Little Slide Rooter

It just seems like when they do things that are active, people still bash them or forget quickly. Signing Baker, Feldman and our new reliever isn't really being that inactive. It's more than a lot of teams have done so far in free agency. And there's no indication that we're done. As quickly as the Sanchez report came out of nowhere, a new one could pop up in it's place. Last I checked there was minimal action on the Jackson and Marcum fronts. We could very well be in on one of them.

Damn, depending on those other pieces that's a really nice return on Dickey. If somehow or another Syndergaard or Sanchez is in that deal too then it's an absolute steal. On a side note, when was the last time that 3 of the top 10 prospects in baseball were traded in one off season? [expletive], I wanted Adams. Double [expletive], the Phillies were a potential suitor for Marmol.

Such nonsense. I'm not a behind the scenes fan. I'm a cubs fan. The process is worthless if the cubs don't win Valid point. While these new age GMs head may be in the right place, Pro Sports is above all else entertainment. Job one should be to give their fans the most entertaining product possible with the available resources year in and year out. When television shows suck, the get canceled. The producers don't have the option of saying that the cast is getting too old and expensive, but bear with us, we've hired a young new cast and in a few years, we'll deveope their characters hopefully and have some coherant storylines.

They gave it their all. Someone else just gave more. Should it have kept going until Sanchez ended up with Greinke money? I'd have loved to have Sanchez, but lets not act as though we missed out on a once in a lifetime free agent simply because he's been the first big name free agent we've actively pursued this offseason. How many strawmen can you pile into a single post? Just the first sentence is absurdly ridiculous and meaningless. If you're talking about "their all" as in the effort of actually flying to meet the guy and offer him a contract, so what? As tedious as it can get bringing up the "participation award," jokes, continually referring to their efforts as if trying hard counts as anything is just as awful. Plus the idea that you'd say they "gave it their all" when they failed to sign the guy is just patently ridiculous. Of course Sanchez isn't an amazing player, and of course I wouldn't want them to throw anything and everything at him to get him to sign, but your whole post is just...ugh. When multiple teams want the same player, only one can have him. If the reports that he really wanted to stay in Detroit were true, we were essentially a pawn to get Detroit to up their offer and a fallback if they didn't. To clarify my stance, I don't quite like the suck so that we might be good in a few years so much as I have come to accept it.

Are you really taking the stance that there are no bad contracts? The closest thing to a stance like that is when you have a guy like Soriano, who already has a bad contract, at which point the money because irrelevant and you just get whatever you can, be it via production or trade. But hey, by all means. Lets give more free agents massive contracts. Perhaps no trade clauses. Better yet, lets trade for a 36 year old loogy because it's July and we're kinda-sorta in contention.

They gave it their all. Someone else just gave more. Should it have kept going until Sanchez ended up with Greinke money? I'd have loved to have Sanchez, but lets not act as though we missed out on a once in a lifetime free agent simply because he's been the first big name free agent we've actively pursued this offseason.

Underwood Loux Candelerio

Meh. It not only saves us $80MM, but it proves to us that when the right piece comes along, we're willing to spend. And it doesn't hurt that it hurths the White Sox chances in their final year or 2 of contention before they have to rebuild from the ground up.

Do you not pay attention to anything? It's not the AAV, teams don't really want to go 5 years on a pitcher who's admitted to having shoulder soreness every time he pitches. When the market is as thin as it is, and demand high, unless his arms hanging from a thread is expect more teams to be in, especially when he's only 29. Marcum's 31 and isn't much healthier. Jackson's the only other option. There's always trades, but James Shields seems to have shown us how expensive front end starters will cost when going that rout. With this in mind, it's also very possible that a big reason that we're pursuing Sanchez this aggressively may be that they've accepted the fact that a Garza extension isn't going to happen, and once Sanchez or another front end-ish SP is signed, Garza's traded a few days later.

At this point, I'm wondering if the holdup is the all mighty mystery team(s.) His agent supposedly duped us, so wouldn't put it past him doing it again to raise the price. Anibal is the best remaining starter out there, and with the demand for pitching, I find it odd that he'd be down to just two suitors. I know the offer may be above market value, but not unreasonable by any stretch. He's 7 years younger than Ryan Dempster who just got a similar annual salary for 2 years.

