Balta1701

I…what?

I mean, you'd absolutely think about doing this if you were the White Sox right?

I would absolutely support an NFL and NBA-like signing period start date. Shut everything down in November, focus on the awards, maybe set some rules for what kinds of things can be discussed, and then allow signings to start either last week or this week - see if the competitive teams suddenly are jumping over themselves to get things done right at the start and that creates pressure like you see in the other sports. A deadline at the end definitely works, we saw that in 2021 as well, but it seems harder to implement if a guy is somehow just out of luck if he's not signed by a certain date.

The Mets were clearly interested in him, that was leaked yesterday along with a dollar amount. The White Sox seemingly had to come back and beat that dollar amount. It's a sensible gamble, if he has a great first half he's easily moveable, if he's terrible then it's a minor loss, and hopefully he at least becomes a moveable contract by the middle of the year.

There's interest, but no one is close to offering the kind of value people want him to bring, and people are using the media and social media leaks to try to drive interest. This is pretty darn obvious at this point.

And I said it was coming - based on all these reports of high demand for him and it being not debatable that he's a front of the rotation pitcher, why hasn't he moved yet?

FWIW, the White Sox averaged 3.96 runs/game last year for 29th in MLB. For Cease they averaged 4.27 runs/game, which is above average for them, but which would have been tied with Pittsburgh at 22nd in runs/game if it lasted the whole season. So offense slightly better with Cease pitching, but not a blowout.

The problem still is that FIP isn't capturing what his problem was last year - FIP thinks that he was the same pitcher in 2022 and 2023 basically, when he clearly wasn't. His strikeout rate stayed almost the same, but his hard contact rates went from in the top 10% of all MLB in 2022 to the bottom 40% of all qualified pitchers in MLB in 2023. His expected ERA went from top 10% in MLB in 2022 (true TOR Pitcher) to 47th percentile (mid rotation innings eater) in 2023. Because these hard hit rates are mostly being absorbed as more home runs and more hits overall, FIP is saying "Oh that's just bad luck in 2023 and great luck in 2022" and factoring this out. You can find long records of White Sox fans here saying that he had lost velocity and wasn't the same pitcher in 2023 and they were right as he was getting hit harder the whole year as a consequence.

So basically the $11 million or whatever it was number leaked yesterday and they waited to see if the two remaining teams would up their bids a little bit?

I do think we're going to challenge the long-term attendance low at this park of 1.34 million back in 1999 (The Kids can Play!). I think the front office is new enough that most of them have long leashes. I wouldn't be surprised if a new coaching staff appeared at the end of this year, but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if Grifol was kept. No reason to pay two coaches right, and he knows the important KC tricks.

Even if it turns out that everything is fine by February, I have to imagine he can't pass a physical right now and that alone will render him basically untradeable. What competing team is going to give you anything of value for a guy who might be healthy this year but where that can't be guaranteed? If you want to sell high on him, show me that he can pitch 10 more innings in the bigs first and talk to me in May once I am confident that he can pitch and pass a physical.

Every time this list comes up I add Jake Peavy because I've never wanted a player to shut up and actually pitch more than him. Never seen a guy talk so much while doing so little. Maybe Joe Kelly can fit into this role too?

Waiting until the deadline or next offseason also gives other teams a chance to have breakout prospects, so teams other than the Orioles could afford him, and if he has a first half or full season comparable to last year then maybe some team will view him as more of a sure thing that they’d be willing to bet hugely on.

