Balta1701

It has been years since any pitcher came back in under 14 months from TJS and threw anything more than about 10 effective innings.

Really you couldn’t guess? https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2020/03/03/white-sox-dallas-keuchel-leadership-25000-team-dinner/4937202002/

Stuff about Frank not being a leader or being all about his own stats...that was all over the media in the 1990s. Absolutely.

I don't know if we're just turning this into a thread about Anderson's motivation or whatever, but golly gee whiz this is pretty darn blatant as to why his power numbers aren't where they were a couple years ago. At this rate, 3 years from now every time he swings the ball will be bouncing straight up off the plate. Is someone teaching this? This is so blatant it has to be on purpose right?

The White Sox joined the Big 12?

Fwiw

Immediately after the trades, 2020 seemed like an entirely reasonable time for a young team to be making a playoff appearance. That schedule seemed to be set back after a generally really bad 2018, between guys who struggled at a lot of levels and bad injuries (Kopech, Robert).

Cease did a good job and the Astros managed to be worse. And Montero out of their bullpen would fit into Hahn’s bullpen perfectly.

Ump is helping Graveman out.

Lead off bloop for Peña. That….seems fair.

Literally every ball that inning other than Moncada’s was a super awkward flip. 2 of them caught, two weren’t.

Abreu is just not seeing the ball at all right now, you can tell from what he is swinging at against Kelly.

Reese McGuire DH’d once last year.

On the subject of this agreement, the big issue is we are roughly 5 years from it being over, and the whole organization is in such a terrible state that it may well spend those 5 years below .500 and out of the playoffs again. This scenario seemed possible a few years ago but was hopefully unlikely, now the path to it happening seems clear. The deal ends in 2028 or 2029 (I think they could extend it for a year). When that happens, the Sox will have a 35 year old ballpark and have a genuine case for a new one. But, between the current political state in Illinois and the lack of excitement around the White Sox, when the Reinsdorf group asks for money for a new stadium and another sweetheart deal they will be laughed out of Springfield. This looks an awful lot like the Oakland situation. There will be some effort to keep them around, but the state won’t want to put up nearly the deal they put up last time and the team won’t want to accept a deal that makes them way less money. The odds of Reinsdorf willingly paying for a privately financed ballpark are less than zero. The obvious path then becomes them struggling for a few years with a half empty ballpark and no deal, bad press, angry politicians, rumors about what might happen suppressing attendance, and eventually they find a deal somewhere else. This path wouldn’t be so obvious if all they had done was win a few baseball games.

The more they pack in the more they make, but they are protected from losing much money if attendance plummets by this sweetheart deal.

The first "Rick Hahn should have been fired" moment on my list is 2013, his first year. He thought they had a competitive roster, added players to it, did not subtract or start a rebuilding process, did nothing to plan for the future until midseason, and wound up 63-99. Not every team would have fired their GM for that after only 1 season, but that was such an epic collapse that at least half of the teams in the league would have said "nope, this is unacceptably bad and we don't care how little time you've had on the job we're going in a different direction".

Had Rick Hahn actually had any dignity, he should have resigned in October 2020. Literally everyone in baseball would have understood it. He could probably have negotiated out of any noncompete clause for a reduced salary and taken a job as an assistant GM somewhere with his reputation mostly in tact from having rebuilt the Sox into a playoff team. He could then wait out another GM job if that’s what he wanted. He also would have gotten out of any of the restrictions on spending that people believe are imposed on him. He’s here by choice.

In the Korean league? Yes.

14 games below .500 matches their worst of the season, at the end of the 10 game losing streak. Fully undoes the 3 wins afterwards. More than 100 years since a team was this far below .500 at any point in the season and won a World Series.

Harder take on him - if all you had in terms of scouting was the MLB.com top 100 prospect list, which of those rebuild deals would you have not done? He made a promising strategic call in selling off players when they had to move them, but part of a rebuild is supposed to be developing from your high draft picks and finding good players outside of those couple key trades. The Braves are rolling thanks in part to a 4th round pick in 2020 right now. The Astros won last year based on a bunch of guys who came in as international signings, a guy they picked up cheap from the Dodgers, a couple of former top picks. The White Sox got no help outside of those trades.