Jake

Shuster is kind of interesting because his fastball is a truly horrific pitch. Only gets whiffs 9% of the time and gets killed when they aren't whiffing. He only throws it 45% of the time, but maybe even that is too much. Maybe we can figure something out to play up his strengths. Back in the Don Cooper days, I'd be looking for him to show up with a cutter.

The White Sox need major league baseball players (or reasonably convincing replicas) first and foremost, **good** major league baseball players second-most. So this achieves the first goal.

Hard to complain. Upside is pretty limited, but the upside includes having two more solid starting pitchers this year which is worth something. Nicky Lopez isn't inspiring but he's a positive value player who shouldn't be irritating to watch.

I don't know that Jason was trying to imply that the comment was related to his cerebral palsy although I'm not sure about that. But yeah, I see it as Boyer just making it as clear as possible that he found Jason to be too needy for whatever reason. Having someone talk to me like that would give me some motivation to get out of the situation if I had an attractive off-ramp.

Why not? IDK. Being a fan is sort of a gut feeling, don't you think? If another team was really attracting me, I'd be into it. But I'm not there yet, for whatever various reasons. Part of it is I'm no longer in the White Sox's market, which theoretically should help in moving on but now I live even further from the nearest MLB team (the Braves) who I also don't find very appealing for various reasons. So there's no real option that allows me to attach to a local team, since there isn't one, and I have to categorically exclude a number of teams because I'm not signing up to be a fan of a team on the west coast when I live in eastern time ?. I'm not going to stop hating on the Cubs as that is one of my pastimes. If I wanted to pretend to still be local to the greater Chicagoland region, I could latch onto the Brewers but...yeah doesn't seem like the time to jump on that bandwagon. So for now I'm just a disenchanted Sox fan. I doubt I'll be living in the game threads or watching the games when I have literally anything else to do. But I will hope that somehow they show signs of becoming worth rooting for again. If another team wants to sweep me off my feet in the meantime, then so be it! I tend to think the likeliest outcome is I hang around until the Sox stop kicking me in the nuts so insistently, but an expansion team in the South would get a close look from me if the Sox are still delivering the nut shots when those teams come around. I can't rule out my life circumstances changing either of course...if I found myself on the west coast that would open up some intriguing options, mainly in the NL.

I don't know why the thread went in this direction but I really am curious about how/why Benintendi played so badly on D last year. Early on, I remember a small number of clear misplays that any fielder would be expected to catch. But by end of season I feel like his shortcomings on D were not very obvious by the eye test which suggests he was basically just moving slowly out there either due to a physical problem, effort problem, or inability to read a fly ball.

I didn't want to talk about it when the news broke, but the feeling is still there. After all the baseball-related s%*# I've been served, I didn't really waver. But my overwhelming feeling upon hearing the Benetti news was that I didn't want to be a Sox fan anymore. I feel basically stuck, there's no other team I care for and I continue to harbor the resentments towards various Sox adversaries. But man are the White Sox playing with fire (with me specifically, at least) if the expansion teams get rolling soon...especially if Charlotte gets one.

On top of that, a large portion of teams have starting shortstops in place already and a good portion of those who don't, wouldn't want to make Tim that guy. In baseball terms, it's not hard at all to see how both sides could want a reunion.

Shaw takes the ball and usually prevents the game from becoming a complete joke

The following bit is concerning to me: I of course have no problem in principle with Dodgers staff fixing our prospects, but it gave me the vibe that Eder wasn't sent to the AFL to work on something, but rather showed up expected to pitch well but is now getting new mechanics from an outside coach who won't be there to help him see the changes through. I'm fully willing to believe the advice he's getting from Dodgers guy is good, just worried that he was in shambles, the Sox had no plan, and Sox will continue to have no plan when he gets back into our system.

FWIW, he at least has consistently denied it: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/21574/baseball-proguestus-giving-up-the-ped-guessing-game/ Could be telling tales of course, but that piece contains an anecdote stating that he volunteered, on camera, to take a PED test at the time in his playing career when he was quite big and teammates with known steroid users.

I could see her joining in someplace in a mostly advisory role just due to the timing of this decision. I'd be okay if it was the White Sox, who are maybe uniquely open to offering a make-work position that she is free to leave whenever it suits her. But yeah, I don't think Jerry is about to shake up the front office and honestly once you've made a decision about the FO structure you probably need to stick with it for at least a little while.

In the context of the White Sox organization, I just don't see any justification for moving these guys unless there's some near equivalent player in another organization who are brilliant scouts believe is about to to break out. They haven't met our highest expectations but they're not terrible players. Maybe this is all we'll ever get, but maybe not. I continue to think Eloy has more upside but to some extent more risk due to his contract situation and defensive position. But these are the kinds of guys that a team like the White Sox would and should be expected to ride with going into next season. You don't have to feel good about it, but these are MLB players and we just don't have many of them.

