Eminor3rd

I mean I think Boras (correctly) judged that this was not an offer that was going to be beat, and probably also knew that Rendon had a good offer on the table too and that they weren’t getting both. I think it’s more that Boras knows not to look a gift horse in the mouth more so than it signals a change in his strategy.

Oh I see now, nightingale is reporting now that there are deferments and they have interest. Sorry, I wrote my post before seeing that.

Really? Are you sure about that? I was under the impressions that was not the car, at least with the Scherzer deal, but I could very easily have read a bad source. That would change it a lot if true.

I’ll be shocked if this isn’t deferred to the degree that the Scherzer deal was. Which doesn’t make it not a shocking amount of money, but NPV of the investment will be substantially lower by the time inflation hits the dollars, which makes a big difference if you’re a billionaire and are projecting how the cost works out.

Cole’s price will be a product of bidding, won’t have anything to do with Stras urge other than Boras will insist on beating the 245 guaranteed number.

I don’t think there’s any chance the Rays sell low on Snell this year, unless they think he’s hurt or something. His ERA was way higher than his FIP, the latter of which was excellent. He’s a very, very strong bounce back candidate, and they know it.

It wasn’t even remotely close. That trade was a massive win for the White Sox. McCarthy’s success came later. The Rangers got 2.2 fWAR out of McCarthy in that trade. The White Sox got 15.4 fWAR out of Danks before they extended him.

That trade would somehow be awful for both teams. That’s rare.

No -- but mostly I was wondering at the connection you implied with players not working out and "there's a reason they don't come over sooner." But yeah, other than Ichiro and Mastui -- and Fukudome, and Darvish, and Ohtani, and Nomo, and Uehara, and Okajima, and Aoki, and Saito, and Johjima, and Iwamura, and Iwakuma -- it's pretty much bust after bust.

You're 100% correct on all of that. The only thing I would add is that there is IMMENSE cultural pressure against talented HS kids signing with MLB teams as prospects, both socially on the kid, and from the NPB on the MLB. And the fastball thing is the biggest worry. These guys are talented enough to do it -- if they were able to develop in an environment that included it. But it takes 9 years for the players to get international free agency rights, which obviously often puts them around or over 30. Can be tough to learn new tricks at that age.

And what is that reason? There is one, I’m just wondering if you know it.

Fastball velo is ticking up, but definitely still behind the states. I’m not sure what the official number is, but just anecdotally from watching about 60-70 games last year it’s probably about 91-93. Relievers are routinely around 94, elite starters can be 95+ With guys like Senga sitting 97-100, but there are lot of innings given to Mid and back end starters (six-man rotations!) that are sitting 86-89 all game. And there are still some TOR guys too though that are just command control wizards with six pitches that barely touch 90. Most hitters (I’d say 85+%) have a contact-focused two strike approach, which confounds even stateside guys who come over here to pitch and see their Ks actually go down. It’s amazing how many balls these guys can foul off when they’re SOLELY trying to not miss.

This is the biggest concern I have as well. You can hide one mediocre OF, but when you start stacking them up...

I’ve seen a lot of this guy, both streamed and even two games in person. Overall, I’m on the fence as to whether or not he can be an impact addition. I think he’ll hit, but I can’t be confident he’ll hit more than a AAA slugger. Some things that the generic articles aren’t saying: 1. The guy is a really good teammate. Very popular in the clubhouse and legendarily level-headed. 2. He is a forward thinker. Has gone out on a limb and spoken out against destructive old-world baseball practices in Japan, such as the ritual overuse of amateur pitchers, among other things. Though there is a growing momentum to change these things, it’s still in its infancy and for a player to speak out as he has is really sticking his neck out against the administration that employs him, for no obvious material return. Just an interesting character note. 3. The exit velos are elite for NPB and above average for MLB. The power is real. He is, also, a fastball hitter, which is kind of rare for Japan, and contributes to his relatively high K rate. Essentially, he is the closest thing to an “MLB-style” hitter, that grips and rips, that is in NPB right now, other than maybe Hotaka Yamakawa. 4. The defense is not good, but it’s because of lack of range, not at all because of clumsiness. The arm is also probably slightly above average, although to be fair, that’s hard for me to tell. It’s just what I’ve read/heard. He would be a fun add and a good teammate, regardless. Performance could range from Daniel Palka to peak Billy Butler that can fake the OF. I assume it would be a low cost addition, but who knows.

Not true — he’s performed well against MLB pitching in WBC and the two other exhibitions that have happened since. Now, it is absolutely true that he yet to see GOOD MLB pitching. But he’s held his own against average MLB pitching.

The fact that they were the highest bidder on Wheeler is encouraging because it at least indicates that they understood how critically important Wheeler was for them in this particular market, given their self-imposed spending limits and the alternatives that are left. Unfortunately, whether it’s their fault or not, they missed on Wheeler, and there’s simply isn’t a comparable alternative available that they’ve decided they can afford. The types of prospects they can afford to part with aren’t good enough to get a guy anywhere close to as good as Wheeler. And the next tier of pitchers on the free agent market are either substantially worse, substantially riskier, or both. At this point, the best Plan B (other than deciding to actually try to be a legitimate MLB franchise and go and get Strasburg) is probably to ride the excruciating train that will be the Ryu bidding, as Boras drags it all the way into March knowing he has to cash in on the elite year of a guy who has somehow gotten to free agency despite being healthy for roughly a quarter of his career. Ryu has the ability to out-produce Wheeler (he just did), but if you want to talk about risk — this is not a guy you want to commit too many years to, especially at the AAV that his 2019 performance is gonna command. Dude has been plagued with myriad issues, including shoulder problems that looked like they were gonna end his career just a few seasons back. Maybe you can get him at... what... 3/65? I don’t know that you can risk much more than that given his health track record. Especially not if you need him to be a horse in the #2 spot. The Dodgers were a great fit carrying nine legit starters and shuffling them around like rookies by exploiting the DL and paying the guys enough to stop their bellyaching about getting shuttled back and forth to AAA, but that’s not what the Sox are gonna be able to do.

If you choose a historic outlier to set your expectations, you’re going to be disappointed nearly every time.

I certainly didn’t gather THAT from his post.

Man I don’t know what to tell you. If that’s how you evaluate players in 2019, I can understand why most of what’s being said here seems confusing. I don’t intend that to sound mean, so I apologize if it does. But you’re really missing close to the entire iceberg by just looking at the tip.

Not bad, though. More like “inefficient.” But is that really a problem with this roster? the whole point to this rebuilding strategy is that you collect so much talent that’s underpaid (In other words, extremely efficient) you have space to actually get what you need via free agency, in which only the highest bid wins, making every win, by definition, inefficient. if they were only ever going to sign players that the rest of the market misses on, there was never any point to rebuilding in the first place. You can be an also-ran fringe wild card contender and still be willing to get free agents on “good value” no matter what your payroll is.

I’m not being sarcastic. You said the fact that Giolito would be the best starter on the White Sox means Wheeler isn’t a TOR starter lol. My point, which you haven’t addressed, is that there is no alternative within the White Sox means. THAT is why it’s a huge miss. Not because there aren’t better pitchers in the MLB, but because there’s no one else they can get. Thus, missing him means dealing with a significantly worse replacement.

I’m not sure you read my original post.

Tons and tons of fly balls and homers, even while pitching in one of the most homer suppressing parks in the MLB. Presumably that gets a lot worse at GRF.

Also, you’re saying that if Scherzer and Verlander are on the same team, one of them suddenly “isn’t a TOR starter?”

You mean the guys that get $200M contracts?