Balta1701

Not likely. It takes way more than a "lack of talent" to lose 120 games. Teams full of AAA caliber players usually still win in the upper 40s, you need real dysfunction on top of a lack of talent to pull off what happened last year.

We are 2 weeks from the start of the winter meetings, they end in about 2.5 weeks. If someone is going to make an aggressive move for him and give that type of return, it’s likely in the next 3 weeks. If not, then that’s telling you teams are waiting for Getz to drop his price.

You didn’t notice that their number one priority this offseason was a platoon corner OF?

Financially, the other reason multi year deals are problematic is that they have to be paid regardless of the revenue stream or financial status of the owner. If the team was sold, the new owners would need to have that $50 million in available liquid assets, cash not stock. If the team plays two seasons in a AAA ballpark in Nashville, they have to pay that deal regardless of their ticket and broadcast revenue. Clearing out long term expenses is a hedge against uncertainty, when you expect the near term revenue to be unstable as would happen if a team was moved and money had to be raised to construct a new ballpark.

You have to throw in though that the Dodgers are also trading guys away in fairly big deals every year. Ruiz on the Nats, Busch on the Cubs, Verdugo was a decent player on the Red Sox, and many of those deals still have other players coming up. The White Sox are even still banking on that.

And frankly, Rodon should have stayed down for longer. His secondary stuff wasn’t developed and it took him years to find a good pitch mix. We also knew that his coach at South Carolina had pushed his arm hard, I believe there were some outings in there that were >>100 pitches while he was in college. Taking time at AAA to build his arm up and work on his secondary stuff against lesser competition would have been smart - and it didn’t take long before the arm problems started. But Hahn knew Rodon was key to competing that year and he couldn’t afford more pitchers, so development be damned. At least they finished…not in 5th place.

Like how Eloy did, right. Rodon got up quick, because Hahn needed him for his 2015 competitive team which went great. Eloy was put in AAA and kept there until he signed his deal. None of them were called up because they were ready.

Carlos Rodon was brought up the first week when the White Sox got extra control of him. He threw 2 games, 10 innings in Charlotte. Frankly, he should have stayed there longer. He was held down after a contentious negotiation with Boras about his signing bonus, where Hahn even laughed about how tough it was during a meeting with season ticket holders. Skenes threw 7 starts at Indianapolis this year, with his agreement, as a way to limit his innings and workload. This was equally clear. Very different, particularly in the attitudes of cooperation vs antagonism.

But the good news is thanks to KW including 2027 and 2028 options on their contract for Machado they have plenty of money to sign them.

With all these guys let’s see how it goes. I like it on paper but I’ve heard it all before. There’s a 10 year old article out there about how the White Sox are totally making it a point to teach framing and like a 9 year old article about how the 2015 team keeps losing games because they got rid of Flowers and now Avila and Navarro are one of the worst framing pairs in baseball. I do want to give Quero a shot though.

Apparently neither of the available ticket packages for this include any autograph sessions. https://bsky.app/profile/soxmachinejosh.bsky.social/post/3lbkjfprlns2l

If he needs another 600 PAs in the minor leagues...There is a bigger problem. All I want to see is him reach a point where he is a solid, strong contributor against AAA pitching. Give him 6 weeks there. If he shows he's back to a .825-ish OPS against AAA pitching, which shouldn't be ridiculous in that ballpark at Charlotte, go ahead and give him a shot. If he is struggling after the first 3 months again this year, then there's something seriously wrong. Maybe that's a back issue and we need to shut him down and figure out another plan. Maybe there's an attitude problem and in a couple of years we can give him the Kopech treatment with talk about how he totally doesn't listen to coaches and that's totally never the fault of the coaches. Maybe he just never was that good and he will stall out at AAA. Straightforward ask here. The AFL was a good sign, now he can go out against minor leaguers, playing everyday, and show that he's actually fine and ready to go. If he's a top 20 prospect this shouldn't be an outrageous request. IF it is, there's more going on than we know.

oh yeah I could have kept going. This one is ripe for you man, go to town. Forget KW existing, guys Hahn called up for reasons other than their performance at AA/AAA. You can come up with at least 5 more. You have to imagine how toxic this is to a system. Guys have no goals to shoot for, they have no idea what it actually will take for them to get called up, they have to give interviews about how they think they should be the starting SS or write an article called "I'm ready" before they get called up because they haven't been given a clear plan that both sides can buy into. Exact opposite of what we saw with Skenes, for example.

