squally1313

Overmanaging + too many commercials + no pitch clock I don't understand people bitching about watching something they purport to enjoy being too long and boring. Baseball is like an opera and for a fan of the teams/game, the ups and downs and pauses make it that much more compelling. It's for the World Series where one mistake can make or break a season. Then start the game at 3:00

The last thing I want to do is absolve Toews, Kane, or anyone else present and silent during all of this, but as mentioned above, it's not terribly difficult to figure out who this player is, and (assuming I have it right) in 2014 he was no longer a member of the Hawks organization. Of course, there's those other stories from 2011 in which all those guys were there. Just disgusting up and down the organization. Edit: See below, important to get the facts right.

northsidebullsball.com amirite

$3300, but yea. Guessing they got a lot of thoughtful response along the lines of what I told them when they offered the opportunity this fall. I probably should have known this by now, but when I clicked through mine I saw the schedule that basically just did Thursday/Friday games and asked if that was an option. Was told that they haven't offered that in years, was just for the people that were grandfathered in, and then her super helpful suggestion was to find more friends to split up the full season. Like she didn't see the last two months of bleacher tickets going for $5/each on Stubhub.

Just give me drama. And/or chaos. If I can't get game 7s, I want Sale to be a superspreader right before they start the World Series.

All except the "Thor, Gray and Matz" part When the first guy listed in there has thrown 10 innings in the last 2 years, forgive me for not getting too excited. Here's your roster below: C - Contreras $8m 1B - Rivas $600k 2B - Madrigal $600k 3B - Escobar $10m (based on one Brewers blog I wrote, that's the high end) SS - Taylor $14m (Zobrist contract, saw a couple comparisons) OF - Conforto $20m (says he's a lock to accept the QO, so let's just guess a little higher) OF - Happ $6m OF - Rosario $15m (total guess) C - Chirinos $1m UT - Hoerner $600k IF - Wisdom $600k IF - Schwindel $600k IF - Bote $2.5m That's $79.5m. Heyward at an almost complete loss gets you to $100m. Hendricks $14m Mills/Wick/Adam/Heuer/Azlolay/pick 5 other bullpen dudes $600k each, $6m You think we should be looking at $50m to fill out the rotation?

Did Tom Ricketts write that post

It's not "giving up", but it's admitting that you have pushed the idea of a competitive team back another year or two. Considering he only has one year left, 'or two' is not accurate. Or at least it's a different conversation where you can prove out a reasonable extension.

For the 'absolutely don't trade Willson' crowd, is there a reasonable extension you'd be happy with? He'll forever be a Cubs legend, but he's basically the Rizzo conversation again, except worse because he's a catcher who has repeatedly had the 'he's too worn down' conversations surrounding him. I can squint and see working with him enough to get to an adequate level of first base defense, hope more reps over there keeps his bat in the 120 wRC range, and run with some bizarre Schwindel/Rivas/Contreras/second division starter rotation at 1B/C. But if that's the case, I want to see KB and Correa or Seager on the left side of the infield.

As we have seen, that's much easier said than done. It's stupidity draped in 3-dimensional chess. 19 teams managed it last year, the Cubs were not one of them.

No problem with them feeling out the market for someone with one year left before free agency, especially when that guy is a 30 year old catcher who has been used very heavily when healthy for the last 5 years. Fair amount of teams facing 40 man roster crunches, and as much as we all love Willy, the difference between him and a couple stiffs who can throw together a 1.5 fWAR isn't going to make or break the season.

not to mention that they have a tv station that they cant afford to completely cripple with a long tank + rebuild, unsustainably high (much higher than what they were in 2011-14 when they also had the good will of people buying in to the theo rebuild) ticket prices that nobody will pay to watch a rebuild (and a season ticket base that isn't just going to stick around in hopes of getting to see that first world series like they might have in the past), and just flat out the fact that the landscape has changed - hoyer himself has said the sign and flip stuff they did back then would not fly today. all that said, horsefeathers ptr and his stupid horsefeathering letter. I believe the majority of the TV revenue comes from people who pay for it as part of their normal cable package, which was always the plan. Seeing rumors online that season ticket prices will drop a very small amount, which, combined with the 6 digit waiting list and your standard stream of Chicago tourists, will be more than enough to keep ticket revenue high. I can see there being some pressure just in terms of keeping the surrounding area lively, but it's pretty much a locked in cash cow at this point.

