2019!

Thanks JR

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

No long term payroll obligations for the potential sale to Mark Cuban!

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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!

Jerry would rather kill himself than sell to Cuban.

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"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Here's hoping...

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With the plan being they are sold after he dies I don't think it's an issue.

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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!

It starts looking like that more and more... sell the team, and watch them move somewhere. 25th in attendance in 2018. Welcome Portland or Charlotte White Sox. San Diego outdraws and they had nothing to speak of last year (I guess the White Sox really didn't either.)

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

I think a new owner will think the White Sox have a better chance of being successful in Chicago rather than a much smaller town that can't support teams either. You don't see a lot of teams leaving huge markets even if they share it, and the biggest examples are the Dodgers, who went to another big market, and the LA football teams who clearly made a mistake.

l

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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!

I wonder if Nashville could support an MLB team?

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Interesting article on expansion. I know it’s not relocation.

https://tht.fangraphs.com/tht-annual-2018/mlb-needs-to-expand-heres-where/

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Not reading all that but it's pretty amusing to say "MLB needs to expand" when 75% of the league is trying to lose on purpose every year

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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

They arent tanking because there are too many teams.

Also there are about 5 teams tanking.

Rangers, Sox, Royals, Tigers, Orioles in the AL. No NL teams tanking? Thats good I guess

_________________
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

You are over-valuing attendance in the big picture - especially when factoring in the Sox deal with The Illinois Sports Authority. They are ranked 14th in MLB in value @ $1.5 B in large part because of the size of the market. That and revenue sharing assure a steady income regardless of attendance.
https://www.forbes.com/teams/chicago-white-sox/#4b9af18e76e8

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“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Just the Marlins. I wouldnt count the Rangers. They just suck there is no specific tanking.

The Sox probably won't be very good, but they aren't going to be actively tanking either. They are going to be playing young guys like Eloy, and giving Rodon, Giolito, and Lopez the ball for 30+ starts. The Sox are probably hoping they perform well enough to pick in the middle of the draft order. Barring injuries, they aren't going to be calling up scrubs from Charlotte just to field a team. If there is one thing this team needs to learn this year, its how NOT to lose 90+ games.

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I mean the same could be said about the Sox now that it's 2019 but when you know there's a 0% chance of a playoff berth on March 28th I think it's fair to call it tanking. But if it's just 6 teams that's not as prolific as it was a few years ago so maybe they are righting the ship.

_________________
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

There are no teams literally trying to lose games.

The Sox dont expect to win the division or be in contention though.


I think the tanking will be significantly curbed with the new CBA. Paying young players like 10% what you pay veterans is part of why tanking is so prolific.

Right. There is a different between "tanking" and playing young guys while rebuilding.

Its not a real high percentage, but its not zero either. The AL Central is not a good division. Of all the teams you listed, the Sox clearly would have the best chance to make the playoffs simply because of where they play.

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I appreciate your optimism but it's 0 and that's only because it's not theoretically possible for it to be less than 0.

_________________
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 dunno. I mean, the White Sox are literally not trying to improve their team.

_________________
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

It is weird to me expanding a league that isn’t as popular as it used to be.

Especially when they are talking about putting a team back in Montreal or Mexico or Portland.

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That's just not true. If it was, guys like Davidson, Avi Garcia, James Shields, among others would have been brought back and guys like Kopech and Moncada would not be called up during the season.

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They absolutely should put a team back in Montreal but they shouldn't expand to do that. Throw them the Marlins or Rays. The Nationals seem a little too relevant lately to move back.

_________________
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

Everyone would be sucking them off like it's their job when the team is good and everyone would be saying the team has to move because no one's there when the team is bad. In other words, Nashville in the NHL. It's a market the size of Milwaukee or Cincinnati without the long history of pro sports or a core population that has grown up there and never left.

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...and there are only 41 NHL home games with a stadium that seats roughly 16-18 thousand?

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Baseball's probably never coming back to Montreal, by the way, for a number of reasons. Public funding for a new stadium is never gonna happen; the province got duped into building an 18,000-seat arena in Quebec City only for the NHL to fuck them in the ass like they were always going to, leaving them with the biggest and most expensive arena in the Quebec Major-Junior Hockey League. Also, a great deal of the English population has left the province since the Expos' heyday thanks to the language laws, and the Expos leaned very heavily on the English side of the fanbase despite marketing in both languages. Most of them have moved to Tronna or Florida. I wish they hadn't left but there's not really a home to go back to. Baseball wanted to finish the job the pequistes started and they did.

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Besides, I doubt that, at this point, the MLB would let one of their original franchises--and the team that's had the longest affiliation with a single neighborhood than any other MLB team--move. And sure, the MLB is a business, which means anything is on the table, but I doubt this would be for the reasons Zippy stated above and for history.

New York lost one of the most locally-beloved (and finally successful, after 40 years of relative sucktitude) franchises and one of the most iconic, but there was this this thing called California to draw them.

Baseball has let three teams move in the last half-century. Of those three, one was an expansion franchise that was born prematurely to keep the Senate from pulling the antitrust exemption, and another was a team in a majority-French-speaking city that no one wanted to own anymore. I think it's safe to say the White Sox aren't going anywhere.

EDIT: to tie it all together, part of the reason the Pilots were expendable was that Bud Selig was sniffing around the White Sox in 1968-69 and the American League didn't want to lose Chicago. The AL as corporate entity doesn't exist anymore, but I think the sentiment would remain that both of the circuits should include the third-largest market.

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They're going to Las Vegas, boys. As soon as Reinny croaks.

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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

Yes they are. Ricky's boys flat out suck.
But, another couple turds like yesterday and I can write them off even earlier than usual. Saving me from longer term emotional disappointment.
I'll watch but I'll be reading a book at the same time.

Jeez, Ozzie. The poor bastard.

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"Change has come to Amerika."- TFG