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My daughter's favorite song...

Frankly, if 10 or 15 other GMs can build a competitive team for well under $200mill, why is capping spending at $243mill supposed to be such a handicap to Dombrowski?

And yet teams are. That's why the Sox deadline and offseason were so boring...

You're probably right when it comes to Cain, Buxton, and Kiermeier. Thy're not going anywhere. Billy Hamilton? Uninspiring hitter, but easy to get. Currently he is on the Braves' bench awaiting pinch runner duty. As they are loaded in the OF, he is unlikely to play much defense, but he certainly is good out there. Pillar was acquired for peanuts by the Giants. He makes about $3mill less than Bradley and has one fianl arb year left. The contract-laden Giants might look for any chance to drop payroll, and their price for him was Derek Law and Alen Henson. That would be like to Sox giving up Hembree and Tzu-Wei Lin. Lagares and Maybin will be free agents. There will be options. Whether or not JBJ is anyone's favorite player, the bottom line is Mookie is irreplaceable. I can nominate CFs to replace JBJ, and at the very least, people will argue, with some agreeing and some disagreeing. I can't think of a RF where we can have that same type of argument with Betts. There just isn't anyone. So if the Sox need to keep either player, the choice at which one you try to keep is obvious to me. Bradley is probably th safer answr, as he should be much easier. Although it's not like he has been all over taking an extension, either. And his agent isn't known for hometown discounts. Yeah it feels like dealing Lynn to California in some ways. But even if the Sox tender Bradley, his agent is Scott Boras. So if you tender him and guarantee Betts leaves, all you're doing is increasing the odds that both leave after 2020 anyway. The biggest reason is the Luxury Tax. Say Bradley gets his $10-12mill. That doesn't mean he costs the Sox $10-12 mill. Depending on final payroll, that could be as high as $14.5mill to $16.8mill. My thoughts were that Bradley just isn't a $10-12mill player. Do you think he is a $15-17mill player? That's what Henry would be paying. If the Sox bring back Betts and Bradley, the amount the Sox pay Bradley plus his luxury tax hit could be nearly 70% of what Sox actually pay Betts. (Assuming $25mill for Betts here.) That's not insurance; that's a drastically disproportionate pricing scheme. Bradley does make baseball sense. He's a good player. But the financial impact does matter, too. A lot of these decisions have to transcend baseball quite often. It is a business after all...

I don't think the Sox can afford a prolonged rebuild. They have too many high-priced contracts as it is. And with Bogaerts, Devers, Benintendi and Vazquez all with the team for the next 3 years, they do have a solid foundation. All they need with Mookie is to decide to pay him. And despite his "off year," Betts is all but irreplaceable. If you think Bradley's Gold glove defense and .730 OPS is going to be tough to replace, what about Mookie's Gold Glove defense and .900 OPS? I also don't think the Sox need Bradley more than he needs them. Not sure where that is coming from. The only differences between Bradley and Kevin Pillar are 30 points in OPS and $3mill in salary. And Pillar was acquired for a failed former top prospect and a career borderline middle reliever. Replacing Bradley with a cheaper version is one of the few types of players they can afford. The Sox might keep Bradley, but it actually doesn't make much sense if they want to reset and try to sign Mookie. Betts is a generational talent and potential Hall of Famer. Bradley is a glove-first ninth spot hitter with the occasional hot streak. You don't build around the latter...

At least we didn't go down. Hopefully the Sox have some Jeff McNeil types who struggle in the PCL but somehow can excel at hitting Major League pitching...

Don't you typically site Vegas odds? Do you think those guys aren't math whizzes? Jeff Sagarin has Bachelor's in math from MIT. They don't get any nerdier than MIT...

Done that. Trips to Wrigley are a comparative nightmare. First of all, while it isn't cheap, at least Guaranteed Rate has parking lots. The train ride in can be fun, but getting back is a lot easier driving if my daughter is all worn out and can't stay awake. We'd all rather she not sleep on a train. And GRF is less crowded, and the concession and rest rooms are less packed (and the rest rooms have been updated since 1912). And Cubs fans have been crazy the last few years. A few years ago they put in the new scoreboard, which blocked some of the rooftop bleachers across the street. There was all kinds of lawsuits from the rooftop owners, apparently angry and complaining they could no longer steal gate money from the Cubs. One game I was in RF foul territory facing the scoreboard sitting next to my daughter, who was maybe 8 or 9 at the time. As she was reading the scoreboard for pitches and velocities, I could see on the rooftop across the street underneath it. In giant letters, someone had painted "BITE ME" so large it could be read by someone sitting in the RF foul seats several hundred yards away. I spent the whole game hoping my daughter wouldn't drop her eyes down just enough to notice it...

Obviously every win helps. But while the Sox shouldn't look ahead, it's ok for fans to do so. And the Sox have a 4 game series in Tampa that is ultimately the most important series left in the season. The best way to ensure gaining ground is winning head-to-head games...

What do any of us know about heart and confidence and momentum that doesn't apply to Tampa and Oakland?

But it happens every year. It's just more pronounced this year due to their being nothing else and the complete lack of activity of DD...