It depends on the year and the Market. Last year, the Mets were pushing hard in free agency, creating a huge market for players, so teams jumped to get things done. That week last year you had DeGrom to the Rangers right before the meetings, Verlander, Judge, Bogaertz, and Turner all agreeing to contracts during the meetings, and the Braves trade for Murphy a couple of days afterwards.

here's a selection. Get real guys it was a very avg haul with Semien keying the deal. Them talking about phegley is especially lol worthy. Come on man. Haha! A's fans are talking long term when their GM is known to trade players as they are going into their arbitration years. Its possible that two or three of the traded players will have long careers, just not in an A's uniform, lol. think Hahn made a great move getting Samardzija for what he had to give up. That being said I'm just looking at this as a 1 year rental for the time being. I think Samardzija as much as he loves the city and all, first and foremost wants to get paid top dollar. MLB is the only sport without a salary cap and players seem to take every advantage of it. I'm not trying to p!ss on anyone's parade here but this guy has said for a while now he intends to test the UFA market and I believe he will do just that. Not confident he'll be in a Sox uni in 2016 but I trust Hahn in making this team competitive the next few years with or without Samardzija. What a great deal for this team! Also, I just love hearing Rick Hahn talk. Pretty serious mancrush. (This one is specifically why I am not copying names) As I've said before, besides Wite I'm probably Marcus' biggest fan but he's gone in a heartbeat if he's the main piece in a deal for JS. (Same poster as above) Here's one specifically said to me when I dared question Samardzija's Exceptional record: "Would you say Chris Sale has been a good pitcher for the last 4 years? I ask because Sale and Samardzija have been on the exact same developmental scale over the last 4 years. Save for Sale getting hurt this year, I think their innings would look almost exactly the same. Sale's better, but Samardzija is still a very, very good pitcher." On Marcus: "He's certainly not irreplaceable. Who's volunteering to drive him to the airport?" A legit #2 for Danish/Semien is a relative small price to pay. I like Semien, but if the main part of the trade is Semien for Shark, it's done yesterday. I love you Rick (oh god this poster is still here) Hell Yeah!!! Fired up. Fantastic trade. Beane gets three guys, all of whom have a shot, but all of whom have legitimate flaws and none of which are top 100 guys. I make this trade every day. Whether it pans out or not, who knows, but on paper, I can't fault Rick H for this!!! Rick Hahn's walking along 5th Street in the gaslamp district making it rain. Rick f***ing Hahn. Kenny damned Williams. Holy crap. That is stealing from the A's. So much better then Danish and Trey IMO! Happy Happy Joy joy Seriously. Great trade. Semien is the only moderately concerning name in that deal. Sox are going to either get an extension or a draft pick at the end of the year too. I ain't mad. Wow, first the news of Robertson, now Shark AND the Sox did not have to give up Anderson,Montas, Danish, Hawkins or Ravelo! Well done Hahn. If he's a 4 WAR pitcher going forward, this deal is a steal and I absolutely love Semien. I support that. Would have preferred Beck being the pitcher over Bassitt, mainly because I think Bassitt can be a good reliever. Again...two guys, none of which are top 100 guys, a few months after the so called genius GM traded a top 10 prospect for Shark. Wow, I was really looking forward to Bassitt in the pen eventually, but if this is the entire deal then I love it! So it's just Bassitt + Semien? That's better than Semien, Trayce and Beck! I'm pretty surprised Bassitt and Beck have any value tbh. I've gone through about 50 pages and there's very scant traces of people saying we overpaid. There's a very uniform euphoria. Guess who the first person to specifically say "I still don't like it" was? And the very first reply I got? "That post is so full of fail". You should see the reactions I got when I dared to write that they were still a sub .500 team.

Well yeah, Billy Beane got an MVP candidate and an all star pitcher for Samardzija. He only pulled this off because he completely and utterly outmatched the GM he was trading with. On paper though, that trade back two players who the White Sox (and most of their fans) thought were worth very little. The reaction at the time was a whole lot of "we didn't give up very much to get Samardjiza this is awesome" and I don't think anyone would be happy if the White Sox sent Cease somewhere and the fans of the other team went "Boy was he cheaper than we expected this was awesome".

True - but at the time he had 3 years of control. Now he has only 2 years of control, which you have to take into account as well.

And yet, will you do that with what you think his return should be?

