CaliSoxFanViaSWside

Totally agree. Crochet would be an opener pitching only every 5th day ? What good is that? He can do that in the minors so Grifol isn't tempted to use him after 2 or 3 days rest to get a win. He needs to stay on the every 5th day schedule.

Yikes I hope your kindergartner got good reports his 1st couple months of school or you failed as a parent.

There isn't a helluva lot else to pin your hopes on. Bannister's specialty and what he takes pride in is helping pitchers find what they once had be it established guys or not so established guys who at times looked great then stumbled. It's not impossible to turn guys around. Rodon made changes for 2021 that helped him turn it around. Kopech going to the pen is probably just a move to help him eventually get put back into the rotation. Being a starter is the only way to make him truly bankable even though the Sox gained nothing from Rodon's success in 2021. Kopech has to find a way to consistently throw strikes. In what's going to be a lost season no matter what ,why the hell do we need another BP guy ? They don't have enough arms yet to toss out there ? What's crazy to me is a month of pitching in the spring is not even giving him or Bannister a chance to work at it . It's funny when you do bad in ST it counts but when you do well it doesn't. But for those applauding the move to the pen I'm guessing you hope it's permanent but it's likely a medicinal move and if the medicine helps you put him back in the rotation to take the place of an injured or struggling guy because you know guys are going to be hurt and struggling on this team.

Not all of us were wrong. I wasn't as vociferous about it but I said super early after reading a few posts about how valuable Cease was that 2023 was going to hurt his value a lot. It's really turned into a what have you done lately league. Remember all the people here pining for Comforto because his career stats were much better than his last year Conforto hasnt got back to what he was. I hope Cease does amazingly well for the Padres and stays healthy in a ballpark built for pitchers on a better team . But that doesn't automatically mean he would be just as amazing in our park on a shitty team facing different hitters, anyone of whom can hit u in the face with a line drive. His destiny has changed now. But if Cease does well in SD you're still going to have people saying "see we should have kept him and got more" even though there's no such thing as a crystal ball to say what would have happened if he was pitching in Chicago. Circumstances dictate outcomes.

Exactly. It's his job to make the Sox better. Posters here can say let him pitch because you're not losing much anyway if he gets hurt or pitches poorly because they have no skin in the game. I'll take 3 prospects who all have a shot to become very good every time. If you wanted Cease to pitch into the season and he gets hurt or pitches poorly and the Sox get very little in return for him you never know what you might have got for him to compare it to. It's such an easy position to take when it's not your ass on the line. If the Sox farm system, after the trades at the deadline moved to about 15 and this trade gives you 3 prospects you can rank in your top 10 you did pretty good since all 3 of the prospects were in a No. 5 farms top ten also.

I'm confused how u determine who is the 2nd piece or 3rd piece Zavala or Iriarte. Ratings are soooo subjective and so impossible to predict future value. All meh people about the trade could be right or they could be terribly wrong. What good is Cease on a terrible team for 2 years ? If Getz can somehow get enough guys to be real bonafide MLB players out of the system all it'll take is a couple WAR by one of those 3 guys that contributes to a playoff team to equal what Cease would've been worth in losing seasons. While I don't have a lot of hope that JR will ever give Getz much to work with he could get lucky with prospects. That's really his only chance of minor success. JR doesn't give his GMs a fighting chance to win. That's why he keeps them so long. If they toe the line , he knows he's setting them up for failure . The 2005 year was a culmination of lucky trades and a lot of guys having career years in the same year. That team had no superstars. That all you can really hope for under JR is a whole helluva lot of luck before it ends quickly. His methods can't sustain continued success even in a very winnable division most years. He aims for .500 or less and he usually gets it. He loved Kenny Williams because for that one season he did the impossible, he found a way to win a World Series knowing how little he gives his front office to work with.

This is totally fair. Even knowing as much as possible your chances of predicting his future value is still next to zero. Anyone can take the safe route and say they'll never get much WAR at the MLB level and no one ever goes out of their way to say " this guy is definitely a 10 year MLB player". Even predicting ceilings are extremely difficult. Who could've predicted the massive upside of Altuve when he signed with Houston for 10K when you have multi-million dollar prospects busting all the time ?

True. I'm one of those guys who hates giving grades right away. Very few would've thought much of anything about the Tatis, Jr. trade at the time. But now it's an F-. Cease wasn't going to help the Sox win anything in the next 2 years so we've got 2 years to see if Zavala and Iriarte can keep an upward development path and if Thorpe can keep baffling hitters with that nasty changeup. He's look great in the 7 innings he pitched this spring all with very few innings under his belt in AA. Plus he's just about ready to pitch 150+ innings unlike guys like Crochet and Eder and quite a few others in our current rotation and in the minors.

Out of context since a long with that he said you can't argue with the 140 wRC+ or w/e it was.

