Dojji

Sorry, that was shop talk. You probably don't know that I'm a telemarketer. "push" is to persist and use additional rebuttals, it's something we often do when the fish aren't biting. The response usually isnt' good, no the first time is usually no the second, third, and fourth, but management will never get that through their heads, so we "push" when the numbers aren't good, even if ti might be better to simply go on to the next call.

you're close to getting it, but still a little off on a couple key points. The big one is that no one trades an ace like that at all, for any price, unless they have a reason to do it. Either they think they have no chance at all to build a winner during the lifetime of the contract *AND* they don't think they can re-sign them to a mutually reasonable deal, or they don't deal their ace. Right now NEITHER of these things is strictly true for CWS. Let me put it this way -- what would have been your reasonable price to trade Jon Lester in 2009 when it looked like we were still right on the doorstep of another ring?

This rumor seems to be debunked, it's been widely reported that someone tried to back up the truck for Sale and the White Sox hung up the phone.

I don't want any pitcher currently on the A's. Not even Hill, really, certainly not Gray.

It took a Phillies team that lost nearly 100 games and didn't have the roster to contend within the next 5 years. That's what it took to "get" Hamels, meaning what it took for the Phillies FO to even start fielding phone calls about the guy. The cost in talent is secondary.

That's OK, the White Sox don't touch it with a 10 foot pole and if you push, they ask for Bogaerts and Bradley (yes both of them) on top.

I think so. There's a lot of out-with-the-old that happens when you are sitting in the basement for 2 years.

Yes it is. You are not comprehending the difference between the 2014 Phillies and the 2016 White Sox. The Phillies would not be in contention for the remainder of Hamels' contract and they knew it, so losing the contract benefitted them and helped them rebuild. The White Sox have no reason to believe they will be out of contention for the lifetime of the contracts on either Sale or Quintana, so the idea that they have any motivation to accept even the most unreasonably, back-breakingly generous offer just has no support at all.

Because of course they do. The names we don't want to trade are always the most attractive names to the other team, for the same reason we don't want to trade them. In all seriousness -- I think we could probably deal one player from our current big league plans to improve the pitching staff, if the right deal became available. As much as he's become a fan fave here, my choice of whom to trade would be JBJ. He's good, I'd love to keep him my price to move him would be very high, but I'd move him in the right trade because Betts and Benintendi could both slot into his position reasonably well, he's probably the most expendable ("least indispensible" may be a better way to phrase that) of our top young stars for that reason.

Cole Hamels was traded when he was 31 and his team knew it was falling out of contention for the very long term. Sale and Quintana are both 27 and their team is only a small step from legitimacy with plenty of money to play with, a hurdle any competent GM should be able to clear in the near future. If you do the math, you'll see this rounds up to "you have no idea what you're talking about."

While I agree with you in principle... TINSTAAPP. Espinosa is to be evaluated on the basis that 150% of his current value is based on potential rather than reality. We have a good stable of young pitching prospects, and maybe 1 of those guys will actually crack the roster and reach 25% of his actual potential in reality. We need to keep drafting. plenty of great stuff to be found late in the first round. Lester himself was a second round pick. The thing to do is to keep drafting the best pitching talent you can, obsessively hording 18 year olds because you're afraid of missing out on their potential, and sacrificing an opportunity to turn some of that value into actual wins on the roster right now, is an example of the miser's fallacy. Potential is valuable. Potential is never as valuable as reality.

They're trading an impact player. A proven cost-controlled impact player who's still going to be playing for the team in 3 years. The kind of player you time rebuilds around. The last thing they want is a bunch of unproven guys. This is the White Sox, a big city team, one of the oldest teams in the league, and a team with just as much history and pride as we have. This is not some cash strapped small market nobody, they can afford these guys, even in a bad year these guys are an integral part of the 5 year plan and losing them would involve creating a new 5 year plan from scratch. No way Quintana or Sale comes without us giving up active impact players from our big league roster. STARTING with Bogearts or Betts... PLUS some of these guys you're mentioning. Do you really think we can protect Bogaerts, Betts, Bradley, Benintendi, and Moncada, all of these, while trying to acquire Chris freaking Sale? Really? When Chicago can afford him and has no actual reason to make any trade at all? You really think that the kind of price you're thinking you can get him for is 1/1000 of the actual price to lure him here? Because seriously, I could use a hit of whatever moondust you're smoking. Hook me up.

