Jake

I still think the Frazier deal was a good one in that it made sense at the time and hasn't been an unmitigated failure at this point. It's fully within the realm of possibility that he contributes to a winning Sox team next year and/or gets traded for more than we gave up for him next year.

Given that Shields has seen his velocity drop over the past few years, it might make sense to cut back his workload since it isn't exactly important that we get innings out of him.

I would rather hold to account the person who agreed to the Samardzija trade than the person who chose to sign Melky. Who gives a s*** about the Melky signing? The worst case is that we wouldn't have spent the money or that we would have spent it on someone worse. The way the >$10M/year FA signings have been lately around MLB tells me that was a near-harmless move. Having Melky on the team has made us more ready to win than most alternatives. But Samardzija only worked in theory if the team was good that year, which seemed unlikely at the time to me and some others. Even if you were optimistic, it was still a risky move since you were betting on all the things that can go wrong in a single season. Worse, of course, was that the player acquired wasn't even very good. The good Samardzija, who lives in many Chicagoans' imaginations and memories, wouldn't have made the team a winner but would have at least provided some cover for the logic of the move itself. Instead we traded at least one MLB regular who was cheap and under control for a long time (along with a potential backup C and solid starting pitching depth) for a guy who pitched like ass for a year and left us with just a draft pick, though we can at least be thankful for that.

The way I see it is that the front office is always highly collaborative. There is usually a single person—typically, but not always, the GM—who leads the front office and makes the final call and when quick decisions are necessary, the leader makes them perhaps without consultation of others. But there are many people who have a lot of input. Your GM will not make many good draft picks or international signings without good scouting advice. Once the advice is there, the GM has to sift through it, make risk calculations, etc. But even then, there are other members of the front office like the assistant GM who will play a role in the weighing of risks and benefits. Lots of teams seem to have a "money man" who will play a large role in deciding whether a move is financially prudent. The GM gets the glory and the blame, but both glory and blame may in many cases be an organizational rather than individual failure. Another thing about collaborative work like this is that some try to work towards consensus. Not always in the sense that the final decision is the one each individual would make if he or she were in charge, but that everyone involved contributed and doesn't outright oppose the final decision. So my question has been whether the big picture decisions for the White Sox are really being decided in much of a different way than before Hahn and Kenny were promoted. Beforehand, Hahn could have pushed against Kenny and/or Reinsdorf at times but it wouldn't have been news to anyone because who cares what Assistant GM thinks. But if the decisionmaking structure is unchanged but the people in it have new titles, does it now matter? Of course, maybe the structure has changed and Hahn has much more of a say than in the past. He certainly is taking on some tasks that Kenny did previously, but it's unknown to us if those are really the major decisions or not.

Our current prospect strategy would put Adams as our opening day starter next year

His velocity averaged over 93, I'm not seeing this "way down" unless you kept seeing his cutters at 88-90 and thinking they were slow fastballs.

QUOTE (miracleon35th @ Aug 19, 2016 -> 12:47 PM) Hawk has to drive for about two hours to and from home games, which is why he decided to only do away games. However, getting to and from airports, staying at hotels and being away from home for several weeks during the season is also not that easy for him. It's too bad he can't rent or buy a condo in Chicago to stay at during the season or at least during home stands. I never understood why he chose to do that drive every day in past years. So now he only does away games but why is staying in a downtown Chicago Condo during a home stand any different than staying at a hotel in another city (unless he wouldn't get lodging/meals in Chicago paid for as a travel expense)? Edited to add - I'd rather see Hawk do our home games and someone else (please no more Benetti) do the play-by-play for away games. Hawk makes that commute not because Indiana is just a super awesome place, but because he treasures being able to go home and see his children and grandchildren is so important that he just couldn't bear to set up shop in Chicago full time for the entire season.

Regarding Hansen, I have to take a college pitcher's rookie league production with a huge grain of salt.

I wouldn't mind seeing Avila back next year. No need to see Navarro around here again, though. Narvaez seems a capable backup.

Given how little he walked and how little time he had in AAA, his current run isn't too surprising. We've seen the good and the bad. One thing that's important to me is that I think by the eye test he looks like he has a lot more baseball aptitude than the stats and description of "raw" would suggest. Even when he's missing at a good slider for a strikeout, he often shows that he does indeed have recognition of the pitch, just not the discipline to deal with it. And of course his defense has been much better than I expected, especially for a guy with a sub-.900 fielding percentage two years ago. I don't think he'll become a player with high walk totals, but he seems to have the natural abilities to be within normal levels, especially for a shortstop.

