Frank the Tank 35

The White Sox are on Deal or No Deal. Schriffen has found his calling and replaced Howie Mandel. There are 3 Luis Robert suitcases left, and the remaining values are $1, $200,000, and $500,000. The Mets offer low ceiling and/or reclamation prospects worth $1000. Deal or no deal?

Vaughn is the type of player the Sox should be targeting during the rebuild: former top prospect with a high pedigree from a failed organizational development program. This would, of course, presume that we would have the capability to fix said post-hype player which we have shown minimal ability to do in the past. If this off-season's staff overhaul includes a monumental investment in analytics and coaches that can apply that, then we might be onto something. Critically, it's our only path forward out of this morass that should bring any reasonable Sox fan hope. However, neither bringing in a placeholder journeyman nor a high priced FA makes sense at this stage of the "rebuild."

This is what became incredibly apparent after their most recent rebuild and really cemented, in my mind, just how far they are from basically every other organization in terms of analytics and the applications thereof. Heuristics confirmed, and think about this to make your day sour: We acquired many near-ready top prospects in the rebuild who mostly all came up and performed well in 2020/2021. Then THE ENTIRE TEAM REGRESSED. As asinine as the TLR saga was, the manager doesn't make every talented, individual player regress to that degree. Other teams scouted our players, developed ways to attack them, used that information and coached their players on its application all the while our players were told, "figure it out on your own," in hopes they had some fatalistic neurosis like Ted Williams. The same probably applies to training methodologies portending our inability to maintain health. The bottom line is that we had young CHAMPIONSHIP TALENT assembled, like some blind squirrel finding a nut, that was completely squandered by our pathetic analytics and support staff.

To pile on, look at how often modern athletes are injured. They have reached, or nearly reached, peak physical conditioning and are extracting every ounce of power and force out of their bodies. At this level of competition, you need every single fraction of an advantage against the other team, and that most definitely includes the rest cycle these high performance athletes need to recover to give them the best opportunity NOT to get hurt.

Lip is right… the ‘05 box set comes with game 3 of the ALDS. Knuckleballers will have a place; it’s not my position they don’t. But watch his mechanics. He barely uses any leverage to play up his FB. He looks like a stiff position player. Then look at Waldron by comparison. He’s maxing out what his body can do. Jordan Hicks threw more 100+ mph FBs than just about anyone last year, and hitters teed off on the pitch hitting over .300 against it. Yes, the ‘05 Sox had a collection of nice pitchers, many of which had career years, and at the time, that magic all coalesced around one perfect season. Two decades later, however, the game has accelerated and evolved. Bobby Jenks is just another high leverage reliever if you insert him into today’s game. Players are maxing out physically in a way they did not then hence all the injuries to the DeGroms of the world. A lot of this evolution is due to advancements in understanding and applying biomechanics to training methodologies and using advanced analytics to determine how to attack specific hitters/pitchers. If you’re not doing this, then you wind up with poor player development and being non-competitive. In today’s game, that is par for the course and creating some magic season from some bygone notion of the will to win becomes ever more elusive, if not impossible, if you’re not applying these things. The hill I’m willing to die on is that the ‘05 Sox was part talent and part just dumb luck, and we’d have a hell of a time trying to replicate that kind of magic in today’s game.

Since my kids were lamenting the fact that I refused to take them to a Sox game this year, I pulled out the '05 WS box set for them to watch. I'm no expert, but you couldn't put together another miracle team like that in today's game. Compared to today's players' sculpted physiques, a lot of those guys look like beer league players. Tim Wakefield pitches like a position player pulled from the OF in a blowout game only he happens to throw a knuckleball. Pitchers got by on cunning and guile. Bobby Jenks throwing 92% straight 100mph fastballs would get crushed in today's game. Today's game has less luck and "moxie" than ever before and has more to do with analytics, biomechanics and being able to interpret and coach based on those. And, of course, the hubris at the top hasn't invested squat in that.

Since we can't sign any $100M players, can we just sign new scouting and development departments to record contracts? The product on field is going to be awful for the foreseeable future, so give me an A's player budget but spend multiples of that on the analytics and development side in the meantime.

If JR could have fetishized that clause across baseball, as was likely the intent, maybe, just maybe, we’d be sitting at the adults table when it comes to FAs. Point being I’m not sure JR has actually changed. Players like Jordan and Thomas FORCED him to continue their employment by their performances alone.

“Diminished Skills Clause” says hello.

https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10115581-mlb-farm-system-rankings-for-the-2024-season Didn't see this posted. Wasn't April Fools a couple weeks ago? I can only hope my blind rage towards this org has rendered my objectivity useless, and that there's a shred of truth to this ranking.

How about letting one of his kids run the org then? I far prefer Michael's Bulls management over the previous era. Let them take a crack at the Sox.

I generally have zero inside info, but I do know at least one view on TLR from the 3. Can PM if anyone is really interested.

Haven't posted in some time, but I still read frequently. Been an active Sox fan for 31 years now, and this is the most disgusted I've ever been with the team. Honestly, if it wasn't for Frank Thomas and those early 90s teams, I'm not sure I would have ever latched on. Objectively speaking, this franchise is easily bottom quartile in management top to bottom past the inaugural phase of my fandom. Watching them continue to fall further and further behind the competition is a prime exercise in soul-sucking. I stopped watching all Sox games over a month ago for the first time in my life during any season no matter how bad they were. The first week, I still flipped over to check the score, but I've managed to go cold turkey since. I promised myself I would not watch a single second of Sox baseball unless TLR was fired. My kids are now at a very impressionable age and are playing little league. We have an annual pre-planned trip to the ballpark where they're generally showered with Sox gear. Had I not bought tickets during the pre-season, there's a good chance we would not have attended this year. I bought them ZERO Sox items at the ballpark. If there isn't a significant house-cleaning this offseason, I'm officially boycotting. I'll take the kids to the Brewers game instead as it's about equidistant to get there for us. I see no reason to submit my kids to this lifetime of suffering following a miserable, regressive organization.

I don't know if this post goes here or in the myriad of other rage posts, but here goes. I created some t-shirts with pertinent slogans for our 2019 White Sox. I sent the package to Brooks Boyer as a gift with this message: To: Brooks Boyer From: A Sox Fan Message: This must be a difficult time to lead the Sox marketing efforts. As a concerned Sox fan, I'd like to help and have included some slogans for the entire exec board. Please distribute appropriately. Mods: There is one shirt with a political tinge. You may need to remove if you feel inappropriate. To whoever is planning that billboard: I'm in.