Right, exactly. EXACTLY. I'm getting a bit weary of fans here with pie in the sky expectations that we're going to somehow con teams out of franchise centerpieces. It's. Not. Happening. The only times that kind of trade has EVER happened is when those guys are about to get expensive and are on skin. And there is no situation like that that exists in the league right now because at the moment more teams are on good financial ground as a percentage of the league than ever before in the league's history and everyone can afford to re-sign at least a few key studs to team friendly deals. It is NOT. HAPPENING. Now I know that we as fans lived the exception taht proves the rule. We all want to recreate the Pedro trade, because that was sure fun. But so many extenuating factors forced to Pedro trade to happen, including, I'm fully convinced, a leaguewide consipracy against the city of Montreal, and there is no parallel situation today. It isn't going to happen. I get the idea of building from the top, I understand, I do, but everyone else wants to do it too if they could. If there's even a whiff that these bigtime talents are coming available, everyone calls to find out the price, and the less cautious GM's start outbidding each other or potentially even themsevles. An ace, a real one, is a prize worth going crazy for, that's why you guys are doing it, but in that environment the price becomes embarrassing for everyone really quickly, even if someone is desperate and stupid enough to mortgage their future to do it. And woe betide the GM who trades one of these guys and gets nothing useful back. See also, again, the Pedro trade.

It kind of diminishes in the presence of two young defensive minded backup catchers, but I won't dismiss the mentorship factor.

Because catching depth is important, catcher is probably the one position most likely to sustain injuries over the course of the season. Also there's no particular reason Hanigan can't bounce back in the second half. If you get rid of Hanigan and take an injury to Leon or Vazquez, you're left with Dan Butler as your backup catcher, and while I've always felt that Butler deserved a chance to see if he could break into the big leagues as a backup catcher with a bit of stick off the bench, the middle of a pennant race is not the right time.

In 13 I still felt the team was struggling to patch together one season at a time. In 2016 there is a clear 3 year plan. 2016 wins.

And the need to maintain something that at least vaguely resembles a farm system?

I sprained my ankle twice in quick succession about 6 years ago, and the ankle still clicks and clacks and aches in bad weather.

Not every situation in which Uehara was pitching is a situation in which I'd want Ross pitching. Barnes is my better pick for an alternative in late innings, and Barnes did see a lot of use in that time. For all the hatred Farrell gets for his "abuse" of Koji and tazawa, take a look at Barnes' workload. He's on pace for nearly 90 innings pitched out of the bullpen. That is a TON. And guess what, any late inning work that isn't going to Koji would have been heaped onto Barnes since he's our best middle reliever. The fact is that the entire bullpen has been overworked by the struggles of the Bastard Batallion. Every one of our RP's have pitched more than they ideally should. Those innings have to be pitched by SOMEONE.

If we got a good price on Holt, I'd be content to move him and gamble on Marco Hernandez being able to be a solid replacement in the utility role. I think Hernandez is quite talented.

With so few free agents as an alternative, the price for any trade is going to be through the roof. The cost in talent to bring a SP in in trade is going to have to be balanced in light of the fact that everyone who needs a starter (and every team not actively tanking for draft picks will be buyers in the offseason) will be trying to get one in that way. Frankly I'd rather use our financial strength as the key asset to expand our rotation rather than waiting for an offseason where the only way to do the same thing would be to eat even further our field of top prospects. A better reason not to go after Santana is the possibility that the Twins may think they need to maximize their return on the guy and fail to make a reasonable price. That said, I'm actually warming to the idea of 1-and-an-option for Dickey if he's interested. You want durable, no one's more durable than R. A. Dickey, and that's a good reason to take a chance on a 42 year old as long as he's good with a shorter contract. A rotation of Price-Wright-Dickey-Porcello Pomeranz should be pretty darn tough to deal with.

Every bullpen needs to be able to abuse its relievers from time to time. You just can't ration out appearances the way MVP says we should. You don't know when you're going to have a bad stretch from your starters and need 4+ innings a night for 2-3 nights in a row. Managing the bullpen so that no one was ever overtaxed would be an act of epic baseball genius, and anyone who could predict the future well enough to pull it off in realtime is probably making a killing in the stock market.

I think we could very well have a twosome of Leon and Vazquez nexty year. But I don't think for one second that Leon is really a 1.200 OPS hitter.

I'll give him a mulligan, but not a pass. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen, but I'm not going to hold it against him.

How about an everyday player in one of the prime positions he plays? Especially 2B. Holt would be quite an acceptable everyday second baseman -- not a superstar, but a solid contributing player. It's the fact that he's blocked there by Pedroia that's allowed him to shine as a supersub.