RTC

You sound like my Cub fan friends who want "good guys" with Clark the bear roaming around. I don't care one lick whether the Sox have a team full of surly bastards if they win the division every year. AJ was a total jerk and the fans loved him.

People often ask what the objective is, but what we have to clarify is WHOSE objective do we mean when we ask that question. Over simplification, but: A - Fan A wants another year of tanking because the Sox are still rebuilding. Their objective is to get a high draft pick again. Record be damned. B - Fan B thinks this is year 3 of the rebuild and feels progress should be apparent. In their opinion the objective should be to see improvement and maybe win 70+ games. C - Fan C never wanted a rebuild in the first place. They believe the objective for 2019, as every year, should be to try to get to the playoffs. D - And then what is the objective of the front office for 2019???? That we have no idea about. I'd guess that right now they're somewhere in the area of B above, but the problem is it's looking more like A is still happening. Hence the frustration on the part of a lot of fans. Personally, I'm probably in the range of B above. But ..... I'd feel WAY more comfortable if option A ended up happening IF I felt category D knew what the hell they were doing. Unfortunately, I'm losing more hope on that front every year. And this winter my hope took a major hit. EDIT to summarize: There are definitely C people on this board and get totally get where they're coming from. But I think a lot of us here are B people, who see A happening, not intentionally though, but by what appears to be the incompetence of D.

Exactly my point. When it comes to putting players on the field who are better at doing baseball things, a lot of other organizations appear to be better at their job.

Yes to all this. I was thinking about how other teams just look a hell of a lot more competent. - First of all, as for rebuilds, people seem to like to reference the Cubs and Astros. Those are NOT comparable at all. Those two organizations didn't just change the 25 man roster or upgrade their minor league talent. They tore everything down to the studs, up to and including a new front office and building world class analytics departments. Did it right. - I thought the Tigers were supposed to be rebuilding. I'm not even sure what moves they made, if any, but they seemed to have passed us by on the way to at least being competitive. - Tigers again, and Indians. Two mid-market teams that have had stretches of division winners while the Sox can't seem to get out of their own way. - Mariners. Whisky tango foxtrot. It sure seems like they traded away their entire roster in the last five months, and I know it's early in the season, but I'll be damned if they don't look like they might be for real. - Look what the Phillies pulled off in one winter. - Friars. Enough said. - I'm not sure what to call the A's or the Rays. Are they always rebuilding? Whatever they are, they are really small market teams that seem to be able to sprinkle in some competitive years. Hahn hasn't even been able to pull that off. And the worst part: none of those teams listed above had ANYWHERE NEAR the assets the Sox had to trade away to start a rebuild, let alone the surplus value attached to them because of extremely team friendly contracts. This organization is a friggin clown show.

No one will be fired. But if they are the next yes-man in line will just be moved up the chain, so no real change either way. The similarities between this team and the Bulls are striking, and there's one common denominator.

Spot on. It's a rebuild, I get it. But when it comes to talent allocation in the front office, dugout, or on the field this organization acts like they either don't care or are just totally Incompetent. And I'm beginning to worry that it's actually both.

As long as we can all agree to stop making up stupid nicknames.

That’s what most people overlook when comparing this to the rebuild of either the Cubs or the Astros: they didn’t just rebuild their roster. Both franchises not only tore the entire organization down to the studs (not just the front office), but did the same with their organizational philosophies, including majorly building up their advanced stat departments.

This is spot on. Might be time to head to Nineveh son.

The biggest piece of BS in this is his line about not being able to re-sign the core because they'd lose financial flexibility (assuming there is a core, which is an unknown at this point) and he's said it twice now. Let me get this straight: committing $30M of your annual payroll to Manny or $25M of your payroll to Bryce somehow ties your hands in constructing a roster more than committing the $31.25M per year you offered? Silly me.

