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QUOTE (chw42 @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 03:13 PM) With what Rios has produced for the White Sox so far, he's been paid just about the right amount of money. In the past, free agency has tended to pay out about $5m per WAR, and as a 3-4 WAR player, he's actually a touch underpaid.

QUOTE (GreatScott82 @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 03:11 PM) Can someone provide stat info on each one of those players, please? http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=2B http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=SS

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 03:02 PM) So, exclude the 40 man roster. Who do the Rangers have that would really interest people as a Rios Return? I'd be SO content with Odor. I would love Sardinas too, who may be available only because he is super blocked.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 02:51 PM) I keep forgetting that Houston is in the AL. Me too, lol. I read that and was like "YEAH, YOU MEAN HOUSTON AND THE ENTIRE REST OF THE AMERIC- oh, wait..."

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2013/08/unkn...on-waivers.html

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 01:29 PM) Yankees Haha, indeed.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 01:27 PM) Yeah. It's a reason why guys arent all dumped August first So which team has lost a few in a row? We might surmise that Hahn thought he had a good match with one of those teams.

I'll take Odor and call it a deal.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 01:21 PM) There was a rumor I saw from one of the national writers, saying BAL was claiming guys left and right, trying to block teams above them. Hopefully that isn't the case here. This is very plausible and very unfortunate. BAL is just slightly ahead of Texas in the claim order. Makes you wonder -- say if Hahn WANTED Texas to claim Rios, would it have made sense for him to watch the records and wait until they had lost a couple games before he officially put Rios on waivers, in order to give them the best chance of winning the claim?

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 01:19 PM) Makes me wonder if AJ vouched for Rios. You think those two would get along? I can see them as maybe the types that respected one another becasue they stayed out of each ohter's way.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Aug 8, 2013 -> 12:02 PM) http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cupcake I am guessing you partook in #4 Lol, precisely. Seriously though, Taste of Heaven bakery in Andersonville -- you guys ever been there? Holy s*** the cupcakes.

I turned it off because my girlfriend talked me into going and getting a cupcake with her. I have no regrets.

QUOTE (robinventura23 @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 04:41 PM) Odd. I thought they'd go with Erik Johnson. Hasn't he been hurt?

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 04:53 PM) Three team deal. Phillies trade Lee to Sox, Sox take on the contract and trade him Orioles. Now THAT would be interesting and equally unprecedented. That's not what Bernstein is suggesting, though.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 04:51 PM) $62M owed for his ages 35 & 36 seasons. Right but their behavior this year indicates they have no problem keeping him and paying him. They were asking for 4 top prospects for the privilege of paying him to pitch for you, this is way out of line with, "we'll give you substantial prospects just to take him off our hands."

