Balta1701

They did hire a new OC right?

What "Patriot stuff"? Mayo?

Clearly if this were used for the Bears they would rip out the current park and build a new dome. Having the parking lots there,, existing water, sewer, power infrastructure, highway and rail access already could be a way to limit the new stadium costs. But unlike Arlington there’s probably no chance for associated real estate development in the area, so maybe lower costs but way lower chances to develop a district around the stadium.

For the city, the other big part of this is that if this isn’t done, there’s a good chance this site is undeveloped 50 years from now. It’s already sat there for 60, and small projects won’t raise enough money to justify redeveloping it. On the other hand. The land in Bridgeport could be turned back into low to moderate density development or even turned into a new big project at lower cost.

Also since Wrigley is trending right now on one of my feeds, this site would probably host a winter classic at some point too.

Would have to see how it interacts with the buildings in the complex, but in general having it open towards the city itself is what we all want as well.

If the first half goes terribly, I will still say it was worth skipping that package. That package does not reshape the white Sox and is only a minor contribution to its next competitive team. Failing to take it doesn’t change their next competitive window to my eyes - heck, even if the Brewers rapidly turn them both into all stars, I won’t believe the White Sox could Have done the same. Lopez has to play somewhere, after all.

Which is totally reasonable and rational for a team that says they are trying to win a division.

And that's a reason to have him on there. He was not only overpaid, but the manager went so far as to bat him 3rd in the middle of a losing streak because the manager thought he looked good in the batting cages. That's a way to put the manager on the mountain.

And Rosario has been a way better defender. 2.5 fWAR for him the last 2 years, 1.5 for Anderson. But, he had a bad 2023 and currently unemployed. There is no market for these guys regardless of attitude.

Over/under on PECOTA related threads?

Hernandez is 32, Rosario is 28. Both had 4 WAR seasons as recently as Anderson. The thing they all have in common is not being good last year, not age. Attitude might matter a little, Getz clearly overpaid for a certain “type” of player for example, but they’re out of a job now because of bad baseball. Anderson fits well with this group.

There are tons of weak infielders still available for teams that need them. Looking at the list, I see Longoria, Brandon Crawford, k*** Hernandez, Jean Segura, Eduardo Escobar, Amed Rosario, Andrus, Didi Gregorius, on top of notable actual good player Matt Chapman. A lot of these guys have clearly been hoping for big league contracts and at this point they're probably going to get scooped up as NRIs. Anderson is in no way unusual here, and that's entirely coming off of his negative WAR season last year.

6 year $100 million extension for Evan Longoria.

It's not just "If Mena turns into anything special" to me, it's the philosophy of the deal itself. This is where Hahn and Williams went haywire. Ok, one of like 47 places they screwed up, but a big one. For a long, long, long time it was "oh it's ok, we can make a deal like this, we give guys up and they never turn into anything." it's ok to give up Poreda, Richard, Sweeney, Olivo, Hudson, Holmberg, De Los Santos, Masset - no one there was a franchise killing player, so it was constantly ok to give up guys to supplement the big league roster - for years. Then all of a sudden, in the space of 2 years, the White Sox gave up Semien, Bassitt, and Tatis (Montas could get thrown here too). Any one of those first deals you could say "oh this is fine, we didn't give up a guy who killed us and we got a tolerable baseball player out of it so it was a win, no problem let's keep doing this". Then, it imploded and wrecked the franchise for years. This one might work out fine, but you do this type of deal enough and you're playing with fire. The odds of any particular deal blowing up horribly are low, but if you do enough deals of the same sort, they can.

The good news is we're projected to be notably better than Colorado or Washington.

The problem is that it's hard to predict any specific result. However I think there's some patterns to the two. For the Seattle trade, if Getz made the same deal a lot, he'd come out a winner most of the time. Giving up relievers is generally a strategy that returns a lot of value for a rebuilding team. Giving away years of control on a cheap reliever is a way to restock a team. Trading away guys whose elbows are starting to act up already generally is a smart strategy. If Getz made this move often, it seems likely that he would win more of these than he lost. For the Arizona trade, Getz gave up very young pitching for an OF who fits into the rotation and fills an immediate need but with something of a limited ceiling. However, pitching is so highly prized and highly sought after that there's a lot of risk in giving up young pitching. Maybe you do this deal 5 times and it works fine the first 4, you get two actual ballplayers out of those first deals, but then you give up a young pitcher who turns into a true ace 3 years down the line and you say "oh we should stop doing that".

Crochet is another guy where "actually seeing him pitch" for a while should lead to a pretty substantial increase in his value compared to today. For a guy who basically hasn't pitched in 2 years, I'd be expecting a huge discount if I was trading for him.

The problem with focusing on FIP here is that it isn't taking into account how hard the contact was he gave up. It is entirely saying "oh his BABIP is worse we can adjust for that", but his BABIP was worse because he was being hit harder. Obviously, improving over the worst defense in the league doesn't hurt, but there is a statistical reason why his xERA is quite a bit higher than his FIP. All that said, you guys have clearly established also that the stuff is still there, but he needs to find some more effectiveness with his slider. The pitcher he was last year is probably an ERA in the low 4s with a better defense behind him, would definitely like to see some improvement over that.

He was basically a full time starter last year because Dusty loved him. How much he'll be able to take I don't know, maybe he gets hurt, but if he's healthy my guess is he's the starter overall.

Colas was supposed to be an excellent RF.

We said that exact phrase last year.

Naw, not really. They might have several of them, but that's far from a surplus.