The Hawk

Stroman was entitled to his opinion. I give a rat's ass what he thinks. Chappas and VAfan are right. No one can ignore the fact that LaRussa has been a greatly successful major league manager. Now the pressure is really on his ass to do it once again. We will see. He was not my choice. I wanted Alomar but our votes don't count and like someone said earlier none of us has ever managed a major league baseball game in our life and we are just mere observers and fans. We will see. The great thing is that if he fails, a lot of use will have the "WE TOLD YOU SO" statement all ready to go as they fire LaRussa and hire someone else and maybe F that up also:)

I may be the only person on this board who didn't want the Sox to sign Machado and still think it would have been a bad organizational move.

This is truly an excellent post. Good job explaining your position:)

The reasons why you gave for not having Paulie in the HOF are the same ones that Buehrle has in my opinion. He never came close to being a twenty game winner in his time in the league. He was great given the stuff that the had or rather what he didn't have. He was a war horse who gave you a great chance to win a game when he pitched. Paulie, to me, really has a better chance of getting into the HOF when the voters consider his power numbers in an era where steroids was prevalent. His season in 2005 was his best and his post season was also terrific. Both of these men were terrific role models for younger players to look at and admire.

Why do you say that?

They aren't going to go after Bauer. He just doesn't fit the make-up of the locker room. What the Sox really have going for themselves is an almost ideal clubhouse right now(assuming that LaRussa doesn't F it up). Bring in a good stable guy like they did with Kuechel who knows how to win and who can be a role model for the young guns that they have and be done with it. Bauer won't fit.

I love Buehrle. He's not a HOFer. I feel the same about Paulie. Maybe down the road when the stench of the roid cheaters is gone from baseball? OF the guys on that list, my only HOF pick is Omar Visquel.

I agree also. The Sox apparently have a philosophy of going hard after position players and not wanting to invest big dollars in top line pitchers. I do think that it a pretty sound way of looking at things. Pitchers do break down and go from top of the line to bottom of the trash heap. Hence a smart way of doing business is to stock pile a bunch of quality strong arms along with a few veterans who have a history of being healthy. So, yeah, I'd go hard after Springer as a first move of the winter. With them they, by far have the best all around line-up in all of baseball. Then fill your pitching rotation with a couple of solid yet affordable guys along with the backlog of young stud high draft picks.

I'd say more than Kopech and less than Cease. I believe Kopech has alarm sirens going on in many GM trade rooms.

If they decide to go the free agent route, I'd go after Tanaka as my middle of the rotation right hander and Quintana as my end of the rotation lefty. I have always liked both of these pitchers. Quin had a season lost by an accident and his arm should be well rested and has a lot of mileage still on it. Tanaka isn't flashy but he knows his job and is a very dependable innings eater. The thing about a pitching staff is that you can pretty much know that at least two of your starters are going to go down during the season so that is where the competition between the young guns comes into it. There are going to be a lot of surprises on the Sox staff next year and I can't wait.

There is no doubt that it is the best pitch in a pitcher's quiver. If you cannot hit your target with a fastball, you sure as hell cannot hit it with any other pitch. ANd if pitchers cannot hit their target, they won't be pitchers for very long.

Ron Gant was also not backed up by most of the players he allegedly cited as hating LaRussa for his racism. Rickey Henderson denied it and so did Dave Stewart for two. As I remember things, LaRussa believed that Ozzie was past his prime and believed that Royce Clayton was the better short-stop at the time and as I remember that, he was. Gant also wasn't hitting for shit and frequently got benched for defensive purposes back them. Once again, It really easy for a black guy who gets benched to play the so and so is a racist card. Gant was hardly a prince of a fellow himself.

The way baseball works follows how contracts are outlined. Very seldom do professional coaches work with other professional organizations players. YEah, pitching coaches at all levels participate in and are paid for working with young pitchers in clinics and the like and can give a player private lessons but even then these guys have to follow rules set by the team that they contract with as well as other rules set out for example by college baseball teams. These teams drill into their own players heads that the pitcher is not to seek out other coaching or teaching without the go ahead given by the college coach or organization. I have experienced that myself when former players have called me up asking to take a look at their delivery and such.

I would call both Sheets and Burger also being guys who an average team would consider as viable prospects to man a DH or 1B job. Both were high draft prospects for the white sox and were scouted by other organizations. Burger's problem has been season canceling injuries but he was considered one of the best hitting prospects in his draft class. As for Sheets, he has had a good climb through the organization but with the log-jam in front of hims with the Sox he might either be trade material or having an outfield job in his future. He has enormous left handed hitting power potential.

