Balta1701

I’m gonna go with “new White Sox GM playing with the press, trying to see if he can drive more interest with a leak.”

Massively overvaluing this guy.

I used ERA because that’s what Baltimore would be getting based on his performance last year, a mid rotation innings eater with an expected ERA around 4. That’s better than he was last year, but it’s not the “top of rotation” guy people want him to be in a trade. Second, back end of the top 100. Third, the trade market for pitching was very hot at the deadline this year: that’s why Lynn returned a big price, that’s why Scherzer returned a big price, that’s why Verlander returned a big price. The trade market last offseason was super weak, Sean Murphy returned a couple non-top-100 prospects and I believe he was the biggest trade last year. This is why I think the right strategy is almost certainly going to be to hold Cease - there are 2 reasons why his price might be higher at the trade deadline. You are likely to get better pitching prices at the trade deadline because of limited supply, which is absolutely not the case right now as there are a bunch of pitchers for both FA and trade, and on top of that we need to see if Cease can either get velocity back or prove to trading partners that he can be effective with lower velocity. Right now, you are trying to price him while pretending his 2023 performance didn’t happen, and unfortunately it did and it was really disappointing. Finally, how much “cover your ass” leaking has happened from the white Sox over the last season. You really think that “there was this great deal for Cease but we turned it down” isn’t something that someone would have leaked at this point? The Orioles and everyone else could see his velocity drop and how it affected his whole performance, you can’t cover that up, there’s plenty of video.

Yes. Clearly I have been far too pessimistic about the White Sox the last few years. Please brag more about their success the last two years, I would love to hear more about how happy you are and the excellent job they have done.

If I was Baltimore and those are the prices for Cease, I will go pay a lower price for Burnes and get a significantly better pitcher for this year, or if I’m willing to pay that kind of price I will go to Seattle and get Gilbert, an equal quality pitcher to Cease with several years more control.

I mean I don’t think you can sell a guy at all if you aren’t confident that his UCL isn’t partially torn.

Right now I don’t think news worth that, I think his value right now is 1 top 100 guy and 1-2 lower value guys. The velocity drop and the hard hit rate this year should look like red flags to any team acquiring him - if he’s a 3.9 ERA pitcher for 2 years while throwing a bunch of innings, that’s useful, but it’s not worth 2 top 100 prospects with this many options on the FA and trade market. If a strong deal wasn’t there at the deadline last year, he’s got to be worth less right now based on his second half, the extra options available right now, and the less control. Maybe in Feb, if someone missed out on everything they might get desperate and overpay, but not right now.

Selling High on Santos? Didn’t he and the season with an elbow injury?

I don’t think Bal will give up 2 top 100s for Cease.

The idea that they might trade for Perez because they think they can win now doesn’t fit with this. The idea that we must acquire all former royals so Merrifield is on his way…this kinda reinforces that.

Shoulder surgery and out for all of 2024? I will probably go with the 5 nontender candidates. The White Sox clearly need warm bodies for 2024; and maybe one of them turns into a useful reliever. With Wright, even if you keep him he’s into arb eligible years before he ever pitches again, and you have to imagine 2025 is almost a rehab and recovery season not one where he’s useful so the best you might get is a useful 2026 and 2027?

Well you’re trading a 0 fWAR DH for two position players who together were 4 fWAR last year. While you’re saving them $13 million this year, if they were that desperate for money they didn’t have to keep those guys if they had options. So I think the Twins say no. Maybe they might think about it for one of them?

That would be a big improvement?

I mean...he could certainly be on the IL.

Eloy isn't an ace pitcher? I agree, but I'm uncertain why that was pointed out.

Eloy put up a .758 OPS while on the field last year. His HR rate was low, his GB rate was high, his walk rate was poor. If he had produced like he did in 2022 you could say this and be accurate, he wasn't productive last year.

