caulfield12

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 04:27 PM) Bob Nightengale ‏@BNightengale 6m6 minutes ago The #Dodgers sign Brett Anderson to a one-year, $10 million contract, reports @Buster_ESPN, with chance to make $4 million in incentives. I don't think anyone had Brett Anderson projected to earn $10-14 million in 2015, when you take his injury history and lack of innings thrown/potential durability into account.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Dec 15, 2014 -> 11:04 AM) No offense Wite, but pass whatever you are sniffing. 2 WAR starter for a guy who was drafted last year is an incredibly unrealistic expectation for him, imo. Could he do it, certainly, but to do something like that, being drafted all of 6 months ago, is an extremely tough feat. I think for this year, we could look at Rodon as a guy who could hold is own in the 4th / 5th spot, while flashing some of that upside (and also getting hit at times). What did Kip Wells do in 1989? I think that would be pretty realistic...someone who comes on in the 2nd half of the season and makes a big impact. Bigger than McCarthy in 2005 at least (and we arguably wouldn't have won the Central without him IMO.)

Doesn't feel like the right time. Tanaka was a situation where you had a potential ace at age 25 or 26...in the prime of his career, like Abreu. With Scherzer, it almost feels guaranteed you'll see an injury or drop-off sooner rather than later. It's just too big a risk, we've seen how the Dunn and Danks contracts alone have handicapped this franchise for the past couple of seasons. As mentioned, with everyone we've brought on, other than Robertson, those risks are limited to a 2-3 year window, which is the prudent thing to do. Best guess is the FO thinking has to be to get to June/July and then the "all-in" move will come at that time to try to make a push for the playoffs/World Series in 2015 if everything breaks right. That would give us another 3-4 months to assess where all of our top prospects are....how Rodon's adjusting....and how guys like Gillaspie, A.Garcia, Flowers and whoever's playing 2B are adjusting. Depending on our place in the standings, you start thinking about who you want to hold onto for 2016 and who you want to trade. That seems a lot more prudent move to make than putting all your eggs in one basket. I haven't done the exact math, but if you add up Duke/LaRoche/Robertson/Samardzija/Me.Cabrera you're still not even touching the overall package of what Scherzer will receive. I have my doubts that someone can argue that Scherzer would/will make more of an impact individually than all of those players collectively. If it was a year ago and Max looked like one of the top 3-5 pitchers in baseball, you could at least make an argument. That time has passed, where you're paying for 2012-13 Scherzer but not getting that same pitcher back for your investment.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 10:50 PM) I shake my head in disgust whenever there's a revelation somebody used or uses steroids. Nobody seems to be crying. Some of us would rather not sign the guy because of his past. I also don't think he's worth the money, but it's not my money, so I won't lose sleep over that. Isn't this guy getting as much or more than Dunn got from the Sox? Man, salaries are skyrocketing more and more, even since the Dunn signing. Cmon. Melky is not worth that kind of money. Sox overpaid greatly at least as far as what he's worth. Whether you want to believe this or not, Butler MIGHT hit better and produce more runs than Melky this year. Melky ain't no Mickey Mantle. Some of us don't like the signing. No biggie. I'm not going to root for him to fail, or anything like that. Would you have been happy with Aoki for half that money? All things considered, we were lucky to get three years instead of four, and lots of projections were in the $15 million range for four seasons. Billy Butler can't be compared to Melky. If you want to argue we should have signed Butler INSTEAD of LaRoche, that's a valid argument, although...at the time, Melky wasn't a sure thing (for us to sign) and the most important priority seemed to be a middle-of-the-order power bat to replace Dunn.

Frank Jodorowsky's DUNE is WAY out there, but it's a must-see if you enjoy the "behind the scenes" part of Hollywood. Amazing all the characters involved in this particular story, like David Carradine, Salvador Dali and his "muse" of all people. For all fans of artistic film-making, animation/storyboards, amateur cinematographers, etc. What's more incredible is looking at some of his other work and imagining that this project was ever going to be greenlit by a major movie studio in Hollywood with a 10-12 hour running time. The work behind the film, though, had a MAJOR impact on a generation of films that followed, especially Star Wars/Raiders of the Lost Ark/The Terminator/Blade Runner. Big influence on the Alien films is quite evident.

So we're at $115 million right now, give it take?

Viciedo and John Danks are the obvious calls. And RH bench help...maybe another veteran. Saladino can take one of those spots. We need another who can play OF (CF) and also take bats for LaRoche.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Dec 14, 2014 -> 09:29 AM) Yes, but not for all that much. Lawrie is a nice player, but Donaldson currently is a star, if I were the GM, he is one guy I would give Anderson + for. Anderson, Gillaspie and whatever for an offensive and defensive huge upgrade. And he is controlled for a while. Except Toronto's in win now mode too. That move would make no sense unless they got all top prospects back and punted on this season.

You'd probably have a majority willing to give up Anderson, Montas and Hawkins for Josh Donaldson at this point. Seems like the plan of action from the beginning was to pull all his moves off without losing any key future pieces. Still a bit in disbelief. Not a huge Cabrera fan but it's almost impossible not to feel positive about the overall direction of the franchise compared to a year ago. Robin Ventura. Your turn.

