Balta1701

He made this so vague I had to read it three times to figure out which comments it was referencing.

Bah, the White Sox weren't the best run franchise in the big leagues under Kenny Williams, but they were quite good. They were one of the top 5 teams in wins in the 2000s, won 90 games 2 years in a row, would have gone to the playoffs almost every year except 2007 under the current format, they developed a lot of talent internally, and Kenny actually had big wins in both trades and free agency. It didn't always work, they also had big flops in both of those areas, they had years where they fell apart, and they developed an intolerable rift between management and coaching, but it wasn't bad and it wasn't lightning in a bottle. They were a decently run franchise, and decently run franchises sometimes put everything together.

If you're looking at a team that has Betts, Freeman, and Smith in their lineup and Gonsolin and Kershaw in the rotation, and not thinking "They're quite a bit better than us", you're just wrong. And if you're also not noting that team was missing Urias, Lux, Syndergaard, Hudson, Treinen, Tracy Thompson, Pepiot, and the big ones - Buehler and May for TJS - you're missing a key part of the point. The White Sox are dramatically healthier than the Dodgers, one of the healthiest teams in the league like people demanded for years, and they're still no where near as good.

I’d like to like Giolito. Smart, union guy, but he was clearly cheating with spider tack for years. That power changeup of his was a cheat. That no hitter involved cheating. Even if it was all Katz’s idea, Giolito did it.

I kinda like Hendriks and admire him as a person.

I’m sure this will be the guy rushed to the big leagues who will have instant and permanent success. *Automated post, repeats every week.

Unlike last time, the White Sox don’t have guys to offer who are premium players with multiple years of control, unless they can get someone to trade for Robert. Giolito is a fine player but he’s only under control for two months. In this case, the smart move is to go for quantity over quality. If you can get several talented A ball players for a guy like Giolito, that’s better value than one guy who is a year from his debut. Get one guy like that back for Anderson, 2 or 3 for Giolito, one back for Eloy, maybe 2 back for Burger, two back for Graveman, maybe one back for Kelly, and at least you’ve built some minor league depth. In a normal organization, a couple of those guys will turn into quality big leaguers with 5 or so years of development and coaching. Aside from that, move every dollar off the roster possible. If you have to eat some money to undo mistakes like Benintendi, do it. Push the reset button on co tracts as hard as you can, then start using your resources in the offseason to find guys that could be tradeable next year at the deadline. Keep doing the same thing and in 2 or 3 years you’ve got a rebuilt minor league system.

If you don’t like how people are interpreting weird and confusing statements, make them clearer.

Just for reference, the worst white Sox player this year in terms of win probability subtracted is Lance Lynn. Lopez is 6th worst, behind Andrus, Anderson, Alberto, and Colas.

As a person who has been demanding Hahn be tarred and feathered and paraded through the south suburbs since 2016, I am rather content to see others coming into agreement with this.

I firmly and vehemently disagree with the notion that this team is being dramatically held back by managing and that you can somehow see that because one starter had an excellent game against a team with its own offensive issues. 36 year olds who have lost fastball velocity but can still have an occasional good game aren’t being held back by their manager. This is just a plain old bad team. That doesn’t mean Pedro is any good, it just means that they’re a bad baseball team. I don’t care if it’s Bobby Cox, Joe Torre, Joe Maddon, or Kevin Cash. They’d still be bad.

Close to what exactly? They’re the third worst team in the AL. You basically say they’re missing the entire core of a roster. They’re closer to being the As than the Rays.

I wouldn’t say he shouldn’t be pitching until August, I’d say he needs to be in a position where you can’t count on him as a contributor yet. If your team is rebuilding and he’s healthy enough to give you innings, fine stretch him out in the big leagues. If you think your team is competitive, you can’t be expecting a guy to contribute anything more than the last position on the roster only 14 and a half months from that surgery. If you’re desperate to get back in the race and every inning counts, he should be working Tom guild strength in the minors. If he’s doing garbage time innings, fine. The White Sox have more garbage time innings guys than they have garbage innings. The White Sox thought he could come up and compete immediately and that was just dumb, but not exactly out of character for this front office.

How many players do the White Sox have who can be used in a close game? How often is it feasible to pitch those guys? Are the White Sox good enough offensively to win many games running away, so that they don’t need their best relievers to get a win? The answers to these questions spell out the reality. They aren’t good enough offensively to win games running away very often, they can’t bury multiple relievers in games that aren’t close because the only games that aren’t close are games where the other team blows them out.

Except for the part where The Athletic was sold to The NY Times for $500 million, making their founders fabulously wealthy.

Anyone who joined this page during Hahn’s tenure thinks I’m relentlessly negative on this team and it’s entirely Rick Hahn’s fault.

After the Muncy game last year I can’t remember anyone caring. Fucker kept walking people with 2 strikes and no one cared.

If they keep Colas down a couple more weeks they can probably avoid the Super-2 arbitration year.

I think almost No one found trying to claw back to .500 to be entertaining last year.

If this was an actually competitive team, this is about the point where you send him to the bullpen and see if throwing in short bursts can help him regain some velocity and effectiveness. But, you’d have to have pitching depth and someone worth calling up to do that, and Rick Hahn knows only stupid heads have or want more than 5 starters for a season.

Serious answer: I’d be cutting Donaldson and trading Anderson anyway so it won’t matter. Sarcastic answer: we’re in a thread about Clevinger coming off the IL I don’t think this organization gets to pretend to care about guys having dignity.

I couldn't help but notice the .500 OPS that Seattle has gotten out of their DH spot and .642 OPS they've gotten from 3b. That sure seems like a fit.