"hasn't had enough activity recently" is not "There isn't much interest in him".

Calling him up early last year would have been being rushed. That might be ok for some players, but it might destroy some other players. Some guys struggle for the first time, develop some bad habits, and that's their career. Some guys might thrive with that challenge. Calling up Montgomery now would not necessarily be "Rushing him" in terms of a schedule you might have drawn up when he was drafted...but my word is this a player who did not at all look ready for the big leagues for an entire season at AAA. What would calling him up last year have done to him other than embarrass him? I don't care about the schedule when he was drafted. I do care about the fact that he couldn't handle pitching at AAA and major league pitchers blow AAA pitching out of the water. Rick Hahn's thing, one of his nonstop things, was calling guys up not because they deserved it based on their performance but because of external factors. Moncada, Giolito, Lopez, were called up because trades created vacancies on the big league roster. Madrigal, Vaughn, Rodon, Anderson, Fulmer were called up because we desperately needed help filling holes on our so-called competitive teams. Robert, Jimenez were called up because they signed their contract extensions. How much did all this backfire? Treat guys consistently. If they do their job and perform at a minor league level, call them up when the opportunity presents itself. If guys struggle, they have to overcome their struggles before they move to the next level. If you don't want to do that, then just bring back Rick Hahn, he was masterful in making moves for reasons other than baseball performance.

When Scott Boras tells Heyman that there is a mystery team bidding on a player, and Heyman publishes it...do you accept it as 100% the truth?

If I hear someone is interested in Juan Soto, who do you think I believe leaked the information about the interest in this free agent? Take one moment on this. What person, good honest chap, involved in the Juan Soto negotiations might feel there's some benefit to him in leaking that teams are interested in Juan Soto?

Except that .710 OPS is motivation for Montgomery's call up now, in 2025. And the numbers are a prediction that AAA in 2024 would be too easy for Montgomery. Oops.

I'm happy to believe they are. I do not believe that if they're serious about it, they're all regularly calling up Heyman for updates. I do not believe that, if Getz was deep in getting strong offers, he would be leaking a general list of teams like that to Heyman.

If we are spending $6 million, the free agent options look better than Vaughn. Justin Turner, Mark Canha, Josh Bell, Anthony Rizzo, and Carlos Santana are all projected from $7-$8 million on 1 year deals from Fangraphs here. Turner and Canha were 1 WAR players last year, Santana was a 3 WAR player. Turner was tradable last year, Canha was tradable last year, Santana was good enough last year the Twins didn't want to trade him but he was tradable in 2022 and 2023. There are other options who are probably cheaper than this. Donovan Solano is regularly a 1 WAR 1b, he made $2 million with the Twins in 2023 and $700k with the Padres in 2024. Abraham Toro has been basically a 0-0.5 fWAR 1b in his career, he made $1.275 million last year. If we need to be cheap, sign someone like Solano or Toro. If we are looking to spend $6 million and be a little better, sign one of the guys who has a history of being a 1-3 WAR 1b and a good shot at being tradable mid-season.

Yes, because the leadership and performance of Andrew Vaughn was key to preventing the White Sox from losing 120 games in 2024. Without his leadership, they clearly would have lost 120+ games.

Because they could have easily designated Grandal for assignment or sent Perez (who started 6 games in the last 2 months) to Charlotte instead. But, they didn't care about Zavala's better defense.

By pointing out this series of transactions you make a convincing case that the White Sox don't care about the defensive side of a catcher's game.

In other words, Chris Getz hasn't had enough activity recently so he called Heyman and made stuff up to try to drive more calls.