Balta1701

It's not clear who leaked it...but if someone were trying to kill this project, they wouldn't' leak it at 4:00 on a Friday. They'd leak it on a Tuesday, for maximum press coverage.

The number is out there. There are articles being written saying "not one damn penny". I'm sure sports radio in Chicago has had this today. I don't care how broken democracy is, if there's a strong, negative response from the constituents, money does not get spent on a project like this. Being upfront and open will help get people on board. If they came up with a number through a reasonable means, tell us what that number is and why giving it to them is a good deal for the city. If they didn't come up with that number by reasonable means, and they can't justify it, then those who say "Nashville is that way" are correct.

A $500 million ask would mean that the White Sox would be putting up probably the other $600-$700 million cost of the park. This would be more reasonable and plausible than the city paying a full $1 billion for the park and the White Sox chipping in like $100-$200 million or whatever. This is also why the White Sox should be out in front of this, because if we're not understanding things correctly, it benefits them to make everyone understand the numbers!

That's basically a 1 year, $10 million deal for a reliever coming off TJS. That's pretty decent money for a guy when you don't know what you'll get from the guy.

If you go to their projections for this year, Teoscar has projections ranging from 2.5 fWAR to 1.7 fWAR. Santander has projections from 2.6 to 1.7 fWAR. Furthermore, Santander via Fangraphs, the last 2 years, is at -11.9 and -11.1 on defensive value. Teoscar is at -8.4 and -6.4. The guy. you said is downgraded due to "Defensive limitations" actually was better on defense each of the last two years, at least in the Fangraphs version. They're very similar. Santander might project a tiny bit better, but not a whole lot.

If there is one thing I think has changed since the 90s - I don't think politicians will react with nearly as much panic to the idea of losing a sports team as they did the last time he got this deal done. I think that was very key to the White Sox staying in the late 80s - "what will this say about Chicago if we are losing sports teams to Tampa Bay" probably got some people on board. I don't think that happens this time, I think that motivation has switched.

There is a decent chance that some young guy the White Sox dump from their 40 man this year (Romy, Sosa, Colas, Lee etc.) goes on to be a quality player with some other team. It might not count as a 40 man crunch but they've created something truly weird here, where they are absolutely overloaded with NRIs and they have a manager who already has indicated he would rather play a 40 year old NRI than a promising kid. Maybe it's a "voluntary roster crunch" or a "managerial roster crunch", because the manager wants the vets and the kids have to be dumped as a consequence.

For a guy supposed to be good at business, he is blowing this one. When the $1 billion ask came out on Friday, it was clear there were two camps. One side was going to say "Not a dime of new public money", the other side was going to say "look this is how these projects get done, lets see what their actual estimates say for how they came up with this number and how it fits in with the larger project." I was in the latter group. It's now been a couple of days and they have given us nothing. The people who would be on board to sell this project if they showed us math for how it works out have no math to point to. They've given us nothing at all to work with, no details, no public numbers other than "you're going to pay the entire price tag for one of the most expensive stadiums in baseball and you're going to like it." This has the feel of Reinsdorf going "calculate how much money we'd make if they extended the hotel tax for 30 years. Then, round upwards. That's what we're going to ask for, and I'll bully them into giving it to me by threatening to leave again." If he was being a smart salesperson, he'd give the people open to listening to him something to work with. The politicians aren't in the same place as the ones 30 years ago, correctly so. Thus far it seems like he thinks the same game as last time will work, that they'd be scared to let him leave. They won't be. The Sox need to be selling why this is a good idea for the city and for the taxpayers, they need to be proactive, and they're being Reinsdorfy.

You can tell how the team thought the $1 billion ask would go over based on the fact that it leaked around 4:00 Central/5:00 eastern on a Friday. They did not want people talking about this fresh on sports radio during the morning drives, or in a weekday newspaper, or in the offices on a weekday.

With Snell and Bellinger I think the path to that was obvious. Who wants to guarantee those guys $200 million with how inconsistent they’ve been? Some guys teams got out ahead of, like Nola, but it was obvious this market would be iffy this offseason.

