Balta1701

FWIW, 13 year old me would have loved over the summer having my mother take us on the train up to the city, meet dad there, then come back on the train after the game with probably both me and my brother falling asleep.

I can't even make a Royals joke, so only way this makes sense to me is if they're looking to do something with/about Vaughn?

They may not want to after his last year, but if Dylan Cease is putting up a Cy Young caliber season again, someone is going to pay a load for him, and they won't want to face that pitcher in the playoffs against them.

Cashman also absolutely has to make sure he has resources available to trade in July.

Kenyon Middleton is going to have a hell of a time telling everyone in the big leagues that he feels he and his family was not treated fairly by the White Sox behind the scenes. That's a lot of phone calls.

Some players may very well want to know that an employer is crap before they have to decide on working there.

Fine, if you insist his minor league numbers have meaning I want to know which of them did better in a taco eating contest. Until then Ortiz is a failure like Madrigal as Ortiz can’t eat as many tacos.

If he pitches like 2022 then yes his value should jump to what Getz wanted, so clearly you do know what is involved in that scenario.

Eh, in terms of “worry” all you have to worry about is if he stays healthy. if 2022 was a fluke, then you will still have a guy with strong stuff, a high K rate, a multi year record at making every start, with 1.5 years of control. The deal the Os just made isn’t far from what the White Sox got for 0.6 years (2 playoff runs worth) of control for Lynn and Giolito at the deadline. There’s little reason to think that 1.5 years of Cease can’t garner as much or more than this deal even if he struggles again. Plus, maybe him struggling will finally get us a new pitching coach. Our current one is surviving because he got Carlos Rodon in shape 3 years ago.

There’s plenty of ways you can say Ortiz is more useful than Madrigal if you have some experience with their system. He can play short, he’s more likely to stay healthy - “I saw his bat and it played with off the wall power” and that’s all insight we might not have. But Rick Hahn’s horrific development of players and terrible use of his system is my area of expertise. So if you want to try to compare players or say a comp doesn’t work, fine - but don’t use numbers that are garbage, that we know are useless, and then repeat them like they mean something when we are the experts in that part. Nick Madrigals minor league numbers are meaningless. Rick Hahn steered his minor league development as well as a drunken sailor. This would be true if Madrigal was now an all star. Take his minor league numbers off the table or we will keep saying you’re making a useless argument when you bring them up. We are the experts in that part.

Saying anything about Nick Madrigal’s minor league stats as though they mean a thing is just wrong. It always was.

With how the White Sox treated their minor leaguers under Hahn, quoting Madrigals minor league numbers to me as representing anything is about like quoting Madrigals taco eating competition numbers to me. 2019, Madrigal drafted with a wrist injury - the Sox play him and are surprised how bad he is, but people excuse it with a wrist injury. 2020 - the Minors don’t exist so no stats, but the White Sox do rush him up to the big leagues because that’s what they do. 2021 - the minors exist but the White Sox only leave him there long enough to get an extra bit of control. He is up by June, is weirdly bad at fundamentals, then gets hurt and traded.

Given that the White Sox can hold onto Cease and see what happens in the first half, I would have not had interest in this return for Cease. If he has a bad first half, the White Sox will have pressure to actually move him, and taking a comparable package at the deadline may be the outcome.

If this was the most that someone was willing to give up in a starting pitching trade this offseason, then Cease getting hurt doesn’t destroy the White Sox.

This spot is the only option that I have heard that is an actual possible win-win. The city gets land developed that no one else can raise the funds to develop. The White Sox get some additional public support to renovate it. If this spot wasn’t available, the path to the team moving was obvious. Once the deal ran out, the state would absolutely refuse to cut Reinsdorf another huge check after the last one. Reinsdorf would want someone else to pay for his next ballpark, the state would laugh. They might extend the deal for a couple years, but it’s so team friendly that the state won’t put up with that for long. The end result of that is something like the As, the team threatens to leave for so long that the state waives goodbye. This is still possible, if Reinsdorf wants the state to pay everything on a new ballpark and site redevelopment the state should say no. But unlike almost anywhere else, there are potential big benefits to the city and state of getting this site developed. That is not the case with his sea of parking lots now.

There is nothing that requires the Orioles to have actually made a strong, competitive offer. They could have had this offer on the table for Cease and waited to see if the White Sox would take it. They shouldn’t have.

Or that the Orioles aren’t willing to give up any of their high value prospects so they took the best pitcher they could get without giving them up.

This deal going down also means no other team was willing to beat this price for Burnes. It’s useful for the Brewers but certainly not loaded. That also says something about the high end trade market right now.

Seems like a high chance that Woodruff already did.

The same team traded Hader when they were in first place. They don’t have the same rep as the Rays but they are nearly as aggressive.

That assumes the market is rational. Right. It is, that’s how we got this deal. Last deadline, it wasn’t.

At this point in the offseason, I will put a bet saying at least one of them has to take a short term deal with a Y1 Opt out.

We actually did have this exact discussion in November, btw.

Does BTV count the value of Burnes returning a draft pick in '25?

This is why the White Sox will actually have pressure to trade Cease at the deadline this year if he's healthy, because 1 year of control is worth a lot less than 2.