Balta1701

Guess which major spring training question is not mentioned once in this article.

What I find a bit remarkable about this situation is that moving the Bears to Arlington Heights seems to be the best for the Bears, almost certainly the best for the city of Chicago, definitely the best for AH and the whole urban area if they're actually able to build this entertainment district, but hurts a couple of very specific, provincial interests, and therefore mayor after mayor of Chicago keeps trying to keep them in Soldier Field to protect those interests.

I feel like after the 2020 mess they set themselves out a back to business format -Make playoffs in 2020 -Park reopens in 2021, make playoffs again -2022 raise ticket prices after playoff appearances, make LCS or World Series. Cut sales staff because we won’t need them thanks to the teams success. -2023 big jump in parking costs across $30 barrier, add in the escalated prices inside sections and big changes to season ticket packages, and this will not be an issue because of the success the team had in 2022. It seems like 2022 sucked and they just decided to go ahead with their plans anyway, and it is coming off as super infuriating and arrogant because of where the team went.

Yeah no good reason to think they will be unusually healthy specifically in April based on recent history, that’s when they have been the least healthy.

This is actually required for many veteran contracts by the last CBA. But it would also still be a good idea to have that type of depth given what we learned about Grandal’s injury.

"This is not a rebuilding situation."

They will be heading to the suburbs. It would be very surprising if they tried to do another spaceship landing in Soldier Field Renovation. It also has the benefit of being the right decision for the city too, a domed stadium will host a Chicago Super Bowl before 2030, and it's going to be super cool, the entire Super Bowl crowd will freeze and find a deep dish pizza place and just be in awe of how well it works. The Chicago Bears should be one of the NFL's Marquee Franchises, they should have a 75000-80000 seat domed stadium for football games and the occasional visit by Beyoncé in the suburbs, and they will have a huge waitlist for tickets once its built. I don't know what they will do with Soldier Field, this is legitimately a conundrum to me. I don't know if the right decision there is to demolish the monstrosity they built and try to restore the classic field or just demolish the whole thing, that would depend on who might use a 50,000 seat stadium near the lake with no skyboxes. This is a challenge for someone who knows the options better than me to figure out.

The excuses are already lined up. “No one could have seen what happened to our closer coming” is actually true! You can’t hold this season against this front office. Time for extensions.

https://www.nj.com/yankees/2023/02/ex-yankees-bust-joey-gallo-will-have-surprise-role-with-twins.html

I’m pretty sure you told me this 7 seasons ago.

The only way he isn’t the GM is if Kenny retires and he takes Kenny’s job.

Today seems to be a helluva day for quotes. Grifol also insists there is no quarterback controversy.

https://www.nbcsports.com/chicago/white-sox/mlb-insider-jon-heyman-grades-white-sox-offseason-d-minus

This could be a number relevant for Cease. Fried was Arb-2 this year, he earned $6.8 million last year as Arb-1. Cease settled for $5.7 million this year.

They might actually want to do so in a couple of weeks if they are trying to keep him away from the team. If he's coming to training camp, he's going to be pitching and preparing with everyone else.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/02/kodai-senga-had-iffy-physical-before-mets-carlos-correa-saga/ (Heyman).

All right, so this is originally from them signing Duvall. They signed Duvall and had to DFA Matt Barnes for the roster spot. They traded Matt Barnes to Florida for Richard Bleier and again still needed a roster spot from that deal so they DFAd German. I found a version of a Boston Herald article asking why German was the guy they DFAd and all it said was they thought he would be most easy to trade for a useful return, which seems like an odd reason to DFA someone.

Straight up, I don't get this for Boston. This looks on paper like a much better deal for the White Sox. Reliever for reliever, except the guy Boston is giving up is younger, was at AAA last year, and was quite a bit more effective. Guy clearly has options remaining, and no obvious reason to think Boston needs a 40 man spot in the next day. This looks like a small but obvious win for the White Sox. Why would Boston do this?

German should also have options available so that's really bloody important.

25 year old, 4 big league innings last year, ERA of 18, 2.58 ERA in AAA for most of last year. No starts only a reliever.

You’re right those are issues that do need to be dealt with. On the other hand, how many quality young TV guys are there that won’t receive any national interest in broadcasting something else? There’s half a year when they could be doing basketball or football, for example. Didn’t Jason do a “stat loaded” broadcast for the college football championship a few weeks ago or was that a different game? I’m sure I had one of those on recently. He really is good at his job and people recognize this. That is a good thing for the White Sox, employing a guy who is good at his job and who will be around for years. The fact that Fox wants him doing games is a testament to this. Employing people who are good at their job makes the whole white Sox organization better, it helps build the brand and it’s another way to bring national exposure to this franchise. Presumably it also makes Nationwide insurance a bunch of money too. One sacrifice of that is losing him for some games, but the gain of that could be having him broadcast the World Series in a few years. How many of the most well known broadcasters for teams had arrangements like this, where they did Big Games for the national networks on the weekend and were available the rest of the season? I’d say many of them. If you don’t want a guy who has demand from Fox, you can find that, by going with worse broadcasters. This may save money in the short term, but in the long term it again sacrifices a chance to build a following in exchange for a quick buck. The good news is there’s no other instance I can think of where the White Sox have behaved that way, otherwise I’d be shaking my head saying “here we go again.”

That was not a positive read.