Snopek

Or just get rid of the AL Central. Like contract the whole damn thing to oblivion.

I would guess the same, not that Vaughn appears to be some born leader or anything. Pretty low bar to clear at the moment, I'd imagine. Also they get to play the whole "tradition of great first basemen" card that Quin mentioned. Also also they get to deflect the ugliness of the TA fight by focusing on Vaughn carrying him or whatever in a "pay attention to the one good thing that happened!" sort of way.

So if I have it straight, every one on every side of this is a liar

Oh no Pedro

Holy f*ck

Gotta see what you have in him!

On the contrary, not only is hope a strategy, it costs zero dollars and requires zero effort. What is more White Sox than that?

Nah there’s always lower with this org

Yep. For the organization whose main strategy seems to be wishing upon a star, that sounds about right.

I mean the Yoan/Burger arguments have been going on almost the entire season. Not sure why it’s surprising that they would come up again in this thread where people are giving their take on the trade based on how they value Burger as a player.

Sure, just feels like his trade value was at a peak at this deadline.

I don’t disagree with the bolded but at the same time, what’s the point of having Cease pitch for what’s likely to be a very uncompetitive team next year?

Their ongoing commitment to self made obstacles is something to behold. Incredibly shortsighted and stubborn organization.

For Abreu yeah?

Pffft how dare you bring objective thoughts into here

Oh it's an awful contract, but he's not in the same question mark tier as everyone else. That's how low the bar is with the current roster.

The problem is they have much less to work with now than they did at the end of 2004. Buehrle, Freddy, Garland, Konerko, Crede, Uribe and Rowand were all serviceable to good major league starters at that point. Plus the nice trade chip in Carlos Lee. Now it's Cease, Robert, Benintendi and a whole bunch of question marks. Which means that's a lot of adding they'd need to do. I don't trust them with another rebuild, but I don't trust them to fill holes in the lightning in a bottle approach either.

White Sox baseball is like a box of chocolates. And by chocolates I mean candy corn. Covered in bees. On fire.

Lucky for us they are both rebuilding AND trying to catch lightning in a bottle, so we get to experience both terrible options at once.

This is the top notch critical thinking I come here for

Hindsight is 20/20. Plus, we don’t actually know why the Royals didn’t hire him, so what’s the point in pretending we do?

That's not even close to being true.

Look, the odds of another rebuild being successful (under the current regime) are insanely low. But the odds of the current regime adding "legit players" and the rest of the roster being good/healthy/whatever are also insanely low. So I'm just ready for a bunch of new faces at this point. It's the more interesting option to me in this lose-lose scenario.

Yup. Personally I'm a Benetti fan, but I get that his schtick isn't for everyone. The odds of his replacement being really bland and/or having no personality are pretty dang high, though.

Trying to decide if the Nationals rose or fell in the rankings