I am thinking of more of a Reload than a Rebuild. To me, "rebuilding" is a really nice way of telling your fans "we aren't spending any money, so keep those expectations low." The White Sox have been in a rebuild fo a while, and the expectations have been low, but the White Sox are actually a fairly smart organization. I go to their games plenty of times because, well, you should see how cheap the Sunday ticket prices are. An "expensive" ticket sometimes costs all of $7. That's like the price of a fast food value meal. And for the cheaper, "less interesting" games - $4 per ticket. These are not typos. This means on some Sundays, I can take my entire family to a White Sox game and spend less on tickets than I would if I were to go by myself to watch the Schaumburg Boomers or the Joliet Slammers. (These are baseball teams.) But if the Sox rebuild, will they be so generous to their fans? How do you get people to go?

While I do lack their optimism, it's good to encourage the True Believers...

Oooof! Thanks for reminding me..

And even if you only get 90% of JBJ out there, is it really so bad? We did win a title with Johnny Damon in CF at one point, and compared to JBJ, it really was like leaving CF vacant for a season. We are talking about a CF who once used the LF as a cutoff man...

The only real disadvantage for the Sox in resetting after 2020 and then re-signing Betts is the free agent market beyond Mookie right now actually looks fairly weak. This has pluses and minuses. The big minus is that any team looking to drop some serious coin won;t find anything in the way of alternatives. The flip side to that is, those same teams obviously won't have a $20mill player coming off the books, so we won't know who has available budget, and a lot of them have their own internal star players to worry about, such as the Dodgers. (Sign Mookie or extend Bellinger?) That is, unless Giancarlo Stanton opts out of his Yankee contract, which would be a move his agent will be screaming at him not to do. Much like Price, I don't think Stanton is going to find a comparable offer from the non-Yankee teams out there. I doubt anyone else will top the 7 year / $218mill he will still have left on that deal (which could also turn onto an 8 year / $233mill deal if his option gets exercised). The remianing years for Stanton are the higher paid ones on thta contract. Now I do expect JD Martinez to be more likely to opt out, a his last 2 years are the lower paid ones on his deal. But he might find staying to be the better move, since his last bout with free agency didn't play out the way it was supposed to in the public story (which might have been nothing but a marketing ploy by Boras). So that leaves only George Springer as a consolation prize, and likely a considerably cheaper one than Betts as Springer is 3 years older and not nearly as good. Or the Sox and the other suitors will have to wait another year for Kris Bryant...

I see no reason to walk assume Betts isn’t coming back. The Sox will have the need and the budget space, and while there are certainly other large market teams, many of them either lack the budget room or have their own elite players to worry about. Certainly there’s still a really good chance Mookie leaves, but this is a situation where the Sox should do everything possible. This could mean Bradley. While Dombrowski’s commitment to defense isn’t so historically accurate, he also isn’t going to simply leave CF vacant. Possibly a glove-first type, as most of them are cheaper. But maybe the Sox slide a current corner over, which can be great (Betts) for defense fans, or not so great (that non-Betts guy). The good news for fans of defense is, if the Sox go this budget-conscious way, the cheapest way to fill the outfield is a no-hit/good field CF...

Add Dalbec to another roster and get a pitcher (and not a belly-itcher) back...

Mata is 20 and not exactly dominating AA. I hope he doesn’t make the team in 2020, for multiple reasons. Ditto Duran. I could see Chatham in the 2b mix with Marco. And maybe Houck on the 40 man The Sox might have to resort to a minor league contract or two to keep payroll down, but that’s no reason to ruin any promise on the farm in the process...

Laureano can do all that and throw himself out at the plate. And he does it by throwing it the wrong way so it circles the globe and comes back to him covered with stickers of all the countries it passed through...

I don’t think you get to speak for John Henry here. But if you do, at least remember he is a strong metrics guy and was one of the first owners in MLB to add metrics people to the front office. Unless he only hired Bill James to play Santa at the office Christmas party, which would also have been a good idea. It’s not whether JBJ is the best or not. It’s whether he’s worth $10-12 mil. It’s easy to say yes when he’s your favorite player and you’re not actually paying the bills, and if no serious decisions have to be made about the finances of this team. Having Bradley back would be great, but he won’t be cheap. He didn’t hire Scott Boras so he could take a paycut. Now bear in mind, a reset is just a board theory. It makes sense in a lot of ways, it’s not like we’re working with insider info here. But right now, this team is Betts-Bogaerts-Devers as the core. And a reset might be the only way to keep that core...

Yes, especially Buxton, Cain, Hamilton and, for some reason, Engel. I live in Chicago, so I see plenty of AL and NL Central teams. (FYI some of them also love Harrison Bader.) Last year I saw Kiermeier and Buxton at Comiskey/US Cellular/Guaranteed Rate Field in person. As for Laureano, go to YouTube and make the call for yourself. Like this one And bear in mind that throw had no cutoff man and I don’t think it even bounced. And there are other clips. The dude is amazing. But the big question is - why are you doubting this? Do you think Bradley is the only CF anyone raves about?

This year he’d cost a pro-rated league minimum. Next year is another matter....

Maybe Laureano comes from another planet. It actually makes sense. Humans can’t throw like that...

Maybe, since he is not a pitcher, Dombrowski will make a move for the recently-released Scooter Gennett. Scooter is having a horrible season after missing the first 3 months, but in 2017-18, he did have an .859OPS with 50 HRs. He is a free agent after 2019, but whoever signs him for the remainder of the season would get an inside track to re-signing him. He might even want a one year value rebuilder...