Chicago White Sox

It gives no sort of representation whatsoever unless you’re able to filter it on people in Chicago. Even then, I’d wager a much larger portion of the Cubs core fanbase uses Twitter than ours. What your doing with this “data” is quite frankly lazy & wrong.

And how much of the Cubs attendance in that season was driven by their local fanbase? There is no doubt in my mind the Cubs are more popular locally, but a lot of that is casuals looking for a good time. Their core base is definitely not 3:1 the size of ours. Ultimately, the biggest difference is the Cubs are a huge regional & national draw. That doesn’t make us a small market club or mean we have 25% of the city. Using the number of Twitter followers to estimate the size of each fanbase is just stupid.

How do the Cubs own 75% of Chicago?? Like what in the world are you talking about? And no offense, but a lot of people follow BOTH TEAMS. This idea that the 10M people in Chicago are one or the other is simply idiotic. Our market potential is vast, even if we aren’t realizing it all right now. If you honestly think we’re a small market club / have one of the smallest markets, then there is really no hope for you.

lol...what in the world are you talking about. They are the definition of a small market team and operate as such. Their strategy is far from ideal and Billy Beane would tell you as much.

This is simply not true whatsoever.

God I hate everything about this post. I used to really respect your POV Jack but now you’ve just reached Fathom levels of pessimism.

Why do you guys waste your time on Brett? No one can actually believe this nonsense.

Because we can already afford Harper & some of those signings. It’s not an either or thing.

What ages better, defense or batter’s eye?

Fuck WAR, give me Harper please. I’ll happily take Machado as well ?

Remember when he said the Sox we’re going to take on all those bad contracts for draft picks & whatnot? Bernstein may be a smart guy, but he clearly doesn’t understand how baseball works.

That’s what I just said, they sold equity (took on additional investors) to help manage their debt load.

It would be devastating. And in all reality, we should be prepared to bid significantly higher than them to prevent it from happening.

Well the good news is they probably like Chicago food and boatloads of money.

The Cubs have no chance bro. Their ownership literally had to sell equity to support their debt load. Those trust fund kids don’t have endless pockets.

There is realistically no amount of money that would cause me to flip sides. I want a god damn whale.

Lol...right? I mean I was expecting the Phillies to be aggressive, but to come out and say they plan to be “stupid” is kind of a kick to the balls TBH. That being said, we just got to hope Jerry’s old age causes him to do something dumb as well.

Our #1 goal this offseason should be to land a whale. Therefore, we should not do anything that helps the Phillies or Yankees improve their chances. Now, if we fail to land a whale and the Phillies would give up a young player to absorb Santana’s contract, I’d be totally open for that, but I think they’d much rather just eat $10M and call it a day.

God damn Phillies. Hopefully they land Machado and then use the rest of their money on pitching.

Where are you getting these numbers from? MLB teams were splitting about $1.5B/year in national TV money before this Fox re-up. That’s $50M/year per club and it just increased. I have no idea what our local TV revenue currently is, but we were getting $450K/game on CSN, so I’d wager close to $40M. I’d say right now all in, we’re around $100M in media revenue alone. Hopefully that increases with our next TV deal, but no idea how you came up with a $50M to $75M increase due to Harper alone.

I just can’t see which teams would actually spend $400M on Harper other than us & the Phillies. No one in the AL Central other than us. The Yankees & Red Sox out, so no one in the AL East. I don’t see any of the AL West teams spending that kind of money. The NL East has the Phillies & Nationals, but I see Washington spreading that money around to fill multiple holes. I don’t see the Braves as a legit option either. The only team in the NL Central is maybe the Cardinals, but Machado would be the better fit. That leaves the NL West and adding a $400M contract goes against everything Friedman stands for. And outside of LAD, none of those teams appear to be legitimate options. So in summary, the market for Harper really comes down to the Phillies, White Sox, Nationals, & maybe the Cardinals. I think we have a real shot there.

I’ve been a huge fan of Grandal for years, but now just doesn’t seem like the right time to sign him.

Sorry Ofman, but the Sox aren’t giving up their 2nd round pick for an over 30 year old catcher.

100% agree with this. He’s just got to carry over the momentum to the regular season now.

And Robert has a 16.5% K rate against much more advanced competition, seems like a pretty positive development if you ask me.