Jake

I wonder if he got hurt — his 2019 season, at age 23 and already in AAA, was very short. And then he obviously wasn't up to snuff to do anything during the COVID year. A lot of guys probably called it quits after 2020 if they were on the fringes. Adams seemed like a good candidate to convert to relief and see if he performed better in that role but it seems he's done with baseball.

lol now that you mention it, whether Daryl Boston works for the Sox next year is an interesting question — more interesting than whether Grifol, Katz, or Getz are working for the Sox by that time

Are we sure the Sox are making the kid change stuff or might the kid be experimenting with things of his own volition?

I'm curious what this will mean for Seby. My gut feeling is they are not about to cut Yaz.

Yeah I don't find that whole group over there to be very knowledgeable or reliable. Chuck is fine as a reporter because he can get access to people and ask them questions. The rest of those guys on NBCSN, I see them as existing for entertainment purposes only.

I don't buy that Jerry is too old to run a real search. The Bulls just hired a couple guys with no ties to the organization, quite possibly guys that Jerry had never heard of at the time he fired GarPax. I know his son is more involved in that organization, but whether this is an internal hire or not probably has nothing to do with Jerry feeling tired by the thought of paying a firm to field job candidates for him. For now, I'm just going to do my best to resist the urge to get too mad about a thing that hasn't happened yet. There will be plenty of time to get mad later. Hate to say it but my Sox fandom is probably changing either way. My older brother, who I chat with about the Sox near-daily, has decided to check out from baseball. My dad, a fan of the Sox since the South Side Hit Men and another person I talk to about the Sox near-daily, is wondering whether he should defect to the Cardinals. And I'm seeing many people on Twitter etc. saying similar things. Going to get lonely out here in Sox world soon if things don't improve, but for now I'm in no rush to take Bob Nightengale's predictions as 100% truth. FWIW, hard for me to imagine following another team since I hate so many of them (especially the Cubs/Cards) and I don't really have a local team here in the South where I live now (the Braves are closest, but screw them)

I read "ACL season ending" and briefly panicked about Wolkow's knee

To me, you've gotta get through the games without running out of pitchers and ideally without an absolute shitshow. Shaw seems okay for that job but Honeywell wasn't doing a ton better than I'd expect a position player to do.

Am I wrong for thinking Shaw is probably better/more valuable than Honeywell if we're focused solely on getting through the end of this season?

Maybe Hahn is worried that JR is going to f*** it up and decided his last service to the franchise is to leak the stupid plans in hopes of triggering a big enough fan reaction to stop it

The most White Sox thing will be for us to hire outside the organization only for Chris Getz to go on to become one of MLB's great general managers for some other franchise.

The sources of exonerating info on Franco are somehow even sketchier than the sources of the incriminating info

If you're changing management, then the owner shouldn't fire the manager. Let the new GM make that decision. I suspect a new GM might even like having a manager from the old regime in there because it's an easy fall guy when the team is disappointing again.

FWIW, I'd rather have them run my draft than... ??? whoever else would have done it on a few weeks of notice at best

Let's hope they're working on something with Eder and that's why he's struggled so much.

Holy crap the legs on this kid ? Edit: wrong quote, should have been the Quero bomb!

Right and I think we shouldn't be so confident in knowing someone's age from these photos. I could believe 14 and I could believe 18 from what I've seen. People grow up differently. And I've seen those claims about the girl having a child which is not biologically impossible at 14 years old but when there are competing claims about her age *and* she's allegedly a mother, I start to think the higher ages sound more plausible. But really I find it hard to know anything with confidence about this since it seems like all info is coming out third-hand at best.

I'm still waiting on any decent evidence or reporting on this. It shouldn't be that complicated to 1. identify the girl (non-publicly of course) and 2. figure out how old she is. It seems like the existence of a (past) relationship between the two is not in doubt. I wonder whether info is circulating in Dominican media and not reaching mainstream English sources yet.

Really striking how badly the newly acquired pitchers have pitched, you'd think they were being paid to throw the games or something. Probably unfair to lump Nastrini in with them though, his numbers look good under the hood.

