Balta1701

How many times in the last 10 years have we heard “maybe a new hitting/pitching coach will fix player X” and how often has it actually happened?

Bullplop. Have you seen the army of people pushing positive leaks?

If that were true then it wouldn’t have taken until March for Cease to move last year.

While it doesn’t necessarily offset all this, let’s also remember that they have essentially zero long term stadium debt thanks to the taxpayers of Illinois, so their overall balance sheet isn’t just super low revenue and moderate spending. Super low infrastructure spending as well/

@Chicago White Sox, just so that you catch this, yes it was a real post this morning. Clearing out contracts is a thing you do before selling or moving the team and I'm not the only one noting this.

I'm as hard on him as anyone about dumping Cease last year for a deal I don't respect...but for Robert, there's another side to this - Cease was a guy who at worst was a potentially good, affordable innings eating pitcher who could strike out a ton of guys. He had been as healthy and reliable of a starter as there is in all of baseball the previous 3 seasons. That's still going to return something at the trade deadline even if he continued to struggle, probably something comparable to what they got in the offseason. Robert...is coming off a terrible year, is injury prone, and gets more expensive each year from here on out. If you can get something for him right now, even if it's not a top prospect...that may simply be better than nothing. Facing up to the prospect of losing Robert for nothing is a part of this. That seemed unlikely with Cease, as at the very least he's been as healthy as one could ask and has always been decent when he's been healthy. Neither of those are true with Robert, we could easily be sitting here next offseason with him worthless after another major hip or leg injury, or after another <1 WAR season, and yes having his option declined as a consequence where the White Sox wind up with nothing. I don't know what the right answer is here, but a decent return, Robert bringing back something that makes the White Sox system stronger, is an offer that shouldn't be ignored out of hand.

They released a statement along with this saying that they're committed to building a stadium in the city, but yeah this feels like a big step towards making that project work.

This ignores the other option. Cease was back to a >4 WAR pitcher in 2024. His best month of the year was July, and he had a 3.42 ERA at the trade deadline, albeit in San Diego. Holding him to the trade deadline should have been an option.

Easier said than done...you might have gotten a real strong return for Robert last offseason, but a return of 2 top prospects would seem disappointing compared to what he was potentially worth when he had 4 years of control remaining. Did we really want to give a big discount on Robert last year?

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.