Maybe as well start googling '2021 version of Scott Feldman'

I just read this about check swing calls in MLB: So if true the angle that we're talking about is technically not the determination of a swing Yeah and I think you need to change the rule. The NCAA has it as a certain point/line. It might mean hitters need to change their approach, but would still be better than the current set up.

Small picture, Flores was 0/18 with 9 Ks going into that AB against Scherzer, and definitely looked like it. Big picture, adopt the NCAA rule which actually puts a line (believe front of the plate or the batters front hip) and figure out some way to automate it. Shouldn't be too hard to throw a camera in every dugout that can get the angle right.

Flaherty for La Russa. Do it.

This is simultaneously extremely fun to watch and profoundly unfair that an essentially 6 month battle for being the best team in baseball will come down to a few innings (and infield singles like that) to earn the right to enter two more slightly weighted coin flips.

Has there been any talk about extending the blue line past O'Hare (or making like a Yellow Line type extension) if the Bears end up out there? Would think with enough lead time you could follow 90 and get pretty close, but I also understand being weary of building out public transportation in a remote work heavy world.

Liam Hendricks is 31 years old and signed for 3 more years, and isn't chasing down any save milestones or anything like that. Turn him into your 6th-8th inning fireman, let Kimbrel close if you don't find a good deal for him.

But doesn't the 'actuarial reality' come for every team? By that logic, won't the Astros be worse next year too? I get that pitching is more susceptible than offense, but this was still a 6th in offensive fWAR, 3rd in wRC team with every major piece coming back next year. I don't see why regression is a White Sox unique concept, and so if you set that aside, the core they have (Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Anderson, Vaughn, Sheets, Gio, Cease, Kopech, plus the guys in their 30s), don't need to improve much on 6th best offensive team, best pitching (by fWAR) team to have as good a chance as anyone the next couple years. Yes, but they needed a 2016 Cubs level of good outcomes to be the 7th best team in MLB(beating 9th by a game), and they don't have the financial resources of many of those teams to stay there nor the farm system(Fangraphs has the Sox system as 30th by a non-trivial margin) to keep up on that axis. And again, the implication isn't that the Sox are doomed, I like lots of their players and I'd be surprised if they don't have multiple other playoff appearances in the next 3-5 years. But in terms of the probability of winning a championship, I don't think those teams will be as strong as this year, similar to how the 2017-2020 Cubs turned out to not be as strong as 2016. But they didn't get the 2016 Cubs level of good outcomes right? Their team, by advanced statistics (total fWAR), was the best team in the AL this year, and 3rd overall. And then they lost to a 'worse' team. Maybe we're just splitting hairs on percentages (and maybe I'm just bored at work), but just replicating their level of play should give them as good a shot as any non-Dodgers team next year, and I think the room for improvement at least comes close to balancing out the expected step backs. Essentially, I don't think this is a 'the playoffs are a different animal and they don't have the resources to take the next step' situation as much as it's a 'the playoffs are a crapshoot and once you get to 8 teams you probably have between a 10% and 15% chance of winning it all, thank god the Cubs won one of their dice rolls' situation.

They can definitely be the 2015 Cubs or 2015 Astros, but as I mentioned in my last post, I don't think they are set up as well for the future as they hope they are. The 2015 Astros still had 4 top 100 prospects, the Cubs still had 5 (not including Eloy who didn't make it). The Sox have 0, and doing a quick google search saw one site rank their farm system 29th after this year's draft. Their payroll is already pretty high, though I don't think they have any Heyward like contracts so they have some maneuverability there. Their window is right now and maybe the next 2 years unless they hit on a high percentage of their moves, which they could. Like I was saying a few pages ago, the easy part is accumulating talent during a 4+ stretch of tanking. Expectations are low, you can afford to take risks, you have extra draft and IFA capital. The hard part begins now when you have the good team but need to not only make it better, but sustainable. Based on the state of their farm system, I'm not sure how sustainable it is. We'll see...I like their team overall. Also I think the Tigers are the sleeping giants there. They have a top 5 farm system, a ton of money to spend and had an unexpectedly decent year. Fair points on the future help in the pipeline. Some of that is timing/qualification based, because at this point their future help depends a lot on Sheets, Vaughn, Burger developing and Kopech/Crochet taking off rotation spots, but not much in the pipeline after that. I just don't see a team that needs to get better, and I think they're pretty set up to maintain this level for a couple years at least, assuming they are comfortable with the arbitration costs continuing to rise.

