Fielder Jones

It's just a dynamic that seems to follow all portions of our player acquisition. Jacob Gonzalez and Keenyn Walker rumor has it were results of the higher up contramanding the department that is supposed to make these decisions. These were guys the MLB community had lower, but we took them and had no one fighting us for them at all.

we dont sign the players we need, we sign the players we can. and there ends up being a reason for that.. no one is fighting us for them. the draft and trades could similarly be interpreted that way as well

Last time we spent we got Benin10D. these two would be Benin11D and Benin12D

This is a Josh Rojas MEGA-thread

was Bannister with SF when the put Manaea on a part time relief role? that seems to have actually benefitted his career since..

the piece also stresses Colson is a starting OD candidate at SS. I could see the team kind of using Merk here to really play up that AFL stint (though he wasnt a SS in that!)

Sean Burke a breakout candidate for 2025 White Sox Merk is incredibly well connected of course and had the Venable thing before anyone else. At the link he mentions the Sox plan for Schultz and Smith may be to bring them up to MLB later in 2025 but use them out of the pen. Bringing back the Chris Sale philosophy i guess. Any thoughts? Is this smart? I guess it could be Iriarte also debuted as a MLB reliever but now going into 2025 is probably back to starter in MILB (not that i know that)

a lot of us would like the existing young guys to get all the burn this year but from Getz's perspective.. Hahn was responsible for some of these. Very evidently he's not a Colas fan. Not sure who now is supporting Sosa but Grifol clearly didnt like him. We probably cant expect Getz to want to have 162 games of all of Hahn's guys. If GMs are hired and fired eventually on win-loss record then I could understand him wanting a veteran in there to help grab a win or two (and he's a 2 win player, to boot). It might not be opening day but by second half of the season we could see 2B being entirely Meidroth and Rojas

We have this belief that 'oh give that guy 500 PAs he can prove he's for real'. when in reality a bunch of guys end up sharing at bats on bad teams and there's going to be time to go around. and sosa probably wont even be in this org much longer b/c he's out of options so that'll be one down. good teams in 2025 arent even making everyone prove they are 500-PA-good, even after they do it! good teams will platoon the spots that benefit from platooning and frankly i'm ready for that in RF since we have tried to anoint a RF with baseless belief far too many a time

we have the learned helplessness that assumes we could never develop a nobody into an everyday player. the sox dont do it. but other orgs do! i dont know if Baldwin is one but we have to start turning some zero values into positive value at some point. tampa is not sustaining their success with blue chippers every year. There's some of that but there's also developed homegrown talent behind it as well. You need all angles of it

probably true about Baldwin but it would be nice if we could be like the aughts Cardinals that would just scrounge up 2 WAR nobodies and play them for 5 years in a row, then replace them

I actually am on the side of being ok with Rojas. He's reliable positive WAR year in year out, and you have to at some point have a guy like that.. after last year, you cant really pretend those guys are in large supply. As far as blocking young talent, im sure Sosa, Meidroth and Baldwin will have plenty of PAs, especially post trade deadline. Baldwin might be opening day SS for all we know. Sosa is out of options though so honestly he may not even be in this org a full year anyway.

Not Fletcher. he doesnt fit where MLB is going

we're going to have to start calling Randy Johnson the Little Unit

i dont know that we have to put the chances THAT high. we just saw something like this where we acquired Middleton cheap and built him up to then be worth Juan Carela, who is a nice starter prospect that is at least good enough to have had to protect in rule V draft

i dont know if i'm with you on the 'arrow up' part. No one in their right mind was going to say Crochet was about to explode and get tons of innings under his belt (again just dating back 365 days from now). Robert meanwhile is the kinda guy that alternates good year/bad year. and if you wait til the deadline then you are alleviating the money concern because his guaranteed $ is not big at that point.

if someone last year this time offered a 35+ FV prospect for Crochet, the line of thinking woulve been 'sure take it, Crochet's a last link to a disastrous past' i would hold onto Robert and try to rebuild something for half a year there. if you trade now for pennies then you'll have to complain when he's at full health and back to a 38 HR pace we shouldnt make trades because we're upset about hahn or kenny. make trades when the time is ripe

L. Acuna hasnt hit great in the minors. He's not posthype he's more like a never-was. great athlete who chases. Baty is tempting as all heck though. Destroyed the minors.

Herb is entertaining.

that is a strangely worded article to me. kind of gets to the point in like the last sentences

i like hearing we have hired smart people. that kind of thing is a slow turnaround but much needed. i would also like to hear we're firing the people Rosenthal said had no business being in baseball

all 'being himself' means is we were pitching him 3 innings at a time and it was pissing him off

This is sad to say but i feel more sure about RF than other positions. Slater's down year last year apparently is part concussion related but he has had good years. It's about time the Sox do a Tampa approach and straight platoon RF for a whole year. There's no savior that'll swoop in and be an every day guy

have heard abel is declining in value and that crawford is an athlete who hits grounders

i feel like these things even out though. We're gonna hear "expect absolute haul" and "eh go get Castillo, Valdez". Cease was coming off a bad year, but had more track record than Crochet. Those two things cancel out perhaps. Give a little edge then to Crochet's value b/c of how little pitching is available right now. And Cease was worth like a #60 overall and a 100ish overall, and a lotto ticket (Zavala). Crochet probably nets a little more than that. But we had all these same reports around the Cease time...certain reporters were saying there'll be a haul, other reporters were pointing out how the Marlins have pitchers that are fallbacks to Cease. So everyone has their hired guns and it's set up to even out in the end.