Balta1701

This isn't the NBA. Practically no one cares about MLB playoff ratings, nor should you. They make up a tiny slice of MLB's overall revenue. There's probably like 1 commercial marketing guy who cares about that. Frankly, MLB is better off when different franchises make the ALCS other than New York or Boston fairly regularly, because spreading the success around leads to those teams selling more season tickets and building stronger fanbases long term. It is good for MLB that the Rangers are back in the playoffs in a big population center, that will help grow the game in that area and it will help create new long term ad sales and purchase agreements for that franchise. It isn't bad for MLB that everyone hates the Astros, either, although there is less excitement here than there was before their run began. It would be good for MLB if this turned out to be a good, competitive series, with few blowouts and it running 6 or 7 games, but still, the impact of getting a team that missed the playoffs for a decade back in the ALCS is bigger than pretty much anything else.

Jose Abreu's regular season OPS in 2020 was .987. Very few first basemen win MVP awards with .831 OPS's, even in virus-shortened seasons. His playoff OPS was not higher than his regular season OPS.

1. Clearly they are going to have to spend some money. Their starting rotation right now is Cease, Kopech, Toussaint, Zombie, Dracula, Scholtens, Lambert. Even if they decide to alienate their fanbase with a domestic violence issue, they still need arms here. Further, their bullpen is tolerable from the LH side, but if Santos has a serious injury (which seems likely), their best right handed reliever is, I guess, Bryan Shaw? They need people here just to fill out a roster. 2. I have no problem having a weaker hitter at DH for now. However, I absolutely want it to be someone who can play a position, and Gavin Sheets can play no where on the diamond other than 1b. Go spend the money on a Duvall or something like that, so that he can play the OF part time, DH part time, and you have a backup for Robert on the roster for at least part of the year.

Keuchel was on the mound in the game where Danny Farquhar caught em.

You can say this all you want but in the end the right decision was to turn down Kimbrel’s option and look elsewhere. That was true in November 2021, March 2022, and September 2022. You’d be complaining louder if the White Sox’s organization wasn’t so awful that Pollock turned down money to leave, too.

Well, it would certainly appear difficult for the division to wind up worse than this year, that seems true.

I seriously doubt that $170 million leaves them with a projection that is any better than in the 70s. But really, is Cease, Kopech, Toussaint, Unknown, Unknown, maybe Davis Martin midseason, with that bullpen, going to get you 70 wins? Maybe if there's some miracles out of the callups. If you had some balance to it, you spent $30 million on the hitting and $40 million on the pitching, maybe you've got a shot. Or, you have to push to $250 million, note that you didn't say you were willing to do that.

Catching the reference? Picking up the option on a guy who you think can be traded, but who turns out only to be worth a bad contract coming back - that was the Kimbrel set of mistakes.

"We're going to trade Tim for a Haul so we will pick up his $14 million option but we don't actually want him on the team so I hope nothing goes wrong with this strategy" seems super familiar.

The answer could absolutely be "regular playing time" as well. It could also be that one team goes to 2/$26.

I’m not a gambler, but the Twins were 1.5 run favorites in this game and boy did I think seriously about figuring out how to create an account to take that one.

What do we think the money looks like? Get rid of Anderson and Eloy and they're at maybe $90-100 million as a starting point, assuming no bad money comes back for Eloy. Rizzo has a $17 million option, so assuming the Yankees turn that down let's say $12 million for him? Matt Chapman has been a 3-4 WAR player each of the last few years, so this seems like a "team record contract" guy? Bleacher Report had him at $25 million a year a while back, let's use that number. Duvall was 1/$7 last year and, although he didn't finish a full year, he was a lot better than he was in 2022, so it doesn't seem ridiculous to guess $10 million. Heyward actually outhit and outplayed Duvall, so I'm going to give him 1/$7 million. Rosario is completely up and down, I honestly don't know, I'm going to guess $7 million but feel free to disagree with me, that's Spotrac's market value on him. DeJong: I'll just guess league minimum. Hedges was signed for $5 million and was bad, so let's drop that down to $2 million I've added about $70 million to the payroll, pushing the team up to basically the payroll where it was last year. Given that free agent costs always run high, I might well still have underestimated things, maybe I'm a bit high on Chapman but under on a couple other guys. The problem, of course, is that it now has a starting rotation of Cease, Kopech, Toussaint, possible undead zombie, and Urena. They have a bullpen where their closer may need arm surgery (Santos), they have a couple of lefties in Crochet and Bummer but both were awful last year (although Crochet may have a real chance of contributing next year), and...I honestly don't know what else they even have. Does Shaw count? How many of these guys are even big leaguers? There's your problem. It basically takes "Spending up to last year's pay" to have a remote shot of even fixing the offense and improving the defense. You've done that...even then there are still issues such as a lack of depth and injury-prone positions and a catchers' spot that may hit .090, but you have no money left to fix the pitching staff! You need like $70 million to bring in 2 starters, a swingman, and a couple relievers, and even then you're still relying on Kopech and Toussaint who might well be terrible! You need like $70 million to fix the offense. Unless the White Sox are going to put out a payroll to rival the Dodgers, and blow past the luxury tax line, you can't do all of this while still finding pitchers.

The other part where it probably matters is later in October. Last year, having the Phillies pitchers do the extra round while the Astros pitchers were fresher was absolutely, 100% certainly key in that World Series. Both the starters and the bullpen for the Phillies were simply worn out by the time they got there.

Somewhat on topic - wow, Detroit has exactly 0 players under contract for next year. They have 2 player options, Baez and Rodriguez, and Baez is the only one who will probably pick it up. They only have a handful of arb-eligible guys, it looks like they have a starting payroll of $50 million-ish including Baez and all of their arb guys (and I'm not sure they will keep Meadows). They had a $125 million payroll last year. They have a ton to spend even if they hold Baez.

"We need to bring in new players to change around the culture." "I don't see how us bringing in new players will affect the team". Any contradiction there?

On the free agent market, everything is an overpay, on average. You have to be willing to seemingly overpay to get guys to sign here. Guys who you think were worth $10 million a year are now getting $12 or $13 million a year because salaries are growing that quickly. Ya just gotta be prepared for it.

So they're quoting a guy talking about cheating who actually made Josh Donaldson correct when he yelled "it's not sticky any more" at him?

Nothing other than the risk of having no starting SS on the roster if Anderson gets a better offer somewhere else (or frankly, if he wants to leave and is willing to take less money to do so - and for a reminder this has happened to a White Sox player recently). This could lead them to having to sign a different SS, perhaps one they can't necessarily say "allows them to compete next year".

For Vaughn, yeah I don't believe there's a strong justification for moving him. His value right now is "backup 1b", you might as well wait to see if he does anything next year before we talk about non-tendering him after 2024. For Eloy, there is some potential benefit in clearing out the contract, and I do believe his contract is still movable.

Where is this new culture coming from?

I agree. Go to town.

You can say that if they have 3 losses. 1-2 with 1 game to play isn’t a pattern in this sport. The Braves went 1-2 against the White Sox with a ‘27 Yankees offense. If the team with the buy won 66% of the games, there would be plenty of years where they went 2-2.

Houston? Verlander’s shutout start?

We call this rooting for the meteor.