I don't buy that. Two top 100 prospects, one of them really strong, is what people seem to be asking for Cease right now - that's about what I'd give up for 2022 Cease. That's not the price for a 3 WAR pitcher with 2 years of control, that's the price for a TOR pitcher. That's what I was saying we should hope for at the trade deadline last year, and if it wasn't there, you wait until the offseason and hope he has a better second half. That's the price for 2 years of a top 5 pitcher in your league. He had a worse second half. He wasn't a top 5 pitcher or even a top of the rotation pitcher in 2023. If we want to demand that price for him, I get doing so - but that's the exact thought process that has gotten me to say that he'll be with the Sox on opening day this year, because other teams can work through these numbers just as I did. To get that price for him coming off what he did in 2023, either someone will need to get desperate enough to overpay, or he will have to go out and prove that he's more 2022 Cease than 2023 Cease next year.

I've at least got Lance Johnson here.

You wouldn't throw it out, but you would put it in context. Dylan Cease was a 4 fWAR pitcher basically each of the last 3 years, but if you go into his numbers in more detail there's more to learn. If we go to baseball-reference WAR, he was a 6 WAR pitcher in 2022 and a 2.5 WAR pitcher in 2023 (below your 3 WAR floor), and I think there's actually more to these numbers than the Fangraphs version. In 2022, Dylan Cease was excellent because of his contact profile - his expected batting average against was in the top 4% of baseball. Pair that with his elite strikeout rate, and you have an elite pitcher even though he has an elevated walk rate. In 2023, he lost over 1 mph from his fastball. While he kept his strikeout rate high, his contact profile went back to what it was in 2020 when he was a rookie, he gave up a lot of hard hits. People were saying in April that if Cease didn't find his fastball he was in trouble and I disagreed with them at the time - they were right! Cease lost velocity on his fastball, kept the strikeouts, but both his fastball and his slider were harder hit as a consequence. Fangraphs is actually filtering this out, because FIP stats normalize out variations in BABIP, but variations in BABIP caused by a different contact profile are actually real. So, the context is - yes, he was truly elite in 2022, but he lost velocity in 2023 and that hurt him in a way that he has to pitch around. Other teams can see that, if we could see here in April that he'd be in trouble with the reduced velocity then other teams can see it too, so they have to ask themselves whether they're willing to pay the price for the 2022 version if they have a high chance of getting the 2023 version. Also, the first time I typed this, my return key stopped working so I couldn't insert more paragraph spaces. WTF?

But are Rosenthal's reports something being fed to him by a biased source - Chris Getz, for example, trying to drive interest in a weak market, leaking "oh everyone is in on him the Dodgers are in on him the Orioles the Giants there's huge interest he's 90% likely to be moved for a huge return" - all of that can be reported if Chris Getz or someone very close to him tells you it. If it turns out that the person leaking all that stuff is lying...Rosenthal and others aren't going to burn their sources by revealing who it was telling them that. You guys won't suddenly stop believing Rosenthal's next insider report if this one turns out inaccurate. Why wouldn't the teams and reporters use each other like that, to try to drive a market?

Naw. If he’s burned his bridge with this staff, trade him for someone else’s busted or injured player. We aren’t getting a new coach, GM, and development staff from this one any time soon, if they don’t want him then don’t keep him.

And yeah, that was clearly a >$60 million discount from his fair value. He also is getting over $40 million from his 2 arb years, so playing out these 2 years and signing a $500 million deal nets him $540 million. It was a strong offer and a reasonable one for a guy 2 years from FA but it was also a discount compared to what he would get 2 years later as a FA. Boras isn’t dumb, he knows the market for these guys. He won’t advise his guys to sign for less than the market, but if a guy gets a full market value offer from the Yankees and wants to play there, he won’t miss it on the off chance of a better one.

If they won’t play him, then he’s not depth, he’s a wasted roster spot.