They believed that if they leaked enough times that there was a hot market for him, it would lead to a hot market for him. They told everyone who would listen for two months how hot his market was and were surprised that didn’t work.

Which would be a shame since a lot of guys (Eder, Nastrini, Montgomery, Lee) are in a spot where you would want them to get lots of looks early against big leaguers so that they could be ready to come up late in the season.

The other thing on my mind about having 70 guys in camp: when will these guys ever see a coach? Or an at bat? We saw last year how the Cubs had a professional development and scouting staff of like 90 and the White Sox had a staff of like 20. There’s been some turnover this year but no one has caught whiff of a massive staff expansion. Furthermore, there’s only so many at bats in these games from either side. If a rookie needs coaching, do they get the focus of that coach away from the 23 other infielders in camp? If they need at bats to work on something, when do they get them? If a veteran pitcher needs support to keep his mechanics under control, wheee is he gonna get that with a camp this big?

I do think it’s clear that Getz thinks he can import a culture. You can see that in detail from his player choices. my problem with this continues to be that I don’t believe it works. Keuchel was supposed to be a leader and a winner, you can still find Kenny’s quotes praising him for his leadership. Lynn was supposed to be a veteran leader. They all ripped the org while leaving, because the org itself was toxic. How are all these 38 year old former Royals going to react when they’re stuck losing every game 3-0, their manager is too busy bragging about how important he is to manage anything, and their staff is so small that they can’t get feedback when they’re not having the success they had in their 20s?

If the team decides to threaten to leave once, hand them a printout of the directions. This should be a project where everyone can win. If the Sox need so much money that the governments think they don’t come out solidly on the plus side, then politely wave goodbye.

The pessimist that they've drilled into me starting in 2013 says that the pitching won't benefit that much because the pitchers will have to treat every game as being lost if they give up a single run, so every pitch will have to be treated as a max effort pitch and they'll wear out and make mistakes too quick.

There's good reason to expect this development will happen though. Combine bringing in 2 million people per year for ballgames with a strong location in the city, this should be an area primed for growth if smart development is done. The company Related was noted as having built these sorts of developments in other cities, including New York. In general, they know what they're doing. In numerous other cities, ballparks have been used to drive development in areas by bringing in regular visitors, and that gives a baseline audience for restaurants, bars, hotels, and retail that allows those businesses to bring in other events, exist throughout the year, and draw in larger and larger crowds. If done correctly, this should work.

$11.7 million salary, limited positions, 1 year of control. Teoscar Hernandez only got a $15 million deal ($8 million deferred on top of that). How many prospects would you give up to save $5 or $6 million?

If this whole complex is developed? And the land in Bridgeport is redeveloped? Thousands.

Let’s say that Reinsdorf’s demand here isn’t reasonable, that they came up with a billion dollars because he wanted an impressive number to punish the taxpayers, and the government would lose massively if they said yes. If that blew up the deal, would that impact his future financing options?

This assumes there’s a market for prospects in exchange for Santander. Most of the moves like that involving position players have been attached to other moves as salary dumps this offseason.

Yeah right now anyone else in MLB thinks there’s probably a 50% or better chance Colas is on waivers before the deadline. Only so many 40 man roster spots available for all those Royal NRIs.

Question for you (or others who know finance). If the company that owns the 78 plot was generally working on Development, Reinsdorf comes in and says “add a ballpark and we can get this deal done”, everything gets to this point, and then Reinsdorf demands so much public money that they can’t justify it and the government balks, blowing up any deal for the site - does that affect Reinsdorf’s company long term? Like does it ruin his ability to get funding and loans for construction in Nashville? It seems to me like it should but I don’t know enough finance to say that for sure. Would it turn out to not matter because he could always get a Saudi loan or something like that?

Now answer this part - was he able to fully follow his normal offseason pre-hab routine during chemotherapy? We are hearing the usual about guys being in the best shape of their life coming into ST. Is that normal for chemotherapy patients, you come out of that immediately in the best shape of your life?

So stabilize taxes while spending untold billions and magically eliminate remote work? Makes sense to me, that’s how math works based on a couple of the exams I just graded.