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 04:21 PM) FWIW, Bernstein did mention that he talked to a few people that presented him with this concept. So it wasn't just "some idea" he came up with. Bernstein has a solo show on Friday and Hahn will join him from 5-530 live at US Cellular Field. It makes sense on paper and in a vaccuum, but it's never been done and there aren't really any good candidates, and you wouldn't get anything like the quality of prospects he's implying you'd get.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 03:56 PM) But that isn't what he wrote. He said teams will give you their top prospects to take bad contracts off their hands. He said it's the new thing in baseball. He is full of s***. It hasn't happened. With the extra $25 million every team gets next year, it will make the desperation of gettimg rid of bad contracts even smaller. Teams will want to get rid of them without a doubt, but not for their top prospects, unless their top prospects aren't any good and they have a Pujols-like deal they want to dump. You could point this out to Bernstein but he would cut you off , hang up on you and call you stupid while you have dial tone. But here, he's the idiot. In the NBA it might happen because of luxury tax and salary cap. Not in MLB. It is good to have money to spend. I will give him that, but taking on bad contracts of failed free agents doesn't make much sense when you could just sign other free agents. Yeah, I think you're right here. There's really no precedent in baseball for this.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 03:54 PM) Since you brought up the Phillies let's think about this with a concrete name. What would the Phillies have to send along to get you to assume the entire contract of Ryan Howard? (3 years, $85 million remaining after this year counting buyout). Is there anything they have that would make you willing to take on this deal if you were in Rick Hahn's position? Man, that contract is so ugly. Ugh. Honestly I don't think there is. I don't like what I've heard from some guys on Maikel Franco, and Jesse Biddle hasn't been able to find the strike zone. Joseph/Valle have modest ceilings. That's just SO much money, and you'd be robbing playing time from younger players. Having the DH open up after Konerko retires is kind of an asset, and Howard is possibly even worse than Dunn defensively at first. They have some interesting pieces, but I'd need at least two of them to take the contract. I don't know if there's any one guy that's worth it.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 03:16 PM) Perhaps the closest examples might be the trades done by the Marlins and the Red Sox over the last year. The Blue Jays and Dodgers wanted Jose Reyes and Adrian Gonzalez, respectively, but their teams didn't want to give them up for nothing, so the teams took on extra dollars in the form of bad contracts given to Mark Buehrle and Carl Crawford along with them. But, the teams taking on that salary also gave up a few players as well, they didn't send prospects along, just bad contracts. Right, that would be more like sending Danks along with Peavy or something, if the team really wanted Peavy. The problem is though that that tactic only makes sense if clearing payroll is a priority we'd get less talent in that scenario in return for the salary relief. It's something that teams to do ino order to get to where Benrstein says we are now, which is relatively free of dead money. So, it would have been asinine for Bernstein to cite those examples in his article. I don't think there's much precedent for the types of deals he is suggesting, nor are there many teams that would be good fits. The Phillies are really the only big-payroll team that is failing to contend, and they are showing no signs of financial pressure.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 02:32 PM) Signing a guy for x years is always a terrible idea. Never give out contracts longer than x-1 years.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 02:15 PM) Well, it's my understanding that Hahn and KW were almost like co-GM's for years and the plan was always for Hahn to take the reigns. The contract situation was like a fail safe. Yeah, I think you're right, I'm just saying it seems to me that at some point over the last couple years their thought process on free agency may have shifted from "i don't want to sign a guy for more than x years or y dollars" to, "I don't want to sign a guy past the year z, because that's the window we have leading into a transition."

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 02:02 PM) It's almost like Hahn and KW had a backup plan in case the team flopped. All the bad contracts expire at the same time. I think they just figured they had a window. If you remember, there was talk of KW getting fired the year before Hahn took over, but he stayed. I think they looked at whaty they had and said "well, we might as well let the 'KW' team play it out, because it could plausibly win, and if it doesn't we give Hahn a shot." So I think they were purposely not signing additional long-term contracts because they were looking forward to a clean slate for Rick.

QUOTE (Y2JImmy0 @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 01:49 PM) http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/08/07/ber...e-sox-optimism/ Pretty decent column. Bernstein has been talking about the Sox primarily for the 1st half hour. He mentioned how he has been talking to some people and they brought up how important it is to be as flexible as they are financially. He said that the Sox could be a team that takes on bad contracts in the final years as long as other teams are trading prospects with those contracts. It's interesting and something that I have thought of. Many of us had said the same things. They will have a ton of money in the coming years, high draft picks, and a ton of young cost-controlled pitching. And this is one of the biggest reasons we don't ned to trade Sale. We are in a position to make moves to be competitive as early as 2015.

A lot of things are going to change between now and the draft. Astros are going to have the #1 pick though.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 11:20 AM) See, this is the one that I wouldn't do, because I don't think you're going to get fair value on the trade market for these guys, especially Quintana. Q is going to hum along and put up productive seasons for us with little or no fanfare, much like Mark did for us for 10 years. Someone would give us something for that, but he just doesn't have the WOW factor that GMs are going to feel comfortable moving high-profile prospects for. Fanbases want exciting players, and a GM is going to get a better reception from the fanbase if he mortgages the future for the exciting player versus the ho-hum player. Now the answer to that is that fans ultimately like winning more than individual players, but all things being equal, fans like exciting more than ho-hum. I think it would be tougher to get fair value for Sale. I don't think anyone would be willing to give up what it would take because of the perceived injury risk.