That would follow with what they did last year in signing Grandal as a strategy. I can't say that it is ideal but it is workable.

If they re-sign Colome they won't need another bull-pen arm. They are set with good arms in the pen. Their priority should be getting a GOOD 1-3 type starting pitcher and another end of the rotation guy. If they want to replace Mazura with another right fielder, fine. Do it. But I think that it is just a "nice to have" when compared with the real need of two dependable starting pitchers. Its not even close.

I think that I would have heard "accusations" of LaRussa being a racist before this shit happened. Especially since I have never like the guy in the first place. I just think that this guy is an egotistical cheating asshole. But despite being one, he still made it into the HOF in spite of his being an egotistical cheating asshole. I think that in this day and age of cancel culture and the other crap that goes along with it, that if there were allegations about him being a guy who despises black players, that this would have been screamed to high heaven on the national sports media. Not a peep to my knowledge.

I don't like LaRussa a bit but its offensive to me the way anytime a white manager has an argument with a minority player, the accusation of his being a racist always get leveled and amplified by a sensationalist press. It is total bullshit what is going on in society and the media right now.

The fact of life is that it is really up to Cease, Dunning, Lopez, Burdi, and Rodon in this off season and spring training to figure things out for themselves. Baseball does give number one drafted guys more to develop but it is not endless and they all are reaching the sink or swim deadline. Cease may have a little bit more time but not much as I see it. What they are facing is a group of other young studs behind them in experience that have the same pedigree and the Sox or any team will not wait before deciding on one or more of the younger kids to move into a higher status in the organization. And you never know if some lower rated guy may find himself figuring out the magic potion of development and rocket ahead of all of these guys. Personally I think that Cease is going to be fixed on his stride and release point and become a top of the order guy. I also really like Burdi's stuff although he may better fit as a set-up type or closer along with Huerer. Crochet is a year away in developing into a starter but what a future that kid has. Probably the best of them all as a starting pitcher.

Are you sure about that? I doubt it. Contracts are contracts and it all depends on what they have written in a guy's contract. If I am a computer contractor and hired to develop software for a company, the company that hired me would not take it kindly if I worked for another company or did programming for free for someone else. I'm not saying what this guy did was wrong, it's just questionable from a few different angles.

That amazes me if true. All baseball organizations hire coaches to work with their own players. They pay them decent money to do that. I just find it really strange that the Giants or any other major league team would be cool with their own guy working with another organization's players. Think of this aspect of it. What if Giolitto hurt his arm while being advised by Katz. Yeah, the odds of that occurring are out of sight but its happened before. I was a pitching coach who helped develop a lot of high school, college, and professional pitchers. But once an organization signs a kid to a scholarship or a professional contract, that organization pretty much always has a hands off policy on that kid for his development. That's what I am saying. The situation with Giolitto and Katz is very unusual to me.

I wonder if on other teams who recently hired a new manager, there is such concern that their new manager reaches out to all of the team's players? Frankly, this is the only time that I have ever seen so many people raising concerns about a new manager being hired and his seeking out his new players for some kind of "approval". I would doubt that the players themselves expect something special to occur like that.

Do we know if Giolitto went to him for coaching while the guy was being paid by another organization? This just seems strange to me. When the story was originally reported, it was basically that Giolitto went back to his high school pitching coach to help work on his delivery and he changed his delivery pretty drastically and it worked. I and others didn't know that the guy Katz that he went to for help was a professional pitching coach with another organization. That's pretty strange to me.

If I were a general manager hiring an MLB manager, I would certainly look for the best guy I could find who knew every aspect of the game. And I do not believe that you could just find anyone who hasn't played the game at a high level collegiately or professionally and who also has not managed the game collegiately or professionally could be nearly as good a one who has. The thought that anyone with a decent brain could manage a major league baseball team is ridiculous.

It kind of is similar to the way that Hahn operated in last year's off season, right? They went after a guy in Grandal who nobody would have expected them to go after given the fact that they had McCann under contract. But they focused on Grandal and spent the lion's share of their money on him and then focused on what their more obvious needs were, namely pitching and right field. This looks like the same kind of thing to me. Their obvious needs are starting pitching but they appear to be going after a legit star outfielder in right field. If they succeed then their line-up is the greatest in all of baseball and they can lessen the quality and cost of the starting pitchers they go after. IF they lose out on Springer, then they can alter their priorities accordingly and seek better pitching options at a higher cost. Its an interesting strategy to me.