I'm not inclined to make negative assumptions about Tim in the clubhouse so I will just think about it in baseball terms. Besides the hurt feelings, which is maybe too much, what is to stop the Sox from declining the option and then pursuing a cheaper one year deal?

I don't get to see a lot of Colson but every time I see him rounding the bases after a homer, he looks awfully big and a little slow (I know I know, it's a home run trot) for a shortstop. Makes me take the claim that he'll be a 3B a bit more seriously.

I don't put much into it when a guy hits well in low-A in his draft year so I'm going to try not to put much into it when a guy doesn't hit much either.

That Vera outing looks a lot like yips on the scoresheet. Don't know what it looked like live.

Doesn't the Selig rule specifically have a carveout for internal hires (that also obligates you to hire an URM elsewhere in the org)?

I understand the point that things are not so simple as looking at the prospect rankings or minor league W-L and saying "Getz did that." It's good to be good at developing guys but nothing matters nearly as much as the raw materials — talented ballplayers. I feel similarly about player health. A good training program might help, but I strongly suspect the reason the Sox had a great run of health through 2000s–early 2010s was that we had a knack for identifying durable players rather than a magic formula for keeping fragile ones healthy. So is it possible Getz could do a great job as a GM? I think it may be possible. But that's just because we don't know much of anything about him. Maybe I could be a great GM! After all, you haven't seen me fail at it. Maybe Getz is hired and things go okay, but the problem is we have no reason to believe he's produced some kind of body of work to use as a basis to hire him.

Okay so the idea is everything worked correctly beside the human element — she lied to security and they accepted her lie. Editing to add the thought that it would be self-serving on the part of Sox security to play up the claim that she had some overwhelming ability to conceal a large object in her fat rolls. I'd be curious just how big this woman is, not because I want to partake in the ridicule flying everywhere (she deserves ridicule for bringing a gun to the ballpark though!) but because I wonder about the plausibility of the gun being well-concealed in the first place.

Like I said, I'm sympathetic to the idea that you need to avoid speaking ill of the guy in that situation. But especially saying he created a good atmosphere and was a positive influence seems way out of line and goes from true/possibly true statements (like that he was a great player and perhaps good instructor) to ones that don't seem to be true unless one thinks sanctioning sexual harassment of disabled people in full view of the players is a good environment that leads to positive outcomes. Just in terms of trying to put myself in Getz's shoes, I would both want to stick to facts and try to avoid making any extra kinds of statements that might be seen as the Sox endorsing him for other jobs in the league. That said, I'd be open-minded towards the idea that he just didn't think that carefully about his words and hopes to do better in the future.

I'm a little confused here on the fat roll thing. I'm no expert on anything so maybe my intuition is just off. The claim here is that metal detectors don't work if the metal is sufficiently surrounded by fat or similar materials? I quite frankly find that surprising

Would really like to hear Getz address this statement. We know the organization got rid of Vizquel because they believed he was guilty of what he was accused of doing — that was the right thing to do. So why this statement? Did Getz actually know why Vizquel was being let go? I can understand that when you fire someone for something that you don't feel confident you can prove, you don't say "we fired him because of sexual harassment." But he obviously went further than that in avoiding negative talk about the guy they fired. So what's the deal? Did he not know, was he on marching orders from someone else (if so, why), or was he careless with his words when trying to simply avoid making a claim that could have led to litigation? I would guess we won't ever hear anything about this, but it's a real bad look.

Two requests: 1. Sell me the snake oil. Who's got the most positive sales pitch on why Chris Getz should be the GM? What would Chris be saying about himself to Jerry to get this job? 2. What's the reason Jerry would have any particular attachment to Chris Getz? He was a White Sox player, but not for long. And he was such a minor figure on our team I wouldn't have expected Jerry to have any kind of relationship with Getz in his playing days. So if not that, what makes Getz stand out relative to other guys in the front office from a relationship standpoint?

I do not want Chris Getz to be GM because I don't see any particular evidence that he has the usual qualifications for it (although maybe holding this title is sometimes the immediate step prior to being hired for a GM role, I don't know for sure) but more importantly that it would seem to reflect a bad process. There's obviously no way a competent search has been or could have been conducted and it stands to reason that he could not have been performing his job at an extremely high level given the outputs. And if he was being held back by the previous regime, then it stands to reason that he has not likely had the level of authority to prove his chops for this type of promotion. I will admit that I'm no expert on Chris Getz and his background, besides his status as one of the all-time lowest power hitters in MLB, so maybe someone can cook up some kind of rationale for why he might be able to do the job. Even if it hurts and even if I'm going to throttle back my engagement with the team, I'll be rooting for him because I'd rather have a successful stupid hire than an unsuccessful one. But for now I'll keep hoping these reports aren't true...