nrockway

funny moment there between pasquatch and sosa.

Lorenzen just doesn't have it 3rd time through the order. Keep him in! welp

don't love the #2 hitter sac bunting

He really endeared himself to me with that interview he did during spring training. The performance matches.

This game is moving really quick. Even the commercial breaks seem shorter.

Martín rocks

Well, I didn't define "mental gymnastics", did I? so what's my definition of it? Stearns was GM of the Brewers for eight years, would you not give Getz the same eight years? That would make your comparison logically consistent anyway. TBH, If Stearns was fired right now, he probably wouldn't get another job, ostensibly because he did something unethical unrelated to baseball. BTW, well-regarded GMs Billy Eppler and James Click do not have GM jobs after performing well. Will Kim Ng get another GM job after leading the Marlins to the playoffs? You've invented a hypothetical and it's clearly fallacious. If Stearns is fired in his second season ("Getz today"), do you think he gets another job? That's not really how it works though. I think it's funny that you called a logically-inconsistent hypothetical situation "reality" so boldly. It literally isn't reality, it's a mental exercise you just made up! lol, lmao even. That last sentence you wrote is sort of what you're doing, isn't it. You should also take that advice about being nicer, guy with a "no fat chicks" avatar. I like family guy but it's a curious choice of avatar for an adult...

Well, not gonna get into a political discussion past this post, but I'm not going to say you're stupid like you said I am. You might be really smart, I don't know anything about you. I didn't like that comment you made asking what the female umpire was wearing. That seems inappropriate and backward. Most conservatives I know don't speak like that, they seem to respect women as equals. I don't think misogyny is even a political opinion, although this specific president seems to empower it. I don't think a guy in his 60s talking about "fake news" and offering all other kinds of lowbrow political takes on social media is necessarily intelligent though. It seems petulant and like something a 14-year-old would do. Throwin a fastball gud doesn't make you intelligent. Being a cheating drug user probably helped in that regard. I think conservatives cared about moral decay or whatever.

"mental gymnastics" Be nicer. Stop with the personal attacks. I'm not going to call you mentally ill like you called me, or stupid or a butthead or something else childish despite the fact that you misinterpreted what I wrote and used that misinterpretation to insult me. That's not even what mental gymnastics is. You know, it's possible to disagree about something as trivial as a child's ball game and not be rude and mean-spirited. Are you mean because it's the internet? Would you say it to someone offline? I would probably say "hey, another Sox fan, neat! so what if we have differing perspectives?" All I'll say is "Mets = win now. NYC = better geography. Fraudster insider trader = better owner; they should be better on the field". It's strictly an opinion to say something like "the Sox are still bad on the field in 2024 and 2025 if they have Stearns or anyone else as the GM. They would likely be better with a bad GM who acquired a bunch of vets who don't make us a contender. Rebuilding was the right decision, it just sucked to lose that many games. They weren't a fun team to watch last year. They're showing signs of life this year with all the young players performing well". I think you should say you're sorry and maybe learn to treat people more kindly. Maybe my baseball take is completely wrong, but I think the 'bully tendency' reflects more poorly on you than 'optimistic ball fan' does on me. It also just isn't good argumentation. I think a neutral bystander would probably agree with my side whether or not I'm correct solely because of how the information is presented. https://myinsideedge.com/MLB/Team?id=12 "Inside Edge scouts analyze every play of every MLB game, capturing detail far beyond the basic game state transitions found in conventional run models. Rich data enables a more precise estimate of run potential compared to simple league averages. Greater probabilistic precision makes our new Expected Runs Added metric the most accurate assessment of team strength available to the public." The RP one is just "expected runs prevented by relievers". I'm not sure how they calculate it. But I just discovered this site and really like it. They have a Chrome extension that works with the various box score sites, shows who's hot and such. This is what it shows if you hover over Edgar Quero for example. Matchup specific info. Pretty neat I think.

Yeah, FSG strikes me as even worse ownership than Jerry considering how valuable the two assets are that they own. I guess they own the Penguins too and I don't know anything about NHL, but they haven't been very good since the acquisition. Liverpool is also historically cheap under Henry but still a great team, although they just went on a spending spree and will likely dominate the EPL again and maybe make some noise in the Champion's League. Wirtz might be a bust but according to my brother, Ekitiké is a star. 2 goals and an assist in 2 matches is certainly a good start. I wonder if Red Sox fans think the Devers trade is simply to offset the Liverpool spending. Guess we'll see what they do.