On one hand, you could see him being willing to accept a reworked contract with deferred pay — basically, the buyout but he stays a White Sox. On the other hand, I don't think the union would allow it. And I don't think the Sox would really be willing to give him anything extra to make it acceptable to the union.

Sox fans (and probably fans of most/all other teams) have always gravitated towards the stoic and/or gritty white guys with non-exceptional athleticism and appearance like Vaughn. This is another area where Vaughn has something in common with Paul Konerko (let's hope the production catches up). Vaughn looks like a guy who wouldn't be instantly recognizable as a pro athlete if you bumped into him on the street. A lot of folks see those guys as basically just like them except good at baseball. The less they speak and act demonstrative, the easier it is to project all the qualities you like onto them

I'm probably just loopy from a bad few years of White Sox fandom but I can live with the Sox trying to defend what little honor remains.

Sox probably see this as something expensive that, for now, will just make fans more pissed off during a time of year at which the anger is at more of a simmer.

To me, the main thing that makes Jerry different from other owners (and each owner is going to have their unique qualities) is how infrequently he has changed front office leadership. He hired Krause shortly after buying the Bulls and left him in that position for 18 years. In fairness, his initial patience with Krause paid off massively and he didn't give Krause a ridiculously long leash post-MJ. Then the GarPax era begins which most of us feel lasted at least a little and perhaps a lot too long. It did end at a point where it seemed impossible that it could keep going, though. So he's really just on his third front office for the Bulls after almost 40 years of ownership. Again, hard to complain about keeping Krause for a long time given the team's success. His patience with GarPax didn't really pay off although there was a period in which the Bulls had good, likable, and fun teams that came after a long rebuild period. I suspect this colored Reinsdorf's view of what you need to do in order to get a successful team built. He buys the Sox in 1981 with Roland Hemond as the longtime GM. He leaves Hemond who finishes building the highly success 1983 squad. The next two years are basically an unmitigated disaster so Jerry decides to hire his own man. So far so good. Well, his own man is Hawk Harrelson. Oops. At least that mistake wasn't allowed to go on for too long (I've never found it too clear whether Hawk really left on his own accord as he said publicly or was just allowed to say that to save face). Then Larry Himes takes over for 4-5 years and does a quite good job but Jerry doesn't keep him due to unclear reasons, some mixture of Himes being too involved in day-to-day running of the clubhouse and Jerry being too involved in the duties of the GM. Himes has a not-very-successful run as Cubs GM afterwards. Then, Ron Schueler takes over and builds some decent teams around core players largely acquired by Himes, culminating in the 2000 playoff season. Schueler steps down due to his age as best as I can tell, thus starting the 22+ year KW/Hahn era. Jerry surely feels validated that he gets a World Series in KW's 5th year on the job, validating a bit of patience as well as hiring from within when you're happy with the outgoing GM. There was some turnover early with the Sox, but I think Jerry must have seen that as tumultuous and something to be avoided in the future. I think he would have happily retained Schueler if Schueler wanted to keep the job — and why not, considering Schueler had just assembled a young team that won its division. As a member of the group of owners, JR has earned his rep for being tight. But as an owner, I don't really see him as a huge tightass anymore. The Sox spend in a way that seems consistent with where they stack up to other teams as far as market and potential revenue. Sox have avoided big contracts in the Kenny+Hahn era, but I can't help but wonder how much of that is driven by Jerry vs. Hahn in recent years. The payrolls have certainly been high enough to carry the contracts of some of the high-profile players we struck out on so it's not as if JR is unwilling to get near $200M in payroll. Sox used to not spend much in international free agency or the draft, but AFAIK since those categories of spending got standardized we have been spending basically every cent we are allowed to. In his older years it has seemed to me that JR has embraced the idea of the owner's role being someone that hires a GM and hands over a budget; great, but now there's even more scrutiny on who that GM is. I strongly suspect Hahn is headed out the door, and I'd be surprised if Kenny doesn't do whatever Hahn does. Will it be a firing? Probably won't be described as such but I don't know. Highly unlikely that JR lives long enough for us to know whether he would give the next GM too long of a leash.

Giving him free license to steal might help build skill/instinct for it that will serve the team down the line.