The risk was not minimal. The Angels and Mariners are screwed based on one bad contract each.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Assuming it was a good faith offer (which you have questioned).

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Do I even have to state how the risk on those contracts is easily differentiated from the present situation?

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Yep. The shit is multilayered in this compost pile of a result.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The White Sox should be commended for trying.

They should get into the Harper bidding just so the Phillies have to pay more (but then with their luck they'd be Alex Rios'd into some montrosity).

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Nope.
They should be ripped for failing.

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I wonder if Bryce is Leery (Holmes) about going to TROUT-TOWN?

As ridiculous as that sounds, that is what some are arguing.

My bretheran pounded the Cub fans for years about demanding nothing besides cold beer from their ownership. I'm embarrassed by what I see today.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

They believed they had the best offer on the table.

That is another permutation in management's apology that is angering me. If you believed it then you had bad intel, which points the finger at management's abilities again.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

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All I said was that the Sox offer was not cheap, not low ball. They got outbid. It happens.

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You continue to try to have it both ways.

Either the Sox front office failed or they didn't and they shrewdly walked away from a bad contract. Pick a lane.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I've already answered you, correctly I might add, on this once today.

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It was not cheap but it was lowball.

They didn't so much get outbid as they removed themselves from the bidding. It wasn't like it was a sealed bid auction where they were stuck to make one offer. They were given the chance to match.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

So are the Yankees low ballers as well?

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Probably could have signed him if they didn't have bad Peavy money still on the books

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I'm going to bounce from the spot for awhile but I will be back at some point to argue with you about this hoops stuff again. Playoffs have been great this season. See ya up the road.

I'm out.

of course

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

You did not. You continue to play both sides for some reason. You can't say the Sox did everything they could while also saying the Sox offseason was a complete and utter failure. Those two positions are mutually exclusive.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

The Sox fans are bring the fire and passion. This is getting me ready for baseball season. Good job.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

I, too, am not convinced they really wanted Manny, but rather wanted the appearance of it - I'm not saying this in a pejorative way, just as an observation and consideration.

I imagine they had a short list of other folks they are actually targeting - obviously considerably less expensive players (I worked with a wholesaler named Les Expensive), and maybe the Sox intelligentsia thought it would look better to frame these other folks' signings around 'well, we tried to land the big fish but, since we couldn't, look at these medium and small fish we got in lieu' than 'we didn't bother because we weren't ready'. I don't know.

Regardless, they're all unmitigated dopes either because they couldn't play their own game correctly or they're just plain old country-dumb. I guess Hahn/Williams can always comfort themselves with the fact that they're not GarPax.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

A case could easily be made they are, inexplicably, worse.

It all comes back to Jerry. He's a much bigger problem than Kenny/Hahn or GarPax.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Absolutely not. Kenny Williams has a ring with a team that went wire to wire in 1st place and dominated the playoffs. GarPax have nothing even close to that.

Agreed.

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Absolutely true. They all should get PARTICIPATION TROPHIES like the Little Leaguers that they are.

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An Ode to the Texas man who shot an Antifa terrorist:

Oh, he might have went on livin'
But he made one fatal slip
When he tried to match the Ranger
With the big iron on his hip

From November of 2018 - Jon Heyman:

2) Manny Machado, SS-3B: Our poll done a few months ago of top executives had Machado the winner. Word is, the Phillies are still hanging in there for Machado, and maybe Harper, too. But at least one team I know of has declared themselves out. 10 years, 32.5M per, $325M. The Phillies are the logical call, but he’s believed to love the idea of the Yankees. Me: 10 years, $30M, $300M.

Somehow, a baseball writer last year had an idea of what it would take to sign him but the Sox are shocked they didn't get him.

Asking a prospective free agent to risk $50 million below the highest offer, for a chance to earn an extra $20 million on a proposition with a probability of, at the very best, 50/50, and an expected value of -$15 million, is absurdly cheap. Absolutely no way around that.

Gar's made the playoffs. Hahn has nothing even close to that. Sox have been one of the worst teams in the league over the last 9 years.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Expected value of minus $15M needs to be kept in context of the size of the deal or about 5% of the $300M or slightly higher percent if you use $250M as the denominator. So absurdly cheap is the wrong relative term.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Making the playoffs in the NBA is not a hard thing to do.

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