That's a good point, can't argue with that. To the original point, I'd probably prefer Bloom over Getz.

Bonds doesn't "look the part". He's also far less whiny post-career than some of these guys. Was watching the Twins broadcast when they played the Sox, their broadcast directed me to Roger's twitter to see his 'reaction' to his son's home run and the post right above it is him talking about "fake news" and playing golf with the president. Whatever, the baseball player is entitled to his political views, he just seems like a stupid person and I can't imagine that stuff playing well with the Minnesota/DFL crowd. why are these dudes always so weird about it...like, are you gonna have a wet dream?

Anthony was drafted in 2022 a full year before Breslow was hired. Maybe the Red Sox did some developmental magic, wouldn't rule it out. Probably he was just a good player scouted by someone the previous regime hired. Sometimes over-slot 3rd rounders turn out to be pretty good. I dunno that Devers had a vision, nobody was questioning his personality in his previous seven years with the team, he was simply jerked around this past year and had enough. I don't think he looks very good either, but clearly he was pushed into it recently, otherwise they wouldn't have signed him to that giant contract. It's only addition by subtraction because he was fed up. At the same time, he was clearly better with Boston than he is with San Francisco, 151 OPS+ vs 116. He is also exclusively playing 1B/DH with the Giants and seems to be happy about it. Our man Liam Hendriks had a similar impression about the front office. BoSox traded the OF prospect in that deal for Dustin May who's pitched to a 4.50 ERA with them. Jordan Hicks has a 6.19 ERA in 16 innings since joining them. Kyle Harrison is in AAA and is worse than he was with SFG's AAA affiliate. Similar ERA, but went from a 4.75 Strikeout:Walk ratio to 1.84. 20-year-old Jose Bello looks OK after 14.1 IP at A ball. I think Harrison will be good, but if that's what you're getting back for a career .853 OPS hitter, it doesn't look like a good trade. The vets are nice additions, but Story was there for a while, Bello was also there before the new GM and was clearly good, Lowe has 20 plate appearances with the ugly sox, Chapman is pretty much just some guy. Bregman is a good player, but he's not exactly a diamond in the rough. He's being paid a lot of money. Luv Gio, but he's well-paid for what he is doing and plenty of teams might've paid him. It was dead salary for a year. He's had an awesome year and I hope he keeps it up for a while. It's funny that they keep acquiring our pitchers, frankly. Why can't they develop their own?

