The Kids Can Play

It's a great Sunday win and impressive series win. However that's baseball and sometimes a bad team can win a series against the best team. Just be careful here, the Sox still have major flaws and are not a playoff team. I will not drop my guard and let them tease me thinking they are back in the race to win the Central. We've gone down this rabbit hole too many times this season. Sorry to be negative, but it is what it is! This impressive series win shouldn't change anything to the fact, the Sox still need to be sellers in the next few weeks.

A nice win, but the Sox hitters still swing at too many pitches outside the zone. They had 13 K's and zero walks.

The Sox seem to be very tight lipped on his injury other than what they originally reported as elbow inflammation. Personally I don't care if he comes back this year since the Sox are not making the playoffs. Thus, it would be a more prudent decision to let Liam rest and heal the rest of the year and let him come back 100 percent in 2024.

That's fine with me. I just wish their was a stronger coaching staff down there to work with Noah on getting him to use let pitches and let him go longer. You're right though, he needs to quit going only 2 or 3 innings. That is on the Sox coaching staff to make that happen. However when the last two years the Sox farm system has been ranked 29th and 26th, tells me they are not very competent developing and improving our prospects, especially pitchers. I don't have stats on this, but an educated guess tells me, the Sox are probably 30th ranked, if you just rank the pitchers in all 30 farm systems.

Of course the Sox are not losing money. However they are not making as much revenue and profit as they could, if a smarter owner and GM were running the Sox. Though you are right, you would think at some point Jerry would be questioning Hahn harshly, since Jerry always claims he is such the smart owner.

Thanks for sharing this in the Pale Hose Talk forum section. IMHO, I think a talented kid like Noah Schultz does belong in this section.

At this point it's safe to say he dominating low A ball. I do not want to over rush this talented kid through the minors, but would it be that bad to consider moving him to high A Winston-Salem sooner than later? Will someone please tell me the Sox won't make Schultz spend the rest of his minor league season pitching at Kannapolis.

He now has 6 starts, 14.1 IP, 5 Hits, 2 BB, 21 K's, 0.49 WHIP. It's extremely impressive even if it's only low A ball. I'm just worried the White Sox dysfunctional player development in the minors will screw him up somewhere along his path to the majors.

Agreed! Hahn is not a good poker player in terms of player evaluation and trading world of baseball, as he doesn't know when to Holdem or Foldem.

Grifol describes the team weaknesses as a lack of focus and attention to detail which are absolutely some of their huge problems. However he seems to forget he promised those things would be strengths and not problems at his initial press conference when Hahn introduced him. This is the best paragraph of the article: Grifol pledged the Sox would be fundamentally sound, control the strike zone on both sides of the ball and earn the trust of fans. But Sox hitters’ chase rate is the second-worst behind the Tigers, and their walk rate is last. Defense was stressed during spring training, but the Sox are near the bottom of most runs-saved metrics. I'm sorry but talk is cheap and once again until Grifol proves he can be a leader and actually back up his promises, so we actually can see major improvements in the results on the field defensively, on the mound with the pitchers and in the batter's box with all their hitting approach flaws; I'm not buying his crap. It's the "same s%*#, different day" BS speech.

A good friend of mine who is a NU alumni reminded of a baseball head coach who would have been perfect. I wonder why NU didn't at least make an effort to go after former Northwestern player and alumni Joe Girardi. There were rumors that he was a candidate. I know he was offered a head coaching job at the University of Central Florida last month which he declined. I would think if NU offered enough money he might at least consider it. He would bring a lot of creditability to the rattled sports program with his resume of winning a World Series both as a player and manager. He had a nice 15 year playing career and three stints as a manager with a lifetime record of 1120-935 .545% His college credentials were pretty good too, as a two time first team All Big Ten selection and three time Academic All-American at NU. You would think that being head coach at his alma mater would be far more exciting than his current gig as a backup color analyst for the Cubs on the Marquee network. The fact he even listened to the college offer from UCF means it's not out of the realm of reality. It's not like they can't afford to offer the money to Girardi. Northwestern has the 8th largest endowment fund in the US for all colleges and universities at 14.4 billion.

