Rusty

I agree. I can’t believe he hasn’t been sent down yet. I would’ve preferred keeping Pillar, sending down AV, and moving Sheets to 1b. I feel like that’s better than any team that forces AV into the lineup and either Eloy or Gavin into the outfield.

I don’t see an issue with anything he said here. Essentially he said the players are working hard but talent matters. Especially when he mentions that the Braves were different because they “knew they were better.” He basically says the Sox are a roster assembled of a bunch of try-hards and that s%*# doesn’t work in professional sports. Especially baseball. In basketball, if you maximize effort, with a coach like Thibs and sell out defensively, you can at least be relatively successful. In football, a smart coach can get pretty far with subpar talent with good scheming and scouting. In hockey you can out condition your opponents and hit the s%*# out of them, you can do pretty well. In soccer, when you are over-matched severely you go into a low block and bunker. In baseball…if a guy can’t hit a breaking ball, he can’t hit a breaking ball. I don’t care what you do, Gavin Sheets or Eloy will never be serviceable outfielders. The pitchers just don’t have an MLB level of velocity and/or “stuff.” Baseball is much more predicated on natural talent. Good players are going to win at a higher rate over mediocre players and coaching than in the other sports. The current Sox players and coaches aren’t even close to mediocre and this is the result.

Don’t forget that he began his career as an IRS tax lawyer. “He made his initial fortune in real estate, taking advantage of the Frank Lyon Co. v. United Statesdecision by the United States Supreme Court, which allowed economic owners of realty to sell property and lease it back, while transferring the tax deduction for depreciation to the title owner.” “He developed a specialty in real estate partnership tax shelters.” He’s a smart guy that knows how to make the financial statements work. That’s why the initial investors agreed to give him full control when he only had a 12% stake and is rumored today to be around 18% owner. He is very good at making people absolute buckets of cash. Fans care about wins, investors care about returns. He is essentially running the Sox & Bulls as an investment or real estate portfolio type of business.

You forgot Sheets…they legit have like 5 DH guys. I mean he can’t hit but…based on his defensive performance so far, AV may best be categorized as a DH too.

NBC Sports reported that the Sox haven’t been profitable for 3 seasons, basically since COVID. That being said, anyone in business knows it’s very easy to get a little creative with accounting to avoid certain tax situations. There’s a reason that many billionaires are able to avoid paying a single dollar of federal income tax. The real value of the team is the sales price compared to what it was purchased for. Jerry also owns 50% of NBC Sports so a. The article could be heavily biased and b. He’s still getting his through the tv deals. I’m sure there are other connected corporations that we are not aware of that are having Sox revenues funneled through them to show a loss. About a year ago Jerry acquired a majority stake in Stadium, which I’m confident means 50%+, which is why he’s moving the Sox and Bulls to that provider. It will give him leverage to get that network on other carriers which means more money for him, they are headquartered at the UC which means he gets to pay himself rent instead of Blackstone, and he can continue to write off the tv deal expenses to a different company that he owns, he’ll have true majority control so expect cost cutting on production and on air talent, and he can write off his losses in a couple years when NBC Chicago. That’s how you use fuzzy accounting to direct money around to show that everything is operating at a loss. I’m very confident that Schiffren was hired because he’s done basketball and football so once they move to Stadium, Jerry can use him on almost every broadcast to save money. The dude is basically a poor man’s version of Jason. I guarantee he’s way, way cheaper, and can be convinced to stay away from National commitments that Jason started to have so you can plan to put the guy on a ton of Bulls, Sox, and CFB games. I wouldn’t put it past Jerry to put him on a hockey game if it saves him a few bucks.

There’s a zero percent chance MLB allows this team to move to Nashville and Jerry wouldn’t do it either because it tanks the valuation for when it’s sold after he passes. It’s smoke and mirrors to try and get the state to renew the criminally favorable lease terms at GRF.

Soroka seriously didn’t have a single swing and miss today? Woof. Against the Twins no less.

Jerry doesn’t give a f***. That’s why I’m at least somewhat confident that Grifol might be here through the rest of the season.

Why if I told you 4 years ago, when we all had visions of a “championship window.” That on April 25th, 2024…the fucking Cubs would have five times as many wins as the White Sox? People would’ve rolled over laughing.

Montoyo, rightfully so, would not take the job without getting a significant raise. He is smart enougH to know that it would essentially signal the end of his MLB career in any mildly advanced coaching position. Pedro, assuming he still wants some sort of job after this will be lucky to find a job as a AAA bench coach (because no organization will trust him with players at AA and below). Maybe he could get a scouting job somewhere or some bullshit position like MLB fielding coordinator.

Because he’s in his own head and is coming crashing down psychologically that he may not be an MLB player much longer.

At the time even the Athletics had a three person analytics staff.

