Balta1701

Yeah if the Bears believe for some reason Maye is the guy, don’t bother with trades, draft him.

I think it’s entirely possible. But who knows how this QB market will shake up before the draft, there seems to be way more demand than available QBs, and Pittsburgh will be in a position where they can’t reasonably expect to draft a starter. Bills just played “Don’t stop believing’.”

Burdi was at least drafted as a reliever, with the idea that a reliever would save their precious 2016 season, outside the top 15. He would have been a challenge to turn into a starter. Probably 29 teams wouldn’t have drafted him in the first round had they thought there was no chance of him starting, but they didn’t understand how smart Rick Hahn’s 2016 strategy was. The record of the 2016 team is a true reflection of Hahn’s quality. Crochet, to me, was Hahn and Williams saying “we could have kept Chris Sale in the bullpen in 2012. Because we didn’t, we got a 2nd place finish in 2012 and a borderline HOF starter. This was clearly a mistake so we need to fix it to get our 2nd bullpen lefty.”

I feel bad for Crochet because a professional organization would have tried him as a starter from the beginning in ‘21. Instead he got the Hahn clown show. You don’t draft a guy in the top 15 and treat him this way, this guy with his arm could easily have turned into a top 10 prospect in all of baseball after 2 years in the minors, but Hahn needed his relievers. And if he gets hurt, then there’s time for him to recover before he has to hit free agency.

What drives me nuts is that they should have been stocking the beer league team the last 2 seasons. They had no depth and imagined they were competing, they needed these guys more then!

Fwiw, Yoshinobu was at 6.29 K/BB last year.

So you’re saying they will sign Scott Barlow next? Because they’re not wearing Royals jerseys.

Mitch Kupchak comes to mind.

Although the Halos paid a high price for those two, it wasn't out of line with what other teams were paying for pitching at the trade deadline last year. Giolito was outperforming Lynn, so he returned more than Lynn last year, for example.

Straight up, answer this. The Raiders offer 3 firsts including this year, 3 seconds including this year, and Maxx Crosby for that pick. Do you say no?

No idea what the actual offers will be, but I wouldn't trade away Williams unless I got a haul like that.

At least in my eyes, the harder question is what to do if someone offers you an insane deal. The Raiders offer you 3 firsts, 3 seconds, and Maxx Crosby for this pick. Thats a half insane but also plausible offer (Crosby today said to trade him if they change coaches). You have turned the 2023 first pick into 2 pro bowlers, 4 first round picks, and 5 second round picks. Was it worth going with Justin Fields and risking using the franchise tag on him? Thats tough.

If they're "Top 100 types" by the trade deadline, that could leave Baltimore feeling they have more resources to use and make them more willing to make a move. This is a potential additional benefit of holding onto the trade deadline.

I don't know what the deal was, but when Anderson suddenly started to fall apart in April 2022, that was right when the whole team collapsed that year. The game where Anderson had 3 errors early and where I started joking that it looked like the Mon-stars had stolen the team's baseball abilities - Abreu had an error, there was another play on the IF that could have been an error, then suddenly the whole team collapsed into an 8 game losing streak that they never recovered from. I don't know what the deal was, but boy that stretch sure seemed like there was "Way more going on than we know about". That was the stretch where LaRussa decided to put Leury batting 3rd because "he looked good in batting practice" or whatever. It all looked like a mess and Anderson was a disaster at that point, somehow this all fits together in a way that I never figured out.

Are you crossing it up with the part where Yermin Mercedes said he was retiring? That's what your words sound like to me right here?

Overall yeah, I don't think I'd like this one. For the White Sox this would be a move that, if it didn't work out perfectly, would be really expensive. Put this in with Moncada's bad back and you might as well throw in the towel on spending for a year. Maybe the Giants get away with this because of their coaching staff? If they do, then they have one valuable staff out there.

These were all posts before you decided to start complaining about how unfair the site was being to you by having too many negative people. I will grant you that "what are you smoking" was posted before these, but that poster didn't come in and say how unfair you were being to them with all these lines. I'm part of the negative crowd. I responded to you with points about the catcher, about the other positive players they lost, the possibility of guys getting hurt or traded. Am I a drama queen spending 3 months whining?

Banister played for the Royals from 2007-2010. You seem pretty offended by people not being positive, which is exactly the point. If you don’t like that people are responding with reasons why optimism isn’t justified, then come up with better reasons. The only one ranting about how unfair it is that people are responding to you with their opinions is you.

Linked to #s 11 and 17 but not a lot of other noise. One is Profar’s brother, so already an MLB connection. No obvious place for the bulk of Their money to be spent. This sounds kinda normal for the White Sox.

First of all, “made hires from outside the organization” is an interesting way to gloss over the fact that they brought in the entire 2018 KC Royals staff. And team. And kept the same flop of a manager. So if no derision is allowed about that, then we are gonna have a problem. But more than that, you complain about not being met with complete derision for being positive, but the best versions of this we get were “oh Graveman sucked last year” (he didn’t) and “thank God Grandal is gone we have to be better now (our new catcher was worse). It sure sounds like you’re insisting that you need to be able to be positive without anyone questioning it and without having to make any sort of intelligent justification. We all just need to cheer louder! Frankly, the page was largely like that a year ago, those who said they were a shitty team were the ones shouted down. But, we also brought better takes than this weak stuff. So this can definitely change. If you’re not willing to justify your position, then don’t make one.

According to Fangraphs, the only 2 players the White Sox had worth <-1 fWAR last year were...Oscar Colas and Gavin Sheets. Who happen to be potentially back in their RF rotation. Guys that the White Sox are missing - 1.5 fWAR from Jake Burger, 2.2 fWAR from punchy mcspitonbabyface, 1.6 fWAR from Giolito, and a trace from other guys like Lynn, Lopez, Kelly. They are also potentially missing 1.6 fWAR for Santos depending on the health of his arm. The two big contributors, Cease and Robert, also both have some downside risk. We are hoping Cease is better next year, but if his fastball continues to weaken this isn't required. We are hoping Robert stays healthy, but this isn't required, and Robert also is heavily relying on extreme athletic ability due to a pretty aggressive approach at the plate, that may not work forever as well. So while they cleared out some negative with Anderson, they cleared out some positive guys in the trades and as a free agent or two as well. Some guys will have to improve to balance out what was lost as well.

You could talk me into going lower, but it requires the truly epic haul of picks and probably a player or two. I come back to the Raiders as they could do this - Maxx Crosby + 3 firsts + 3 seconds definitely has my attention even though they're outside the top 10.

This could absolutely happen just by random chance, fwiw. The White Sox finished 5 games ahead of the Royals last year, but the Royals had a better run differential than the White Sox, so those two teams were actually inverted based on how they performed. Random stuff does happen like that.

I don't remember this but I don't think there were a ton of rumors, in part because Hahn pulled off two other major trades that offseason with Boston and Washington so there weren't a ton of buyers left.

There is a $15 million cost for “benefits” that each team incurs, in addition to some other complex rules for contracts like Robert that increase in value every year. When the White Sox started 2022 with a payroll over $190 million, they probably had about $15 million under the tax, maybe a little less. Their payroll in ‘23 started off lower and the tax line went up by $3 million, so in ‘23 they definitely had space for a big addition without coming close to the tax.