Following up: Luis Robert Jr. rumors don’t take holidays off

Scott Merkin talked to Chris Getz after the White Sox announced their signing of Sean Newcomb, which came a day after they formally introduced Munetaka Murikami. It's Christmas Eve, and if Getz had his way, he'd "bah humbug" anybody passing off the holiday as an excuse for slowing down.

“I don’t even know if I like the time off quite honestly. I love diving in,” Getz told MLB.com on Monday. “It probably drives my family nuts and perhaps some of our employees as I’m pinging them early in the morning or late at night or in the middle of the night. I love this job and I love pursuing ways to get us better.”

And maybe he will, because there's a fair amount of smoke around Luis Robert Jr. regarding the Cincinnati Reds, and the New York Mets, to a lesser degree.

Granted, Robert's rumor mill is situated in a valley where air doesn't really circulate, so it's hard to know if the smoke is new, or still hovering around from the controlled burns of previous seasons, but Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Gordon Wittenmyer is naming some names...

The White Sox, who also have been connected to the Mets in trade talks for Robert, are said to be willing to eat maybe half the 2026 salary. [...]

The White Sox have sought young players and near-ready prospects in trade talks, and the Reds have a deep reserve of young pitchers with at least some big-league experience, such as Chase Petty and a pair of starters now healthy after missing a year with Tommy John surgery: right-hander Julian Aguiar and lefty Brandon Williamson.

... and saying that he hears a deal "could be done as soon as this week, if it gets done."

Wittenmyer's amused coda to that quote -- "OK, sure, whatever" -- suggests that it's not so much that trade talks are on the 2-yard-line, but more a reflection of how long-running the discussions have been. It seems as though the White Sox and Reds have been talking on and off for more than a calendar year, so there's probably an established understanding of what the other side will agree to, if and when one side is ever willing to give that extra ground.

Robert isn't such a hot commodity that teams will be climbing over each other to give Getz a superior offer, but given the shallow market for center fielders -- and right-handed-hitting outfielders -- with upside on one end, and the White Sox facing their own financial incentives to unload Robert's salary after signing Murakami on the other, perhaps the conditions will finally be conducive for consummating the most tedious of trades.

Ryan O'Hearn signs with Pirates

With Murakami off the board, it makes sense that Ryan O'Hearn, an above-average left-handed hitter who slots best at first base in his own right, would settle on his final destination soon afterward, as he reportedly agreed to a two-year, $29 million contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates.

That's more or less the contract FanGraphs' crowdsourcing settled on, and it makes a lot more sense for the Pirates than it would have the White Sox, who were connected to O'Hearn earlier in the winter.

O'Hearn would've been a welcome addition in Chicago with regards for raising the team's floor and giving Will Venable more pathways towards a functioning lineup. It's just that he's 32 and has yet to hit 20 homers in any of his eight big-league seasons, so signing him wouldn't have leveraged the White Sox's greatest luxury, which is the ability to absorb a complete flop without any impact on carefully constructed timetables or the bottom line in pursuit of a real difference-maker.

An ulterior motive for MLB's tech regulations

When we first discussed Major League Baseball's plans to regulate technology used in the minor leagues, we touched upon the apparent winners (laggards, potentially players as a whole) and losers (early adopters, teams with ambition, tech companies).

What I didn't immediately consider was the potential for corruption and self-dealing, and reading Bradford William Davis' report on one immediate conflict of interest, of course there is.

The league presented several companies to clubs in a closed-door session at the winter meetings earlier this month, and teams are now closely scrutinizing the firms under consideration. In the presentation, multiple sources say, the league repeatedly referenced one potential vendor: Infinite Sky, an artificial intelligence startup.

That company was founded in 2021 by MIT PhD and entrepreneur Ken Lazarus. According to its website, Infinite Sky uses machine learning to analyze video footage and measure pitcher biomechanics, evaluate ball speed and movement, and even forecast injury risk. 

Lazarus is the uncle of Morgan Sword, a powerful MLB executive seen as an inner-circle candidate to succeed Rob Manfred as the next commissioner. Sword is EVP of Baseball Operations, a major voice as MLB continues to take major leaps with new technology.

So that's fun. It seems like if the league were truly concerned about making sure entire swaths of players weren't left behind by negligent teams, they'd enforce a technology floor the way they do minor league stadium requirements, and perhaps ban exclusivity deals to prevent information from getting too siloed. But that would require either the league or owners to foot the bill, and that doesn't appear to be the idea here.