Overly harsh karma.

Doesn't getting deeper mean at least the farm system got better which should usually translate to a better MLB team ? I'm kind of chuckling at what I just wrote considering who the owner still is. But it will be difficult to get much worse right ?

So you're getting your hopes up for a Sox player to make the HOF who plays for the Sox his entire career when you're 54 years old and 3 guys have done that in 120 years of Sox baseball and none in the free agent era. Better hope you live to 120 years and I still doubt you'd see it happen. Baseball may not even be a thing then with the way kids cling to their phones ,computers and video games. It's trending that way now with giant asses becoming a thing being a poor excuse for ending up a 400 lb diabetic. ? Don't have a clue as to why being a lifer matters. Just wear the hat going into the Hall is all most care about.

Wouldn't it just suck if he's got a sore shoulder or elbow.

Plus we were thinking it was going to be Baltimore for so long we got tons of info on their prospects. We didn't discuss the Padres very much so we're learning about them on the fly and getting conflicting reports. What we do know about Thorpe is that he's very advanced for his age as a PITCHER, not a thrower who controls with command. The changeup seems to be an extremely effective pitch for him. I'm not discouraged about what I've read about his arsenal but an underwhelming FB will diminish his effectiveness. He's somewhat of a throwback . Stuff turns a lot of heads but being a smart pitcher with command and good secondary pitches really elevates your floor.

Of course. I've been bitching about how our owner despises investing in scouting and development for what seems like ages. Now he's blaming the neighborhood of the current home field for the Sox not being able to compete in his quest for a new stadium while teaching his heirs how to be hucksters just like him.

? Oh yeah let's start telling everyone how much Robert is worth. We sure taught those Oriole guys a lesson about how much Cease was worth. He's not a superstar yet. Superstars having multiple good years of productivity. He's going to have to remain healthy for most of the next 2 seasons and not have a down year. Everyone thought Moncada was a superstar after 2019. That hasn't gone well. Everyone kept predicting 40 HR seasons for Eloy, also did not go well.

I think Kjerstad , Norby and Beavers would have been received better by the fan base. We like hitters more than pitchers. Of course I really like Beavers. Think his stock is rising. Kjerstad and Beavers both could be the LH savages.

He said White Sox for life. That's a dream. It just doesn't happen any more with Free Agency.

A bunch of white guys .

Plenty of players signed from the DR have been announced. If the Sox have signed some why wouldn't they be announced ? Does that mean 3 or 4 of the supposed 4 or 5 DR signings might be involved in that scandal ? Plus my beef is not the slowness of it. It's the continued lack of players from the DR during JR whole time as owner when that country produces more MLB players than any but the US and then being called out because I don't trust the Sox to do anything worthwhile in the DR because JR does nothing in the whole scouting and player development departments . The whole board hates JR and Grifol and to me JR has been and always will be 100 % responsible for the Sox being a joke. I'm not angry at all. Sox lifer here. I roll with the changes. I tune into as many games as I can. I follow all aspects of the Sox and from the owner on down to low levels of the minors. You hear stuff again and again about how the Cubs have 3 times the amount of staff members than the Sox do and yet there are people still carrying buckets of water for JR because he finds ways not to spend money developing players and limiting the places he gets players from ,DR and Japan specifically . Believe what you believe about the " age scandal" being the reason and not JRs pocketbook and lack of paying for youth or staff or high priced Free agents or not signing pitchers long term .That's a lot of not spending for potentially great players and limiting your acquisition pool to the mediocre the bad and the ugly. And you see this off season JR wanted to cut payroll so much that Getz was reduced to a garbage picker . Keep making excuses for him while the rest of MLB keeps making the Sox look like a bush league team.

DR players have been coming to the MLB since the late 1950s. That's over 60 years of nearly nothing from that country. We trade for Eloy and despite the massive potential he hasn't made much of an impact because of injuries.

Carter looked amazing . Don't think TX would part with him.

So you're good with how the Sox have operated internationally in the DR for 40 years. It's the country that has been producing more great players for longer than any country besides the US in that time frame. Tell me what good DR players that the Sox drafted in those 40 years. I'll hang up and wait and wait and wait. Tatis JR.doesn't count since he was traded before he even got to play in the states. You can name probably all the other teams in the majors who have done better than the Sox in 40 years in the DR.

No your grudge is just sad carrying water for an incompetent organization calling out people who have legit beefs about how poorly the Sox have operated internationally and neglect scouting and player development for JR's entire regime. But hey maybe once Getz gets his bearings we can expect the Sox to go all in on some more mediocre/poor players like Benintendi for $75M. Go take another extended vacation. No one missed you. Take that sucker ban bet you proposed and shove it.

My beef or the the Sox beef with the DR ? I know the Sox beef with the DR. It's too corrupt there. They always have problems with spending on a lot of things.