Roughneck

How can you see a tweet from 5:03pm today. ARE YOU FROM THE FUTURE?!

C'mon. This may apply to you, but it's silly to think this applied to a big portion of the fanbase. Do you think the people in the stands last year were there because of hope that we'd land Machado or Harper? No. Sox fans have dealt with a lot of crap. We've watched almost all of the mild/fair-weather portion of our fanbase defect to the Cubs. We saw the players strike in a year the Sox should have won a World Series. We sat through countless years where there was no hope at all, like 2013, then watched the other assholes win in 2016. There will be a lot less interest obviously because the team would be worse in 2019 than with one of those guys, but the majority of the admittedly small mass of people who care are just going to be extremely angry. And if somehow the Sox start winning division titles regularly, the ones who did tap out will return.

As the great Ted DiBiase said, everybody's got a price. He might really want to go to the Yankees, but at some point there is a dollar amount that would make him say "Damn, I can't turn that down." Is that $50 mil above NY? $100? I don't know, but the Sox will obviously pay a premium to get him if they do. Fans are going to be irate regardless, but I don't think him getting under $300 million from the Yankees looks that terrible for the Sox. We've had reports all along that he wanted to play in NY, and it might work out that the Sox offered a bunch more money but he went to the Yankees anyway. It's a built-in excuse for the Sox. Manny signing for under $300 with the Phillies? That would be a huge problem for them.

Yep. Seems like the Sox have what is clearly a better offer and Machado *really* wants to play for the Yankees so he's giving them a last chance to get within the zip code of the Sox' offer. The only way that could possibly be positive is if the Sox' offer is something like $100 million above the Yankees' and there's no realistic way of them jumping up that much.

Are you talking about Garfien or one of our posters?

It's possible, but I think Harper is going to drag it out until the end of the month or into February. Them drawing the Nationals back into it seems to point to the bidding not being where they expected it to be. Add into it that the Dodgers still haven't cleared enough payroll and supposedly don't want to go long-term on Harper, and the usual deep pockets Yankees/Cubs/Red Sox or even Rangers/Mariners/Cardinals are out of the bidding, and I think this things aren't looking so great for Boras. I think Boras will zero in on whoever loses out on Machado and have a Mexican standoff with that team, the Dodgers, and maybe they can draw the Padres into it. Worst case scenario, the deal isn't there in February and Harper decides to go back to Washington for something nuts like $50 mil for one season for one final shot with that franchise. Boras likes to play games and I don't see this ending soon.

But even then, he could be doing it to get attention. He gains a hundred followers with that, then comes back tomorrow with "Wow, NY isn't out of it. Just heard that the Yanks have stepped up their offer and things are getting VERY close" and then suddenly he gains several hundred more followers. People do that crap all the time. And it goes back to message board and comment sections before the retweet came to be. They get off on creating rumors and acting like insiders so people think they're important.

I feared going into this offseason and the Sox would whiff like the Bulls in 2010 and then try to sell a mediocre signing as great. It's obviously just speculation at this point but... Moustakas is Greek for Carlos Boozer.

Looks like that random Yankee fan had the wrong Manny. Someone should have told him not to... Acta fool.

It goes well beyond that. The entire 2005/06 offseason happened on Wednesdays. The Thome/Rowand trade got it started the day before Thanksgiving, and pretty much every moved that followed happened on a Wednesday, spawning the "White Sox Wednesday" meme. There were a few moves in the subsequent years happening on Wednesdays and that was always mentioned.

Probably both depending on the situation. Here, I imagine they wouldn't give a specific dollar amount because they don't want to price the Sox out. If Lozano says "Phillies are at 7/280. Can you top that?" Maybe the Sox back out because they set an absolute limit of $270m. But if he says "Phillies have a higher offer. What can you do?" maybe the Sox throw in an extra $15-20 mil to get the deal done today. Also, that doesn't put the agent in an awkward position of having to admit he lied, costing the player leverage. The Sox are likely going to come up a little at this point because they want to get the deal closed, so being vague is good. But if the Sox tell him to go pound sand at $280, it'll be bad when he comes back to them the next day and asks if the $250 offer is still good.

I agree. I mean, if that guy made his own email address publically available, he should expect to get mocking emails when he's proven wrong, But if he didn't make his email address public and someone found it, that's wrong. And in general, it's a good idea to not harass people via email. Tag him in a tweet laughing at him and call it a day.

I think we can all agree Dan Clark is the dog shit jabroni, however.

He make Dan Clark humble. Old country way.

Reading the posts from peavey, are we sure this guy isn't the Iron Sheik?

I don't care how many turn it down, just as long as Manny doesn't.

If it's for the same number of years, it should be. Especially because NY taxes would take about $10 mil more from Manny than IL taxes.

Unless she had a colostomy, she does.

He's not really talking politics. Trump is just one of the names which came up for that post. Best I can tell, his posts are like Madlibs.

I was going to say the only thing missing from the Caulfield parody post was a random mention of Trump. You don't miss a beat.

So... someone says ban bets are for small dicks, and you want to make a ban bet over who has the biggest dick? And I imagine that would be beyond the duties of unpaid moderators.

I've read this post 4 times and laughed harder each time.

You shouldn't need to be talked off a ledge over a $4 mil one year contract for a decent veteran who is blocking nobody.

wut

Because we're signing both, duh.