I don't think you can necessarily take the Cubs 2016-2020 gradual decline and slap it onto the Sox though. They don't have a Heyward, they hopefully don't have a Russell, and they have 2 top 20 fWAR pitchers, ages 27 and 26, locked up for 2 and 4 years, even ignoring Lynn (and to a lesser extent Kopech). Why can't they be the 2017 (or 2015) Astros? Or even the 2015 Cubs? And I guess it depends on how much weight you place on being among the best 2-3 teams in baseball, vs just being in a position to take as many shots at the post-wild card playoffs as possible. I think they're in a good spot to carry their division for a few years. I don't think they'll have the Cubs specific decline, only that the most likely outcome is this is their best team of the competitive window. They may not have the specific components that led to the Cubs decline, but regression to the mean comes for everyone. Will they still be division favorites? Probably next year at the least. But it only takes one pop up team to knock you to the wild card if you aren't in that 'best 2-3 teams in MLB' tier(and sometimes even then like this year's dodgers), and even if they don't they still have to beat the best in the AL to win a title in all likelihood. If this sounds bearish it doesn't mean to be, I like the White Sox roster for the most part and think Hahn is capable of supplementing it further, but there's an actuarial reality, especially when it comes to pitching, and I think it's fair to question if they can replicate that for the foreseeable future. But doesn't the 'actuarial reality' come for every team? By that logic, won't the Astros be worse next year too? I get that pitching is more susceptible than offense, but this was still a 6th in offensive fWAR, 3rd in wRC team with every major piece coming back next year. I don't see why regression is a White Sox unique concept, and so if you set that aside, the core they have (Robert, Moncada, Eloy, Anderson, Vaughn, Sheets, Gio, Cease, Kopech, plus the guys in their 30s), don't need to improve much on 6th best offensive team, best pitching (by fWAR) team to have as good a chance as anyone the next couple years.

I don't think you can necessarily take the Cubs 2016-2020 gradual decline and slap it onto the Sox though. They don't have a Heyward, they hopefully don't have a Russell, and they have 2 top 20 fWAR pitchers, ages 27 and 26, locked up for 2 and 4 years, even ignoring Lynn (and to a lesser extent Kopech). Why can't they be the 2017 (or 2015) Astros? Or even the 2015 Cubs? And I guess it depends on how much weight you place on being among the best 2-3 teams in baseball, vs just being in a position to take as many shots at the post-wild card playoffs as possible. I think they're in a good spot to carry their division for a few years.

Yeah, this was the Sox best chance and they didn't get the job done. Kind of like the Cubs at the start of the run everyone talks about their bats but it's the pitching that really made the team special. Meanwhile Rodon is a FA, Lynn will be 35 next year, and Cease hasn't shown what he did this year before. They're going to slide Kopech in, and that will help, but this rotation is going to regress a lot. It'll still be quite good, but there's really no place to go but down from #1. Can the offense pick up the slack? You look at Robert, Eloy, and Vaughn and you probably think "Of Course!" but we all saw how assuming your guys will keep improving turns out. And even on this side of the ball, they have no 2B, and their 1B and C are starting to get pretty old. I assume they still are willing to spend resources to do some stuff this winter, though likely nothing huge. So at that point you'd expect a slightly worse team next year? But then you have to think about the rest of the division. It's been complete horsefeathers the last few years, but that might not still be the case next year. The Twins and Tigers are expected to be pretty active this winter. The Indians and Royals will likely make a few moves, and have some significant help coming from the farm imminently. So even if the Sox hold serve talent-wise, it's not going to be nearly as easy next year. They're not going to crash and burn, but they really needed to at least make some noise during these playoffs. Eh. On the flip side, even a 'slightly worse' version of this team should carry the AL Central pretty easily. Can't assume full health from Robert and Eloy, but I'd take the over on the 520ish PAs they got combined this year. Vaughn and Sheets both have plenty of pedigree. The Madrigal/Kimbrel trade obviously hurts, especially if they can't teach one of these corner guys into a marginal second baseman, but Moncada can play there, so they can be flexible in who they target. Pitching will regress because it always does, but the offense should improve and there's a lot of margin for error the next few years that you feel pretty safe saying they'll have a few more shots at the playoff lottery.

I went to one of my nephew's little league games in July. Any shred of faith I had left in humanity left me that day. Just moved out to the suburbs and we're right down the street from a huge park with a ton of baseball/football/soccer fields. Only have a 2 year old, so don't have to deal directly with it for a while, but walked over and started watching a football game with 10 year olds and my god, the Dads involved. At this point that's probably better argument for me than the health issues.