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FanGraphs | Jay Jaffe: The White Sox have been rumored to be in the Manny Machado sweepstakes, but I wouldn’t count on it: owner Jerry Reinsdorf has a checkered history in giving out lengthy deals, and the biggest deal they ever handed out was to Jose Abreu.
Baseball Prospectus | Matthew Trueblood ($): Banning the shift not only won’t do anything, but it’s based on the completely faulty logic of using year-to-year BABIP to analyze shift effectiveness. There are a lot of moving parts to the changes in players—trading contact for power, a bigger strike zone, etc.—that the league can examine instead of banning one aspect of the game that actually makes it more interesting, strategy-wise.
MLB.com | Anthony Castrovince: The Phillies have an internal WAR, and the Nationals have an internal metric called “Pentagon.” No matter how you slice it, but WAR-based analysis defines how rosters are built. But they actually all disagree greatly on how they weight certain abilities, and that is often dependent on the market. The Athletics are determined to find high-floor guys to fill out 20 through 25 on their roster, while the Yankees may look to have more high ceiling players in their farm system.