I was hoping someone could help me with the way Noah Schultz is being handled. I don't follow the minors as close as some other here do. However I really like the chances on this Noah Schultz and hope we don't screw him up. As we know he is killing it at Kannapolis through his first five starts. My questions are the following: 1. Why are they throwing him every 6 to 7 days? That is fine I guess since he is only 19 yrs old, but then he only goes for 2 innings or like the last start 3 innings. 2. I see they moved some players up across all levels. I'm wondering at what point are they going to move Noah up to high A WS? I mean he hasn't given up a run in 5 starts and only one hit, just maybe low A isn't very challenging. I am not expecting the Sox to rush him up all these levels and screw his timeframe to make the majors, but maybe high A would be a good thing for him sooner than later. I guess I question the judgment of the Sox FO because obviously need to be questioned, since the last few years the Sox have been of the worst farm systems in baseball.

As we all know, that's the Sox MO, "Stupid is as Stupid Does!"

I know you've told me that before, and that's fine by me. It seems the corporation that runs the Dodgers is doing just fine. However I'm still not convinced some mega billionaire like Cohen of the Mets, can't go solo to buy the Sox instead of a collection of billionaires who form a corporation like the Dodgers did. Either way the next owner or owner group, need to be about winning as a first priority, spending money like a 3rd largest market team should and recruiting away and hiring the best baseball executives and people from the winning organizations.

Hopefully after Jerry is gone and the team is sold, the new owner will be one of those rich billionaires who wants to spend money at whatever it takes to win. Hopefully it will be that way because this rich billionaire owner bought the team for fun and to win and he didn't buy the team to make money, because he already has made his billions in some other business. Whether that happens remains to be seen, but that is my hope.

Well he did have the energy and mental fortitude to go to that sports conference back in May and make all kind of stupid comments, like the one about how dumb he felt other owners were when he sits in owner meetings. It seems to me if he can do that type of crap, then his cognitive skills are intact enough to a decision to fire the loser front office. Sadly Jerry just doesn't give a sh$t!

Keep the embarrassment going Sox fans! Sox fans need to quit wasting their money and more importantly, if they finally want change, they need to stop spending money on this POS organization. I don't give sh#t if Jerry still makes money from other sources, his demented ego will not handle this well when he sees a massive attendance decline, that will be a laughable embarrassment to his franchise and the other baseball owners he is SO MUCH SMARTER than.

Welcome to your 2024 Sox pitching staff! Another 90 plus loss season.

He isn't good as a pitching coach and I've been saying that for awhile now.

Of course not, when the AAA Knights are tied for 18th of 20 teams in runs scored at 4.87 per game and 20th in OBP at .340. Btw, you might think a .340 OBP is good, but at the AAA Intl league, it's really bad, as .384 leads the league and 10 teams over .360 OBP. Of course nobody should be shocked they lost 8-0 as the Knights' pitching staff is 20th in ERA with 6.37. What a job Rick Hahn and his FO did in scouting, drafting and developing the prospects in the minors. Every GM in baseball wishes they had this type of job security for posting one the worst major league rosters and farm systems both in the same year.

I've never seen Frank Thomas as upset with a Sox team as he was last night. I'm glad he and Ozzie ripped the team. Gordon and Pods should never be on another post-game show because they are too soft and will never rant and rave and throw managers and players under the bus. Going forward for the rest of this miserable season, I wish it could only be Frank and Ozzie with Chuck.

That's a great article. However it's very disturbing about the two acts of hazing the NU upperclassmen did called "Running the Player" and the "Gauntlet."

I always liked and respected Pat Fitzgerald. I have always pulled for him to build the NU program to some national prominence which never happened. I'm sure Fitz is a nice guy and all that stuff. However the bottom line is, he was the head coach and the buck did stop with him. Fitz unfortunately assumed he had leaders on his team, or his good assistant coaches that were closer to the action going on. Regardless of the factors that caused the termination of Fitz, there just wasn't the right positive team culture where the players wouldn't dare consider something as hideous as bullying or hazing to a teammate, fearing the consequences from their head coach.

As Michael Wilbon said, who is a very loyal NU alumni, huge donor to the school and on the Board of Trustees and personally knew Fitzpatrick well, regardless if whether he knew it was happening or not, it's still his fault. The head coach is responsible for setting a culture and positive environment on that team and in that locker room where hazing and being a bully could never happen. It also shows a lack of mature leaders on that team, that wouldn't step up and stop it.