It’s because Jerry isn’t willing to spend on an analytics department. He’s got a hitting coach down there trying to chart pitches, probably on a fucking spiral notebook. It’s been a few years since I looked but last I saw listed the White Sox analytics department was a grand total of two employees while the top teams were around 7-9 personnel. There’s a reason both Sox’ hitters & pitchers can’t adjust to anything. They are simply being out-scouted and out-analyzed on top of already being a roster full of below average MLB players. That is absolutely a recipe for a historically bad season.

If I’m Pedro…honestly I ask for a 50% buyout to “resign” and hope that I can completely re-start my career starting with some bullshit MiLB position or something like fielding coordinator sooner rather than later.

He won’t. That’s why they are going to have trouble replacing him. I know there’s very few MLB manager positions available in the world but people are smart enough to realize this organization is complete career suicide at this point. You’d have to throw a bag of cash at someone and we all know Jerry won’t do that. People are saying Ozzie but I just don’t see him doing it. Why would he? Montoya won’t take it because he knows he’d essentially be putting in retirement players. I’m just gonna say…we’ll get the press release that Tony’s health issues are no longer an issue and he’ll be the interim…

I’m seriously how bad it has to get before they fire Pedro? I’d imagine something like 3-27 gets it done. Maybe.

-200 for the Twins today appears to have been easy money. I honestly wasn’t even worried when the Sox went up 2-0.

This is awesome.

Whose gonna tell him…

I honestly root for them to lose every day just because I know the minute they win a game Pedro is going to spout some complete bullshit about “building off this,” “righting the ship,” “getting some momentum,” etc when…we all know they suck. God forbid they ever win two in a row.

That’s what I was thinking. This team is literally setting records for futility. If the goal was “damage control” then it’s a horrible failure. I have to imagine that it won’t be this bad all season but…they are on pace to lose almost 140 games. This is a historically bad roster. And don’t give me the excuse of Robert and Yoan going down. If you don’t go into the season expecting a couple players to have long term IL trips, that’s a poorly formed plan. Yoan has been playing hurt for literally years and Luis has played over 100 games exactly once in his career. If you want damage control at least play some of these fringe AAAA guys instead of signing dudes in their late 30s that can’t hit.

Let’s be completely honest. Benintendi is the least useful of the bunch. The guy can’t get to balls with an 80-90% expected catch rate, is airmailing cutoff men, throwing to the wrong base, and even when he gets the right base needs a cutoff guy to get it from left to second. Also you know…the whole batting .167 thing. Unfortunately we all know that it’ll never happen since he’s the largest FA contract in franchise history. Pillar will go down for Pham. I doubt we see Colas at the MLB level ever again and they won’t call up any other young guys unless there’s an injury, they manage to dump someone at the deadline (not likely), or when rosters expand because Getz is not willing to admit that nearly every offseason acquisition was almost a complete miss.

I’ve got a pretty significant wager on under 64.5 wins. Seemingly looks like the lock of the century. I know that the Martingale strategy almost always ends up as a disaster for the bettor, but I have to wonder if theres some opportunity with this team on money line bets. As long as you start conservative relative to your bankroll, it’s hard to see this team running off what? 3 straight wins? Certainly something like 7 would be a complete miracle. Today I see the Twins at -200 which seems like a pretty good value bet. I guess the biggest risk would be that they are so bad that books legit start pulling odds for games when they go against top pitchers or teams.

I don’t know if it’s been explained but…if you are going to sign Pham and Clevinger why the hell wait so long? To get more leverage and save a few bucks. They aren’t going to be world beaters but at least sign them early enough so they can break cramp with the team. The Sox’ literally went into opening day with a 4 man rotation. That’s horrible roster management. Did anyone actually believe Yoan, Eloy, and Luis were going to play 155 games together? Now you have a lineup that essentially requires a DH in the outfield at all times, Nicky Lopez is your lead off hitter, the new centerfielder is literally tripping all over himself and knocking it over the fence, and the largest contract in team history and newest infielder are missing routine fly balls. Getz swung and missed badly. I’m sure he is under pretty significant financial limitations and some of it is a shitty situation left over from the previous regime, but they went into this season with zero backup plan. They needed everything to go right to even get to 65 wins, now a couple guys go down and this is what you get. Legit making a run of the worst record in league history and setting new records for futility on almost a daily basis.

4-7, not a single guy hitting over .200. Yikes. None of these dudes were ever going to be great hitters but players offensive abilities completely falling off a cliff the minute they get to this organization is 100% a pattern. It’s the same as a complete lack of a pitchers ability to hold runners on whether they are a young guy or veteran coming in. It’s like they instantly just stop caring about holding a guy close and they start running around the base paths at will. Teams have analytics departments that completely have the book on these guys meanwhile the Sox’ analytics department is about 4 people deep. For context…my daughters youth soccer club has more than 4 people assigned to video and opponent analysis…