Eminor3rd

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.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 10:47 AM) The A's have traded numerous young, cost-controlled pitchers for prospects, which they have used to rebuild their organization. They didn't kick the can down the road of mediocrity because of it. And they contended the next year. Because they had ready-made replacements and went dumpster diving for reclamation projects that worked out. This is exactly what wite is suggesting as a strategy -- but we don't have anyone that can replace Sale's production next year so we can't trade him and have a shot at a quick return to glory.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 10:31 AM) I don't think I agree with this whatsoever. The A's are not kicking the can down the road right now, are they? But the A's have done precisely what wite is saying we should do. And they only trade their cost-controlled guys when they have someone nearly as good waiting in the minors to replace him.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 10:22 AM) It all came down to that one low, low slider to Delmon Young The pitch is burned into my memory. I remember literally throwing my hands up in the air in disgust and disbelief.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 7, 2013 -> 09:50 AM) Build from WHAT? We have s*** in our system. The FA market is going to be littered with "damaged goods." Teams are locking up their good young players early (just as we did with Sale) so they aren't hitting the open market. The guys that do hit the market are doing so because they want a monster contract (how many of those turn out well?) or because they are mediocre and expendable. If you want to keep Sale, you're looking at having to basically build through the draft. Given where we are right now as an organization, that is going to take time. Time that will be wasted with Sale winning 6-7 more games for us a year to put us in 3rd or 4th place instead of 1st or 2nd. Very rare is the case where a team cannot turn its fortunes around in SIX years. And part of the way you have to go about turning it around is by keeping the cost-controlled players that can contribute in a big way over the next six years. Sale is the best and among the only examples of that on our team. He's the one guy you don't want to move. If you keep doing that, you're just kicking the can down the road constantly (Royals)

QUOTE (CaliSoxFanViaSWside @ Aug 6, 2013 -> 08:44 AM) But once he learns to lay off the junk, he'll be a beast. Most of the stuff we're talking about now isn't really related to my original post about how Viciedo has been worse at the plate this year, so I don't really know what to say about that. But the line quoted above -- I absolutely agree with. The problem is that it isn't a given that he actually will learn to lay off the bad stuff. The thing about Garcia being older and more advanced than someone like Hawkins is, in fact, one of the biggest reasons I worry about his plate discipline -- because he has come much farther, and has been instructed much longer, and he still is swinging at 41% of the pitches out of the zone. When you combine that with the fact that the White Sox coaching staff (from what I glean from the media and the way most Sox hitters have acted) appears to encourage an aggressive approach, I am afraid there's a good chance, maybe even a higher than average chance, that Garcia won't actually learn to lay off said junk. Watching Viciedo make zero progress is just further reason to believe the coaching staff isn't able or willing to teach an approach that will work for Garcia. Of course, it's certainly possible that Viciedo simply isn't capable of recognizing pitches and it has nothing to do with the coaching staff. Maybe Viciedo is just obstinate and all of my impressions of the coaching staff are wrong; they are trying their best. It's also possible that Garcia will never listen to the coaching staff anyway and have a revelation and change his approach for the better on his own. Or maybe he'll just be Vladimir Guerrero. I hope one these things is the case, but there is no evidence that points to them, so it must be considered less likely that they will happen than what all of the data points to. And so I'm worried about him because it doesn't look like he's in the right environment to succeed, and that's why I didn't like the acquisition. I acknowledge he has tremendous talent and potential, but I was hoping that the Sox would address their horrid immaturity at the plate by acquiring a hitting prospect that had already shown a propensity for a more mature approach, and I thought it was a real possibility because there were some logical candidates on teams that wanted Peavy.

If you trade Sale, that really awesome staff is way less awesome. It's already taken a hit with the loss of Peavy. I don't think you can afford to trade Sale unless you're committing to a scorched-Earth rebuild.

Sale doesn't go unless you don't expect to competitive for years. I bet Santiago/Quintana would fetch more than you'd think in the offseason. Pitching market will be just as thin as it was at this year's deadline, and we're talking about pre-arbitration guys now.

I think you can safely move one of Quintana or Santiago for a young hitter. You just deal with Danks as your 3 man and let Rienzo/Johnson/Molina/Castro/Axelrod fight for the other spots. If I had my choice, I'd move Santiago and try to sign Quintana. Whoever said 2014 is a transitional year hit it on the head. You know you're not likely going to win but you're using it to shuffle stuff around to contend again soon. It's just a punt, not a rebuild.