WestEddy

Tim Anderson's out-of-wedlock baby actually had some of Monty's DNA?

Eloy says the Orioles were short a bat.

Hey, the Tigers and Royals advance. Maybe the Sox were just being throttled by two juggernauts all year. Maybe the Orioles could have used a hitter.

If you DFA him, you're still paying $6 million. If they moved Korey Lee to 1B and gave him 600+ PAs, he'd hit 20 HRs. The more comments I read, the more I look at B-R.com. The more I see there, I am further sold that Vaughn is Gaughn. On top of that, I seriously think the league is suppressing salaries by everyone cutting payroll. In that austere environment, Vaughn needs to be cut to be paid market rate.

Sorry, my response was more tangential. A guy like Marcus Semien probably would have been a bad 2B who hit some, for us. Fully developed in Oakland. I don't think there's any hope for Vaughn here, right now. I don't think there's any hope for him elsewhere, unless some other team decides to give him a swift kick.

Offseason baseball hitting labs exist. Unless Vaughn was being told to stay away from that "voodoo garbage", he had every opportunity to hit the ground running in a position that was clearly going to be handed to him this season. Coming out of the last weekend in May, he looked like a sure DFA.

Grady's banked around $30 million in his career, so I don't think the money's an issue. I agree with Grady taking the opportunity to gain experience, but I never thought Robin Ventura would be a horrible manager. Maybe the organization's so dysfunctional, either the bad decisions start pouring out, or good logic turns to sh*t when the whole team's being jerked around.

I just came back to mention Brandon Belt. Dude sat out all year. His 2023 certainly was better than Josh Bell and Rowdy Tellez. Maybe he's asking for the moon. More realistic is that teams are squelching payrolls in a league effort. If Belt couldn't get paid with what teams were running out there, I doubt Vaughn gets that $6+ million arb.

They could probably DFA both, and Colas/Elko would give them exactly what Vaughn/Sheets did.

They made a big deal this preseason, showing Vaughn talking with Konerko, and Konerko basically telling Vaughn, "This is your make or break year". With all that fanfare, Vaughn clocked in as a replacement player. I wouldn't have a problem with them keeping him, but I could also see a DFA for Vaughn, and a Sheets/Elko platoon. It would be nice for them to not rebreak the loss record.

Point being that "winning" doesn't bestow wisdom. "Konerko" is a one-word joke about the type of profile Reinsdorf would hire as the next Sox manager.

I don't think "aw, he's an old man, leave him alone", I just don't see the point. If he's still sharp, he'll evade any "hard hitting" questions. Does anybody think that Mike North is going to make him start crying and admit to pulling the plug on Manny Machado because he was scared, or something? No (and I think you or bmags said this earlier), the worst or best thing to come out of that is Reinsdorf naming Kurt Bevacqua as his favorite, ideal player, or whatnot, for everyone to scream about for another 12 months. Reinsdorf won't offer any convincing promise of a new path of hirings and investments in development, he's not going to walk us through a PowerPoint, or any of that. All he can do is say that his trust is in Getz, and for Getz to walk everyone through the moves he's making. Nobody will believe anything until people are in place, and even then, until those people start making sensible decisions that have real world results. And even then, it will only be when we see a good, deep run into the playoffs with a young team that the calls for Reinsdorf to die will start getting drowned out.

Which is why I don't care about the letter one way or the other, and look forward to these changes he's talking about.

I'm not citing Buster Posey like that's a good example that mirrors Chris Getz' ascension. I'm not seeing much reaction that calls this a genius move. Aubrey Huff has done a lot of winning, too.

A more truthful press conference might sound like: "I'm getting older, and I don't want to not recognize anybody in the front office as I get even older. Therefore, I am going to only hire people I can remember." I'm not sure that would go over any better.

Of course, if they fired everyone, hired all the best people, they'd be on a better track for success.

I really believe the first paragraph of mine you quoted, and I think I've always believed that. I understand people hating the idea of Chris Getz, and not being receptive to a Chris Getz rebuild. Reinsdorf betrayed the fanbase in 94, made an incredibly stupid comment in 97, then groused about the state of the game since then. He should have sold after 2005 and gone out on top, because his attitudes were outdated then. Buster Posey was just named President of baseball operations for the Giants after 2 years of being in the ownership group. That's a lot less practical experience than Getz had when gifted his current position. I'm not arguing that Getz was the best person on the planet for that job, but owners do that.

