TCS Morning 5: What just happened to all of our plans?

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 Alex Gordon was never the ideal target for the White Sox. He's far older than the rest of their core, more of an immediate boost to the 2016 team than a long-term solution, more of an all-around stud than the pure offensive injection the lineup desperately needed, and more than anything, just plain-old more essential to the Royals than to anyone else. 

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TCS Morning 3 items or less only

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Oftentimes the only useful and complete view of how a team approached a free agent pursuit is after the fact, possibly years later, in a book perhaps, written by Jonah Keri. Reacting to incomplete and often intentionally strategically released information and trying to paint a larger picture is a minefield.

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TCS Morning 5: The White Sox at the doorstep of an ideal offseason

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It's not done yet, and they seem curiously abandoned the pursuit of the best option, but by all reports the White Sox have at least recognized their moment of opportunity, deftly identified their flaws, traded brilliantly to shore up holes in their roster while holding onto their top prospects and navigating within ownership's payroll restrictions, and are steps away from expanding their payroll beyond previous limits to secure a top four option in an incredibly strong market for corner outfield help.

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The AL Central and the MLB Draft: A recent history

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The success or failure of teams in the MLB Draft is difficult to determine. The main reason for this is because it takes so long for most draftees to reach the majors, and players shuffle from team to team so often (whether it's by trade or otherwise) that looking at a particular team's draft class for a particular year will often only yield one or two players who actually made an impact on that team's major league roster.

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These Damn Royals - Important stuff from Wednesday's 7-5 loss

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The Royals are a pain in the White Sox's ass. If it weren't official before, I'm making it official after Wednesday's 7-5 defeat that saw beanballs, gopherballs, and a myriad of other weird stuff.

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State of the Central: The Kansas City Royals

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Between the prominent presence of Royals fans in the Internet baseball writing landscape - Joe Posnanski, Rany Jazayerli, Jeff Passan, and Rob Neyer to name a few - the Royals' recent trolling of the White Sox, and my petty schadenfreude when they fail, I have paid a lot of attention to the Royals in the past few years. Dayton Moore has also just been interesting in his own right, making grand proclamations only to backpedal from them as his promises of a winning team in 5-years was then revised to 6, 7, 8 and then 10 years as the Royals kept losing.  Moore has his strengths as a GM.  He added a lot of talent to the Royals' minor league system* and got a very good return on Zack Greinke from the Brewers. Salvador Perez looks like a nice find, and he's squeezed more value out of Jeremy Guthrie and Bruce Chen than one might anticipate. At the same time, since his hiring in June of 2008, the only hitters on the major league roster who look like they can hack it are (1) Eric Hosmer, a #3 overall draft pick who plays first base and is currently slugging .391; (2) Lorenzo Cain, a player I like a lot, who was part of that Greinke trade I was praising earlier; and (3) Salvador Perez, not necessarily because I think he's a very good hitter, but rather that I think he's a good enough hitter for a good fielding catcher. Otherwise, the offense still largely depends on Alex Gordon and Billy Butler, two guys acquired by Allard Baird before Moore arrived.

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