I think I'm the only one doing it. Maybe not, but I mention it quite a bit. I think it's a funny bit because the Mets are not as good as they ought to be with an unlimited budget and with the guy everyone thinks is the best GM in the league. I mean, the Mets were way better in 2022, weren't they. I suspect Stearns probably has his fingerprints over the excellent Brewers team this year, systems he developed, but if we follow your logic, the Brewers are a better team because of their new GM and all it took was replacing Stearns. The MLB roster has clearly improved since Stearns left, the W/L record isn't up for debate. To that point, I think many realize that Rome wasn't built in a day. What you're describing is a team that Hahn/Kenny built and decisions the new GM made to get "prospects" who didn't play for the Major League team last year or most of this year or still aren't in MLB. That singular record is not indicative of future success. "Worst team ever" stings a little, but ultimately I'd rather have the prospects than keeping Tanner Banks, Erick Fedde, Greg Santos, Dylan Cease, etc. Or signing a bunch of veterans without a future on the team. Not all of those trades are working out as we might hope, but we would've obviously performed better if we kept them and what would be the end result? A playoff berth? The team was on a downward trend because of decisions the previous FO made, it seems illogical to stick it on the new guy in his first season. It's simply not how baseball works, did you really expect him to magic up some superstars? Or to make Moncada, Eloy, Benintendi suddenly play well? To go back in time and not hire Grifol? I wish our GM could do magic but it seems like an unrealistic expectation. In terms of magicking up superstars, perhaps Colson doesn't perform like he is now without the new-and-improved Arizona complex. Hahn had years and years to do that but didn't. Kenny's ego would have never delegated responsibility to someone like Brian Bannister or Ryan Fuller. At the time, I thought it was cool that the Sox posted an open position for 'biomechanics analyst' and it seems to be helping and to be the sort of thing that modern MLB teams do that we previously did not. The organizational culture is clearly much better, it's not two guys micromanaging everything, consequently the players appear to be having fun. There isn't the 'white guy clique' anymore. We're not hearing players talk about how dysfunctional the team is. I probably wouldn't have done the Bummer or Mena trades, ostensibly the in-place systems that scouted those players who were acquired were from the previous front office. Maybe the new GM learns something about acquiring players like Rojas and Nicky Lopez, though it's not like they were paid handsomely or for multiple years; otherwise pretty much every player on the worst team ever was a Hahn/Kenny guy. Some of the reliever signings and trades were a miss, Booser this season is clearly a miss, but they're just relief pitchers and ultimately it's pretty marginal. Are Fajardo and Mena moving the needle? You'd probably prefer to have them, but it's not of the caliber of trading Tatis or Semien for bad, old pitchers. Although, seems like there was improvement in that department, the free version of 'Inside Edge' seems to think the Sox are pretty good at that this season relative to other MLB teams (see bottom). In terms of building a team for the future, you ought to be paying attention to what the rest of the organization is doing. It takes time in baseball relative to other sports. To me, that's a lot of the fun about talking about baseball. It takes some time to bear fruit. Some amount of guesswork and prediction is involved and I could be totally wrong, I'm not the sharpest mind, but we all have access to the same information to help guide our perspective. The White Sox will probably bear fruit before the Bulls though, that's an actually poorly-run organization. In fairness, I can understand why that's not appealing to a lot of people, to go through a rebuild, especially when we fans have been burnt before. It's still a necessary evil unless you're the Yankees or Dodgers. The Sox weren't fun to watch last year. Birmingham was a lot of fun to watch and I bought some of their merchandise. Although I'm still waiting for someone to say "hey nice hat" instead of "why are you wearing a Red Sox hat?". Some homeless guy in my neighborhood yelled at me because I was wearing my '83 Sox hat too much ("we stopped wearing that hat 40 years ago!" or something), but I digress. Now some of those Birmingham guys are in the MLB and are still fun to watch, they're actually performing, at the highest level. And are continuing to improve. I completely tuned out of the Sox by this point last season, I'm heartened by the performance of our young players and I wonder why we all aren't. It's fun when they have good games and I don't really care when Owen Wilson or whatever 30-year-old reliever who won't be on the team next year blows the game. Baseball is fun, it isn't that serious, and sometimes being optimistic is the same thing as being logical. Anyway, this is my essay for the week.

Looks like the Sox torched the ROY candidate groundballer after being pwned by him a week ago or whatever. Shane bounced back in August after a horrible June and July. The young guys continue to ball out. Korey Lee gets in on the fun. Excited to watch the replay.

