35thstreetswarm

I am more worried by this than any tweet in the Machado thread. I had dreams of making the Craft Kave my home away from home during the coming resurgence. It's perfect. I pray they don't ruin it.

I think you can believe these moves are worth the risk and justifiable from a baseball and/or financial perspective...while still acknowledging that it would be pretty humiliating for the franchise if we end up with the Manny Machado superfriends and no Manny Machado.

Good enough to make the Sox a much more attractive destination (from a baseball perspective) for player #2 if player #1 is inked to a deal, that's for sure. ...assuming the Sox are willing to commit that kind of $ to two players in the first place (which I have my doubts about).

I’d say zero, particularly in a situation like this with such large dollars involved. “Lots of people willingly surrender tens of millions of dollars because they think the team offering less money is cooler—happens all the time. I’m sure it does.” I’ve never seen any notion so widely accepted despite being unsupported by evidence or economics.

...except it wouldn't be great, because they would have passed up the opportunity to add proven, premium, young talent to the promising core that "turned the corner". They would be one Machado/Harper worse than they could have been. Sorry, but your position -- that we should avoid adding premium talent because there is a chance our existing talent level isn't high enough -- is indefensible.

Since the national discussion about Harper's likely destination now seems to be uninterested in minor details like whether the team in question has room for Harper on its roster, has the financial flexibility to pay him, or has met with him/expressed any interest in signing him, why not throw the Red Sox into the mix? They are the defending World Series champs. They are also very popular. Bryce Harper would hit home runs in Fenway. I hereby declare the Red Sox the new frontrunners to sign Harper.

I don’t know that it’s possible for this board to take the Dodgers more seriously. Most of he board seems to have assumed Harper is already there, despite the fact they haven’t made any of the moves necessary to allow it to happen.

...and I don’t blame them. I don’t love the idea of massive long-term free agent contracts either, and if the Sox were in the middle of their window of contention I’d want them to steer clear of these kinds of signings. But we are in a unique situation where we should be willing to swallow it because this would be so important to jump starting our rebuild. Really hoping the true market for the terms these guys want winnows down to the two “desperate” teams (Sox/Phils).

Precisely. The Cubs and Dodgers might be able to match our offer if they had more payroll flexibility and didn’t have a bunch of positional conflicts. And if my aunt had a **** she’d be my uncle. Talk to me when either team has actually done the things necessary for them to make a competitive offer for Harper.

Unlike the Dodgers, the Sox are desperate for Harper to alter the whole trajectory of their franchise, and have staked themselves to that desperation publicly. They stripped down their payroll for the express purpose of adding a major free agent. Sure, this contract would out of character for Reinsdorf too, but the Sox have much more natural motivation to break character.

Look at this tweet—YES! Oh, another one—we’re f***ed. Is “peavy” a bot?

...and unlike past free agent misses, this will be a clear case of “won’t” rather than “can’t”. They’ve made a big show of how they stripped the payroll down to nothing for the express purpose of signing free agents. There is no question they have the financial resources to blow other teams out of the water if they want to. If they are outbid, it will be by a team with less “room” for the player than the Sox have, and thus an admission that even when they are in a perfect position to pay up for a player they’ve announced they desperately want, they aren’t willing to make it happen. They will be opting out of the “big boys” club.

I’m puzzled as well — it’s reached a point where they will look incredibly foolish and un-savvy if they come up empty handed here. Maybe it’s the hopeful fan in me talking, but I’m going to apply Occam’s razor to this one and assume they’re talking big because they know they have the payroll flexibility to win this bidding war and intend to do so.

I also don't trust Hahn to trade for players, or the organization to develop them. I frankly hope the Sox avoid "good players" altogether, and maybe think about burning down the stadium.

The mood will be sour, at least among die-hard fans like those on this board. I started the offseason thinking that either one of these guys would be a huge windfall, but I was in the "not counting on it" camp. All the stories about the White Sox pursuit got my hopes up, and got me thinking about just how unique an opportunity this is to supplement the rebuild with elite free agent talent (and boost fan interest), and that for once there is no real financial barrier to the White Sox doing so, at least from a payroll perspective. I've come to think this is kind of a crossroads for the Sox, and if they don't make it happen I'll be upset. I think there are many others like me. I recognize that this is not an ideal place to be from a mental health perspective.

This is the weirdest thread

The Sox will not burn a year of prime-career service time for two weeks of PT during the 2019 season, because it would be baseball malpractice to do so. It's really that simple.

I think that's more realistic, but not a better option all else being equal. While it may not be likely or even plausible, I think Machado plus Harper makes far more impact than what we could cobble together using other lesser free agents. Sorry, I now realize I misread your post before (which I thought was implying the point I am making here.)

And imagine Harper and Moncada joining forces to form the greatest head-of-hair combo the MLB has ever seen.

Good, then that rules out the mid-market teams

Says who? The Sox were near the top of the payroll list relatively recently. And even if $200 were some magic barrier for us, there's a fair amount of room between $60 million and $200 million. Signing these guys doesn't come anywhere near maxing us out.

Low. And I think that attempting to sign both (who gets the bigger contract?), and the involvement of Boras, each introduce a host of complications that make this whole thing highly unlikely. But from a pure payroll perspective, I don't think signing both guys (if it were possible) is as crazy as it sounds, especially if there's a strong incentive for them to opt out after 5 years or so.

That could be interesting, but Lillian's question was how better to allocate the money over the next FIVE years, with the most important years being years 3-5 (and the first one included because that's the timing we're stuck with). Your proposal includes a couple of two-year contracts, which don't really fit the planned/hoped-for window of contention. I'm not a fan of signing free agents to short-term contracts at this point unless they're flip candidates. As insane as the two-star approach sounds, and as unlikely as it still is to make these stars align, I think Lillian's money-allocation reasoning is pretty sound in this unique situation where we have next to zero payroll. It would make an immediate and enormous splash and give the team an instant identity. And while I'm nervous about relying solely on our stable of prospects to fill out a contending team, I'm pretty confident that it could fill out the remains of a roster built around two established stars. There's also no way we'll have an opportunity to make this kind of free agent impact when the time is "right" (whenever that is).

This is the truth. I'm aware of no precedent for a big-name, mid-career MLB free agent leaving tens of millions of dollars on the table because of soft considerations like competitiveness, "fit", franchise popularity, or any other factor patently not worth tens of millions of dollars to any rational economic actor. I have no idea if the Sox will outbid the competition, but if they do I think they'll get their guy.

1) Sign Machado 2) Get good 3) Rebrand ourselves as Chicago's "villain" counterpart to the hokey, little league uniform-wearing squad from the other side of town