Typo: Hansen's draft year is listed as 2014 Also: "6. Trey Michalczewski, 3B [Previous: 6th, -2]"

He's perfectly able to let management know that the jerseys are terrible. He can b**** and moan a lot if he wants. But he has to go out and pitch regardless. He also has to not stab the jerseys with a knife as a form of sabotage. I almost wonder if he thought he could get away with it without anyone knowing who did it. Either way he thought he could ruin the jerseys to get his way and the Sox had no choice but to nip it in the bud.

Okay good, now we can blame the management again

Why do my spidey senses tell me this somehow involved poop

Only trade him if you get what you were looking for before this. Sox have the leverage over Sale.

Seems like this story sets the Sox up for leaking a narrative that Sale forced their hand

Anyone who fails to see that Sale is a big baby has blinders over their eyes. I still like him, but the guy throws temper tantrums and it's a character flaw that might just be getting him booted out of here now.

QUOTE (NCsoxfan @ Jul 23, 2016 -> 06:48 PM) Way to hit his trade value Hahn? At least make it sound better! For all we know, the truth may be way, way worse

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jul 23, 2016 -> 12:21 AM) Really? I'm honestly kind of horrified about the debates. Trump plays by different rules than anyone else. He could call her a dumb c***, lose no votes, and nothing Hillary could do or say would make her look okay. I just have no clue what stuff could happen on the debate stage and if Trump mistakes would be received as such.

We're far from backed into a corner where we need to trade Q/Sale

QUOTE (fathom @ Jul 22, 2016 -> 09:18 PM) Yep, and he's been an amazing member of the Sox in terms of not complaining about the talent around him and/or demanding a trade. And a not amazing member in terms of publicly calling for the ouster of the team's VP

Profar has the same amount of team control as Sale and less than Quintana. Would have to be a secondary piece.

Thought that factoid that Griffey is the first #1 draft pick to go to the HoF was fascinating. Seems to undermine the idea that there are really big payoffs for a full-on tanking approach. Note that I am not saying the draft is a 100% crap shoot and that higher picks aren't better. But one must admit it makes far more sense to undertake such a strategy in the NBA, where 19 number 1s will be Hall of Famers starting in 1958 (Elgin Baylor) through 2003 (LeBron James, making an assumption here). After Griffey, the only surefire HoF caliber player is Alex Rodriguez who clearly won't get in and then you have the fringey Chipper Jones who may make it in. No obvious HoFers after that, though Bryce Harper is on a promising path and David Price is haivng a great career.

Putting aside all else with Trump's speech tonight, it is bothersome that it was based on several false premises: 1. The country is suffering from greater rates of crime (false in all but the most absurd readings of crime statistics). 2. We're dealing with an influx of illegal immigrants, mostly from Mexico (net migration from Mexico to the US is negative, more people are going from US to Mexico than vice versa). 3. Immigrants are dangerous (less likely to commit crime than citizens). 4. Illegal immigrants are primarily coming to us across an unsecured border (most overstay legal visas). I do wonder, for all that rank and file Republicans may agree about with Trump, are they nearly as interested in these immigration and crime issues that this speech focused on so much? Sure, they may generally favor the idea of the need to crack down on crime and on immigration, but I've never had the sense that these are the top issues for average conservatives. And, if I'm right about that, it's because the world most of us live in is not characterized by unprecedented crime and immigration. My read is that conservatives are generally either concerned with big changes to our social world—like gay marriage—or the way our economy is run, the role the government should serve in reducing poverty, etc. because those are more clearly problems and ones that affect people's day to day lives. I just wonder whether conservatives in general are in agreement on what the major issues are and, after that, whether Republicans and Democrats are at all close in diagnosing the problems that they should be seeking to fix (with the assumption that the proposed solutions will generally be different).

To be completely honest, if we traded Sale and Quintana, there's almost no return that wouldn't still have me much less interested in following the team for the foreseeable future. It would absolutely be a punt to a few years from now hoping that we at least walk away with a couple of guys as good as the ones we lost.