I don't want to do a whole thing, I think it's a fair perspective, and I'd echo Tony's post (if I think he's saying what I think) and say that "it's hard to tell at this point" but I'll make a few points in response. I don't think I'm holding teams to a higher standard per se, I just think there are other factors at play. Namely the owner. Also the geography. Also the position they started from. I feel like the Mets should be better than they are with an unlimited budget and the fact they play in New York City. Not only is is it the most important city in the country, it's also close to the Dominican Republic and has a large Dominican diaspora. I think the Sox should've been better for the last 60 years because Chicago is an important city and media market too. I'd hold JR accountable and pretty much every other previous owner before the GM in that regard. I think I'm holding the GMs to the same standard when controlling for other factors (not very mathematical, just my opinions as I see it). I think I try to be objective about the two teams I like, the Sox and Bulls, and I think the Sox have a better front office than the Bulls do regardless of the winning percentage. Sometimes losing and being bad is the correct strategy compared to treadmilling. I'd rather they be terrible this year than win 70 games by signing a bunch of veteran stopgaps. More opportunity for the young guys and another opportunity to draft high and potentially get a real difference maker compared to picking at 15. I pretty much hated the Hagen Smith pick and liked Konnor Griffin, JJ Wetherholt and Braden Montgomery specifically. Sox selecting Smith with his profile seemed like a previous front office sort of move. Still not a big fan of Jac. It's not like Hagan is a bust though, he's just not moving as fast as anticipated and his control issues are concerning. Jury is still out on him and Schultz. This year's draft seems a lot better. The Mets have been second fiddle to the Yankees forever, but that's changing somewhat, arguably because of the cash infusion from the owner, and it was happening before Stearns was hired. Maybe he did a bunch to persuade Soto to join the Mets over the Yankees, if so he should be credited. I bring him up because he's been super hyped for years and I'm not sure what he actually did that's so great. Maybe he turned the Brewers organization into a really good one and it's still paying fruit under a new regime (this is the obviously best they've been though as soon as he left. Many seem to be holding Getz to that same standard relative to Hahn/Kenny). I just don't think he's made a bunch of great peripheral moves with the Mets and they should be better considering the other factors. Mets have 4 top 100 prospects per Pipeline, but Stearns FO only picked one of them. 4 of the 5 White Sox top 100 were selected under Getz (or traded for in the case of Montgomery, maybe we just say 3 of 5). Antonacci is probably going to be on the top 100 soon enough. There might be a few other guys like Fauske and Lodise who could be end up there. McDougal has taken HUGE steps forward and looks like an ace this year when he looked pretty marginal the previous two years. There is a ton of depth in the White Sox system if we're paying attention; that didn't exist with the previous front office. Jeral Perez, from the Fedde trade could be there. The Fedde signing and trade was big and I wonder why the Mets or any other team didn't do that. That's an example of creating something out of nothing. I'd quibble specifically with the Red Sox and Twins. Twins had a fire sale and didn't get much of anything in return. Maybe that's pressure from the owner, but I bet they could've made smarter moves and set up their 'rebuild' better. I like our rebuild better than theirs, frankly. Really early to tell though. The Twins are headed to the dumpster and I'm not sure how they'll get out of it. They might transcend the Rockies/Sox in terms of all-time bad. This just seems like a general trend in MLB as it was in NBA, the 'middle class' of the league is falling out. All of their top prospects were picked by the previous regime besides Culpepper and they seem to be on the same path they were before the new GM took over. I think the Red Sox should also be better. Completely alienating Devers and getting pennies on the dollar in a 'win now' move doesn't seem to be working out because they're not winning now. Toronto shouldn't be the clearly best team in that division. The Crochet trade was a win for both teams, but Crochet's injury concerns are still a question. Payton Tolle is the #28 prospect in baseball but I don't think he's measurably better than Schultz or Smith. He's walking fewer guys to be sure, that's going to be the thing to address with our lefty prospects. Schultz just had a real nice outing after coming back from injury, Smith walked a bunch of guys but his K rate is great. I still think it was the wrong pick. Anyway, that list I posted is only to suggest that Getz is not actually doing a bad job, and to give him no credit is just pessimism for the sake of it or otherwise not paying attention to anything but the MLB team. The system is genuinely exciting. Sox management is doing things that we weren't doing before. As stated, I only really pay attention to the Sox and Bulls and Getz is way better at his job than Karnisovas is. Pretty much every trade or free agent acquisition has been a loser. Every draft pick that he didn't trade (most of them) have pretty much been a bust. Re-signing bust Patrick Williams to a giant extension was the last straw for me. I'm all, "fire AK" (I post about it on RealGM all the time) and I'd be consistent and say, "Fire Getz" if there was actually a reason to suggest he was worse than his predecessor. The Major League record isn't the end all be all in this case. Once more, I think it's time to start adding MLB talent and not prospects, so we'll see what he does in that regard. I'd change my tune if the team isn't performing reasonably well by 2027. I hope the front office makes intelligent trades eventually that trade 'prospects' for actual performers. If they sign another Benintendi, I'd rationally be annoyed by it. I am a "homer" in the sense that I am supportive of the team and my glass is half full, but I'm not a fool.

I actually did write a response but didn't hit submit because it needed editing and didn't have the time then lol...or maybe that was the thread about sample sizes. Either way, I wasn't referring to you. You don't put words in posters' mouths. You shut me up certainly. I'm probably not going to reply to this thread for a while after this post, I'd like to post on SoxTalk all day, but we're not all of retired and sometimes the discussion moves on. Or I forget. I'm not looking for a fight or to put anyone down, but for some amount of objectivity. And also just a generally kinder tone. I'm not always the best at that, but dang this place is pretty hostile sometimes. I think it's pretty clear that the team is in a better state now than when we were .500. Ample evidence that this organization is moving out of the stone age via outside hires, biomechanics staff, a new facility in the DR etc. Good post that I can't really look at right now. Tonight.

Well, I didn't write "sheesh wouldn't you rather have Getz than these schlubs?" I wrote "would the White Sox be measurably better if they hired any one of these other dudes instead?". You could respond to what I wrote instead of, I dunno, somethin' you made up. caulfield did. It's probably a more interesting discussion. And less rude to me.

Really hope he turns out! French wine country to American border town community college to MLB is definitely a unique path.