Yep, that's why this is so insulting and I'm so pissed. (and honestly, I'm surprised, but the feeling is not going away) - You see that quote from the Phillies front office : Don't want to let the fans down. (And if you want to hear more, read the Phils press release this morning and you'll get a sense for how much they understand the marketing benefit of having Bryce. Heck they sold 100,000 tickets in the first 24 hours after they signed him. How many milliions of dollars is that?) - The Giants front office looked at Harper as solving a problem with ticket sales and fan interest: "panic and desperation about season-ticket sales and fan interest has become the overriding factor" https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2019/02/28/bryce-harper-free-agent-giants-dodgers-phillies/3014206002/ - White Sox front office: can't spend a dollar if we only have fifty cents. Hey, but they're not cheap. They don't seem to care either. Other organizations realize they need to put a product on the field to attract the fans (i.e., don't worry about not spending fifty cents, spend the dollar you might not have and you'll get three back) while the Sox want the fans to pay up first. Most org's seem to have a "build it and they will come" philosophy. Sox : "we might build it IF they come first". I've been a Sox fan for over 40 years. I have bled black and white. I'm not going to go root for the Cubs or anything crazy like that, but I don't know to what extent I can support this ownership anymore. I just don't know. Somehow, some way, they need to get the message. I'm just not sure they ever will. I'm sick of this shit.

What you say makes sense in theory, but the reality is that these are the risks a team has to take if they want a top free agent. There's only a handful of tippy top FA's and if you want one of them, the truth is THEY have the leverage and opt-outs are part of the game these days. Heck, most people were stunned that Machado's opt-out wasn't until year 5.

Exactly. Think of it this way: What if someone told you “Bryce Harper is actually looking for only a 3yr/$105M deal and the Sox can beat out the rest of the league and get him? He’s theirs. Oh, and by the way, if you sign him to a 3yr contract there’s a possibility that you’ll have him for 7 more years.” I’d take that in a heartbeat.

But didn't the Torii Hunter fiasco happen on Kenny's watch? And that was in very similar fashion to Machado, where the Sox thought that had a guy in the bag and then another team swept in at the last minute and outbid them. Not saying you're wrong, just that painful shit happens, and I'm not sure we can say it wouldn't have happened if it was the other guy.

I think the former which is why,even if they are in this to any degree, they’re running uber-stealth at the moment. I think they know the optics on another failed attempt would just make things even worse. edit: I do like you’re take on a failure tax. If they have ANY bit if business sense that’s part of their equation right now

Here's some numbers from something I posted (what feels like 2 years ago) about 5 weeks ago. These numbers are from last year. My choice of Stros, Dodgers and Sawx was random choice of teams that had a good deal of success - Astros had 20 players at 1.0 WAR or higher. Dodgers had 17, Red Sox had 17. Sox had 10. - Astros had 10 players at 2.0 WAR or higher. Dodgers had 13, Red Sox had 10. Sox had 5. - Astros had 5 players at 3.5 WAR or higher. Dodgers had 6, Red Sox had 6. Sox had none. This is why people are correct when they point out that Eloy reaching 3.5-4 WAR, or even if Moncada reaches 5+ in addition to Eloy, that's not enough. You need studs. Playoff teams typically (no, not always) have a lot of really good players. Not just three guys at 4+WAR and then a bunch of 1.5-2 WAR players. That was the White-Sox-Stars-and-Scrubs-Mired-in-Mediocrity business model. Having a 6WAR player is not a necessity, but this was the Sox golden chance to get one and they blew it.

“Deaf dumb and blind boy” seems ironically appropriate. Jerry can you hear me? Jerry can you heeaaaarr me?!? Featuring A.J. Preller as cousin Kevin

When’s safety net night?

Really good episode of Brockmire

This was discussed on the radio yesterday afternoon. Last year there were something like eight 34-year old players in the ENTIRE league that had over 550 PA's. Now that we're out of the steroid era it's pretty much in the single digits every year (compound that with the fact that rosters are getting younger). As a player, to assume you're going to make 550 PA's in your mid thirties (even without team manipulation) is a fools bet.

TWO THINGS: - To those SoxTalk-ers that were adamant that signing Manny was (paraphrasing) "never going to happen" because "this is the White Sox we're talking about" and "what in their history makes you think they'll pull this off" ..... you were right. The rest of us owe you a big apology and you us a big fat I Told You So. - I've never been a member of the Reinsdorf Is A Cheap Bastard club. But after this I'm left with no other conclusion. If the difference ended up being 2 years and $50M, Keith Olberman pretty much summed it up:

Yay Team Safety Net!

I'm not even sure the Pads are "smarter". It might be they just have bigger balls and ponied up 300 guaranteed.

I was thinking that some of those clauses were probably related to MVP. So, yeah, you have to hope that Betts and Trout break a leg in order to get paid. Okay, sign me up!

So much this can’t beat 30M AAV and opt out after5?!?!? WTF ....