oneofthemikes

Tough to see this working out but it's fun to dream. If he can become a little less of a thrower and a little more of a pitcher, it could be fun.

$18M for 35-year-old Hamels and we have people balking at $22M for a guy that's been a top-20ish pitcher in baseball the last 2 seasons. lol

The amount of time left in the offseason is inconsequential here. The point is that the Sox aren't going to make a run at Cole or Strasburg and Wheeler is the most desirable option outside of those two. Once he is gone, it's not like the amount of time left in the offseason is going to make better pitchers appear in free agency. If we miss on Wheeler, we're going to end up with more half-measures that don't put this roster over the top.

It'll be a sad state of affairs if we miss on the 3rd or 4th best pitching option in a free-agent class. We may not like the numbers that are being thrown around but that's the going rate for solid pitching. If we commit to these arbitrary contract length restrictions and are resigned to shopping in the bargain bin to fill out the roster, we're going to end up wasting a great young core.

Is he really that good of a manager? He managed the Yankees and their billion-dollar payroll. Several seasons those rosters should have been able to sleepwalk to 90 wins.

Holy cow! That's a team filled with major league baseball players! It's been a while since I feel like we could say that.

I'm so tired of the Sox being an "also-ran". We've been watching this team at the bottom of the heap for too long. The core is here, more young talent is on the way. Spend the money and get your guy.

Gross. I want no part of Hamels anywhere on this roster.

Marte would be a phenomenal addition. How much would that cost in trade capital?

Madrigal and Vaughan to follow. That'll be a tough lineup

The back-to-back lippers on the front were brutal to see. That's something I expect to see from me, not the best to ever do it.

Not sure why people are losing their mind about Giolito based on yesterday. I mean, sure his line looks rough, but I also saw a tweet yesterday that said it looked like he was going out of his way to throw more breaking stuff than normal. Seems to me that he was just doing what guys do during spring training. Working on things. They face live batters and see what works and what doesn't. His velo also seems to be much improved and closer to when he was at top prospect status. Can we at least make it TO April before we write guys off entirely?

Right, but I guess that's what I'm getting at. If he's terrible, it's a small amount of wasted money (nothing new for the Sox) and if he's great, it's an enormous savings for a game-changing talent.

I'm not seeing how people can be anything but excited about this deal. If he sucks, the Sox are only on the hook for ~$7M AAV for 6 years which is far from a crippling amount and if he's amazing the Sox will have a superstar for ~$9.5M AAV for 8 years which is incredible given the contracts that we've seen guys like Harper, Machado, and Trout signing lately.

I take that to mean that the Sox got cute with incentives and swellopts and "if everything breaks the right way you CAN make this much" and Manny went with the Padres "we're going to give you this much money" approach.

Can we get any of our board sources to weigh in on this stuff?

Not saying that it's particularly relevant to this discussion, but I just checked the subscriber numbers for some MLB teams subreddits and it worked out like this: r/whitesox: 10.9k r/cardinals: 21.8k r/CHIcubs: 30.6k r/minnesotatwins: 12.1k r/wahoostipi: 14.0k Not sure where the rest of the teams in the league stack up or if this is even remotely related to the overall size of the fanbase, but take from this what you will.

I don't necessarily disagree with this. When he is on, he has flashes of a very high ceiling. There was a stretch of about 5 starts last year when people were trying to convince themselves that Covey had turned a corner and was about to be Corey Kluber.

According to who? Sources?! Please tell us!

I still don’t understand how this is possible. If that actually occurred and it can be proven, how is there no recourse for that?

Meh. Depends. It was "rumored" by a rando on twitter. Might as well have something one of us made up.

Thought about this earlier today. For the first weekend since Labor Day, they don't have football to compete with and have a chance to dominate the sports news cycle. And video of a surprise signing would go viral in a heartbeat.

Seems like an appropriate amount of planning for the most important free agent acquisition in franchise history.

It's pretty obvious to me that this is one of Rick Hahn's sons. Close enough to the situation to be aware of some of the details, smart enough to make sure that the initials and follows are semi-subtle as to not be obvious to everyone right away.

So we're just gonna ignore the fact that he worked on his swing a lot last offseason (with Matt Lisle who was just hired by the Sox) and hit .248 last year? And that when he was away from Dodger Stadium he was a .270 hitter?