Balta1701

You certainly can. Guys like Rodon, Martin Perez occasionally sign for like $5 million or less. The problem is you can't count on that kind of luck to fill out an entire rotation. If you sign one of those guys to be your 6th starter, that's fine on a competitive team, and if they break out - hooray, look at Rodon in 2021. However, you can't count on that kind of luck to fill out your entire lineup. Somewhere in there you need additional cheap talent to come out of your system, otherwise you are filling your entire roster with Clevinger like guys who you are hoping have comeback years. If I write down all the positions you opened after 2025 - 3 starting pitchers, closer, 3b, SS, and try to fill them with average free agents, you wind up with a $200+ million payroll really quick without something from your system.

There are so few cases of this happening in baseball over the ~8 seasons of the domestic violence policy that it is hard to make an educated guess about how that will affect baseball's decision making. However, in part based on the "some unknown reason" language you chose I do want to note and stress that different people respond to trauma differently and that one person filing things in a different way from others shouldn't be taken to indicate really anything about the validity of the accusation. You can come up with lots of justifications for why a person would act like that. It is also possible that there were other steps taken that we don't know about yet, baseball beat writers in Chicago aren't necessarily the best criminal investigative reporters. What we know is that: 1. Somehow this was reported to the Padres last year and the Padres reported it to MLB. MLB appears to have followed appropriate procedures as spelled out in their domestic violence agreement, opening an investigation while retaining privacy. 2. The White Sox signed Clevinger without ever being informed by the league. This was again the written policy of the league. 3. The victim chose to go public a week ago including their photographs.

There has been no real discussion of it by any reputable source in the couple hours since it was posted.

Logistically, the idea of moving an extra 20k people into and out of downtown 81 times a year has always struck me as challenging. You can get away with much larger crowds for 9 football games because 8 of them are on Sundays, but trying this during evening traffic will leave a bad taste for everyone unless there’s a serious rethink of moving people into that area.

“Since this month has been a dumpster fire for this team, we need to do something to make people feel positive again. I think it’s about time we announce the extension and salary raise for Rick Hahn.” - White Sox ownership.

That was extended sequences of paid administrative leave. Eventually the arbitrator just said “ok don’t pay him for that time but it counts as his suspension so he’s free as soon as I cancel the rest”

Paid administrative leave should be possible as long as there is an active investigation. I will be confused why if they don’t use that.

Last years number 15 pick is ranked number 98 on this list. Picks 13, 14, and 16 are not currently ranked, and I got lazy and stopped looking at that point. It seems unlikely that the 15th pick in next years draft will make an appearance in rankings by next offseason, not in a place to replace Colas on the list at least. That’s also not a knock on any of them, it’s just a matter of not being highly enough ranked coming into the draft and only a couple months in the low minors, for a high schooler or something like that, that’s no time at all. If that’s going to happen it’s from someone already in the system today.

If they got a good offer for him I wouldn't have been surprised if they moved him, but we've seen how weak the trade market has been this offseason. If teams were paying high prices in trades, there would have been more. Teams are mostly holding onto their prospects, I'd expect the same next offseason as well. If a team needed a shortstop, there were 4 on the free agent market that they didn't have to give up prospects for. I don't think you're going to get nearly as much as you want for him, but I do believe you can get "some amount of talent plus saving his full contract" next offseason. It is my expectation that the White Sox will be in a position where that is something they have to do.

While that's true, do the White Sox have $14 million to spare? We heard all this offseason about moving Hendriks to save the same amount of money and next year has a a very good chance of being tougher, financially. On top of that, he will have 1 year of control, so if they don't move him, they won't ever get anything for him. And they have clearly been whispering unhappiness about him the whole offseason. With a replacement available for him, these are savings the White Sox can get while still getting a small amount of talent back for him, and without seriously hurting their so-called "competitive roster". This is something we are going to hear about all next offseason, starting at the trade deadline if they're out by then.

Yup. We talked about that in the other thread, I am looking at a financial mess next offseason equal to this one if not worse, Anderson is movable to clear payroll, they have made it clear they're not thrilled with him internally based on tons of whispers over the last year, and there's an available replacement.

I'd imagine that's exactly right. I doubt he's going to spend a full year at AA in 2023 and a full year at AAA in 2024 and then not get called up. Far more likely IMO is that he's the opening day shortstop in 2024.

How is that related to Mike Clevinger spitting tobacco juice on an infant?

I really don’t care about the White Sox losing money through this stupidity on their part, I already laughed at the fact that Hahn guaranteed him $4 million against suspension with his stupid buyout and option. I would care more about taking the money from the suspension out of Clevinger’s accounts. He got that contract by keeping an abuse case quiet, a penalty would be nice.

If he was suspended for half the season it takes $4 million away from him compared to buying out his whole deal:

What's changed is that this has been made public in a way that was out of the control of the league. That could mean that the acquiring team is simply uncomfortable with playing him to start the year.

Now that this has leaked, "administrative leave" during the investigation seems plausible.

You mean Bill Veeck?

There was zero reason to do that stupid mutual option if they weren't casually moving it onto their 2024 budget. It won't be picked up because mutual options are almost never picked up. "Oh there was actually no reason to do this but they did it anyway and it turns out that it gave Clevinger an extra $4 million" is not a defense for him, it actually is even dumber!!!!

It wasn't fine if he was told he had only $17 million to play with, and dropping the money onto 2024 was already dumb even before it turned out here that it really backfired. And oh, Clevinger jumped at the money because he knew he was going to be suspended and happened to take advantage of Hahn's foolishness - just super embarrassing.

I wouldn't jump to conclusions on that, these investigations are notoriously slower than it seems like they should be for these professional sports leagues. I do not know why, but it's quite consistent.

If Rick Hahn came into Jerry Reinsdorf's office and said "I need $30 million to create a competitive team" and Jerry Reinsdorf said "The budget this year is $17 million, sorry", it's not Reinsdorf cowering out of hard decisions and instead acting like a capped out GM, it's Hahn. This should never have been a strategy regardless of the budget, and it's perfectly ironic for it to come back and cost them several million dollars and a PR nightmare.

And in this effort to defend Hahn, you've just said "Rick Hahn got outsmarted by Clevinger".