About what Sanhez is looking at. Hmmm.

Garza-Sanchez-Shark-Baker-Feldman would be a very good rotation Marmol-Fujikawa-Adams-Camp-Russell-2 of Rondon/Rosario/Wood/Beliveau/Dolis/Bowden/Cabrera would be a very good bullpen DeJesus-Castro-Rizzo-Soriano-Stewart-Schierholtz/Sappelt-Castillo-Barney could potentially be a solid lineup if enough goes right, though adding a big bat would't hurt. That's Kool Aid for one night though.

When Edwin Jackson signs, assuming its with a team for whom he's never pitched, it will be his 8th big league team. Before his 30th birthday. That has to be an oddity of some kind.

So even our 36 year old reliever who may not pitch until 2014 could just be a cruel joke.

Agreed.Sanchez would certainly make us a better team, but not enough to drown in SoCo over. A big part of what made the Delgado and Haren non-acquisitions seem so exciting was the price that we'd seemingly gotten them for. With Sanchez, we'd have gotten a quality player at market value. If we sign him, I'll be happy. If not, I'll be a bit bummed due to the let down, but at least being bummed about losing out on Sanchez is less pathetic than being bummed about missing out on Jason Grilli.

Twitter is definitely to rumors what Mad Dog 20/20 is to teen pregnancy. Still, the kind of confirmed reports of done deals such as we've had over the past year are very different. This joins the Soler, Dempster, and Haren fiascos as premature reports that were reported as actual news. As I recall, even with the Roberts and Peavy debacles, nothing was ever reported as news of done deals so much as lots of speculation that something could get done any day.

If we do miss out on Sanchez, I suppose we could turn around and make a similar offer to Jackson.

Fake trades and signings are the new fake rallies.

I'll assume that somewhere in this record breaking contract is a STAY THE [expletive] AWAY FROM LOS ANGELES. BETTER YET, BUY A HOME IN A QUIET, SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD, AND DO NOT LEAVE IT FOR ANY NON TEAM SANCTIONED PURPOSES clause.

In related news, we have 1 left handed reliever, unless they plan on using Raley or Wood in the pen. Not sure why we're clinging so tightly to Clevenger, Campana, Rusin, and Raley.

I'm not sure what's left of the Angels farm system, but would a package involving Bourjos and Conger for Garza be acceptable? We could always expand the deal to include Marmol.

It's nice to see Bill Buckner getting out of his house. It was too good of an opportunity for him to leg slip through his fingers .

Rather than get into a debate of whether or not Norris would be worth eating $26MM, the real problems with this are A. if Soriano does waive the NTC, it will be to go to win and not a situation worse than the one he's in now, and B. why would the Astros want a 36 year old when their game plan seems to be get rid of everyone who's ever had a big league at bat?

8. Maples: highest ceiling of the pitchers 9. Loux: fairly close to big league ready. Seems liken a safe bet to be at worst a cheap back end starter. 10. Underwood: just going off his scouting reports, he seems to have a very high ceiling, but not to the extent of Maples And when does Reggie Golden get in on the poll? The lost season doesn't help, but he's only 21. I know that I'm going off the fumes of almost 3 year old scouting reports and a Ron Gant comparison, but if nothing else he hasn't disproved himself yet. If Watkins and Alcantara, each of whom are pretty safe bets to be decent, Golden should still get some consideration based on ceiling. He's younger than Soler and just a year older than Baez. I'm not putting him in the same boat as them, but if he can start putting it together this season, he could be on pace to arrive around the time they do and be a solid piece of the puzzle.

If you get rid of Clevenger and Campana, you are almost certainly going to have to replace both of them with a catcher and another backup outfielder, unless you think they are going to go with 2 catchers on the 40-man or have Brett Jackson on the MLB roster. Jackson's exactly what I had in mind if we need an OF. As for an emergency backup catcher, If the need arrises all they have to do is say Koyie Hill's name 3 times and he'll appear in full uniform.