I genuinely think it's amusing that a bunch of people with the exact same (rare and dying) hobby, posting about a baseball team on an internet forum, are so vitriolic. Some more than others. It's like, chill out, it's not that serious. Definitely doesn't need to be personal. Don't think I need to accept that. It takes years to build a team. The actual record is pretty irrelevant, it's not like it carries over. Frankly, this season I'd rather have a top draft pick than 'barely' missing the playoffs. I've seen enough of that garbage with the Bulls. A rebuilding team is obviously going to be bad, it's a question of 'is the organization itself more effective than it was under the previous GM?' It seems hard to argue against that. At the very least, it's hard to argue that Getz is worse than Hahn/Kenny. Based on what we can see publicly, the Sox are doing the sorts of things that 'modern' organizations do. I'm not going to beat a dead horse, this has been discussed plenty on the forum and you could read my perspective in the 'fire Getz' thread. An additional point would be, look at the below list of GMs who have been hired since Getz. Many of these teams look clearly worse and blowing a contending window. Bendix seems like a good hire, a different forum poster convinced me of that point. Maybe Greenberg. Stearns seems totally overrated. Would the White Sox be measurably better if they hired any one of these other dudes instead? Somebody should make that point, I'd listen to it.

That's horrible, I didn't know that. Adds a little context to his slow start. I don't think it would be a Robert for Doyle trade, more like Doyle for 'prospects' whoever those players might be in a year or two. Not saying that deal would even be available or the Sox would have the pieces, I just like him on the team and he probably doesn't have a future in CO. Michael Harris II might be another option, but he's looking a lot like Luis.

Robert is only expendable if there is someone who can replace his defense and still kind of swing a bat. If the Sox are going to compete before 2030, you don't just jettison a guy because he didn't live up to his superstar potential but is still useful. Not sure there's anyone like that in the system except maybe the 19-year-old Alcala or 18-year-old Christian Gonzalez, but and who knows what they'll actually do when they gets older and move up levels. Jacob Burke, DJ Gladney, Dru Baker are not those guys. Need to have someone like Ceddane Rafaela who I would've liked to see in the Crochet return and was perhaps available. Or Brenton Doyle who almost certainly isn't available but might be after Robert's contract is up. Robert at his worst is still very useful relative to other 'defensive' CFs. Compare to Victor Scott or Jacob Young. If Robert is hitting at his best, he's one of the best players in the game. I mean, I'd rather 'overpay' for Robert than have one of Cedric Mullins, Kyle Isbel, Trent Grisham, Alek Thomas (known Mt. Carmel bully) on a 'fair' contract. I don't think you can expect the first three to continue to hit over the life of a free agent contract. They're also not as good defensively as Luis. Daulton Varsho is about the only guy I can think of that might be a good, and realistic, free agent signing to replace Robert's production. Let's say Robert is healthy next two years and OPSs at like .710 for 2.5 WAR per season...what contract does he deserve? Probably one the Sox can pay and aren't likely to replace with internal candidates or a free agent. They'd have to make a trade (I think the aforementioned Doyle or Rafaela would be great acquisitions if possible). He's a .769 OPS hitter across 2300 PAs+ so he's probably more like that realistically. With his GG defense, there aren't many better options in the MLB. Jung-Hoo Lee will make more money than Robert next season and is pretty much the same age, has similar injury concerns and isn't clearly a more valuable hitter. See what Robert does next year and maybe he's due a reasonable extension. Injuries I think are still the biggest factor though. Still, it would be a shame if the current rookies continue to perform and improve, Braden and the other prospects come up and show out, and suddenly there's a massive hole in CF because Robert is no longer on the team. We've basically past the point of trading for prospects, at some point you have to stop planning for the future and plan for the now. I say it's 2027. Maybe the caveat is you don't think CF/up the middle defense is as important as I do, but still, who is at least a 'good enough' defender to play center field and will be available for the Sox to sign or trade for? Who is an internal option? Braden is a RF, Wolkow could maybe stick there and could be in MLB by 2027, but his bat is far from a sure thing. The rest of the OF prospects aren't going to see MLB any time soon and are also far from sure things. tl;dr: keep Robert unless there's actually a better player available. Maybe it's Varsho who is a unrestricted free agent in 2027. Maybe then you decline Robert's second team option if he really proves to be a sub-.700 OPS hitter. So what if you have to pay him like Benintendi or a little more. Small price to pay for production at an important position. He could also hit .850 OPS and be a 5 WAR player and we'd be kicking ourselves if he wasn't on the team.

really sad. that might be it for him.

Gomez has been solid. 7 ER in 18 innings with us compared to 7 in 4.1 with the Dodgers. Sox ERA down to 3.50.

Any close calls with a gator?