: “I would totally sign an 8 year $200 million contract today. I have no problem being paid money.” Thats the game with all those statements - of course he’d sign an extension if you paid him massively. They’re mostly meaningless, the only reason you don’t say that is if you hate the team you play for so much you’d never take their money.

They added a minor league reliever.

Where did you see that about them?

I thought about adding that detail but there still seems to be a reasonable chance that they trade for Salvador Perez instead.

Just wait until you see Austin Hedges get a big league contract worth a couple million after a 27 OPS+ last year.

Still no salary here?

Is Biggio a negative?

TBH, $7 million for Lopez and DeJong still would seem like a lot given how this franchise acts - but manageable I guess if they’re smart elsewhere? My reference point is always 2019 where Hahn added $50 million and got basically nothing for it.

If their years of control Were even I could buy this. Manoah has only 1.130 years of service time so he’s still pre arb and if I’m counting this right he would have 5 years of control as a super 2 player, compared to 2 with Kopech.

Prediction; in August we are going to be screaming about how Montgomery has only played 3 of the previous 10 games.

Has anyone gotten a dollar amount on this?

And zero prospect return for a guy who was pitching excellent at the time. Is $5 million a month somehow ridiculous for a pitcher these days? Naw, you’d have been a fool to turn that down if you needed pitching and there were no personal issues. The Dodgers took on $10 million for the guy with the worst ERA in baseball and an injured reliever and gave up a top 10 prospect in their system. But $5.5 million for Clevinger? They can’t afford that, they would lose too much money if their fans in the outfield got fewer souvenirs.

No one picked up Clevinger when he was completely free on waivers at the end of August. He wasn’t moved because teams would rather lose the pennant than acquire him.

So teams won’t overvalue prospects right?

I’m gonna go with “new White Sox GM playing with the press, trying to see if he can drive more interest with a leak.”

Massively overvaluing this guy.

I used ERA because that’s what Baltimore would be getting based on his performance last year, a mid rotation innings eater with an expected ERA around 4. That’s better than he was last year, but it’s not the “top of rotation” guy people want him to be in a trade. Second, back end of the top 100. Third, the trade market for pitching was very hot at the deadline this year: that’s why Lynn returned a big price, that’s why Scherzer returned a big price, that’s why Verlander returned a big price. The trade market last offseason was super weak, Sean Murphy returned a couple non-top-100 prospects and I believe he was the biggest trade last year. This is why I think the right strategy is almost certainly going to be to hold Cease - there are 2 reasons why his price might be higher at the trade deadline. You are likely to get better pitching prices at the trade deadline because of limited supply, which is absolutely not the case right now as there are a bunch of pitchers for both FA and trade, and on top of that we need to see if Cease can either get velocity back or prove to trading partners that he can be effective with lower velocity. Right now, you are trying to price him while pretending his 2023 performance didn’t happen, and unfortunately it did and it was really disappointing. Finally, how much “cover your ass” leaking has happened from the white Sox over the last season. You really think that “there was this great deal for Cease but we turned it down” isn’t something that someone would have leaked at this point? The Orioles and everyone else could see his velocity drop and how it affected his whole performance, you can’t cover that up, there’s plenty of video.