One thing I was thinking about here - the reason why you specifically called out "Ryan Cordell" here is that, in my eyes, there were disturbingly few of these sorts of guys acquired during the last rebuild. So few that you can name one of the couple guys they tried and everyone knows what you are talking about. Look at the 2017-2018 rosters, how many busted 25 year old prospects from other teams are there taking playing time when they had it to give? You have Narvaez who was a rule 5 draft minor league selection, you have Palka, you have Dylan Covey (Rule 5 draft), Charlie Tilson (Traded for Zach Duke), and I guess Cordell and Nicky Delmonico. One of these actually did turn into a decent big leaguer, and of course I'll grumble under my breath about what was done with that. The 2017 White Sox starting pitching staff had 4 guys who were age 30-35 in Holland, Miguel Gonzalez, Mike Pelfrey, and James Shields, along with Quintana who was traded midseason. Which of these 35 year old guys was going to be a part of their competitive roster in 3 years? None of them. They acquired these veterans, paid them sometimes tolerable money (Holland, Nova, Santiago, etc.), and didn't trade them for scraps. In this one trade, Getz got just about as many "Random guys who might be worth a look" as Hahn got in the entire 3+ year rebuild process. Hahn did not churn the bottom of his 40 man roster to see if he could find anything useful, he plugged those veterans in so he could get innings and leadership or whatever. Maybe it doesn't work out, maybe they get nothing out of any of these guys, but if they're going to lose 100 games either way, why not lose 100 games with 25 year old pitchers rather than 35 year old pitchers?

I agree with credit here. The worst thing the White Sox could have done this offseason was to insist that they could make themselves win 83 games and be competitive for the AL Central or the Wild Card, every time they do that with a 70 win team it sets them back for years with bad contracts and traded away talent. The two moves they've made so far may not make them better long term, but neither is a move you make when you're going to sell everything out to try to luck your way back to .500 at the expense of the next half decade.

Reinsdorf will be thrilled, gets rid of a new school guy and gets his team press.

I barely think about him "overcoming obstacles" I just enjoy his broadcasts. While I'm not into the cheesy parts that fill time, I find him to be one of the most educated and modern broadcasters available. Didn't they have him doing a "modern broadcast" during the AS game or something like that this year on ESPN2? That's why I like him, I get to hear a discussion of how offensive production actually works rather than a discussion of how important it is to bunt all the time. I also found him quite good during the 2020-2021 seasons when there were actually a handful of dramatic games, and I think some of the stuff people like less was more emphasized in 2022 and 2023 because they had so little drama.

Here's the chat from last offseason. The setup people were imagining was Liam (pre injury) plus Eloy for Francisco Alvarez and Jeff McNeil (who was coming off an all star season in '22), and you can find several "We need Eloy's offense" posts in there saying "he might hit 40 home runs this season" and "I am holding Eloy for sure" posts at that point. You can imagine how the reaction went when I said "this is so ridiculously one sided that it takes adding Anderson to get it to balance".

I think that we caught a wave, the trade deadline this year was a time with a lot of teams wanting to compete and not a lot willing to trade starting pitching, so teams made deals they otherwise wouldn't have. Take a look at the returns the Mets got for their starters, they loaded up despite teams taking on $20 million a season. If a team is that desperate for starters right now, they have free agency, they have Oakland constantly trying to sell everything, they have Cleveland and Milwaukee both seemingly in places where they should be selling front line guys, they have other teams like the Rays who always have arms to move. Several of these teams would not have sold off players in the season, they will do so right now. The trade market has more options than over the summer, and there's an entire second market in free agency with some quality arms. Maybe someone misses out on several and gets desperate in February. I could understand that happening, a rush depletes the market and someone feels they have no choice to make a move. For now? Cease is what, the 4th best starter on the MLBTR list of trade candidates? Are we expecting there to be so many trades that 10 or 20% of the MLB top 100 prospects change teams this offseason?

LaVine was traded?

You're right, I substantially underestimated the demand for pitching at the trade deadline this year, I'll take that. I will also point out that last year I was laughed at when I said that Eloy + Anderson wasn't going to return the #1 prospect in baseball and that we shouldn't do that because Eloy might hit 40 home runs this year. I'm gonna call myself more correct on that one. So sometimes I'm right, and sometimes others are right.

You could probably get the Four Seasons Total Landscaping available on this schedule.