Bryce Harper. That would be interesting. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12024212...-show-fan-event

QUOTE (LDF @ Dec 13, 2014 -> 05:38 PM) your idea of replacing Danks in the rotation, will not work. maybe Shields? $$$$$ Won't happen.

QUOTE (LDF @ Dec 13, 2014 -> 05:36 PM) this is what i have been hinting about. i just read i think on cbs sports that the braves wants a pkg of the 2 Uptons in a trade going out. even if that is true, i will still like to examine that trade. outside the protections of the top 3 prospects why not??? No way we take both Uptons.

Aoki might be the best option...unless they go with the worst defense in baseball/anti-Royals approach and stick Morse out there. I'm still hoping for Rasmus but growing skeptical...if two years and $20 million could get it done. The other approach is finding two Keppingers/Holts/Navas/Bonifacios to go with LaRoche/Gillaspie/Viciedo. Zobrist?

Outside of trading half of the farm for Upton, we are a .500 team right now. While I'm pretty sure most would trade Anderson and Montas for a guaranteed playoff appearance, we would still be just one significant injury to a top three starter of being knocked out of contention. Even Melky Cabrera doesn't get us beyond 84-85 wins...assuming the superior version of him was/is sustainable. Rock and a hard place. I'm guessing the feeling is that they need to wait until June or July instead of committing to another $15-25 million now.

See Esteban Loiaza.

QUOTE (ChiSoxJon @ Dec 12, 2014 -> 09:34 PM) Next Move: Shop Danks for some prospects, clears cap, dead weight, and adds prospects to our system to which we just lost a few low level guys, add a veteran OFer, and look around for a young cather Who would be the fourth starter?

The equivalent of Kotsay and A.Jones five years later.

QUOTE (Melissa1334 @ Dec 12, 2014 -> 08:18 PM) With our current bench situation, and with Hahn acquiring a LFer (FA or trade ) , am I crazy for thinking that if no one offers anything that can help this team, for viciedo, that were better off keeping him as a back up OFer/dh? Because someone invariably will get injured and JR isn't going to sit through 350 Jordan Danks ab's.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Dec 12, 2014 -> 07:25 AM) Dombrowski says that they aren't talking to Scherzer, but I wouldn't be surprised if he returns to Detroit. That's another reason why I want the Sox to sign him. If he joins our rotation, the Sox would be consensus picks to win the Division. If Detroit signs him, they are still the team to beat. The Sox don't have a single big long term, expensive contract. That's the one that would put them over the top. Not according to war projections (see Dave Cameron article).

http://www.blessyouboys.com/2014/12/11/738...2015-al-central Manaea's not the #4 starter for the Royals. It's just impossible to put someone who started important post-season games behind him. With the Royals, it's probably Ventura, Duffy, Vargas, Guthrie and then there are about 5-7 possibilities for 5th starter, among them Manaea, Finnegan and Zimmer (if healthy). The Indians would probably list it Kluber, Salazar or Bauer, THEN Carrasco at this point. Minnesota would be Hughes, Santana, Gibson, May and Millone. No Nolasco...or, at best, he's 5.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 07:50 PM) Well first off, they aren't even remotely close to the same type of player, so putting them on the same projection path is odd to say the least. Second off, you indicated that maybe he was going to attempt the same thing Conor did, not "he won't improve because it is not likely". And that is even more odd when you read it the way you put it. And this is because what Conor did was sacrifice power for average, which i certainly dont see Martinez doing. I dunno man, sometimes your streams of consciousness in these threads are a bit out there. Both players were acquired for next to nothing or garbage. Both players were originally pretty highly-regarded. Both players had career "outlier" years in 2014. Both players are not expected to repeat their 2014 performance in 2015. Maybe it would be better simply to have said both had arguably flukey seasons (for altogether different reasons) and the chances of seeing the same results in 2015 are arguable at best. I was never intending to delve so deeply into the particular reasons for their success, offensive approaches, etc. Just a general statement.

QUOTE (Knuckles @ Dec 11, 2014 -> 11:06 PM) Why on earth would Mariners even want Vicideo? If they don't have enough money to sign Melky and need more power than what they're likely to get with Jones and Ackley in the OF.

LIFE ITSELF (Roger Ebert biopic) was excellent. Lots of cool tidbits for Chicagooans. Halfway through The Maze Runner and liking it more than I thought, compared to The Giver and Insurgent. $325-350 million for the next Bond (Spectre)? Just wow. Sony's taking hits right and left this week. http://insidemovies.ew.com/2014/12/11/gold...minations-2015/ Golden Globe nominations

Rasmus still has the biggest potential to outperform his contract if he's only paid $8-9 million. There's just no way we're bringing back Rios. And Aoki, while solid, is a lesser version of Markakis and similar to DeAza. That's not worth $7 million.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Dec 10, 2014 -> 02:04 PM) There's also margin of error when calculating pythag W-L. Wikipedia says the latest formula has a root-mean-square-error of 3.99. So the pythag W-L might be calculated as 90-72, but you could think of it more as predicting a team record somewhere between 86-76 and 94-68 (this is probably not the 100% accurate way of describing the detailed statistics but it at least gives a 'feel' for how accurate a prediction might be). Trying to say a team over- or under-performed their pythag is tricky enough, and trying to tie it to a single variable like "manager" is just ridiculous. Phil Rogers is not happy. Nor is Ron Gardenhire.