If a new owner took the keys on November 1, 2023, fired everyone down to the peanut vendors, and started over from scratch, I don't believe they would be much further along than now. I think Getz is doing a pretty thorough overhaul. Mike Shirley might be the only guy who deserves to stay. I think 2024 had to happen on some level. Hostetler and Paddy didn't keep a steady stream of prospects coming. Maybe Getz didn't develop what he got, or didn't get modern resources. I can't imagine that Hahn/KW were trying to force stats info, hitting and pitching labs and competent coaches on Getz, and he fought to keep all that stuff out of his development program. What seems to be borne out from subsequent events is that Getz wanted modernization, and didn't get it. I agree that JR is the problem, but this is the situation that exists. I'm not going to write a scathing comment that makes JR sell. So I prefer to just wait and see what transpires from the conditions that are kind of set in stone right now.

The core problem with JR is he believes he has all the answers. If only he pounds *his way* harder into that round hole, it will work, this time. I also believe the White Sox front office is his gentleman's club, where he goes to smoke cigars and commiserate. He's too old to hire the newest, brightest GM candidate who will clean house, and rebuild the "right" way. He doesn't want to spend his final days not recognizing anybody in the office. I see no evidence that Reinsdorf thought Getz would have the Sox competitive in 2024. My take is that JR thought Getz could cut out a year of whatever. Using this site as a barometer, I don't think there was any buy-in to Getz making a re-tool go faster. People were commenting that we're 5 years away from a winning record, regardless. Sure, maybe most thought JR believed that, but nobody was reassured by that sentence.

If a person believed that Getz was so inept that he would trade Crochet for one less Miguel Vargas than everyone thought they'd get, then maybe packaging a cooked Benintendi wouldn't be the worst idea on Earth. But Benintendi has shown signs of life in the final third, and it would be ludicrous to gift two years of a front-of-the-staff ace to take three years of appropriately paid production off of our hands. (Maybe 1.5 seasons of renaissance Benny, 3/4 season of bearable, platoon DH, and another 3/4 season of ass.)

Jim Margalus has a rational reaction to JR's statement. https://soxmachine.com/2024/09/jerry-reinsdorf-statement-white-sox/ "Words are easy". I generally don't care about player interviews unless something happens and they dish. The rest is designed to not inspire follow-ups. JR might have the wrong vision of what the next pennant contender looks like, and I think TLR and Getz will help him shape that. I'm married. I've been in those arguments where every word is a tangential argument string. ("So what exactly did you mean when you said..."), and I don't really have any use for the current sports talk daddy pretending to "get answers". Nobody believed JR when he said he was hiring Getz to hasten the process. But now that becomes some horrible betrayal. I just feel JR would duck and dodge, he'd say something useless that everyone will scream about until the next incident, and we'll be in the same place, waiting for Getz to announce how he was blown away by Grady Sizemore's interview.

I'm looking forward to serious hires for an organizational hitting program, stats department, international and pro scouting. I don't expect them to catch up to Tampa or the Dodgers in one offseason. Their health and conditioning issues seemed to only apply to 3 guys, but addressing the training staff would be nice. I would like Getz to get respectable returns for Crochet and Robert. I can't imagine they need to save space for Jacob Amaya, Chuckie, Gavin Sheets, or Braden Shewmake. Justin Anderson and EDLS are in arbitration, so unless they have a magical elixir that turns them into supermen, that's elbow room. I don't expect any FA signings of note. Maybe a better targeted version of the Brebbia/Leonne experience in the bullpen. Fedde/Flexen/Soroka produced a Cy Young competitor, an innings eater, and a bullpen arm. I can stomach another whack at that to supplement Cannon/Thorpe/Burke/Davis. If the Aug/Sept output of Benintendi and Vaughn is real, they can anchor this team, and play to be traded next deadline. I'd imagine a June 1 infield looks like Ramos-Monty-Sosa-Vaughn/Elko. Elko has some work to unlock Matt Davidson level but, like Sosa, he's struggled then hit at every level. If Colas isn't traded/released, he's part of the 6-headed CF hydra of Fletcher/Colas/DeLoach/Julks/Brooks Baldwin/amazing new prospect(!). I could see the Sox picking up a RF and a SS at the same AmVets dollar sale they shopped last year. Maybe their managerial hire drags a couple of 10-year pensioners along. Max Stassi wasn't a bad idea, and I could see a veteran catcher to challenge Quero for co-catcher. I have a weird fascination with Buck Showalter as a manager, but see a more realistic choice of 4th-best-young-managerial-prospect, followed closely by "Grady Sizemore checks all the boxes(!!)" tl;dr - slightly better same old.

I know it's a common phrase. Used by idiot bro-dudes to shame fans of a team. Fun fact: It doesn't work if you don't feel a deep need for validation from strangers.

Yes, you should put more effort into "being more specific". LOL. That's a good goal.