Jose Abreu

Now that the picture is out in circulation again I'll say this. There is a lot being discussed here that is not claimed by the "source". The barbershop, any exact numbers, us having the best offer, etc. But he did claim that we met with Harper twice in Vegas (the 19th and once more the following week), Harper prefers to play in Chicago, and the White Sox are very motivated to get it done. He claims he heard it from Harper's friend, and I did find that he indeed knows multiple people who are close to Bryce Harper. Whether they actually told him all this cannot be known, but he absolutely knows the people he claims to know.

Not just that, but he has posted plenty of photos of himself in Chicago and how much he enjoys it, he was a Blackhawks fan before the Golden Knights came around, he is a Bulls fan, etc.

That's not the guy

Thanks, I'll add, however, that what made me optimistic about his story after research was not at all about what Ron Kittle allegedly said, but purely the source himself and his connections

Goodnight, sweet prince.

There's a lot of misinformation in here now. About 25% of what is being discussed was actually said by the guy. The rest is speculation that is now being attributed to him

Tim Anderson openly recruiting Machado in the comments of Machado's latest Instagram post.

There were no concrete figures given

Yup. I don't blame you for being skeptical. I was too before I looked into it more. I'm not saying this guy is 100% indisputably telling the truth or anything, but I at least think there's a reasonable chance he knows what he's talking about.

Example: Just a mere week ago when some random guy on Twitter broke the Colome trade the night before it happened. Lately, random social media presences have actually been decent at breaking news. The problem is that for every correct post, there are a hundred BS ones

Don't know if you saw but I PM'd

The source was a guy who claims to know a close friend of Harper. I initially wrote it off as BS but looked into it some more and found that the guy actually knows the people he claims to know. That's as specific as I can be

FWIW I have reason to believe that the source Peavy44 posted earlier is actually legitimate, in the sense that he would indeed be able to hear rumors and whatnot from Harper's camp

If the Sox do love their chances at signing him, then perhaps we have some sort of framework that Bryce/Boras have already expressed some interest in. Maybe it's the Albert Belle top 3 paid player no matter what thing

As long as it’s not Engel, it’s fine with me

In that scenario, Cutch would play CF. I couldn't think of a better mid-range option (Pollock isn't mid-range). If we sign Bryce, I'd be surprised if we then give Engel 100+ games in center next year.

I would imagine signing Harper would also lead to a chain reaction of Nelson Cruz, Andrew McCutchen, etc. type signings too

If we go into 2019 with no notable free agents and having sold off vets for (presumably) weak returns, I'd be perfectly fine with somebody other than Hahn being the one to answer questions at Soxfest, and this is coming from one of the bigger Hahn supporters here

Because he would be our best offensive player and can be had for pretty cheap (in terms of trade value)

This is exactly what I was going to post. While luck is a major factor in BABIP, oftentimes, better hitters just have better BABIPs (consistently, over multi-year periods). I think a more effective method would be to look at quality of contact, hard hit percentage, line drive percentage, relative to soft hit percentage, pop up percentage, etc. coming up with a function and finding a way to factor that in. Doing that might help normalize some of the problems you outlined such as overrating low BABIP guys like Gallo

Agreed, I've never seen Lauri so adamant about hoisting up shots. And that's a good thing, because he's good enough to justify that mindset.

I'd be pissed if I were a Phillies fan. The owner pretty much flat out lied to them, unless they did outbid the Nats and Corbin declined anyway