WestEddy

Nobody on this board, outside of maybe Poppy, thought this season wasn't a rebuild year. Breaking camp, pretty much everyone thought we had 2 assets to sell: Cease and Robert. Now, lo and behold, we seem to have 2 more valuable assets in Fedde and Crochet. We're also talking about Brebbia, DeJong, Pham, Flexen and Kopech. In a rebuild, I choose to judge the GM based on how he can raise value on assets, and get that value back in trade. I'm happy with the Cease trade, and have no reason to believe I won't be happy with returns for Fedde, Crochet and Robert.

$4.3m is a low price. It's time to stop pretending this is big money when 1 WAR is worth about $9m.

I'm not sure what or who that was a dunk on.

How so?

Lopez plays good defense, but has no power. He won't be the second baseman going forward, but in a rebuilding year where we're not expected to be competitive, he's fine. As far as the future, you have Ramos, Baldwin and Gonzalez in the pipeline. You're going to have a solid, regular 2B at some point in the next year.

1) It's a rebuild year. The team isn't expected to be competitive. 2) Pham provided an offensive spark, and is playing out of position. In the event you disagree, see #1. 3) Julks also provided an offensive spark upon arriving, and will be the weak half of a platoon. OPS of .806 vs. LHP. 4) Fletcher started to hit in AAA, and is now injured. He's the very guy everyone has been yelling to give playing time to. Again, read #1. They're still giving playing time to the players they want to showcase for trade. There will certainly be space for Fletcher, Julks, Colas and DeLoach to get PAs once Pham, Sheets, and DeJong are dealt. It's a rebuild year. The team isn't expected to be competitive.

Sheets didn't get his first OF start until 4/17, well after the last of Eloy, Yoan and Robert went down.

I'm not going to quibble about the actual words of an introductory press conference. He did make a couple positions better, defensively. Not as good as he wanted to, but SS and 2B aren't the black holes they were last year. I would also argue Lee is better than the tandem of Zavala/Grandal. Injuries and timelines forced them to revert to Sheets in RF to get his bat in the lineup.

They didn't "suck". Pham is fine, and Julks is adequate as the weak half of an OF platoon. Both provided a bit of a spark to the offense. Grossman could take a walk, and brought back a future bullpen arm. If you're referring to the trades for Fletcher and DeLoach, they're not considered "ready". It's a rebuilding year. They were never expected to be competitive. Please point us to this magical GM you know of who has won every single trade and FA signing.

Moncada started out hot, and is still top ten in bWAR on this team. Eloy and Yoan's 2023 numbers would make a world of difference on this team. Robert and Eloy don't seem to be lifting this team on their return.

1) This year was an obvious rebuild year. There was no plan to be competitive. 2) Nobody has ever claimed that Getz didn't know players could get injured. They had a plan B on each person who went down. No, those plan Bs weren't "plug in star player who will be better than the guy he replaces". The disconnect comes when you're expecting Getz to have multiple layers of plans in place to be competitive in a year that we all agree could not, in any way, have been "competitive". It's like, if 5 starting players are killed in bus crash, then you start complaining that GMs should know that bus crashes happen, and they should still be competitive.

I'm not claiming he knew. You are. And it's not even an excuse. Those 3 players actually got injured, and then didn't play in games for long periods of time. The Sox weren't a competitive team. You don't get to sweep away the actual *fact* that Eloy, Yoan and Robert were injured and couldn't play by saying Getz "should have known". As I just posted to WS2023, they either could have loaded up with offensive players at the other positions to absorb their absence, players we don't even know were available to them on the FA market, or should have had better players in reserve to replace them. If they had better players in reserve, those players would be starting. It seems to me that you are claiming that if Yoan, Eloy and Robert never got injured and played every game, AND if Vaughn and Benintendi magically turned it around and OPSed a passable .700+ and played good defense, they would still be losing an historic amount of games, just because.

Nobody ever said that "Getz didn't know these three were injury prone". That's a ludicrous strawman. When your three main offensive players all go down at the same time with injury, that's a setback, regardless of whether somebody "could have known" or not. Knowing doesn't magically make them well and put them back on the field. If they had better players in reserve, those better players would be starting over the injury prone. I seriously don't understand what's so hard to understand about that. It's argumentative to try to take that "excuse" off the table by saying he "should have known". The only ways to have prevented those three injuries from derailing the plan of "just kind of bad" was to either load up the 4 open positions with the best players available, either by trade or free agency, or to just cut Robert, Yoan, Eloy, Benintendi and Vaughn, and again, then go out and replace them. And we don't even know if the first option was possible, given payroll restrictions, the Sox' reputation, and that players signing a contract would be looking at playing during an obvious rebuild. You don't know what players were available in trade or FA, and seeing that it took until the season started for them to finally sign Pham and Clevinger says to me that anybody was holding out for a better offer from anyone.

The bizarre narrative is that Chris Getz didn't realize that players could get injured. To me, that's the most bizarre strawman of all time. 3 key players were injured, 2 other key players crashed and burned. Saying Getz "should have known" is the most bizarre strawman of all time. "Knowing" doesn't change the fact that 3 guys got injured, and 2 others produced zeroes. Competitive teams often don't recover from that. The Sox weren't built to be competitive.

The plan was to lose more than they won while upgrading the positions that were open. The plan became a disaster when 3 veterans got injured by the 11th game, and two other veterans OPSed under .400 for over a month. We all keep forgetting to mention that. He did upgrade SS and 2B. There's no debate on that. The RF tandem fell apart when they became the CF tandem. Maldonado was a sop to Grifol to help him control the clubhouse. I'm guessing Lee is an upgrade from Zavala and Grandal. He inherited the other 4 positions. His 2 best defensive fielders were out most of the season, and LF and 1B regressed. Boo, Getz. Again, nobody will even care by May of next year.

That logic only works if you imagine Getz rubbing his hands together, and circling a date on the calendar in early April that he knew his 3 top hitters would all be on the IL, and that he also knew his 4th and 5th best hitters would go on abysmal slumps that would last into June. We all knew it would be a rebuilding year. The team seemed reasonably bad. It's funny the pushback I get for pointing out that they finally stopped getting shut out once a series, while everyone is throwing catered parties over low attendance, and worst 81 game start in team history. "In your face, .... not-haters!!!!" Hey, look on the bright side. This tank is so egregious, maybe it forces some rule changes on roster construction.

Point stands.

Plus, they're giving this away to the first 10000 fans

Even if that comes to be, the year after, nobody will care. Can you give me Houston Metropolitan suicide statistics during the Astros run of futility when they tanked? I'm paying attention because I'm "old", and slightly "infirmed" in my retirement, this summer. What's your excuse?

You probably want to reword that to make it make sense. I'll wait here while you guys figure out that setting records for futility aren't World Series victories, either. Around May 1st next year, nobody on Earth will care. But hey, what are the odds of breaking the run differential record? Can somebody update me if Nicky Lopez still has the lowest RBI of a 2B after 81 games? I'm intrigued. LOL.

Maybe the Sun-Times should have newspapered better, so they could have kept their building on the river, and I wouldn't have to see Trump's name emblazoned on the focal point of the river as I drive on Lake Shore Drive.

I guess since he came off the IL, he's OPSing a pedestrian .723, and maybe somebody would fall for that? He would just need to go on a tear for a few weeks.

I'm liking Dombrowski paying retail for Robert, just to get him.

I'm now intrigued for getting anybody for Eloy and his buyout money, just to free up the at-bats.