Balta1701

There's a big difference between these two types of signings. With Fedde, you could call it a gamble. The guy looked to have some nonzero chance at outperforming his contract, at having figured things out overseas. I'd be ok with something like that again. Flexen looks like a different matter to me. He was coming off a year when his big league ERA was 7. HIs peripherals were terrible, almost as bad as Thorpe. I look at him as "Cheap innings". There's nothing obvious about his profile that says he had a chance at improvement. These we don't need. If you can give me a guy who has some chance at being better, someone who has a chance at being tradable, I'm ok with that. Someone coming off TJS, or someone who had a dramatic drop-off for reasons. Walker Buehler comes to mind here - you could definitely talk me into a 2 year deal for him with an opt-out after year 1, although I'm not sure if Getz would do that since "We don't do opt outs" was a thing for the White Sox previously. I find the Soroka gamble a lot smarter than the Flexen signing, if we were doing things like that again.

Ideally, the way this goes is that you develop several players who are interchangeable, and you use the DH spot to give people rest or to limit the exposure of people who are bad at defense. I guess Ideally the best answer would have been Ohtani but our owner laughed at the concept of signing him. Had we not failed at developing guys, Eloy, Vaughn, and Sheets would have been an ideal set of guys to rotate through DH because none of them are great at defense and you could play matchups with them. This year with the White Sox, depends on who is ready to come up at the end of Spring Training. If Ramos is ready to come up, then that would move Vargas there. If Elko can come up, it moves Vaughn there sometimes. If Fletcher can be an effective corner OF, that would move Benintendi there. Is that important? Not really, they all work.

The famously successful White Sox format of paying premium prices for DHs.

Ah the famous compliment, being compared to Red Sox fans. Well done Getz.

Mike Clevinger beat up at least one woman and has other abuse allegations against him and Chris Getz paid a premium price for that in an offseason where he spent the whole time trying to find leadership.

Like a guy with an ERA of 10 at AAA? Just do me a favor, don't come back in a year if this Rice guy puts up a 1 WAR season and say that you called him being ok...because you're not willing to trade anything for him.

Then pick him up when he's put on waivers, same as Eder.

To be fair, I wasn't here because Chris Getz felt the need to willingly sign a player who no one else in the league wanted because he beats women.

Quite frankly, yes, Minor League relievers are garbage. Anyone remember when Rick Hahn spent 2018-2019 piling them up and then got literally 0 big league relievers out of the ones he traded for? Show me that he's actually able to have some success as a reliever. Dude literally has zero value right now. There is a good chance that he could be moved through waivers right now without being claimed. You're literally saying "They should give us this player for free".

Tim Hill? Picked up after being released. No reason for them to go after an Eder when they can just wait for guys to be released.

Let's face it...the Yankees got a LH reliever from the White Sox this year for a lower price than a prospect.

Even then I'd have to imagine they would sit around and wait for him to be put on waivers this season. Same as Colas right now, you just have to expect that these guys will be available for nothing this year.

I don't see how Eder could have any value right now. Would you swap in a better-performing minor league pitcher, someone maybe like Burke who could help them this season?

Given how little the White Sox have to trade presumably he's coming back as one piece for Crochet? Or do you have another concept in mind? He's not on a rule 5 list right?

I'll bite. Who is Rice?

This guy has neither played for the Royals nor is he a mid-30s "leader". That alone makes it different from last year. He's a minor-league journeyman at this point. Adding infield depth in the minors is rather important when you are likely to have guys like Ramos, Montgomery, and possibly Sosa who move up and down between the minors and the big leagues.

But that’s the same problem for Mayo then, you’ve just turned him into what, a 2.5 War player?

Does that put Basallo as a DH most of the time? Because that leaves a lot of the same issues as for bringing in Mayo.

In general, I would not be a fan of the White Sox using their resources to acquire a catching prospect, because at least for the next few years they absolutely have to try Quero out to see if he's their guy. If they acquire Basallo, who gets moved to 1b? They can't both get 3 years to see if they can develop as the starting catcher.

I can totally see LaRussa sending a .100 hitting Leury Garcia up for a bunch of these if this rule existed in 2022.

Because no one has ever been annoyed by....Red Sox fans.

Naw, Rodon wasn't.

That the only time people can point to where his staff performed exceptionally well, his staff was cheating. He was inarguably a great cheater.

But the thing is - with the Montas deal, you're looking at a guy who put up 1.4 fWAR last year and has a projection of 1.9 fWAR next year, and was worth 0 fWAR in 2023. If that costs 2/$34 million, is it really the case for a team like Baltimore that they can afford guys like Montas?